Artist Trading Blocks

One of my mentorship groups, FiberArt Northeast (otherwise known as FANE) has been meeting monthly since 2006. Among many other things, I am constantly challenging the members with fun art projects, some for exhibition and some just to stretch creative muscles. Over the holiday break I offered them a quick little project that I had read about on the Gelli Arts blog, Artist Trading Blocks. A number of years ago Artist Trading Cards burst onto the scene. The size of baseball cards (2.5" x 3.5") the ATCs are a great way to collect and trade small pieces of art with others.

The artist trading block is a three-dimensional interpretation of this idea. The Gelli Arts blog suggests using 4" x 4" posts cut into 4" cubes for the blocks, but once I realized that I needed over 30 of these and I discovered how very much each one would weigh, I quickly dropped the size suggestion and tried to find a smaller, lighter weight alternative.

I wandered around the lumber department of Home Depot until I came upon what they call "square dowels", oddly, since aren't dowels by their very definition round? Lumber is weird, my friends, 2 x 4s are not 2" or 4", and dowels are apparently not always round. Anyway, the square dowels are 1.75" on a side and 36" long so I bought two. Using Carlos' chop saw I was able to cut each dowel up into 19 blocks, ending with 38 total. Some members took 1 and others took 2 so they would have one to trade. I took two so I could trade as well.

What a blast! Nifty little six-sided collages! Three dimensional accessible art! A great way to slide into the new year art wise.

One block is covered with different whites and off whites to start. I added pieces of an old book, an embossed paper Ganesha, colored art papers, a postage stamp, and then I stamped some letters, numbers, a word, and a chop over the papers.

The other block is a mixture of papers and fabrics, with other papers, a fortune cookie fortune, and more stamped letters, numbers, and words added. This block is in much brighter colors than the first.

I can't wait to see what everyone else has made and I'll be sure to report back. So what do you think? Will ATBs become a thing? Do you have a yen to make one (or three) now?

Playing with Paint

Some artist trading cards made by playing with paint and matte medium and stamps and fabric on watercolor paper using techniques found in my new book Surface Design Essentials.

AED - backgrounds

Background layers for Artist Trading Cards. Yummy.

Workshop at Sew Inspired

Elin Waterston and I will each be teaching a workshop at Sew Inspired Quilt Shop in Simsbury CT on Saturday April 4th. We'll also be signing copies of our new book, Art Quilts at Play from 1-2 pm.

Elin is teaching Artist Trading Cards with Angelina fibers, painted fusibles and Shiva Paintstiks from 10am - 1pm and I'll be teaching Fiber Art Postcards with Tsukineko inks, metallic foil and gel medium transfers from 2-5 pm.

Hope to see you there!

Art Quilts at Play

Here's the big, exciting news! I've been living this project for the last 18 months and I can finally share. Elin Waterston and I have written a new book, Art Quilts at Play, for C&T Publishing, to be released in January 2009.

This new book is a perfect complement to our first book, Art Quilt Workbook, and covers a plethora of surface design techniques and special effects on fabric. The book is full of illustrated how-tos, many, many samples from the different processes and oodles of finished art. Once we've shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. Our first book was based on an in-depth, comprehensive class that we'd been teaching. This new one also draws on workshops plus the techniques we each use in our own art.

Over a year ago we asked a small number of very talented women in the art quilt and mixed-media world to contribute some pieces to our book and they very generously agreed. Their work enriches the material and shows you how different artists with different voices and different techniques approach the same themes or materials with exciting, original and unique results. We're so grateful to each of them for their contributions.

Natalya Aikens
Woodie Anderson
Liz Berg
Gail Ellspermann
Janet Ghio
Rayna Gillman
Terry Grant
Kathryn Hunter
Andrea Jenkins
Jane LaFazio
Mati McDonough
Tricia McKellar
Kim Rae Nugent
Karen Stiehl Osborn
Virginia Spiegel
Beryl Taylor

A few of our students were also asked and graciously agreed to share their work with us. We are so thankful to them for their generosity (and in a couple of cases, their bravery as well!)

There will be a big release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21st and we hope you can join us!

You can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting me. We're so pleased with the response to our first book and hope that you'll like this one just as much.

Text as design and inspiration

Artist Trading Card with a background of newspaper from India and a Chinese fortune cookie fortune

I love the use of text as a design element. I know that a lot of other artists are also inspired by and incorporate text into their work. I adore the way Karen Stiehl Osborn uses text, Rayna Gillman does beautiful things with letters, and Virginia Spiegel has a way with words, just to name a few. I don't know whether my affinity for the use of all things alphabetical is linked to my colored-grapheme synesthesia or not but I do know that I find it a very satisfying inspiration.

Sometimes the forms of the letters are pure design elements for their shapes, used as background noise, as in this piece from my Climate series.

Sometimes the letters or numbers are large and central to the piece but don't "say" anything.

Sometimes the letters spell something relevant.

I can't get enough letters and numbers. I have over 600 fonts installed on my computer and subscribe to a bunch of font newsletters. You might say that I'm a font junkie. I'm such a letter nerd in fact that I print out and collect the Type Trading Cards from ITC (International Typeface Corporation) each month. They're like ATCs, but with font history and fun facts.

I also collect lots of things that have text on them to use in my work. I have scores of fortune cookie fortunes -

Maps -



Old music scores -



Pages from falling-apart books -



Reproductions of old money or letters -



Postage stamps -



And of course, paper and stamps with other languages.

Handmade paper with Korean characters -



A newspaper from India -



And more alphabet stamp sets than you can shake a stick at - in every size from 1/4" to 3" high, and several character sets.



I've been playing with layering text of different scales, different languages, different colors, to say something and just for the forms. I can think of so many more directions to explore.





I found some really neat letters made of recycled tin cans in a catalog recently. The letters are about 8" high and 1.5" deep. Because they were on sale, the company was out of a lot of letters and only had two vowels left (u and o). It made spelling something out a little challenging, but I did think of a great word for my studio, as you can see!



My husband walked in right after I hung them up (probably attracted by the hammering) and wanted to know why the wall said "spout". Silly boy...

Portland Fish Market

Actually, that title is a misnomer. I'm in Portland, Oregon for Quilt Market and I'm posting about fish (and I'm still on east coast time, so it's after 2 in the morning and it all makes sense to me).

I incorporate a lot of gyotaku printing in my work. I use rubber replica fish instead of real ones, as traditional fish printers do. Recently I discovered small and teeny, tiny rubber replica fish and of course, had to order some. Below you can see an assortment of the fish. The one at the top of the picture is the typically sized fish, over a foot long. The one below it is about 6" long and the weensy guys at the bottom are just over 3" long. Aren't they adorable?


I played with the itty bitty fish first and made a few ATCs. How fun!



Tonight I had dinner with Rayna Gillman. After dinner we walked toward the Max (Portland's incredibly awesome public transportation system) and came across this wicked tree sculpture. We tried taking a picture of ourselves in front of it but the results weren't flattering. I think it takes a special skill to be able to snap a self-portrait with a camera and have it come out looking half-way decent. Alas, most of the people with that special skill are under 25. For proof, check out a typical under-25 Facebook or MySpace profile photo. The sculpture had a beautiful name which completely eludes me at the moment.


Portland is a gorgeous city with a lot of public art. It's very laid back and the pace feels so much slower here. And everywhere you look there are people reading. Sitting on the sidewalks, curled up on benches, on the Max, everywhere. Of course, the best bookstore in the known universe is here, Powell's. They were out of my book when we stopped in yesterday, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's because they sell them so fast.