Giant beetles!

As promised yesterday, here is a recent piece with two seriously big beetles. "Elfreth's Alley" is a mixed media collage with stitching on a 36" x 48" stretched canvas.

This is the first in a series of at least 8 new works, all depicting large-scale insects. I've sketched out the next four already. The one I'll start next has a big-ass moth on it. This is a fun series to construct because I'm having to invent methods and techniques to make what's in my head work in real life. I'm enjoying the unexpected turns that this project is taking me. Check back for more progress and updates!

Art on Exhibit!

I spent the morning hanging my solo show. I have been working all summer to get ready for this exhibit -- making new work, and matting, framing and mounting existing work. It was fantastic to see it all hanging together on big white walls!

The opening reception is tomorrow night, Thursday September 23rd from 7 - 8:30 pm. The exhibition is held at the Edward J Duffy Art Gallery at the Canterbury School in New Milford CT. The show runs through October 14 and the gallery is open to the public weekdays from 8 -3 and Saturdays from 8-12 or by appt (860-210-3800).


On exhibit are over 50 pieces, including the first public showing of the first half of the Loteria series and many other new works. I've discovered one drawback to working on a small scale - it takes a LOT of work to fill a gallery!

Many of the Loteria series are on display, as well as an assortment of gyotaku fiber and paper collages, insect work in a variety of formats, some new pieces inspired by cell phone photography and a few three-dimensional fiber houses.

I hope you can stop by!

Bricolages - part deux

The bricolage assemblages are done! I'm not certain what they "mean" or what they're "saying" yet. I tend to work very subconsciously and all of that needs to filter up before I can figure it out.

I made small shelves with balsa wood, painted them and then distressed them before attaching them to the illustration board. I used both glue and small screws to attach the shelves.



I auditioned a number of found objects for the shelves. In the end I used found chess pieces that I bought from Judy Gula in Houston last year.




The empty morphine vials came from a Facebook friend's etsy store.



The cardboard letters and vintage Japanese card came from another Facebook friend's etsy store. Etsy is the best. So is Facebook.







It's very tricky to photograph framed art because of the reflections on the glass and harder still to photograph shadow boxes because of the depth of the frames and the shadows they throw. These difficulties were compounded by having to use just one photoflood, since the other blew during a marathon photo shoot recently. B&H will be delivering new bulbs on Tuesday, so I'll set up and shoot again next week.

Simple Arts Podcast

When I was teaching in Asilomar at the Empty Spools seminar a couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of meeting Annie Smith, podcaster extraordinaire. She interviewed me one evening and we really hit it off. You can head to her website to listen to the podcast and hear us chatting about art and quilting and life and everything. Please leave a comment for me here - I'll be giving away a copy of my new book, Art Quilts at Play, on Wednesday, April 1st (no fooling!)



So you can follow along, in the podcast I talk about the books I've written with Elin Waterston, the shop that my mom and I opened in 1990 (that will continue as an internet store) and my husband's artwork.

UPDATE: The winner of the free book is "sewjoe"! Please contact me with your mailing address and I'll get an autographed copy of Art Quilts at Play right out to you. Thank you everyone for your very kind comments! And thank you Annie for the opportunity to talk to your listeners!

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.

Illustration Friday - excess

...baggage, that is...

cotton fabric, mulberry paper, linen thread and acrylic paint on 6" x 6" stretched canvas

New Fiber Postcard

Block-printed Fish, 6" x 4"

I'm working on some new postcards for swaps and the first bunch are done and ready to be mailed. This one gave me a chance to try out the new Stewart Gill paints I bought at Festival in Houston and the pearlescent acrylic inks I picked up in my favorite local art supply store.

This series is bound for the latest students in a class that Elin and I teach called Swap Art. Elin shows the students how to make fiber ATCs in the first class and they make enough to trade with each other. I teach them how to make fiber Postcards in the second class and then we all mail postcards to each other over the next couple of weeks. Fun! I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Then it's on to the postcards for the latest round for Postmark'd Art. Our group has been trading for a number of years and we have members from all over the world.

New Work with a new product

Although I'm working toward a big deadline for a secret project I can't talk about yet, I did make two new pieces last week that I can show.
Pescado Verde, 2007



These pieces were made using a new product that's being released at Quilt Market at the end of the month. As soon as I can talk about it I will, and everyone's going to want some of it!
Mariposa, 2007

Lots of secrets, how intriguing...

Playing in new media

Today I took a "mental health day" and attended an encaustics workshop at Silvermine Art Center. The workshop was taught by a knowledgable, generous artist named Nash Hyon. She introduced us to the techniques and processes, showed us all the basics and got us started on an exploration of encaustics or "hot wax painting". The Ancient Greeks used this technique for portraits and murals and, more recently, artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Delaunay have used it. Due to a few very pressing deadlines I won't be able to explore this medium further until after the new year, but taking the class today got me thinking about my current medium of fiber in a deeper way.

Encaustics is all about layering. You start with a (usually) blank surface and patiently, slowly build layer after layer of wax medium, adding collaged items and colored pigment if you choose. Incising lines, scraping away layers, adding still more layers until you declare yourself satisfied with the result. Now I'll try to translate some of that patient layering to my fiber art where I've been trying to work more complexly in layers of imagery, color and texture.

I enjoyed the process of encaustic, but it's a skill like any other that takes practice to master. Today I was mostly experimenting with how the different materials I was collaging would react with the wax. I'm definitely looking forward to exploring further and seeing how best to incorporate this technique into my "vocabulary".

I've also recently taken up tap dancing again. Another medium, another opportunity for creative inspiration. Choreography follows a lot of the same principles of design that visual art does -- repetition, rhythm, variety and balance among others. Besides, it's good exercise for both body and brain. And I can combine art quilting and tap dancing if I "shuffle off to Buffalo" every time I head to the ironing board and "shuffle hop step" when I head back to my machine!

White work

The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction is organizing an exhibition of White-on-White works. It's really interesting to work in the absence of every other color - every minor variation in tone becomes more important. Take a look at the work collected so far. I just finished mine and will send it off tomorrow. What a challenge to work with such a limited palette!


Carmina Figurata, 2007, 12" x 9"
mixed media mounted on stretched canvas - papers, fabric, found object, acrylic paint, printing, embossing

There will be a full-color (if it's an all white exhibit is that an oxymoron?) catalog of the exhibit.

It is not quantity which counts [with colors], but choice and organization. - Henri Matisse

Teeny, tiny art

One of my favorite books by Murakami has a line in it about creating: "The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape." I like that image - transposing consciousness into color and shape.

The SAQA group that meets in Somers NY every month set ourselves a small (keyword: small) challenge for June. I handed out some 1.5" chipboard squares to collage on, called bazzill chips. I had a lot of fun in this tiny format. I've decided I've been playing a kind of "visual limbo" lately. How low can you go? My average size of work is in the 9" x 12" and 10" x 13" range. I've been making 8" squares and 6" squares in a new series. I make a lot of fiber postcards that are 4" x 6". I've done atcs. But boy, 1.5" is really small. I know there are a lot of artists out there working on the 1" squares, but 1.5" is maybe as small as I'd want to go.


I experimented with a couple of new materials and plan to use them in some larger pieces. The left side of the chip is wrapped in copper foil tape and the other three sides (and the back) are painted with pearlescent liquid acrylic, which has the consistency of ink, is slightly sheer and is highly metallic. And yes, I have beetles on the brain.

I need to make more of these...