Beginning art quilting

Shelly wrote to me this morning:

“I am a beginner quilter, and am just starting out in art quilting. 
I wanted to ask how you started in art quilting?
How did you get to be where you are today?
Do you have any advice on how to develop my art quilt skills?
I haven't entered any shows yet, is this a good first step? ”

Like most people I started with traditional quilts which is a good place to get the nuts and bolts basics of the actual construction learned.  You work from a pattern so don’t have to worry about composition, but you do have to consider colour and value and texture, piecing or applique and quilting and bindings.   It’s good not to have to learn too many things as once.  Once you have those skills, they will transfer to the more difficult field of art quilts.

Some think art quilts are easier because you’re not following a specific pattern, and you don’t have to make the points meet etc…however while it’s easier to make a bad art quilt than a traditional quilt, it’s much more difficult to make a good one!  You have to think, plan and critique a whole lot more.

Having learned the traditional basics, I became frustrated: 
following someone else’s pattern
working with commercial fabric.
So I took workshops with several well known art quilters: Nancy Crow, Elizabeth Busch, Emily Richardson, Jan Myers-Newbury – and even more workshops (about a dozen of them!) on various surface design techniques, particularly Claire Verstegen and Kerr Grabowski.

But soon I decided to stop taking workshops that were about a particular style – I didn’t want to be a clone of anyone…making derivative work is a very appropriate stage when you are just beginning, but once you have the knowledge I think it’s important to develop your own style.  This is the First Step.   Your own particular style comes from one thing: making lots of work and making it very thoughtfully.  Putting yourself into every piece.  What do I want to communicate with my work?  What is my preferred way of doing it?

I made 13 quilts, entered #13 to Quilt National and called it “Aiming High” – I think you should!  I was lucky enough to get the Rookie Award that year and it was downhill from there!!  (well, no, not really…but I wasn’t that lucky again for a while).  

Thank you, Shelly, for the question – questions always set one thinking and sometimes that’s a task!  Now I must rinse out my dye experiments so I can write about them in a day or so…

and if you have been, thanks for reading!  Elizabeth

Return from Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts

I’ve been teaching for a week at Arrowmont in S.E. Tennessee on the edge of the Smoky Mountain National Park.  I drove through the park early this morning and it lived up to its smoky name – of course the “smoke” is the early morning mist rising up the mountains – a great lesson in atmospheric perspective as the curving blue hills are fainter and fainter in the mists!

The evening sky from the window of my room.

Arrowmont is a green oasis in the pretty  (lots of hanging baskets) but overly busy little tourist town of Gatlinburg.  Actually at 7am this morning, it was delightful!  I was the only one driving through the town apart from one lone jogger.  Arrowmont runs weeklong courses throughout the summer and for a month in the spring and fall too  and it’s a great holiday for those who don’t like to like on the beach developing their skin cancers!!  I’d always much rather be learning something new with kindred spirits, then broiling with a potboiler!

I had a great class; everyone was excited to be learning –  - some were experienced artists and some had never dyed or made a quilt before.  They designed, dyed gradations of several different colours, made masses of shibori and even dyed their socks! Then they blocked out their quilts on the design wall, and some were able to sew several sections together – one lady started 3 pieces – an achiever for sure!

Karen worked on two pieces: the left one had the theme of “What’s over that hill?) (the trees will have more branches before it’s finished!), and the right one will have the square and diamond notes of Gregorian chant…reflecting a particular piece of music.

 

 

 

Rosie had to be “persuaded” to use the gorgeous piece of shibori fabric she made as the background for her lively dancing tulips!

 

 

 

This is just the start of Elaine’s cityscape, there will be a glittering bridge in the foreground.

 

 

Bonnie’s piece is about hope, she will be making the skinny white lines that cross through the piece in a dark colour.

Carol started on a series of mood pictures to brighten her office as vice principal of  Middle School – the tree later moved to the left of the house by the way!!  The beauty of blocking out your quilt on the design wall means that you can make these adjustments as you go along.  Always make visual decisions Visually!!!  I love the transparent effect of the peaceful smoky mountains…and the brightness of the quirky little yellow houses!

 

Patty worked on three quilts that she’ll hang together – contrasting the grimy factories and polluted cityscape with the freshness of the waterfall – she’s going back to the dyepot this weekend to dye some really pale blue for the splashing water at the bottom.

 

Susan and Carol both dyed up a storm!!

many people had not dyed fabric before, so they rushed down to Arrowmont’s art store to buy dyeing kits to take home with them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you’ve used up all your fabric, then start dyeing your clothes! what else?

(apologies to those ladies whose work I didn’t get a picture of)

and now to prepare for my next class which will be at Quilting by the Lake in Syracuse, NY in 2 weeks.   If you have been, thanks for reading!   Elizabeth

Arrowmont Class Day 3

I'm blogging from Arrowmont School of Arts and crafts on the edge of the Smoky Mountain national park in Gatlingburg, TN. It's the 3rd day of class and so much has already been done!
On Monday everyone had to create 3 potential quilt designs from a variety of different inspirational sources - and amazingly at leat 3 beautiful designs appeared on everyone's design wall. We critiqued them as a group, examing how well they portrayed the theme or main idea, how harmonious they were, whether or not they were interesting and well balanced. It's iimportant too to show rhythms and echoes - in all the different elements that we play with in 2D work: viz: shape, line, value, colour and texture.

We then had a quick whiz round colour theory, a description of different colour schemes. I'm a cruel witch in class! and force people to choose a particular colour scheme, and a dominant colour - no cor blimey spilled paintboxes!!! Of course colour is so seductive, you want a little bit of everything - but nearly always a piece is stronger if you are a little bit restrained. After all who would want to eat a plate of bacon, chocolate, curry, peaches and lettuce?

Yesterday was dyeing day. This is always so much fun as it's mainly physical after the intellectual vigours of designing day!!! Everyone dyed a gradation sequence in their dominant colour, and a slightly shorter series in their secondary colours. Then little bits of accent colours. Some did larger pieces for background fabric, some immersion dyed, some dye painted and we ended up with arashi shibori - then you can really let the colours fly!

Today is blocking out. First we'll choose which composition is to be made, then grid it - I think that works better than blowing up to life size as it allows more room for adjustment as the paint goes onto the canvas - as it were. It's important to keep things fresh and lively, and if you follow a pattern too rigidly (and who wants to do that anyway?) things get tightened up.
After gridding, we'll pin up the most background piece and work forwards. I'll explain more about this in a later post.

One more thing about Arrowmont. It is a marvelously exciting place to come for a class because of the great mix of disciplines - plus many of the teachers are the leaders in their medium. This week we have Akira Blount here whose wonderful doll sculptures are in many museums and the White House. I am over dyeing a shirt for her - I just hope she likes the mottled look! We have Mary Todd Beam who has taken the Gold Medal at the AWS show several times, we have Fred Fenster, a master metalsmith. Arrowmont has been organizing workshops for many many years, beginning nearly hundred years ago with craft training for local people and gradually becoming national and then international in its scope. Sadly last year they were threatened by a proposal that the land be sold out from underneath them - to develop condos and a waterpark to increase the local tourist base - to compete with theme parks like Dollywood. This particular sale fell through, but the possibility is still there. They hope to renew the lease on the land next year for a few more years but really need to come up with a long term plan so that they are still providing great teaching and excitement in another hundred years. The options appear to lie between raising enough money to actually buy the land (currently leased from the fraternity Pi Beta Phi) or to raise enough money to move the school to another site - several other communities both in Eastern Tennessee and across the nation are immensely eager to obain such a jewel in their crowns.

And now, back to the textile studio to torture those poor students some more!! If you have been, thanks for reading. Elizabeth

Teaching at Arrowmont

No pictures I'm afraid as I'm teaching this week at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN - just on the edge of the Smoky Mountain National Park. I drove through the park yesterday on the way here - alternating long vistas of blue mountains (aerial perspective at its best!) and cool green shades of rocky streams. Last night we sat out on the lawn and watched the firework display - I remembered Terry Hanckock's firework quilts! I don't think anyone has done a better one.
Tonight I'll meet my class and we'll begin by finding our their expectations, hopes, dreams and goals for the class - I'll make a long list and hope that it in some way reflects my lesson notes!
The topic of the class is "Coaxing the Muse". We are going to explore all the different ways inspiration can come creeping in - not just fireworks and mountains, but also bathroom floor tiles, roof patterns, music, and poetry, relationships and being on hold on the telephone!
I'll report when I can - about our discovery process!
Thanks for reading!!! Elizabeth

I hope practice does make perfect! I’m waiting…

I’ve been doing some exercises in value studies to try to improve my composition skills.  If you have a strong composition worked out ahead of time, much of the work of making the quilt is done.   When you’ve made a few quilts, it’s not hard to figure out construction, quilting and finishing – after all that really is the busy work.  The secret of success is that strong composition.  I know many people compose their pieces on the design wall but I find all that getting up and down with different bits of fabric – different shapes, colours, textures, values etc – to be extremely arduous!  and frustrating!!
  “ Oh no! I tried 20 pieces of fabric here and NOT ONE looked right!”
Have you been there?  I know I have!

So what I’ve been doing is taking some of the photographs I took in Scotland last month and working out interesting value studies.  I don’t know if I’m going to start (or actually continue) a landscape series yet – it’s not a subject I tackle very often…though I have made a few:

Landscapes do offer broad sweeps of values and it makes it easier to assess the values underneath, unlike the industrial or building pieces.   

 

 

                          Here is the underlying value pattern of this piece:  As you can see I have a large light area at the top with a rather boring straight line intersects with the middle values on the right.  With hindsight this piece would have been more interesting had I made that line more varied.  

When you examine the basic values (light, medium, dark) of a piece the work will be stronger if:
there is an unequal amount of light, medium and dark value
the shapes of the light, medium and dark areas are varied
the shapes have interesting edges.
It’s also good to have the most contrast between values in the focal area of the quilt – because such high contrast will draw the eye.

Let’s look at another landscape piece I made:  and the underlying value pattern:

Here I think the straight line is even more evident, especially as that is one of the highest points of contrast.  On the other hand, I do have a much better proportion of values: mainly mid values with a  moderate amount of dark and a small amount of light.  

Now to look at a photograph and to consider the value pattern BEFORE I start work!

                  Several possible improvements are immediately evident:  the sky is a big rectangular chunk of pale  (apart from that one cloud) – so I think it would be good to deepen the value of the clouds and get more interest into the top portion.  Also it would be good to increase the size of the distant island and maybe deepen its value too.  Not much, just enough to see it as different from the sea.  There is a nice strip of light sea between the main light sea area and the sky that leads your eye out and it would be important to preserve that.  The round chunk in the foreground is not very interesting and it could be omitted, or  given  a bit more life.  The high contrast of the sea birds forms a very nice focal point.

I’m going to keep on practicing!!!  the program I’m using by the way to pull out the values is Photoshop, but it’s important to learn to do it by eye, so before I Photoshop the photograph, I do a rough value sketch to see if I’m getting it right.  Then I can get immediate feedback from the computer.  Practice plus feedback is the best way to learn. 

I’m also very happy to announce that I’ll be teaching a two week class at Penland next year (June 27-July9)…..and they have computers  loaded with Photoshop available for students !!  This is brilliant!!!  That will give so many more compositional possibilities.

If you have been, thanks for reading!   Elizabeth

From Inspiration to a Series

In my last blog I showed the picture of Durham (UK) castle and cathedral.

 

    That picture and several others I took across the river Wear which flows around the base of the rock upon which the castle and the cathedral are built  were very inspiring. Durham is a town really worth visiting – if you can figure out how out how to use the car park – we had to have assistance from several passersby! Probably be better to go by train!  You can get all around the UK by train and it’s great just to sit there and dream your way through landscapes.  I sure wish you could do that  here.  I live in a major college town, there is a huge metropolis about 80 miles away – and no public transport.

Eniow!  (this is a very useful Yorkshire word that should be in the dictionary but isn’t ….yet!)
Eniow, enough of political moaning and back to inspirations.  The castle rock at Durham with all the buildings piled up upon it actually inspired a whole series of quilts – I continually went back to this photo and to my notes and postcards from my visit there and this is the series of quilts I made .   They are all about 60 inches square.  I worked with different techniques, different materials, different lighting, different  myths and fancies – I did have a show in Atlanta with all five displayed and that looked great!  But now they are split up and gone their separate ways.

In the above picture I was focusing on the weight of the buildings and their texture.

In this piece I wanted to contrast the earthiness and domesticity of the houses with the  more abstract concepts of religion.

In the above piece I was thinking about the light in late spring, everything warming up!

And in the quilt above I was more involved in the overall pattern created by the buildings.

In this piece I was thinking of myths about castles and strange lands: the golden castle above the town where the princess sleeps for ever, the land where the bong trees grow to which, one day ,we might sail!

So…you can see how easily I can get into a series!  I’ll be talking a lot about this in my class at Quilting by the Lake later this summer.  Meanwhile, if you have been, thanks for reading and looking!  Elizabeth

I am NOT a camera!

I don’t like entering those shows where one has to put one’s work into a category: abstract, pictorial, traditional, innovative etc. I think of my quilts mainly in an abstract way. Yes, sure, I begin with a photograph of a group of buildings, chimney tops or industrial buildings that has caught my eye…but my interest is beyond that surface description and way beyond what the camera actually caught.

What intrigues me is usually a dynamic arrangement of shapes, particularly where there’s a mixture of skinny shapes and block like shapes where they’re interacting with one another. The fact that’s it’s a building is of far less significance.

I like the way the chimney pots poke into the sky in a rhythmic way – especially when there’s some syncopation going on - as there invariably is when rooftops don’t exactly coincide.

Industrial buildings often involve complex diagonal and unexpected twists and turns. Often there are odd connections between large shapes – quite fascinating and with their own erratic beauty. It’s good to spot something that catches one’s imagination, to see a beauty where no one else has noticed, and finally to be able to convey it to others.

I I love looking at paintings where the artist has shown me something I had not seen. I’m especially fascinated by seeing a photograph of the original scene and then the painting side by side. Then you can truly realize the skills of the artist. The colours are richer, the boring irrelevancies and uglinesses are omitted, shadows are mysteriously full of colour – not just a drab grey pall. The artist rearranges the objects slightly to form an interlocking pattern of intriguing negative and positive shapes. Instead of the flat tonal plain evident in a photograph, remember the reality of simmering textures and dipping shadows.

It’s important to be able to articulate what it is about a scene that captivates you; otherwise it might get lost in overly laborious and concrete rendition of the parts. It’s necessary to sort out the freshness or the mystery from the merely mundane. Don’t lose that observation!! Hold it, keep it, present it!

When we look at something we’re not standing there on one leg with one eye shut (well, at least I’m not!) – but this is the camera’s view. Instead we’re looking around an object – try looking through one eye and then the other – you’ll be amazed at the two very different views. Now, how to portray both of those views? Also you’re not standing still…there are always subtle movements, the landscape moves and changes constantly. How to convey that? Don’t lose this dynamism with a flat, still, one eyed view!

For more pictures of my quilts, please take a look at my website…..and, if you have been, thanks for reading!! and ….don’t forget the comments!! Read with interest and pleasure! Elizabeth