Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration can come from every sense – and also from every thought and memory. Today on my morning walk I saw the light edged grasses in the meadow at the end of the street. The owner lets all the wild grasses grow up and there are many different colours and shapes and fronds…all backlit early in the morning. What a quilt that would be! (Please scroll down for pictures, I havn't yet figured out how to get the photographs where I (as opposed to Mr Blogger!) want them to be!)

I walked by the sycamore tree down by the pond and its distinctive woody smell reminded me of a long ago walk in a sycamore grove in a London park – I’ve completely forgotten which park or who I was with but I remember the long line of trees, the sycamore smell and the shapes of the leaves – another quilt!!

The sharp amazingly loud call of the wrens as I came back down the drive reminded me of the shibori background I’ve put into several quilts – I like that edgy contrast between the sharpness and the soft roundness of the wren – can you see the contrast in the quilts? I hope so!

Elizabeth

Screen Printing

Screen Printing

It’s like magic!!! When you slowly lift up the screen…and look to see what wonders appeared with a few swooshes of the squeegee!! Even though I seem to be making solid colour (well solidish!) quilts right now, my dyeing heart is still firmly in screen printing.

There are so many different possibilities and so many inspiring stimuli out there!!

Above and below are examples from my recent experience.

First is a picture of the waves in south Carolina…..and next my first attempt to imitate some of those lines and movements…

I definitely want to try this again with one of my really big screens (I’ve a 40” square one and a 50” by 25”).

The images also remind me of the wonderful Moroccan rugs currently on show at the Cavin Morris gallery.

The third picture is a deconstructed* (Kerr Grabowski) screen inspired by the bird netting I’ve had to drape over just about everything in the garden – thanks to those dratted deer who ate all my beautiful flowers (and leaves!) that I could see through the studio window.

If only we could turn deer into energy!!

Elizabeth

*Deconstructed basically means you turn the whole thing on its head and do it all backwards and you get amazing results!!! Instead of putting the thickened dye on the cloth you put it on the screen - and of course, not infrequently if you're me, on yourself!! (contact me if you're interested in a workshop on temporary screen printing using dye).

When is an Art Quilt boring?

Have you ever been to a quilt show and felt like you were seeing nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing challenging and engaging? Nothing fresh and real?

Obviously people have different points at which they can be bored, but human beings are definitely wired for novelty!! An appreciation of something different and new makes sense as a survival characteristic – we survive by spotting what is novel and Art moves forward by creating new images, sounds, sensations. Mozart was described as continually trying for a balance between what was comfortable and what was new and interesting. His survival really did depend on that.

Some artists jump so far forward into new uncharted waters that the result can be difficult and uncomfortable but they are the pioneers. Their work can lead us out of endless circular repetitions - though I don't deny some of the tracks are too rocky to be useful!! (and by the way I adore mixed metaphors - they are the only way to go!!) The way up from the comfortable recliner always requires effort - research suggests that while our attention is drawn to the new, our actions tend toward inertia (Thaler and Sunstein).

Think of all the examples from art , from music, from designer clothes where the creator has taken a new direction. Philip Guston changed his paintings dramatically in the 1960s because he feared they were becoming the epitome of “intellectual desiccation”. It may take some time to become comfortable or admiring of the "new look" but without the challenge we are doomed to a parched and mawkish sentimentalism.

Sometimes when I look at popular art quilts I worry that we are all playing it too safe. Is it time yet to eschew the excessively sentimental, to abhor weak overly pretty solutions and rise to the challenge as Mozart, Hirst, Guston and many other artists have?

Elizabeth

Ueland and Zorba: the full catastrophe and the inspiration.

I’ve been reading more in the Brenda Ueland book (If you Want to Write) particularly about inspiration – and the finding thereof. She feels that it’s something that slowly creeps up on you when you’re in a dreamy mood. Sometimes I like to walk in a kind of loose relaxed flowing way trying to drop all sensory barriers and letting all the sensations (visual, aural, tactile etc) enter and be appreciated in their “Full Catastrophe”. I don’t take Zorba’s line to mean negative things – but rather to appreciate the totality of it all – everything – the complete panoply. Sense everything!

Above is the view from my sewing machine – I do seem to spend a lot of time just gazing out of the window, but according to Ueland this will welcome the Muses! As you can see I finally got this small nameless piece off the wall and onto the sewing machine….

I need a name for it..the piece is about “the light on the edge of the buildings where they are seen against the water beyond”…but that’s too long to fill out on show applications!!

Perhaps someone can put that into as memorable a phrase as Zorba’s!

Elizabeth

Eschew cliches! Avoid them like the plague!

I'm finding it difficult to get back in the groove after a few days in the above idyllic setting!! It's South Carolina.....a reasonable drive from Georgia.

I think it was Hemingway who always left work at a place where he could start writing again immediately he returned. It’s fun to come back to something and see if it still looks (or reads) like you thought it did!! And the piece I left pinned up on the wall (amidst a great deal of clutter I'm ashamed to note!) to “mature” while I was away doesn’t look too bad (“not too bad” is an Englishism which means “hmmm this may be just right!” ).


However, I always worry that a piece is too “smooth” – I find I prefer art that is more personal, even if it’s a little bit wrong and has rough corners sticking out all over the place! If it’s too smooth and polished off and complete, it has no freshness. Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write) emphasizes “breaking through the shell of easy glibness to what is true and alive underneath”; Mia Michaels (If You think You Can Dance) looks for dancers whose performance is honest and genuine rather than the over-rehearsed shallowness of the competition style.

Furthermore, My New Year’s Resolution was To Take Risks! Without some recklessness and boldness, only trite solutions can occur. I’m inspired by painters like Mary Newcomb who use simplification to draw the eye to “surprising essences”.

I look again and again at the piece pinned up on the wall hoping that I have achieved an elegant and enigmatic economy. It's based on a drawing I did of the view of St Ives in Cornwall from the rooftop cafe of the Tate Museum. We never did get a cuppa tea!! but the view made up for it. I vow to take more risks with the next piece!!

Elizabeth

How to recognize seduction

As usual I’m working on several pieces at once…sometimes this is because one piece is at the sketch stage, one is at the design wall blocking out stage, one at the handstitching stage etc…I find that getting away from a piece by switching to working on something else helps to give me a little more perspective and distance.

Here's a detail of the piece on the design wall....

It’s so easy to get seduced by one little bit and not be able to give it up even though it clearly doesn’t fit in with the rest of the piece. Here is an example from today – I like the clarity and boldness of the two black/white/blue window shapes.......




….. but they really don’t go with the soft mood and colours of the rest of the piece…
.so here in image B they’ve been removed (as well as that looming triangle!)– I hope for the better!!

And this is my current piece that is being handstitched while watching telly and
drinking a little libation to the quilt gods!
(yes, drinking not pouring!
definitely not drowning!)).

I am trying out some white scatter stitches
on a black background –

they look like little shards of glitter in the midnight air…
hmmm…

is this going to be one of those seductions?

Elizabeth

Sell the baby??!!

When I was first asked to sell a quilt I was quite taken aback!! What? Sell my baby – especially since said baby had just won a prize….but as I thought about it, I realized that these babies were not doing much being rolled up in a closet! Even though they were rolled on those wonderful noodles the pool companies invented for quiltmakers (seriously I wondered why noodles were in the seasonal fun section of the drug store together with buckets and spades and floating devices!). It would be so much better if the quilts were hanging on a wall giving pleasure to people and I had the money to go buy more dye, more white cloth, a better sewing machine, thread, art books……

So then it was necessary to determine a price. The next time I was in a show, I worked out the square foot price of each piece…the range was large from $100 to $800 psf. I considered where my work fell in terms of quality but also decided to calculate the cost of everything I used to make the quilt, and how many hours it took me to make it. If I paid myself a minimum wage, the figure came out at $150 psf.

So that was where I started…I’ve been kind and given myself a small raise each year (without having to have the yearly evaluation where you are extremely nice (if not sycophantic!) to the boss in the hopes that this may help!!!) so now I’m at $200 psf which feels about right.

Quilts sell from a variety of places (shows, galleries, websites) to a lot of different people. I love to meet or hear from the new owners and know that my piece is bringing a little joy and pleasure into their homes or workplaces. Quilts are better out of the closet!

Elizabeth