Spending money...

I used to think the best thing to spend money on was something that you could keep, hold in your hot little hand...and take with you always...something tangible.
But then you end up with a house full of STUFF!!

Lately however I've been reading and thinking (as usual!!) lots of cogitation goes on around here...
One of the books I've just read is The Practicing Mind
by Sterner and while (as with any so called self help book), there's a lot of padding and iteration of things we already know but havn't paid much mind to...reading these afresh does bring them to the forefront. 

Sterner reminds us of just  a few important things - but they are well worthwhile spending a little time considering. 

In the last chapter (of this very short book!), he talks abou the importance of spending time, effort and money on developing your skills and your knowledge rather than getting a bigger car, a fancier kitchen, another gadget for the studio, a newer and better sewing machine.  Improve yourself rather than your sewing room.

We are lucky in that the tools of our trade are really quite few and can be very simple - we don't need more in the way of objects.  We really don't need as much space, even though I do envy those gorgeous studios that people have!!  Slavering over the wooden floors, the space, the long moveable design walls, the lighting, the separate areas for cutting and sewing, the floor to ceiling windows looking out over the lake - well you get the picture!!  Oh yes and the infinity pool!!  And perhaps a grand piano seen through a doorway at the end of  the studio into the main house..but ...BUT....those are objects, surroundings, they are not  you.  They actually don't benefit you one iota, they don't help you to grow as an artist or a person.

Looking back over your artistic life, is it the acquisition of particular objects that really made a difference to your progress?  That stand out in your memory?
" Thank goodness I got the Super Swifty Nobble Bong!  it enabled me to finally get into that amazing Quilt Show! "
Or rather was it learning something new and then practicing it and developing your skills?
Getting to observe yourself in action as an artist, taking your time, bringing your feelings and abilities to the practice of your art (whatever medium) is so much more rewarding  than those rows of objects.
Take your time each day to enjoy what you know, what you can do...minute by minute, enjoy the practice.  And if you want to spend money, spend it directly on improving yourself, not your equipment, developing your knowledge and your ability to put it into practice.   The best sewing machine in the world in the most glorious studio will not help you to move forward so much as putting your own time, effort, practice and thought  into your work and yourself.

If you have been, thanks for reading!  Comments...please!!!    Elizabeth

Perfection: don't play it safe!!

It seems to me that one of the problems with traditional quilting - as it's taught - is perfection.  For perfection is boring!  I remember as a sickly kid,  I had every sympathy with Colin (in one of my favorite childhood books: The Secret Garden) lying in bed and desperate for something to think about!  I examined every inch of the wallpaper - a repeated pattern of flower baskets, there were hundreds of the damned things! I was desperately looking for the one that was different.  Had I known the Oscar Wilde quote: "either that wallpaper goes, or I do"  (supposedly his last words - the wallpaper won!), I'm sure I would have shouted them out!  (hopefully not with the same result!) Not because I hated baskets of flowers, but because they were all exactly the same.

But, in real life, perfection is unnatural......  an illusion.

If you think about music, or painting or writing, or a flower garden - to be rigidly perfect, technically perfect, is deadly.  DEADly!  As Sara Solovitch wrote in her book, Playing Scared, the viewer or the listener "craves excitement and discovery".  Solovitch considers that it's our faults and mistakes that provide guideposts to higher capabilities.

Sports psychologist Don Greene says "People want to hear (see, feel) excitement.  They want to hear energy.  When you play it safe, when every detail is perfect, chances are it isn't exciting.  it's like a tennis player who makes every serve.  They're not playing at the edge of  their capabilities.  Until they start faulting, they don't know how much range they have for faster serves".

In quilt design, it's very important to take risks, push your selves to and even over the edge.  What's to lose?  A bit of paper, a few minutes sketching with a pencil?   Do lots and lots  of sketches and drawings in the hope that a few will have something new, fresh and exciting.  Sketching out ideas with a pencil is not the time for a lot of criticism and negative self talk..  This is the situation where the "throw fabric at the wall and see what sticks " (and here I quote from any number of people...these are not my words) is EXACTLY what you should be doing - only I suggest for speed and economy of fabric - and also for focusing on lines, shapes and values rather than texture or color, that you do this with pencil and paper...or a brush dipped in black ink and paper...whatever your sketching tools of choice.

And now I need to convince my piano teacher too that perfection is an undesirable illusion!
If you have been, thanks for reading.....and thank you so much for your comments!!   Elizabeth

Improv

I'm fascinated by the parallels between improvisation in different mediums.

Remember, improv is not random and I'm not writing about the "cut out pieces of fabric, throw them at the design wall and see what sticks" school of  socalled improv.   Or even the "put one interesting shape up and then let it tell you what it needs" idea.  My thrown fabric never seems to stick to the wall in very interesting ways at all...usually just sort of droops and sadly falls off with a sigh.....even if I do get something sewn together its thoughtless origins are far too evident!
And I've never had a piece of fabric "talk to me".  Even though I've heard both painters and writers say "oh the characters/painting takes over and tells me what to do", I've never had orders from my quilts....even for a nice cuppa tea! Or a gin and tonic, come to that....be very interesting though if  they did!!  Might cheer them up a bit!

No, real improv is not like that at all.  In fact it probably began seriously in classical music times. In the 17th and 18th centuries  musicians were  expected to be able to take a simple theme and then, off the top of their heads (and years of vast experience with harmony, counterpoint and so on) develop that theme in many different ways.

In a article  in Clavier Companion  (a magazine for music teachers), about improvisation in playing the blues, the music writer Bradley Sowash describes how first of all you take a simple melody and add in the "blue" notes  (generally speaking a note that is unexpectedly flat, a minor instead of a major interval).  You accompany, or back, that melodywith any one of several sequences of related chords  (as in the "Blues Box - the numbers relate to specific chords in the key (or colors!) you are working in) for the accompaniment (or background).
First you play it straight....then you vary it.

So that we can see, that he's suggesting simple variations on both the foreground (melody) or subject of the piece:  do it straight, do it backwards, turn it inside out...and at the same time the background can vary too.
Composers like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart of course would be very familiar with this - though probably without the unexpected "blue" notes!!  They could take the  same subject and create 20 or 30 variations on it: straight forward, then perhaps a different key (color), or a different pitch (size), then backwards, inside out, upside down, with ornaments, with different ornaments, spaced out with something in between etc etc .

Now with quilts, one can carry out such improvisations  within one piece - like in this quilt I made many years ago:

Warm Light

So I've used the same simple "melody" - double rectangle with a cross piece - over and over....but the repeats vary in size, in color, the inner cross piece is at different heights and angles, some of the sides lean a bit more than others etc etc...

Or you can create a series of quilts changing the "melody" (your subject) in many ways, but making sure the whole series hangs together. 
(And, by the way, I've a new class starting Sept 2 at academyofquilting.com
 entitled Working In Series that describes just why and how you can do this.)

To improvise with fabric:  you set up your basic parameters, you decide on the background "chords" ( size of quilt, type of background piecing etc), you pick your subject and then consider all the possible ways you can change it.   You are freewheeling in a sense, but within fairly strict limits.

 Why strict limits?  why not just hit the piano keys at random?  or cut and place the patches of fabric at random?  Firstly, the individual  pieces would have no cohesiveness, no clear structure, no unity - it would be merely a collection of notes, or objects!   I did once write a blog about the  ugliest piano piece in the world -  a computer generated "composition" that uses all 88 notes on the piano - just once!  and it sounds bizarre, disconnected, awkward and is very hard to listen to!  You don't what to make quilts like that!

Secondly, if it were several quilts, all unrelated, it would simply not be a series!    

Well, after a nice cuppa tea, I'd best get back to my notes!
If you have been, thanks for reading...
Do email me (there's a link up on the side bar) if you have any questions...or write a comment!  I love comments...              Elizabeth

Photo Licensing

Sunset at Harbor Island, SC

  We are all so careful these days about using photographs (the above photo is one of mine and you are welcome to use it!  no bill will arrive from me!) from the internet and I know several people who have been threatened by photograph agencies and billed significant amounts of money even though their use of the photograph was educational only.

Therefore it was with great interest I read an article on the website hyperallergic.com  (lots of interesting articles about art), about  Carol  Highsmith, the famous photographer who over time has donated nearly 19,000 thousand photographs to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge.  This has been her life's work.

Highsmith only discovered that a certain agency had taken the photographs from this source, added their own watermark and sold them, when she herself received one of their threatening bills for its use!  And she is not the only one,  2013, Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million, after the agency pulled his photos from Twitter and distributed them without permission to several major publications.
The agency was trying to charge the photographer a large fee, a very large fee, for the use of their own photographs, photographs they had donated to the public domain!

In the comments in this article, it was evident that several people had paid the agency in questions large sums of money, having been totally mislead by them as to who had the ownership and copyright of the image.  The agency affixed its own watermark AND frequently did not attribute the photographer with the credit.  Quite likely they have already snitched my sunset, and soon I'll be getting a bill for using it!!

Let's hope that Highsmith wins her billion dollar lawsuit against them for doing this, but my guess is that these agencies will simply consider this "the price of doing business".     Clearly - there will be more....and the old saw "the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour" is certainly going to be proven true yet again.  However, it is good to know that sometimes the artist comes out on top!

If you have been, thanks for reading!   All comments strongly welcomed by the way!! Have at it!
Elizabeth

Self Critique: first steps

Unexpectedness is a great way to attract attention!

The last time I taught a class I asked for suggestions for an upcoming blog.  When later I read through the suggestions I was surprised by how many people mentioned self-evaluation as being important.    This is one time when the mote in the other person's eye is probably more helpful than the beam in your own!

As a first step, I'd suggest really training your eye by critiquing other people's work.  The problem with critiquing your own is that it's really hard to be objective.  When we look at the piece on the wall we see not only the actual pattern of shapes in cloth but also all our hopes, beliefs, intentions, inspirations etc.  It's very difficult to shut off those.  Especially if you're learning how to evaluate the strength of a piece.

  Therefore, I suggest getting together with friends and bringing examples to the get-togethers of Truly awful work (in your opinion) and fabulously brilliant work.  Take images from the internet, or from books or magazines.  You're not going  to be publishing these, your comments will go nowhere but the group!  So don't worry about that...but when you show the others the work and make your comments you have to totally justify and say why you think the piece is Awful, or boring, or exciting or fabulous. Gradually you'll learn ways of expressing these things...and you are training your eye...it's like wine tasting!!  you've  got to have the wine!

The most important thing about a work of art - which you'll notice immediately you go out surfing on the 'net - is whether or not it attracts your attention.  D'you want to look at it for more than the standard 3 second glance that most images create? d'you lean forward, and hit Ctrl + to see it better?  D'you want to "pin it" or save it in some way?  D'you want to come back to it later to look at it again?  These are the key hallmarks to a successful piece.

All the rest is the nitty gritty of how the artist achieved a succesful work...those "principles" we've all heard about?  They are the means by which the artist caught and held our attention.  They've been derived by critics and teachers looking at artwork that has stood the test of time figuring out what characteristics  those artworks have in common.

Some are technical: unity/harmony, variety/tension, rhythm/movement, balance/proportion, economy.
Some are more emotional: does  the work make us feel? Is an emotion created within us?  whether it's delight, or despair - does the work affect us?  what is the artist communicating?  
or is the emotion we sense one of boredom?  this piece is boring, it's empty, it's been seen before.  As human beings we are definitely hard wired to be attracted by something novel.  If the quilt is the 17th, or 70th or 700th iteration of something we've seen before, it's not going to have much effect on us.

If the piece is interesting but somehow doesn't feel quite right, the problem is likely to be something technical.
If  the piece is boring, the problem is likely to be that the artist is not able to communicate something  to us...possibly because they have nothing to communicate...or that they are so inarticulate that they have failed to do so but more likely the former.

As a group or an individual once you've developed your critiquing  skills on other people's work, it becomes easier  to see your own and judge it.  BUT to aid the transition, put your work into the same format as that which you used for others' work. ie. if you looked at all the images on line - on your computer monitor, then put your work up there.  If you printed it out...then print it out.  Also I strongly recommend having more than one piece to look at at a time...at least 3 is good.  And that has the added benefit of having you make more work!!  More work is always one of the best ways of improving in anything.


And now I shall go and make yet another cup of tea, I'm sure it will be better than the last one!
If you have been, thanks for reading!
And do - please! - comment!      Elizabeth

The joy of everyday life

So what have I been getting up to?

........posing for our local - brilliant - photographer, Chuck Murphy.  He mainly photographs birds...but then, I guess, I would count as one ancient old bird!!

It's always good  to get your work out in public 
Although I'm very leery of hanging quilts in restaurants since I don't like artwork that smells of food,  I was very happy to take some work to the OLLI office at the university.  OLLI stands for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and is an organization of folk 50+ who are interested in learning new things.  Curiously, the branch in our town is attracting a lot of attention from people looking for a nice place to retire because it's an amazing way to meet new folk and immediately get involved in (far too much!) stuff!

The left hand quilt, Bluebeard's Castle (named after the opera) is one of my Hamilton steel mill series, the quilt in the center is a view of Athens.  As you can see I'm color co-ordinated!!

Apart from that frisky pup, the paintings are watercolors - the two on the right are views of the pond in our neighborhood - I walk round there early most morning and it's fascinating to see  the same view over and over in different lights.  I've done a couple of quilts based on this pond too:

and

.....and there are a lot more paintings of the pond, which I won't bore you with....

I find that nearly all my art work is about things I see or experience every day....I'm currently engaged on a series of quilts - abstract - that are about what my day feels like rather than the actuality of physical detail - it's quite a challenge  but it's so worthwhile to be really in touch with what you're experiencing...instead of just racing through things...
well...on with the day!
And, if you have been, thanks for reading...and commenting!  I do appreciate the comments very much.

Elizabeth

The juror vs the critic

 I've a lot of experience critiqueing (mainly in my online classes) and some (limited) experience as a juror and  I began to wonder about the role of the juror vs the role of the art critic.  Too often when faced with the yes/no response from a juror we tend to think of the juror as a critic…but there are actually many differences between the two.  The juror has only the y/n binary response sorting the quilts presented into two (metaphorical!) piles only...also we never know why one quilt was chosen, another rejected. Whereas the critic has a much broader role which may or may not (according to the critic, they vary) include indicating whether or not they think the art is “good” or “bad”.    Unfortunately, there are many jurors but few critics in the art quilting world.

Critical reviews are valuable to both the general public and the particular artist.  although some artists choose to disregard (or  consider invalid) a poor review, in fact, a thoughtfully written review, can help the artist gain insight into their own work,  and enable them to see it in both a wider  historical and  geographical/cultural view.  It’s hard to step back from an individual piece and see how it fits in with both one’s own body of work, and that of work being produced by other artists.

One of the goals of art criticism is to introduce the work to a wider audience – not just the art going intelligentsia, or the magazine-buying quilter, but everyone – all classes, ages, occupations and levels of society.  A lot of people out there still think of quilting as a bedding medium, not an art medium – they are truly surprised when it’s suggested that a quilt can hang on a wall! An art critic would act as a public educator: art can be paint on canvas, clay formed into vessels, glass hanging in light, fiber on a wall.  I met a well educated woman just yesterday who told me that quilting was a lost art because nobody hand quilted anymore!

Today there are many journals of art criticism offering a wide variety of reviews about art from many different angles.   We can learn so much about ourselves as well as increasing our art knowledge from looking at art, examining our reaction to it, and reading about the critic’s (hopefully more broadly educated) reaction.     I enjoy reading the short critical reviews in  magazines like Art in America, for example.   Some writers focus on describing the work – perhaps in ways I had seen, or perhaps not.  Others compare the work to other artists..which can lead one to follow a trail that broadens and has many side trails!  Some offer value judgments with which one might agree or disagree – but all the reviews make you spend more time thinking about the art.

Most critics feel that the phrase “art should speak for itself” is a cliche.  They suggest that art is strongest when it forces the viewer to engage with the artist.  The work should entice one into conversation, but not  be a direct obvious advertising-like statement that leads one to put up the shutters, rather than peer in through the window! (o yes the glory of the closely stitched mixed metaphor!)  Stay tuned!!!  I don't want to be hit in the face with the obviousness of your image,   I want to be intrigued enough to want to stay and figure out what is going on for myself…intrigue me, entice me, question me and pull me in…

A critic, of course, may have his/her own agenda.  Clement Greenberg was famous for his desire to drive a revolution bringing change and progress to the contemporary art world – he has been called the “Moses of the art world” – feeling that he was the one with the vital set of rules on stone tablets tucked under his arm….but today’s critics are less didactic though alas, often very dense in their writing.    Greenberg felt that one couldn’t intellectually determine one’s response to art: that one should follow one’s automatic response with bravado and nerve and then work hard to “determine the difference between good and bad”.    One of the exercises I have done in my workshops is to show very good and very bad art - (IMO of course!) - not stating what I think of  the work, allow a discussion to take place - if you think it's good (or bad), then tell us why....

 Other critics have sought to show the public the connection between a society, its culture and its art.   They feel that the art should communicate about that culture rather than adhere to specific aesthetic goals (which can often render the art as dated by “fashion” within the art world).   All seek to educate us, and to encourage us to spend more time with art.  I think that this is very difficult for today's quilters - how to hold onto the tradition and at the same time make one's work relevant to today's culture?  I find myself doing one thing or the other, and entering the work into different shows bearing in mind the particular bent of  the juror.

Criticism has been defined as using language to explore visual images: trying to clarify one’s thoughts, emotions and understanding about a particular work.   It should help us to see why we respond to this landscape, and not that one – when they may both be views of the same river.  Why is this one more effective than that?   From this kind of criticism, we can learn how to strengthen design, how to make better art, as well as how to understand and enjoy good lasting art – rather than art that is like candyfloss, a quick cheap flick of sweetness that soon grows stale. 

  The critic’s task is to put into words the effect that a work of art can have upon us.    Thus the importance of the dance of communication between artist, the critic and the viewer.  
I wish  we had more art critics writing about art quilts, and didn’t have just those yes/no responses, all of us -   art quilt makers, and viewers and collectors  - would be better served.
So, what d’you think? Can the emphasis be switched from sport (running races with people coming in first, second, third etc) to education (leading us to a broader understanding of what the medium is about and what it can do)?

If you have been.....thanks for reading…. all comments Very Welcome!    Elizabeth