The story of creation: My Winter Survival or The WORK of art.

I am so far behind on posting it is too overwhelming for me to try to catch up today. I will try to do it eventually since this blog is how I remember what I have done and when I have done it! I wanted to share my latest piece so I decided to write a post about how it was created with all the little details as it is a very detailed piece. And at the risk of giving away my secrets and giving the copiers out there a bit of help I will show the materials I used as well. (As an aside, I don't find copying a form of flattery unless I am somehow credited). I hope this will also show how much WORK goes into creating something like this. This post will also be part of my clean up from this project. I will photograph the things I used as I put them away! This is what PART of the mess looks like. When I am really into a piece and/or rushed I make a huge mess.

I created this piece specifically for the West Hartford Art League's Out of the Loop fiber art show. The deadline for delivery was 1/28/2014 and I began on 1/18/2014. I had another deadline to meet before I could start on this piece. I was thinking spring and getting through my usual (although a bit deeper this year) winter season depression. It was also inspired by many other things: the workshop with Silvia Watt at Wiawaka, Van Gogh's Almond Branches, classic Asian depictions of cherry trees in bloom, a trip to Delectable Mountain Cloth, and a closing Jo-Ann's store. I think it was also a way for me to justify all my recent purchases of fabric, beads, threads, etc... a way of saying "see I do use them"!  Here is my haul from Delectable Mountain....

 and a little bit of what I bought at Jo-Ann's.

I have been doing too much buying (not all of it shown here) and that is bad not only because I can not afford it but it can be a symptom of a mixed state of mania and depression;either way judgement and impulse control are out of whack. Even with all my stash I still NEEDED to go buy some more threads...
at JoAnn again...

 and the special thread store; Thistle Needleworks.

Some of those threads are a gift for my friend though so they don't count, right?

Now to the process: I began with a layer of cotton gauze and white prefelt and then added a bit of naturally dyed (Indigo, I think) roving.

I then covered the wool with a piece of silk chiffon naturally dyed with black beans. On top of that base I cut bits of silk that I had eco-dyed, naturally vat dyed, marbled, and one bit of nuno prefelt....

bits of commercial silks...

and bits of yarn and naturally dyed roving...

till the layout looked like this.

After it was wet felted I decided that I needed to add a bit of pop, an accent, and a bird seemed so fitting. That involved some research, although I had drawn over 30 birds for the dictionary I wanted to find a perfect pose though the bird would be figurative. Then I did some rough sketches on paper and fabric for a backing for the embroidery that was the next step.

After cutting out my fabric sketch and attaching it to the felt I started stitching...

a LOT of stitching...

 in the car, in waiting rooms, at home listening to audio books...on and on. Sometimes unstitching and restitching to make 'improvements' from 'ick' to 'good enough', as the deadline loomed.

 During all this toting of the piece t around I accidentally spilled some water on the piece. This would not have been a problem except that the water had a slice of lemon in it. Lemon (acid) + black bean dye = a change from blue to pink. ( I knew this from my experiments with post mordants). Happily the pink worked well with the piece.

Once I got to 'good enough' with the bird (although I pulled some stitches too tight and puckered the felt I hoped I could smooth them out)...

it was time to get to developing the flowers on the tree. Adding more embroidery, beads, bits of fabric and lace.  Using some of the threads and ribbons I had naturally dyed in months past.

This work went on right until the day of delivery...thankfully they had evening hours for that!
I had also planned on adding some Chinese characters as is often seen on the classic paintings and so I had to do more research...thank goodness for the internet! At first I thought I would just do my initials but during my research I discovered that would be difficult so I looked for something else that would be appropriate; maybe something that could be the title. I found a phrase on a website that I thought was appropriate to the piece, my emotional state, and the recent extremely cold weather that has gripped the nation. The problem was that the image was so small I was not sure that I could clearly see the characters. That meant trying to decode what each character meant and finding a clear picture of each stroke. Next I had to try out differnent fabric paints and markers to see what would work...

(Thankfully I didn't have time to shop for the 'perfect thing.)

 and I had to practice the strokes on different fabrics.

.

I had every intention of having all of the day before delivery day to mount the piece which can be a lot of work sometimes, and I did start but still wound up finishing in a rush. And that was with the help of my wonderful father and eldest son.  The process:

assemble and glue the stretcher frame

 (purchased along with the decorative frame on an earlier trip to Jerry's Artarama)

stretch and staple muslin (thanks to son for help with this)

stretch and staple linen after a search for the right color

Pin and stretch the felt to the linen

stitch around the tree trunk and branches and stuff them so they project off the surface of the felt

stitch and stuff the bird

embroider my initials

sign the back and attach my card

attach the decorative frame (Dad is getting to be a wiz at figuring this stuff out)

attach screw eyes and hanging wire

Now rush to finish filling out the forms, which involves two difficult things; coming up with a title and PRICE! and then drive half an hour to deliver the final product.

All this work is why it is a bit irritating to be asked "how long did that take you to make?. Do I include the hours of driving-shopping-learning-dyeing-sewing-practicing-felting-thinking-imagining-beading-painting-getting materials out-putting materials away-ad infinitum, that applies to this one project? Or do I include all the work, learning, and practicing from all the years and projects that came before since that too is part of this piece?  Somehow it seems to leave a lot to be said when all of this is reduced to Name of Artist, Title, Medium, Size, and Price.  How DO you put a price on all that work not to mention that this is not just an object but in a way a piece of me? I will say that most artists do not make minimum wage even if just actual working time is considered. And though we do it because we have a NEED to create, for some of us it is our only WORK and there is also a NEED to make money. 

If only to buy more craft supplies.

Bouncing all around

Things have been very un-normal around here since I last wrote. I feel like I have been in a time warp. I think that when I do so many different things I have a hard time feeling...stable. I had to pack up my studio to turn the room back into a dining room for Thanksgiving. We postponed our meal till Saturday so that we could have more family members able to attend. We wound up with a count of 22 people from 4 generations, and we were still missing many members. It was chaotic and stressful but also nice. It is especially nice to have little ones around on a holiday. Three days after that gathering my dad had elective surgery on his shoulder for a torn rotator cuff. Being a professional stress-monger I think those two events sucked up a lot of my energy emotionally and physically; that and the time of year have caused me to struggle a bit more than I have been, but I am still hanging in there and fighting the depression demon.
I was able to do some creative things, but even with that I was bouncing around. I finally tried the piece of sanded paper for pastels that my friend Debbie Wagner gave me back in August when she came east to attend the Felter's Fling. Debbie is a wonderful artist and her pastel paintings of sunrises are so beautiful and her spirit shines through each piece. Her story is amazing and can be read about at the above link. The piece of paper she gave me was one that she uses for her sunrise paintings; she brings her supplies with her when she leaves home. I asked her to show me how she does her pastel work and I learned a lot just watching how she manipulates the medium. I find this true of watching other people felt, just seeing how they hold the fibers and do a layout can be so informative. I was all excited to try the paper but other things were more pressing at the time. Since most of my felting supplies were packed away it was the perfect time to go down to the basement "studio" where I do my messy stuff like dyeing and get my pastels out and finally try that paper. What a difference it made! The pastels perform very differently depending on the ground. I don't have a lot of professional grade pastels so my color choices are limited but after trying a this better grade of paper I decided that I wanted to buy some more quality pastels. Yesterday, after making a bit of money at a craft show...and since I WAS so close to Dick Blick I invested in a set of Sennelier half sticks. Here is a photo of my new colors and of the image I did with Deb's paper. I can't wait to try the new pastels, I think the colors will be richer.

After the get together I got out some wool to felt some soaps for the craft show. (I am not going to get everything out because we need the dining room for Christmas dinner in a few weeks). I did some to look kind of like stones...soap stones! 

I also worked on making a 'Scape Scarf'; a scarf with a landscape or other image on the ends. I proposed teaching this as a one day class at the symposium so I need to make more to work out how to teach it. That takes a lot of noticing what I do and my thought processes instead of just 'doing'. It takes some of the fun out of creating when you have to be so mindful instead of just letting it flow. Here it is not quite finished but it will give you an idea of what it looks like.

 

Below is my first Scape Scarf made many years ago. 

While I was waiting at the hospital I worked a bit more on my piece from Wiawaka. It was good for distraction. I am starting to think that in a way this piece is a self portrait; the black and white symbolic of the extremes of emotion that comes with being bipolar, and the problems of having black and white thinking especially where decision making is involved. The antique laces showing my old fashioned sweet girly side but placed along with more modern, somewhat eerie or sinister elements ; the odd bits of often opposing textures and surfaces that combine to make a complex whole. The piece was begun in Sylvia Watts class and since Sylvia is a psychiatric nurse who specializes in art therapy I think I was reminded of some of the times that I was in the hospital. I would have loved having her for a nurse!

The past two weeks have seemed more like a month. My feelings about the Newtown shooting have been constantly shifting between anger, sadness, frustration, thankfulness, etc.. I was having trouble sleeping and decided that I needed to just worry about being kind to myself during the week before Christmas rather than worry about doing all the things that it seems necessary to do at that time. I was able to remember what really mattered and prioritize. It is amazing the things that I put on my 'must do' list that are really just 'should dos' or even 'wanna dos'. I did have to clean up the studio/dining room so we could have Christmas dinner there, but the rest of it was really just things that I wanted to do. I was happy that I was able to get myself to make cookies and do a bit of decorating. The holiday turned out much better than I had hoped and I was able to forget the bad things in life for most of the day. We did spend sometime during the dinner grace praying for peace to all that were hurt by the tragedy on the 14th. We also thought of the children of Sandy Hook when we spent some time Christmas night creating some snowflakes to decorate the school that they would be going to in January. The Connecticut PTSA came up with this idea and they have received a blizzard of snowflakes from across the globe. Here are the contributions from our family.

I wanted to include some hearts and angels in some of them. It took a bit but I was finally successful at making one with angels. 

This made me think of my mother who used to make strings of paper angels to bring to people who were sick or grieving. Thoughts of my mother come more often during this time since she died on Dec. 19th 2005. Holidays also always make me think of the past and of loved ones who are no longer here.

I don't usually do much felting between Thanksgiving and Christmas in an effort to keep the dining room clean. I sometimes take that time to paint or just do crafty stuff down in my basement space. Although, last year I was working down there on a raw wool rug. This year I was working with the Icelandic fleece, sorting and carding it so I could start on a pair of shoes. 

I had been wanting to make a cat cave for my daughter's cats. Her cat, Georgia loves to hide under one of the rugs that I made.

I wanted to use some of the Icelandic that was too yucky for other use; the stuff I would have otherwise thrown out. Vicki says the cats like the stinky wool best. The idea of making a cat cave came from Monika Pioch who makes such beautiful forms for cats to hide, sleep, and play in. I didn't even try to make one like hers since I knew I could not do as well. This is what it looked like...

and I thought it was felted fairly hard. Georgia loved going in it.

However, Emma thought it made a better cat bed. Turns out it was not as hard as it seemed when it was wet, but they still love it, and the wool went to good use.

Even though I was working on this project in my sorrow on the anniversary of my mother's death I felt compelled to render an image that I have had on my inspiration board for years. In the process I totally trashed the dining room.

I was wondering why I felt such a need to make this image (based on a Tiffany stained glass window) at this inconvenient time. I thought perhaps I just really needed to work with color. But as I was working I had the thought that maybe I was drawn to this particular image because stained glass always reminds me of being in church when I was young. I was always entranced by how the light that shone through the colored glass created an otherworldly and peaceful space. I now feel closer to the creator when I am out in nature, and there are times when the light shines through the leaves of the trees or breaks through the clouds of a sunset that reminds me of that stained glass light.
I started this piece by laying out wool in much the same way that I would do one of my usual landscapes.

I wanted to do this as a nuno collage so that It would have a bit of sheen from the silk. I 'fussy cut' bits of my dyed silk that had the colors I wanted. I even took the time to dye some silk because I did not have a particular blue that I wanted. This is what the layout looked like before I wet it.

I am not going to show yet what happened to this piece. That will be my next post....if I am able to 'fix' it. Suffice it to say that things did not go well from that point on.

Rather than end on a negative note, I will show a hat that I finished early in December. It was a custom order from a woman who came to one of my shows; a Red Hat Society hat. Not colors I like to work with but I was pleased with the results.

Grieving for others...

And trying not to personalize. The tragedy of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School have struck a chord in me. When awful things happen we are touched to varying degrees depending on how 'close to home' they are. As a parent, I can thankfully only imagine what every parent in Newtown is feeling but that imagining is horrible enough. I cannot think about it too much or I feel sick to my stomach. It feels self-centered to write about how this event has hit ME but I started this blog to help ME to remember what I did and when I did it. I would not normally write about something that was global news. One of the 'tools' in my mental health tool box is to compartmentalize things. I have a tendency to string together all of the awful times in my life. When anything goes wrong my mind wants to reach back and bring all the other things that went wrong in the past, that might be remotely related, and add them to the present problem. I have to use the logical side of my brain to tease apart what is and is not relevant in the here and now. Sometimes it IS helpful to look at similar events from the past but I tend to overdo it and forget all the good that has happened in between or even the good that has come out of the difficult times.
But this event has been poking at many sore spots. I know that having it happen here in my state, in a town similar to mine has made a difference in how it affects me. This became obvious when the news coverage switched from just our usual local folks (reporters, politicians, state officials, etc) to the more well known people. I have seen our state police spokes man; Lt. Paul Vance, speaking to local news reporters on TV many times. But never with so many national and international folks. Somehow, when bad things happen that are physically further away it is easier to keep it emotionally further away as well.
Besides these connections, I feel a connection because my daughter and niece are school teachers. Even prior to this my daughter had been asked by a student if she would try to shield the students with her body in such an event. It makes it hard not to imagine that those adults who did just that could have easily been one of these girls that I love and cherish. Just hearing them speak about the protocols and drills that is now part of being a teacher makes it easier to imagine what those people went through.
But the part of this event that causes me the most conflicting emotions; the part that I understand on the most personal level are the issues of mental health, learning disabilities, and gun control. I will not go into these issues in detail here. But I really wish I knew of an appropriate place to speak AND BE HEARD about the ways in which I know from experience that many of the ideas and opinions run counter to my experiences.
I am trying to distance myself from these comments but it is difficult. We are all looking for answers, a way of understanding this horror and a way of releasing some of the emotions that have been stirred up by it. I know that what I should do is some felting therapy since it is a bit too cold for me to do my dirt therapy out in the garden. But then again maybe I need to just allow myself to grieve. When you suffer from depression it can be hard to know when it is time to fight the sadness and when it is time to give in for a bit. I do know that it IS time to send wishes or prayers for peace for the entire world and for ourselves. Maybe if we find peace inside we can spread it to others.

 Post script. A phone call while I was writing this of a break in at a neighbors house has really not helped my emotions. I had to go down when her alarm when off to bring the key and talk with the police since we are the alternate contact. So much for the illusion of safety in bucolic little towns. 

Another Month Gone By

I was surprised to see that it has been a whole month since I last posted on my blog. I wish I could say that that was because I had been having such a good and productive time that the month just flew. Unfortunately it has been a struggle for me with another dip into the pit of depression due in part to a switch in meds from one drug manufacturer to another. Along with the depression was a good dose of apathy so I didn't even care enough to try to fix things. I didn't believe that the switch could really be causing that much trouble but when I took some of the old pills that I had in my travel bag I felt much better. I was even able to tackle some jobs that have been hanging over my head, like figuring out my insurance to pay for those meds. That whole thing is so complicated that I feel like I need a medical adviser, much like a financial adviser who can read AND understand all that paper work and then tell me my best options. It is hard enough to figure out with a mind that is working well. (I hope I don't sound too whiny since I do often think of those who have health problems that are so much worse than mine).
Since it HAS been so long since I posted I am just going to give a brief gloss of the "highlights". (Thank goodness for my photography or I would not remember any of it). First the felt-y things.
My sister Beth wanted to make another landscape so she and I had a nice day of playing felt with her. Here is the piece she made; it is not done yet.

I started this; it is not done either.

 I hosted another Felt-Together for friends but since Joei wanted to make a landscape I kept my invitee list short. Here is the piece that Joei started.

 Robin brought her piece and did a bit more needle felting on it.

Sadly, I didn't get a photo of the project that Cheryl Christner was working on. I just kind of played with a few different things. These little blocks are for a guild project.

And I sampled some new wool, yarns, and fabric.

One of the new wools was from Lisa Merian of Spinner's Hill. This wonderful woman offered to donate the proceeds from the sale of some special wool to a fund created for fellow guild member Linda Van Alstyne. Linda is battling a rare form of cancer; adenoid cystic carcinoma. The wool was dyed in Linda's favorite color and was perfect for making some fall leaves. They will get some beading, and stitching and be turned into pins.

Before I hosted a Felt-Together again I made another improvement to my 'studio' arrangement. I came up with an idea of how to hang my pieces so I could see them without really changing the dining room too much. After seeing my things hanging on the wall of Robin's studio I realized how much more motivated I would be to finish some of my pieces if I could see them hanging instead of packed in a UFO box. I hung a big piece of purchased felt over the china cabinets and can pin the pieces up. It will be easy to take down and store when holiday time comes again. 

One of the pieces was one that I finally finished so maybe this idea will work. I finished the beading on this old piece.

I spent a lot of the last month outside since I find working outdoors to be very healing. Dad calls it my dirt therapy. The barn project is still going on and now that the roof is done it was time to bring in fill for the inside. That meant moving some of the wood that was still in there...a lot of wood. Dad did much of it but gave himself a hernia moving some of it so I called in the family to help and we got it done. Now it decorates the yard.  I think we could build a new shed with all of that.

 The dump truck in the background is actually stuck. So Dad got a change to drive it while it's owner was dragging it with the skid-steer. I think he had fun!