Creativity

The building continues

2012-01-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

Construction has continued at a pretty fast pace...This is where we were just before Christmas. In the picture below you can see the walls going up on the upstairs part. Everything is braced at this point although sheer wall is already up on part on the lower section (sheer walls keep things straight during earthquakes and provide more strength to the building)

My grandson Ashton who is constantly finding great things to do on the construction site

The studio is beginning to take shape...this photo is taken from the very front and looks back...the south is to the left and the back is facing west. The garage is attached to only part of the house so it has created a small storage area between the house and the new garage wall.

This is the view of the studio from the middle part near the stairs. The open area on the right will remain open to accommodate the RV. The room toward the back will be my sewing room, at least that is what I am planning at this time. The area to the right now has a window and the wall on the right will be a 12 foot design wall. Across the room from the design wall with be bookcases for fabric storage with a large 4 x 8' work table, cutting area and ironing station.

Ashton is busy building his own buildings.

And, ta da! my sink! What a beauty! My husband will put in some shelves on the bottom right that will pull out. Under the sink is storage

And here you can see just how big that sink is...although I know you have nothing to compare it to.

With all the construction going on, I am having a hard time focusing on any art work....all I can think about is dyeing fabric and doing deconstructed silk screening as now I will have the sink big enough to handle the silk screens and the space to have everything together in on place. I won't have to drag things home to wash after batching the fabrics....All I can think of is getting in to some jars of new dyes from Dharma!

So much has been happening

2012-01-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

A very long overdo update on what has been happening.

Christmas was wonderful and spent with the immediate family for a change. My father, my daughter and her husband and their two boys, my son and his wife from Ohio....who is now pregnant (my daughter-in-law I mean!)

Got over the cold and am now feeling well again. Back at the gym to try and build some strength back up...two months in a recliner and a month of a rotten cold have taken their toll on me. My shoulder is doing much better and some strength exercising of the arms is helping this muscle to remember what they are for. And about time, too!

In late November we began construction on a new oversized attached garage which will house cars, our motorhome and lots of space for my husband to have a great metal and wood workshop. I am hoping to be able to park my car in the garage for a change. In California we are storage deprived as we don't have basements nor attics....and relatively few closets.

So, the big exciting thing is that we are including a new studio for me which will be somewhere between 800-900 square feet. I will finally be able to move out of my Oakland studio and work completely here at home. My current studio as home will become our family room with TV and our older, smaller TV room will now become a part of my new studio which will be my office, genealogy stuff, etc. The new studio has a wet working area, a small bathroom, a hugh, wonderful commercial sink, a design area, lots of storage, and a sewing area where I can set up two sewing machines and their big tables.

So the foundation has been formed and the concrete pumper is working away....8 truckloads of concrete! Fortunately, this was done during a time when were

Then the huge crane comes (it isn't even extended out yet) to unload and set the steel I beams for the moment....earthquake country and this garage is being built to withstand anything!

Here to two huge vertical beams and be bolted to the foundation and the cross pieces are being lifted into position.

And then the welder spent three and a half days welding all the pieces together that had been bolted together initially. He must be twenty feet up in the air!

I have many more photos to share and I will eventually share some of the collages I have been doing. For some reason I can't get my cable into my camera so I can download more, which include pictures of my sink and my upstairs just framed in...

So later...

A long time ago....

2011-11-22T20:24:00.001-08:00

I was so on a roll! Went off for a week at Asilomar in Pacific Grove with a wonderful group of women and spent a lot of time doing some hand embroidery on some new pieces and then decided to make a very simple (modern) quilt....you know, one where you don't have to match anything and there is lots of space around the fabrics! But what fun it was to do that and to get it done very quickly. It just needs to be quilted now.

And then, on Monday, October 8, I took a nose dive off the next to the bottom step on my stairs and landed right on my left shoulder. It took my husband 20 minutes before we could get me up off the floor and off to the hospital where it was confirmed that I had broker the left humeral head bone. This is the rounded top part of the big upper arm bone. Can't be casted. Just a sling and lots of pain killers. Oh, did it hurt. My poor husband has done wonderful duty caring for the invalid. Could not get dressed or undressed, wore practically nothing since it hurt too much and lived on the recliner since I could not sleep in bed. Well, six full weeks later and I am still in the recliner but left the sling after three weeks, and now start PT on Monday. I can do more and more but can't extend my left arm very much and certainly can't use weight with it. So we move back into the rebuild mode.

This is why you haven't heard from me.

But, on a positive note, I have caught up with several DVD's about quilting and art and several workshops I have down loaded. My good friend Carol Suto took me to my studio two weeks ago so I could play with printing deli paper with some new 12" x 12" stamps I had made using fun foam which is sticky and works well on light weight acrylic. Had a blast and then made three more stamps which I went down to try our a few days ago.

Going to the studio is difficult. I am very limited and have only started driving again a week ago. I have to be very careful because I don't have full range of motion in my left arm.

I couldn't go to New York to teach which I was supposed to do five days after my fall. I was really unhappy about that but Kim has given me a new date in early 2013.

Will have pictures for you shortly. We have broker ground for our new RV garage with a new studio for me upstairs. Hoping to pour concrete for the foundation maybe Friday or Monday.

My arm is now very tired from typing this little bit. Will try to get photos up tomorrow....

Continuing to Catch Up

2011-09-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have been continuing in my quest to get unfinished work off of the old piles and in to the finished piles....which are all on top of an extra bed...so many that if I need something on the bottom it is quite hard to get out!

But anyway, enough of my woes! This is a fused piece that I did several years ago and I had wonky edges on it (on purpose). The edges curved but it never hung flat because I did not plan the curves correctly. So I cleaned it all up, cut off portions, and refaced it which I like much better.

Summer Time

Yesterday I spent several hours creating sleeves for three other pieces that I have previously shown on this blog. It is really nice to get these things done.

Now, all that needs to happen on these is to put labels on them. I have even been putting them into my catalog! Will wonders never cease. Oh, I do hate all the details that have to be done for the business end.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is a reception for a new show opening called Fabric Art/Art Quilts Plus, at the Cinema Place Gallery at 1061 B St. Hayward, CA. There are quite a few pieces of work in this show and I have two of my new pieces in it. The reception is from 5-7pm and the show runs until November 12 if you are in the area. There are many northern California members of SAQA in the show. Lots of great work!

So, I have sandwiched the Grand Canyon/Colorado River piece and am about ready to draw in some basic shapes. I have spent a lot of time studying the topo map of the Grand Canyon and have decided on a portion to work with which I think has very interesting shapes. I am impressed with myself that I have been patient, have quilted three quilts created by women at the Federal Correctional Facility in Dublin, CA, have been working on a piece for the altar at church, and have worked with a small group of teens at church to create a new stole for our new assistant priest who is heading up the family ministries. Just have to finish each of the those for church and then can get them in to be used.

Next week a small group of us are going to Asilomar for the week of free time with the sewing machines. I am trying to figure out just what I want to do with this time....hmmmmmm...what shall I do with four full days away from home? Well, you will just have to wait and see.

Your help is needed

2011-09-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have a piece that I created a couple of years ago that I made wonky sides on but it never hung correctly and was only shown once at a guild show. I have now removed the facings, trimmed it straight and refaced it. All I need to do now is give it a final pressing and then photograph it so I can post it here...promise I will do so very soon.

My topo map arrived for the Grand Canyon piece and I have been fascinated as I study it. There is so much information contained on these maps. I have found entries to the north side of the Canyon that I didn't know existed and now hope to get back there before too long to check it out. But I have been planning this quilt in my head, which is the way I usually do things. I have such a clear image of what I want to do that it almost feels done....but I guess that really isn't the way it works, is it?

However, I have been busy doing some quilting on community quilts. One of our members from the Amador Valley Quilters has worked with the women at the Federal Correctional Facility in Pleasanton for a number of years. She brings in fabrics and the women make quilts. Since they did not purchase the fabric, they can not keep the tops they have made so they donate them to the guild's community quilt project. This December we anticipate giving away about 900 quilts to various organizations within the community where there is need. So I am just doing a very small part.

But on to more important things.

Two years ago I went with six other members of my church, All Saints Episcopal Church from San Leandro, CA, to Uganda where we spent two weeks, most of which was working physically at a small orphanage which we had been providing some support to over the years. At that time, I made a plea to people to help support this project and offered 20% off on any of my work and the payment would be made to the church and I would not get any of the money. This then afforded a very nice tax deduction for those who purchased my art work. I was able to raise over $3500 from generous purchases and donations.

When I returned I raised a little bit more and was able to send money to purchase three treadle sewing machines. They had an instructor to show the kids and staff how to use the machines. I had hoped to be able to follow up with further fund raisers to help them but was not able to for a while.

Which comes to today. All Saints has been trying to work with Sunrise House to become more self-sufficient. Uganda has over 4,000,000 children who have become orphaned as a result of the very serious AIDS epidemic in Africa. Sunrise House has, had various times, had up to ninety children there but now can only afford to help about 25. They are having serious financial difficulties and need immediately $3000 in order to get the children into school. School costs each student about $50 for a term of 3 months, plus money for their books, paper, pencils and uniforms.

I am again making the offer of 20% off for any of my art work with a check made payable to All Saints Episcopal Church. If you are interested in making a purchase, please contact me first to confirm availability before sending any money. Many of my newer works are on my blog and have not been updated on to my website so search here also.

One of the girls after making a craft project together

Our Fr. Rob on the left with boys from the house all ready to do major clean up on a fire destroyed room prior to repairing and repainting.

The cook on the left with one of the kids bringing a load of bananas down to the cook house on the right. Cooking is done over an open wood fire. On the left are the latrines for the house. In the background is the town of Fort Portal, Uganda.

My thanks to any of your who are able to help support this effort.

Another one is now done

2011-09-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

I am waiting for the map of the Grand Canyon to come from USGS so that I can figure out the right contours for the Colorado River in my Grand Canyon piece that is waiting for me.

For once, I am not feeling impatient to start. I guess having several things to finish up allows for that! I have just finished the facing on one which is about 106" wide and about 48" high. It still needs to have a sleeve put on.
It is one of my ridge series and hasn't been titled yet....it really is amazing to see what I have sitting around in various piles of things. And I have given you a close up.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time making sleeves for about 5 pieces. And during all this time I have quilted two large quilts for our community quilts at my home guild, Amador Valley Quilters. One of our members works with the women at the Federal Correction Facility in Dublin and I have agreed to quilt a bunch of the quilts that the women have made. When done, those will go into the batch for community quilts...over the years this project has grown quite a bit and we now give away about 700 quilts at Christmas time to various agencies in the community.

Meanwhile, I continue to do my collages with found paper and am really enjoying doing them. They are all done in a book where they will stay as they are done back to back. I enjoy looking back at my color combinations and choice of composition. Some day I will scan some and post them. It is a nice way to start the day.

And, for any of you who are in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have a couple of new pieces that will be showing in Hayward at the Cinema Place Gallery, 1061 B St., Hayward, CA from Sept 21 until Nov 12. There will be a reception on Wed, Sept 28 from 5-7 pm. Come on down! There are a lot of SAQA artists from the area showing in this show. It should be quite interesting.

Another thing on the burner. We are currently interviewing and discussing building plans with several contractors to begin finally to build our additional garage to hold our motorhome and it will have a space above for me to have a much larger studio at home. I have the scale drawing all ready and little cut out pieces of furniture (4 x 8' plywood tables) which I move around. I will have my own outside entrance which will be nice for open studios in our area. I am really looking forward to this since my studio at home house all the household finance stuff genealogy stuff and more stuff and more stuff. I have been going through things and filled up our recycling bin yesterday with a lot of paper stuff...old bills, etc...all the shredded paper went into our greens bin and get composted but the sheet paper goes off to recycling. It feels good but there is still a lot of stuff. I am going to have to hire young men to move my other studio stuff to the new studio when the time comes because I sure can't haul everything up stairs! Once I am in there, I may hardly ever come out...oh yeah, dinner time and bed time....but it will be especially nice to start working on my collages first thing in the morning before I do anything else, and in my pj's too! Feels so decadent!

Back to sewing sleeves on....

And it keeps on coming

2011-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

my goodness, I spend the day at the studio and then come home and do my hand sewing while I am watching Masterpiece Theater...what is wrong with that....oh, did I say my husband went up to the cabin without me? That's why I get to sit in my comfy chair and watch MP Theater! He can't sit through the commercials and has to hold on to that silly remote...so, I come and go when I feel like it and don't have to worry about fixing a real dinner...just get out the lettuce I have cut up, add some chicken slices that I bought ready cooked and cut and veg out....oh, life doesn't get any better! LOL

So, anyway, I have completed Roots:

And then I finished Lone Tree which is based on my trip to Uganda...the tree is a photo I took while I was at the Queen Elizabeth National Park

And finally, the beginning of a new piece which will be the next one in my River Series, The Grand Canyon. It will show a topo map of the Colorado River as it runs through the Grand Canyon. It is ready to sandwich and then start quilting. It, too, is pretty large. I don't know why but all of a sudden I am working really large...probably a result of doing so many small things the past year!

Meanwhile, at my chair at home is another very large piece, about 98 inches long and about 48 inches high which almost has all the facing sewn down and then another piece which needs the facing sewn down.

It is really fulfilling to get these things finished. I am feeling a great sense of accomplishment as the pieces that were around I had just done the quilting and left it...never doing the final finishing. But, as I decided I wanted to get back in to showing work, I felt I needed to get some of these things done. But it hasn't stopped me from doing new work. I am getting much clearer about what I want to do...some time ago I did several pieces that included a lot of silkscreened trees and I have decided that those are just too busy for me...I like my things relatively simple....except for the quilting, that is!

And the work keeps coming

2011-09-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have really been working hard.

I have completed two more quilts, one which was just done, River 2, and another that I just finished up, Safe Harbor.

Below is River 2. I seemed to have so much fun sewing strips together that I did it with some more fabric and then did all over quilting of the river. Then I used gesso lightly to help bring all the colors together. I really like this and have enjoyed doing it....I think I see some more coming.

This is Safe Harbor, a quilted painting. It is about 60 inches x something else close to that....

I have been on a finish everything spurt of energy. And I have been working large. I had a quilt I had done some time ago and had made the edges wonky and it just never hung right. So off went the facing, I trimmed everything square and now I need to resew the new facing. I also had another small quilt that I had done earlier this year and had just tossed it aside after doing the top and the quilting...out it came and now it is all bound...will get a picture soon as I really like it.

And then, more photos to come, I have been doing a lot of collages...about a collage a day. Sometimes I miss a day but then make up for it. It is all with torn, found paper and I am just working with color and shape and composition. I won't bore you with a new piece everyday on my blog....I just get too busy to blog. And besides, I need to pull the scanner out once I find a clear place on my desk to put it.

Oh well, some more in another day....the juices are really flowing...I hope no one gets any spittle on them! (That was a funny!)

Big Blue is Done!

2011-08-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished my big blue quilt. It is about 7.5 feet across and almost 5 feet high. I am really happy with this piece. It is square but I haven't edited it to fix that part since this is not a finished photo anyway as my thread file is in the picture!

It feels good to have this done. I really like the layers I have and am already thinking about the next one which I should be able to start next week....

A Leap of Faith

2011-08-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

I have been steadily working on my blue quilt. It is 4 x 8 feet and is very heavily quilted with orange thread. I felt that it needed more so I took some red-orange dupioni silk and fused it, creating circles.

You can see how heavily quilted this is.....

And a couple of other circles....there are a couple of circles stitched only also in the quilting.

I added some negative leaf shapes in the stitching and also added red-orange silk leaf shapes.

Well, I lived with it overnight and then returned today after thinking about it and I had shown it to three very good friends to get their feelings about the piece. It needed more so I decided that I would add painted circles but I would apply the paint with a small nozzeled squeeze bottle. It took me a while to get the red-orange color just right and then to get the mixture smooth enough and of the right consistency to evenly come out of the squeeze bottle.

And then the leap of faith...the entire quilt was finished with the quilting and now I was about to use paint to add more circles....I had to trust in my vision and just go for it and hope that all worked out just find.

They add an additional texture and continue the circle motif further around on the piece. I like the way the paint has gone on and it should dry with a raised surface. This is all on top of the quilting.

So tomorrow is the moment of truth when it goes back up on the design wall after the paint has completely dried and then I can step back and see if I am satisfied or not...

Catching up and thoughts on art quilts

2011-08-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

I have been slowly working away on the blue quilt but I was away for over a week as I went to the Nebraska State Quilt Guild Convention in Kearney. I was teaching three classes there and had a great time. It takes a couple of days to get ready to go, including shipping three boxes of surface design things and ordering some more to have shipped directly there, getting everything packed, etc. One day is spent getting there and resting up, then the next three days were busy teaching. Then, on Sunday early I flew out of Kearney, headed back to Denver and then on to Oakland and home. As I get older it takes longer and longer to get over the jet lag, even if it is only two hours worth. Going from East to West seems to always be harder.

I haven't been able to spend much time in the studio this week as the week was taken up with various family things....taking my dad out to the exchange to get his cigarettes, babysitting a couple of times, sleeping, unpacking, etc.

When I did get down there, I was doing some sewing on the blue quilt but also doing some picking out of sewing because I wasn't happy with the way a couple of things were going. Still have picking out of stitches to do.

But then, I looked down at the floor and saw an orange piece of thread under the wheel of my chair. I tried to pull it out but it was stuck so I turned the chair upside down and started cutting and pulling thread out from the five rollers of the chair and this is what I got:

There was a large piece of tulle caught under there also. I had to really work at it for some time and there is still thread in the rollers....

But, I also wanted to share some thoughts about the "rules" of art quilting versus the "rules" of traditional quilts.

I talked about this in my design class in Nebraska...there are many reasons why certain rules exist in the world of traditional quilting...for instance, seam allowances are pressed to the side and not open, because quilts used to be pieced together by hand stitching so there was only one thread and pressing the seam open would put too much stress on the thread. So when we begin to machine quilt we just followed the same rule...Edges must be straight, piecing correctly done, corners matching, etc....you know what I mean.

Then art quilting began as a new direction in quilting. For many years art quilts were judged and compared to traditional quilts and the expectations were the same of both...stitched mitered corners is one that always gets me....why they need to be stitched I have never understood. But judges mark the piece off if it hasn't been done.

In my class one of my students was telling me about trying to make art quilts and that she pieces or appliques everything. I suggested she might want to fuse and she was somewhat horrified, feeling that fusing might be cheating. Thus began my discussion about the difference between art "quilts" and traditional quilts.

Art quilts are made for the wall, not to cuddle up under, to fondle or to keep you warm. They will not be washed. Thus, many of the rule of traditional quilting just aren't necessary.

Use any method you want to attach fabric or anything else you want to put on your art....staple, fuse, pierce, skewer, hand sew, machine sew, glue, whatever you need to do to help you create your artistic statement. Put your heart in to what you are doing and let your voice come out. You do not need to always use bindings....facings work if you want a finished edge, straight stitching along the edge to keep it all together works, zig zagging the edges works, satin stitching the edges works, putting a hand running stitch along the edge works. Mounting your work on paper is great, or on canvas stretched on stretcher bars or other fabric, hanging with a sleeve, mounting on plastic, mounting on a panel, what ever works to show off your work in the best manner for the style of work you have created. The work doesn't need to have three layers...how about just two? or one? oh, but then that becomes something else....fiber art or textile art.

The "rules" we do need to pay attention to are those of composition and design. The elements of design help us to describe what is happening and to understand why it is happening....not working out the way you want? Turn to the elements and principles of design to try to figure it out. Let your voice be heard. Say what you want to say in a manner that will be convey what you want your audience to hear. Interact with the audience, after all, art does not exist in a vacuum but needs to be responded to, to have a dialog with others, to convey your message, to cause people to stop and look and look again. The eye needs to move around the piece and find surprises and interesting little intersections along with places to pause and relax.

We also need to understand the difference between a "study", a "sketch" and a finished piece of work. Many times I have seen what I would call a study hung as a finished piece of art. I think the UK patchwork people fully understand the difference and keep many studies and sketches in their sketch books rather than showing them...a study which looks closely at a part of something, seeking to understand how it is all put together rather than creating a piece of art. A sketch is a quicker little jotting down of what has been seen and is not a fully finished piece of art. That doesn't mean that sketches aren't great but they are what they are. Rough, thoughts on going, unfinished, searching for understanding of the subject. The finished piece should show all of that...

I have found that so many people in the "art quilting" world have come to art quilts via quilting. They have a good understanding of putting it all together but not necessarily the understanding of how art is put together. I have seen work that artists in other mediums have done with fabrics, trying to make an "art quilt". They get the art part but not the craftsmanship of the quilting or putting it all together. I read several art magazines each month and keep an eye on what is showing in galleries across the country and over seas....every once in a while fiber slips in but it is always called a painting...I have seen some stitched, gessoed and painted and hung on the wall with nails nailed through the piece but they are indeed art and the way they were put together is all a part of what makes them. They are judged by art standards and not quilt standards.

If we want to be taken seriously in the art world, we need to leave the comfort of the quilting world and enter art shows....work can easily be entered as mixed media or textiles or fiber. Some shows are exclusive to watercolors, or paintings or sculpture, where this work might not fit although I have questions about watercolors on fabric as opposed to paper....unless the rules specifically say it must be on paper....then we need to apply for that show. But don't expect to get any judges' comments back because that doesn't happen in the art world. On the other hand, they won't care if you have stitched down the miter on your binding corner either!

So tomorrow it is back to problem solving on my blue piece and a week spent in the studio....what fun!

Three days in a row....will wonders never cease?

2011-07-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

Well, started out the day with my artful journaling group at church and then went out to lunch with my good friend Carol.

By 1 pm I was at the studio, got the quilt pinned (with straight pins) and on to George's table.

You can see the the quilt fits nicely on the table and working with George is a dream. There is no problem in doing a piece this size....I just have to roll it up and frankly, this piece is much easier than many of my others because it is just one layer or fabric (with seams), batting and backing. Usually I have multiple layers of fabric fused and painted fabrics which all makes the thing heavy and stiff to quilt. But this is easy. So started out making three circles, which I had to pick out half of one because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Then I started doing the heavy stitching 1/4" apart with sort of straight lines inside the circle. I am doing this with orange thread.

And, just as I was really getting in to the swing of things, my husband called to say the planning department had our garage and studio plans okayed and we could pick them up. Well, there went the studio time and off I went to pick up my husband and check book and then down to the county offices to hand out another $2000 for permits and fees....now we can actually start! This has been in the planning for five years and it has taken us about 3.5 years to get it all through the planning department. We will be adding an oversize garage (we already have a 2 car one) so that we can park our RV in the garage. The bonus is that over half of the space above the garage part will be my new studio. This means, given time, I will be able to do all my work at home with ready water access and a washer and dryer in the studio (it is already in my home studio) and be able to work at night, or day, in my jammies or fully dressed in something nice. I can pop in to add another layer of paint to something, come and go and work much more in my own rhythm...

Tomorrow is not a studio day, it is the grandson's day...so it is off to the zoo so we can be sure to see the lions, the spiders and all the other insects....Back in studio on Saturday! My husband can start getting the bids for the foundation and garage floor...my, how fun that will be!

My goodness but I am back again....

2011-07-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

Will wonders never cease? I spent a full day in the studio. Arrived, and studied the blue strips hanging on the design wall. I wanted to be finished with stitching strips....I love to work in a collage method and doing the sewing of 60" strips gets a little tiresome....

But, the piece wants to be bigger so bigger it got! It is now about 60 x 92" or something like that....

The only problem of doing something that big is having enough fabric around to do the backing in the same size. Most of the time I dye about one yard of fabric and then end up cutting out parts of it....I dug deep into one of my bins and came out with enough fabric to piece the backing

Got that all sewn up and then ironed which was a major chore as it was hot in my studio and my ironing table is only 24 x 48" and my floors get really dirty. Lots of road dirt and dirt off the overhead rail lines outside my studio create a problem....no matter how often I sweep!

So, once ironed and the big table cleared off, I lay out the backing, pulled down the big roll of cotton batting and plopped it down. The trick is to get the batting cut to the right size and then layers correctly onto the backing without any wrinkles....of course, working by myself gets a little challenging to get things straight....couldn't pull anything but had to life gently into the air and let it float down....and then got the top on

I had hoped, before coming in today, that I would get to the sewing part but that just didn't happen. Had too much other sewing to do on the front and the back. Ah well, it gives me more time to think about what it is that I am going to do.

Lest you think that I just make up everything as I go, let me assure you that I have been thinking about this piece for some time.

I love the work Deidre Adams but until I had actually seen her work in person, I had no sense on the depth of her work and the complexity. Of course, she stitches a number of various pieces of fabric together, frequently using a zigzag stitch and then paints the work. There are layers of paint. At places you can see the original fabrics which add even more depth. But as much as I admire her work and would love to create work like hers, if I did it wouldn't be my work. The problem is that her technique is so much a part of her voice in the creation of her work.

So the feeling that I would like to paint a quilted piece will have to remain just that. Lately I have been doing work that is very heavily quilted and calls for further surface design. I have one piece that I have painted a few of the circles in that have been stitched and I like the effect.

However, I have another idea of what to do once the quilting is done....

well, you just have to wait....

I keep disappearing!

2011-07-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

I just can't seem to keep this blog going regularly! I so admire those that can, who offer words of wisdom on a daily basis, show you daily what they have accomplished, share their thoughts, etc...but sometimes I feel others really don't want to hear all my anguish and questions about my work, the times when it is all in my head and there is nothing ready to show yet, or the many other artists whose work I have been discovering on the web and all that stuff. Besides, I don't like to show very much what is in process.

But today I thought I would show you some process on a piece and the progress as I go. I am not quite sure how this will turn out but I am experimenting with several things to see what happens...so join the journey with me.

I have pulled out a pile of various blues that I dyed some time ago. And then the unplanned fun begins. I tear strips that are 60 inches long, one at a time and sew them, one next to another. Each time I take the time to iron the strip before sewing, and then carefully ironing the piece that I have just sewn, tear another strip and keep on going.

At one point I tear out a narrow piece of painted fabric which has a lot of red circles on it. Of course, with just a narrow strip you don't see the circles but the small lines show up. This also introduces yellow and red into this monochomatic piece.

And this is where I stopped last night. I think I am going to add more pieces when I get back down to my studio. I do have a plan in my head for all of this but you will just have to wait and see what happens with it....

And, in the meantime, here is my piece for Deep Spaces which will be opening soon. I will give you the dates and places a little later.

Deep Space: My View

Deep Space: My view detail

so it is off to the studio I go.....see you later!

What's been going on

2011-05-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

I have been really busy. And I have been loving every minute of it!

Open Studios is coming up this weekend, June 4 and 5 and the next weekend, June 11 and 12. All days will be from 11 am to 6 pm at my studio in Oakland, CA at 4401 San Leandro St., just off of High St. and I880. Come on over!
So, I have been really busy! I have done a couple of fabric collages with my new fabrics but have decided that a number of them need another layer so I will be doing some screening on to them to create more complexity.

I have also been playing with the creation of paper fabric and have had a blast. I have made about 12 sheets of this stuff in different colors with different papers. My long standing habit of collecting old books that are falling apart is now paying off as I use the pages in my new paper fabric. I have pages from a technical Chinese dictionary, lots of books on construction and the various aspects of it, and who knows what else, including receipts and old ledger pages and written letters of various ages. They are finding their way into my paper fabric.

I will be selling these at my open studio as my small ticket items, along with matted collages in both paper and fabrics, quilted fabric collages both stretched on stretcher bars and not and what ever else I can come up with!

So I am sharing some of the cards with you now. They are really cool, if I do say so myself. The colors on the cards include metallics and pearlized paints which don't scan very well and become very vibrant.

What I like about these is that they can be sent to someone as a card and then they can be framed in a 5 x 7" frame! Instant art in a card.

And I thought I would share this little clip of my "installation art" at my studio in case you missed it on facebook. It is very short but I was fascinated and watched this happen for a long time before I decided to film it. The music in the background is Peter Lanz and Paul Speer in Desert Vision. I love listening to their music.

Some of my fabrics

2011-05-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

After working about 2 or 3 weeks, I now have a collection of various fabrics to work with. I have spent the day today working with several of them but since nothing is ready to share I thought I would share some of them with you!

This stack is all misty-fused!

A painted piece of fabric that has been silk screened with paint

A stack of monoprinted fabrics all misty-fused

The stack that needs to be misty-fused

and another stack that has been Misty-fused

One of the painted pieces

and another one

It is such fun but it takes a lot of time. I use various methods of applying paint from printing, to thin painting, and scrunching up and wiping down the print table

Before I started doing the putting together work on the red stole I just finished, I looked at my work table and decided that I needed a new cover because this one was just too grungy...not that anything comes off of it but it had holes where I had cut into it, etc. So a new cover went on but I have saved the old one and it is still on the table so when I want to get sloppy I still have it there. But I do have another 4 x 8' table in the back part of the studio where I have taken up my printing and fabrics painting.

One of the greatest new additions to my studio has been a really comfortable chair...now I stay down there all day and don't leave because I am tired of standing or need to just sit and think for a while since now I have a place to do it.

Life doesn't get much better! Oh yeah, it would be better if I had a deep sink in my portion of the studio instead of having to go around the corner to my studio mate's studio and use the itty bitty tiny little corner sink......one day!

Time goes by too fast

2011-05-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how time races by. I am behind in posting and have finally gotten around to uploading some photos of work I have been doing.

One of the greatest joys I have is the creation of liturgical work. When I joined All Saints Episcopal Church in San Leandro about 9 years ago, I had no idea that my art and my spirituality would come together with such fulfillment.

This has been my spiritual home for all the past years and I have received so much support, especially from the rector, Fr. Rob Droste. He is also an artist and is very gifted in a number of ways, but most certainly in his ability to help us find our relationship with God and Jesus. In thanksgiving, I created a six panel set about the creation. This led to much more work, including a commission for a wonderful alter frontal and later a chasuble, stole, and veil for the chalice. I have continued to do a great deal of work for this church, as my gift to the church.

Three and a half years ago, I was asked to be on the vocational committee to work with a good friend, John Trubina, on his journey to becoming a deacon for the Episcopal Church. That journey as been a very interesting one, watching John become even more committed to serving the Lord. His graduation from the School of Deacons occurred a week ago and my gift to him was his red stole for ordination. I thought I would share this with you. As I was doing the stitching on the front, I find myself mentally chanting a mantra that serves me well "for thy glory, Lord God" and this is my prayer when ever I wam working on liturgical work.

So, first I painted a piece of silk. I was not completely happy with it as the red was wonderful but the paler areas appeared far too pink. So I over dyed the piece with two different colors of red. The painted area created a very different texture that the dyed area. I then cut all the pieces and proceeded to do satin stitching in three different rayon threads to add more interest and texture. This photo is a part of the piece, which hangs diagonally across John's body and has the longer part of the sash going down the front and also the back. This is a special stole, made specifically for his ordination which will be in two weeks. I am quite pleased with this.

I have a commission to create a stole in the green colors for another deacon (who is already ordained and serving our Bishop) and need to finish the chasuble for my priest at All Saints which will go with a veil and stole I have already completed.

I have also been quite busy painting fabrics which are now ready for the silkscreening part. My studio became a busy place as I painted fabric, hung it up, ran out of hanging space, ironed it, repainted it, hung it up and continue the process for four days. It has been great fun just experimenting with different paints to see what I like the best and different colors and various ways of adding paint to fabric. And just as I was about to upload pictures I had taken, I can't find them on my computer. Ah well, those will have to wait.

But I have been doing a few pieces doing handwork. These include some of my painted fabrics plus ephemera I have collected and are stitched on to watercolor paper. I have several more in process.

Oh well, time to get back to the studio....I have much to do, especially since open studios is coming up the first two weekends of June!

and life goes on

2011-05-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

When I began to take a career in art seriously, after my retirement, I was very intent on all of the business end of things. I had an art management program which was great, a photographer who did my work, a lab that made all the slide duplicates, piles of stamps, an assistant to do the form filling out and slide replacements and fabric folding, listings coming out regularly to check out for appropriate places to enter, quilts coming and going.

But then little things began to happen that just seemed to make everything more difficult. Two years ago I switched back to a Mac but my art management program no longer worked on this platform. Things were supposed to be transferable and I tried to set up a program in Bento but I just couldn't get the hang of it. And then the data would not transfer. I have finally found another art management program that works on May but I still cannot transfer the older work to the newer platform. I have let my website slide somewhat because, without the art management program, I have no place to keep all the information about a piece of art work in one place...you know, size, price, medium, etc. Also, suddenly the way I had been storing my photos no longer worked when I started using iPhoto. So I tried another photo program, Aperture, but it seemed far more complicated.

I know enough about computers to get around fairly well but when I decide I want to do something with a program, I just get lost. Something that should not take very long seems to end up taking forever...like getting my art work into the new program. I end up just frustrated and giving up. I still can't get my laptop, ipad and iphone all synched together...and sharing data like contacts and calendar....can't live with them and can't live without them.

Watching younger artists pursuing their careers with energy and on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, and lots of other social networking means just makes me tired watching it all. Oh, I have a facebook page but I got too confused using it. And I have a Twitter account that I have never used. And I am on Facebook but don't have a fan page or whatever it is. I "like" most people.

So, I flounder with all the data.

But the studio is very comfortable, except when it is too hot or too cold. I think I am going to have to invest in some insulation on my own since the company that owns the building doesn't do anything like that...there is something about freezing in one's studio that is fine when one is young but not so much fun later in life. And all the little heaters don't seem to put out any heat...either is all comes at my feet of it goes up to the ceiling 12 feet above my head.

Ah, but I have entered a show and am waiting to hear if the work is accepted. It is the Deep Spaces show and the art work much bet 18 x 45". Not only did I create a piece just for this show, but I actually was able to get a decent photograph of it and did the on line entry...wow, that is pretty good!

so, I will give you a photo of my piece for this show...if it is accepted. It is called Deep Spaces, my view. It is based on many photographs from the Hubble which I have put together in my own way.

It has been created using fabrics from another dyer who gets the most wonderful saturated pieces. I Misty fused everything, cut it all up into smallish shapes about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in size and then worked the colors. The bottom part, although dark, is very rich and the orange just glows. Unfortunately, a photo does not do it justice.

Back to the creation of a red stole for a good friend who will become an ordained deacon shortly...it is my graduation gift to him after four years of school...he graduates this Sunday so I need to get it all finished tomorrow.

and I continue

2011-05-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

I found myself really in a quandary between doing the kinds of work I like to do and listening to all those in the know. The messages about having "one body of work" was coming to me from all sides. I like to work in both geometric formats which are really design exercises for me and then I also like to work in a very organic manner. I enjoy working in both ways. I guess the organic work flows out from me whereas the more geometric work tends to be more from the head. I like to make pleasing pieces, I love to explore how color relates to another color, I love line and being able to manipulate it in various ways.

So, I needed to get a portfolio out to art consultants and galleries in order to carry on with my professionalism. But all of a sudden, I had serious doubts about what I was doing. People I know and respect were very encouraging and saw nothing wrong in the way I worked but I fell victim to all the "talking heads" in the art world who counseled that it was necessary to stick to one style and if one did other types of work, keep it to ones self. So instead, I found myself stuck. Both feet stuck firmly in the quicksand. I really began to feel that I needed a mentor but had no idea who to turn to.

And, of course, doing nothing got me no where....

On the positive side, I have continued to make work consistantly and I have done some good work. I have gone back and forth between the geometric and the organic styles and have enjoyed what I was doing although I was not getting it out.

About the best I could do was to participate in an collage swap that Karen Stiehl Osbourne did and to contribute collages to Virginia Spiegel's ACS fundraiser.

The doubts continued for the past two years. Questions of if my work was really good or not....was I just fooling myself....was I a pretend artist...who was I...what was my voice....etc., etc.

Now during the past two years I landed a job in Switzerland and taught there for five days and enjoyed the company of several of my Swiss on line students. And then I spent a week by myself in Lyon, France. It was during that time that I slowed completely down. I sat at the cafe and just watched people, when I missed my bus, I just waited two hours for the next one, watching the people. I was able to get away from myself and just absorb all that was around me. What a gift that was. But when I returned, things were still drifting for me.

I can't tell you what has happened but I have felt a great burden lifting from my shoulders. At 63 I should be able to just do my work and not worry about trying to please anyone (I haven't before) or to try to make sense of what my voice is, etc.

For the past two weeks I have been working hard in my studio and have been creating a much more welcoming place for myself. I now have a second 4 x 8' table, and just got a used leather recliner with a small side table. I can't tell you how much I have been appreciating that chair during the past week. Most of the work I do, except for machine quilting, is done standing up. My knees are bad so after a while I can barely stand. Today I worked for a couple of hours, sat down and read for a little while (about art), worked some more and then sat down and did hand embroidery on new work that I have been doing. Hand work....me....hard to believe but I have been finding that since the work I do is not precise that I can have fun with it.

So, what kind of work do I really like to do? I have been giving this a great deal of thought. What I have come to realize is that the Japanese esthetic is very important to me and I had not realized how much of that I had absorbed from my time in Japan. I like things that are asymmetrical. I like clean lines. I love organic lines. I love something that is understated. I enjoy minimalism. I enjoy the expressions created by the movements of lines. I love the act of making art. I love the various processes that I engage in. I love the problem solving involved in designing art work. I love to work by myself and enjoy spending entire days by myself.

Ah, but then I need to come up for air and socialize with others, especially other artists.

I belong to a small critique group with some very special artists: Alice Beasley, Claudia Comay and Robin Cowley. All are very good artists and we have been very supportive of each other. This has been important to me and it is with them that I am able to discuss concerns that I see in the art quilting world. The art quilt world is so very different from the art world. We are going through growing pains and since so many of us came to this type of work through quilting rather than art, many have a lot to learn about art...but that is an entire other topic for discussion.

Enough for tonight....my thoughts are still coming and I appreciate being able to put them out there and am open to any feedback....

where am I?

2011-05-09T23:51:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager, I had dreams of becoming a professional artist. By the end of high school, I had already taken two years of art at high school, a summer session at the Honolulu Academy of Art, and had studied sumi-e while I lived in Japan. My mother was an artist but I don't have many memories of her involvement in the arts except for her years of being a student in sumi-e. She eventually received her teaching certification and taught for many years. She had done a lot of oil painting before we first moved to Japan and that is when, in 1954, that she began to pursue the Japanese art form. I took lessons with her for a while but found that the very studied use of brush strokes was not really to my liking.

Early on, a lot of my work was abstract. I made the decision to go to Trinity University in San Antonio, TX to study art. A wonderful school...smallish...about 2200 students and an outstanding liberal arts program. The arts complex included art studios, music studios, and our big theater which housed several smaller theaters also. It was a fun place. Students in the arts frequently crossed disciplines. I took drama lessons, drama students took art lessons and music students took art lessons. A very creative place to be.

After my sophomore year, my father retired in Berkeley, CA and was working for the University of California. Since he was employed there, I could attend with minimum expenses so I transferred. I was excited, this was a big school (22,000+) with a large art department. I learned how to weld there and really enjoyed taking metal sculpture classes. But I found that I just did not fit it. I am not quite sure why, perhaps because I lived at home and attended school, it was hard to meet other students and develop relationships as I had while living in the dorms at Trinity. I also found that I was not sure how I was going to make a living with art. I fancied architecture but really didn't have the math for that field, considered interior design and passed on that, was too snooty to consider teaching for a living (you know, those who can, do, and those who can't, teach) and, although I was selling my work and going to various art fairs around the area, I figured I should consider something else.

So I went in to Social Welfare, which was actually a good fit for me and a year after graduation finally found a job in the probation department where I remained for the next 30 years until I retired in 1999. During all of that time, while working full time, being involved in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (big time) and teaching at work, I was able to become involved in quilting. I started machine quilting early in my life of quilting, when it really was not the thing to do. Years later, I was teaching machine quilting to those who turned up their noses as my work....ah well, life is interesting!

When I retired, I finally had the time to begin my art full time. During the last year of my employment, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She lasted just two months after I retired. I was glad that I was retired in the later stages of her cancer as I was able to spend a great deal of time with her and to support my father. Several months after her death, I made the decision to return to art on a full time, professional basis...that is, an artist who works at selling their work.

I began creating work all the time. Once I had enough work on hand, I began entering quilt shows and also art shows. I was doing well. I hired a high schooler to be my assistant and kept her busy filling out show entry forms, filing returned slides, labeling slides, etc. to help keep me organized. She also kept my data base up to date for me. I was busy. I had begun to teach, although I had decided that being a studio artist was more important to me than being a teacher. But I enjoyed the teaching and it helped with my income.

I was doing well. IRS was very happy. I even made a profit!

But I found that I was pushing all the time. Making work, finishing it off, doing all the work my assistant had done as she grew up and went off to college. I was getting tired. It just seemed to be too much to enter several shows a month and to keep track of everything. So I stepped back and that was two years ago.

Burn out on the career had hit. So for the past two years I have not entered any shows, not even my own guild shows. I haven't been sending out work, I haven't followed through on my goals to obtain further gallery representation after the gallery I was with closed, and I had not really connected with any art consultants although several had sold my work for me before.

So, where did that past two years go?

enough for tonight....I will continue with the update and the move forward.

It's Time ONE

2011-02-15T12:24:00.001-08:00

One Cause, One Wednesday, One Hundred Collages
One Cause – The Fight Against Cancer.

One Wednesday – February 16, 2011.

One Hundred Collages – Created for this event by an all-star team of artists: Natalya Aikens, Pamela Allen, Laura Ann Beehler, Liz Berg, Pokey Bolton, Laura Cater-Woods, Jette Clover, Jane Davila, Jane Dunnewold, Jamie Fingal, Gloria Hansen, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Lyric Kinard, Jeanelle McCall, Linda Teddlie Minton, Karen Stiehl Osborn, BJ Parady, Judy Perez, Wen Redmond, Cynthia St. Charles, Virginia A. Spiegel

The goal – Raise $8,000 for the American Cancer Society in just one day. More details and a preview of artwork:http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/ONEFundraiserPreview.html

Fiberart For A Cause has already donated over $205,000 to the American Cancer Society through the generosity of fiber artists and their patrons.

Featured Artist on Virginia Spiegle's blog

2011-02-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

I am the featured artist today for ONE! on Virginia Spiegle's blog...take a look and keep Feb. 16 on your calendar for your opportunity to purchase wonderful art work all for a good cause...The American Cancer Society.

Take a look at my interview!

New Work finished

2011-01-31T21:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally got the right staples in the right stapler....I must say that the pneumatic stapler does a much better job. The electric stapler only gets the 1/2 inch staples in half way. Which means that I have to use the hammer to hammer them further in and sometimes they go really wonky and get smashed down rather than neatly hammered down. Well, until the weather is nicer and the big compressor is fixed, this will have to do.

I have decided that this is a really nice way of doing the mounting of my work on stretched canvas. This time I tried something different and it really worked well. I cut out the canvas with enough to overlap the back by two inches. Then I centered my art work onto the canvas, gently pinned it down, and then machine stitched it to the canvas. The I could center from the back side of the canvas since it has a stitched line outlining the artwork and stretch the canvas onto the stretcher bars. Works neatly and quickly without having to do hand stitching. So now I just have to attach the D rings and wire them. I found a source of plastic covered wire so there is no bare wire showing.

So, continuing in the circles motif, here we have three of the five....

Circles 7

Circles 6

Circles 8

These are each about 10 x 12 inches and mounted on 14 x 18 " stretched canvas.

I have the hardest time getting my pictures straight on so they look squared. These really are squared and I tried to straighten them up but it just doesn't work.

Well, I guess things will need to go to the photographers....

Some Days can just be Frustrating

2011-01-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

I decided that I wanted to attach my new collages onto black canvas stretched around stretcher bars.
Easy, I thought.

A couple of years ago when I first started doing this, my dear husband got me a stapler...my hand is not strong enough to use the regular staple guns so he went out on a quest for me...to find a stapler that I could use and that would work well.

He brought home an electric one but the staples didn't go all the way in to the stretcher bars. So then he kept on looking and finally brought home an air stapler...one that uses compressed air to fire the staple. It is really cool and shoots out these wicked looking staples.

I can use it at home on the back porch because the huge air compressor is outside and I have a long hose to connect the stapler to the air compressor.

However, it is rainy and cold outside and I have the perfect set up at my studio for doing this...the fabric, a place to cut the fabric, the sewing machine, the stretcher bars, a big, high table to work on, etc. Plus it doesn't rain inside...it may get cold but if I am moving around it isn't too bad.

So last week I decided to stop by Home Depot and get an electric stapler. Found a good one and got a couple of boxes of staples that the person told me would fit the stapler.

It was in my trunk and before I could get it out, my husband saw it and got upset that I had purchased a stapler without discussing it with him....well, he still had the original electric stapler from before. It is a Stanley but I needed staples. So I went off to the Ace Hardware to get them and came home with a couple of boxes of staples that seemed to work. However, when I got down to the studio, they just jammed in the stapler. So I pulled out the stapler that was still in my trunk and loaded it with the staples that were supposed to fit it....nope, just spat out staples two at a time...

So, I have one piece of fabric with the collage sewn one and two staples holding it to the stretcher bars.
Decided that I just could not face Home Depot to take the staples back today to exchange them so will do so tomorrow.

And I had so hoped to get these five collages done...finished, wired and everything....ughhhhhhh!

This seems to be the way things have been going for me. Something that shouldn't take very long seems to take way too much time!

Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Getting Little done

2011-01-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

While I was away for a week, I came down with a horrific head cold and had a very sore throat and lots of coughing. For the first time in many years, I simply gave in to the cold, for about the full 10 days that it takes, slept, napped, drugged myself up with decongestants, and played games on the computer since I wasn't able to do much else.

But now I am feeling much better and am ready to tackle the art world. What has happened though, which happens to me any time I am away from the studio for any length of time, is that I become overwhelmed with ideas.

Of course, when I go back to the studio, there are always things in progress to some point or other. But then, while I have been away, I start getting new ideas, which I wake up with in the morning, or fall asleep with at night or just dream up during the day. Sometimes I wish I could shut my brain off.

I did the 5 collages for ONE and have started doing some along the same vein but larger for myself. These are done on upholstery fabric, have various items in them, including circles cut out of other fabrics, vintage linens and silk screening. They have a minimal amount of stitching in them.

So on my mind has been the question of how to display them...I thought about matting them, ready for framing and then thought about mounting them on rigid board, and then decided that they would really look best sewn to a piece of fabric that is then stretched onto stretcher bars....I will tell you, storing these babies is not as easy as storing regular quilts! I can't pile them up on the bed and they are not beginning to take up lots of room on my new storage shelving....oh well, I guess that is what the shelving is for.

But, to backtrack some, on the 15th I had to get my Sketchbook Project sketchbook mailed out which I had finally finished the night before. The entire project moves along and you can see a progression in my work as I did the book over 6 months' time.

So, here are a few pages from my sketchbook project....this page has lines on the left made with graphite and the lines on the right are stamped using cardboard.

On these pages I started making a grid with an ink pen and then began coloring it it with multiple glazes.

On two pages that I painted and over painted, I just made lines with my ink pen....very similar to a lot of stuff I have been doing in my fiber work lately.

And more lines, similar again to the fiber work machine stitching I have been doing a lot of....

So, today is Thursday and tomorrow I am back in the studio, having spent a day this week doing clean up and organizing. I purchased a new electric stapler so I can more easily staple fabric to stretcher bars, so that is one thing to do, I need to trim up a couple of quilts and get facing on them, mount the new collages of the new stretched fabric. and then I am ready to figure out how to displace my felt pieces...those may also go onto stretched canvas...and then, I can open the sketchbooks and really look at all the ideas I have been jotting down....

A nice week away

2011-01-20T14:32:00.000-08:00

I have returned after spending a week up in the cabin in the Sierra foothills. The first day was cold but then the weather turned spring like. Just beautiful. I spent time creating new samples for my on line class lessons, read an entire book, had naps, thought about quilt ideas, and just generally enjoyed myself. The only complaint was that I picked up a sore throat and head cold which I am still trying to shake! oh, well...and next week it will be time in the studio...just hoping that the weather stays a little warmer longer as that studio gets so cold. When the outside temperature drops past 60, so does the temperature in the studio. Someone told me I could get fingerless gloves as WalMart so I guess I will have to venture in to find some.

But, I am going to share with you the other collages for ONE!

ONE is a 1 day sale of 100 collages created by 20 artists. You can follow the link to get all of the information. This is another Virginia Spiegle fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Many beautiful things to purchace!

Save the date! Feb. 16!

Meanwhile, I have continued with the circles in a larger format and will be posting them soon!

On line classes starting up

2011-01-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

I have just announced my on-line classes on my website.

Better Art by Design is a six week class. Students leave this class feeling more confident about creating their own original quilts. Work is done at home and lessons are posted each week with a critique by me to help you understand the ideas better. This class begins on Jan 31. Information is available on my website.

Advanced Better Art by Design is a four lesson class given over 8 weeks. This class is designed for those who have taken Liz's Better Art by Design class and are ready to do some more intensive work. Critiques are given as work is uploaded to the private Yahoo site. Again, go to my website for sign up information.

I will also be teaching three classes at Quilt Nebraska in July.

In October, I will be in the beautiful Hudson River Valley enjoying a stay at the Greenville Arts 1889 Inn teaching Better Art by Design. This is through Hudson River Valley Fiberart workshops. Would love to have you come join me at this delightful time of the year!

Today was my last day as Rector's Warden for my church, All Saints Episcopal. I have turned all responsibility back to the rector who returned this past Monday and will be going off to the cabin for week on Wed. afternoon. I am looking forward to this peaceful time although I will be doing some fine tuning for my on line classes.

I am including a few more of the collages for ONE

Yellow Circles 1

Yellow Circles 2

Put Feb 16 on your calendar so that you may bid of one of 100 collages available from twenty wonderful artists!

Happy New Year

2010-12-31T17:27:00.000-08:00

The end of 2010 has come upon us. There are so many things I wish for, not for me personally but for the entire world.

I wish that everyone who could would give something to end world hunger.

I wish that everyone who could would give something to bring infrastructure to third world countries so they could have fresh, clean water and sanitation disposal.

I wish that we would all learn to appreciate and respect our differences and live together in peace.

I wish that we would all do what we can to help take care of our environment.

I wish that countries could be at peace.

I wish that children were never killed in violent acts.

I wish that we could all see beauty in our lives and take time to appreciate it.

May you have a happy new year and may 2011 be a happier year for everyone on this earth.

Another Day in the studio

2010-12-29T22:27:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, Virginia Spiegel asked me if I would like to participate in a one day auction of collages to again raise money for the fight against cancer. I have joined her campaigns many times either by creating postcards or collages (last year) so of course, I said count me in.

So today I finished them up and now will be sending the photos off. Save this date and information:

One Cause, One Wednesday, One Hundred Collages

One Cause – The Fight Against Cancer.

One Wednesday – February 16, 2011.

One Hundred Collages – Created for this event by an all-star team of artists: Natalya Aikens, Pamela Allen, Laura Ann Beehler, Liz Berg, Pokey Bolton, Laura Cater-Woods, Jette Clover, Jane Davila, Jamie Fingal, Gloria Hansen, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Lyric Kinard, Jeanelle McCall, Linda Teddlie Minton, Karen Stiehl Osborn, BJ Parady, Judy Perez, Cynthia St. Charles, Virginia A. Spiegel
The goal – Raise $8,000 for the American Cancer Society in just one day. More details and a preview of artwork: http://bit.ly/ciJ0TN

I thought I would show you one of the five collages that I have completed for this event. The series is called "Yellow Circles". It is approximated 7" x 5" and is mounted on 10" x 8".

This is Yellow Circles 4

During this past summer, after my return from Switzerland, I began working with commercial felt. It has been very rewarding for me as I have done a number of different things with it. Some I have shown on Face book as they were done. I purchased industrial felt in a couple of different thicknesses and also had some circles punched for me and bought grey waste felt, that left over after punching out gaskets and things. This image is one which is a piece of commercial felt with some of the circles I had cut which have been needle felted onto the background felt. Then I took a piece of the grey waste, cut it to the shape I wanted and couched it down. It is far too dense to needle felt. I am now working on a very large piece that has this same waste and is being stitched by hand onto a large piece of 1/4" felt that is about 70" by 36"....this will take some time! I am glad I am working on this in the winter since it sit under the heavy felt blanket while I stitch!

This piece is not very large and will be mounted on mat board suitable for framing. It should be placed behind glass to protect it from dust. Since it is felt, it has an affinity for any stray pieces of almost anything.

where you have been, Liz?

2010-12-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

It has been six months since I posted. I have been doing art work but not a lot.

During the past year and a half I have served as Rector's Warden at All Saints Episcopal church in San Leandro, which I have attended for the past almost nine years. I stepped in to fill in for someone else. I have done this job before and it hasn't been too bad....regular visits with the priest to discuss the parish, plan making, etc....leading the vestry...all that kind of stuff. Well, six months ago, after a lot of on again-off again decisions, my priest decided that he was indeed going to take a three month sabbatical after a month of vacation, meaning he would be gone for four months. The planning before hand took a lot of work and dealing with everyone's anxiety about his being gone was hard. But, here we are, just a little over a week before he returns to the church and less than two weeks when I will be relieved of my job completely as I will be going off of vestry. While he has been gone, I have been in charge of things...of course we have had an interim priest with us but she has only been handling Sunday services and any emergencies. I have gotten all the rest.

As I realized that my time was coming to an end, I started to relax and it wasn't until that started that I realized that I have been somewhat tense and stressed during some of this time. Nothing serious but enough that it was interfering with other parts of my life...mainly my art. So I did a little bit here and there, made some baby quilts that still aren't finished and just fussed around.

A couple of weeks ago I traded some rubber stamps (well, a lot of rubber stamps) to a friend for her 48"x18"x72" shelving unit. My husband gave me a hand putting it together and the next day we were back at Costco to get four more. By the time we had finished putting the last one together, we had it down and worked as a team. Then came all the rearranging which meant that heavy bins had to be moved around and we decided to change the layout of the wooden shelving units that my husband had made for the studio some time ago. Two of them came up front and make a nice display shelf for art work as well as a good place for me radio and ipod player. The other four were stacked one on top of the other and then put together to make another 4'x8' work table with shelves underneath. They also hold bins of fabric. Now the new shelving is holding tons of frames, finished art work on stretcher bars, paints, silk screens, rolls of fabric, batting and tons of other stuff. There is still some space but for once I have my special papers laying flat on a shelf under the work table. One of my 6' tables is just folded up and the other one still have piles of stuff on it that I need to get sorted out. It is the place that I can sit down and work on collages and mixed media stuff. Another 6' table is still piled high with stuff...fabric to be ironed, work that needs to be finished, etc.

But today, I spent five relaxing hours back in the studio. I am back on track and ready to go full speed ahead. Some of that time was spent cleaning up for then several hours were spent on collages.

I have a lot to share but don't want to spend all night doing it so this is just to help bring everyone up to date.

My Better Art by Design class will go on line again, starting the first of February. I will start taking sign ups later this week.

thank you all for your patience as I frittered around...it is now time to get back to the business of making and selling art....what a concept!

Back in the Studio

2010-07-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

Well, today I finally made it back in to the studio.

It is a fascinating process...coming back after being gone for quite some time.

My mind is overflowing with so many thoughts and ideas that I sit and wonder what to do...should I start painting with the colors of Lyon? Should I work out the shapes of the buildings in Lyon and turn those in to abstract? Should I start doing some brush painting? Should I start doing some collages? Should I paint fabric? Should I work on my felt?

Just what should I do? It is really hard to come back after being gone...

I had left a rather large piece of felt partly stitched (about a 30" x 30" piece) so I decided to try out my new eyes with George and see how that went. It went fine once I tuned him up and cleaned him out and gave him some new juice (as in oil) and the we were ready to do...but just what did I want to do with this piece?

After some thought I just started stitching. The flow of the machine and the color being laid down by the thread was mesmerizing. It felt good. It felt like what I should be doing. It was right. And I did a lot of problem solving during the process of finishing this piece.

So, now I am back in the groove...at least a little. I did some brush work on old maps and also on a piece of canvas I have painting. I have gotten my juices going again and now I can fall back in to the routine of making art....

Slow right now

2010-07-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

I have spent about 4 hours in the studio during the past four weeks....not much time at all.

But, art has constantly been on my mind! I have spent time looking over the pictures I have taken and have thought a lot about how I could represent what I have seen.

I have been drawn to the colors of Lyon.....off white, dirty white, creamy yellow, ocher, and pink. Many of the buildings are built with natural stone which happens to be pink or ocher. And then there are the colors of the shutters: green, blues, browns, peeling white paint, green metal, gray, all sorts of colors. And the beautiful greens of the trees! What a delight!

There was a lot of art everywhere! Art on almost all of the buildings of some sort...either in the gargoyles, or in the faces in the wall, or the coloration used, or the placement of things, or the graffiti or the public art, both very old and very new.

This trip was very special as I traveled by myself in a country where I did not speak the language. I found most people to be very nice and helpful. I was fascinated by the neighborhood of my hotel which had a tiny collection (or maybe it was really pretty big, I couldn't tell) of many different peoples from many different countries...or at least, home countries.

World Cup games were on the the streets were filled with honking car horns when a team one, and the national flag of that country was waved proudly.

I was able to go at my own pace and take time to view what I really wanted to take time to do.

I missed a bus to go out of town and ended up waiting 2 and a half hours for the next one but just sat at the river Rhone and watched life going by. A group of some African people gathered across the river and some were on stilts, all brightly dressed, and I could hear their drum music across the river...it reminded me of Uganda but I know that wasn't where they were from.

There were times when I wished I had someone to share a thought with but I was quite a peace with myself.

This trip provided a lot of reflection time and a lot of visual ideas that are still sorting their way through my head.

I returned and it took about five days for me to finally get back on US time...waking up at 2 am is not so good when the whole day stretches out ahead of you! To have a nap or not...would I be able to go ahead and sleep later or not or would I be up way too early?

We then took four days and went up to our cabin in the mountains where it was the absolute other end of the scale...very quiet, earth colors everywhere, greens, browns, and blue skies, and quiet except for a few birds.

For the first time I saw a number of crows up at our place...they caws filled the air with a screeching sound and disturbed the peace of the area...but then I guess they might have been warning everyone about our dogs where were with us!

So tomorrow I go in for cataract surgery on one eye (the other eye is fine and just has the very beginnings of a cataract) so one eye is it. I have made the decision to have my left eye vision corrected to a mid range so that I can machine quilt without glasses....I will need new glasses for reading (although my arms are still long enough to read if I hold something out far enough) and also for distance. I anticipate smooth surgery by a doctor who did both of my father's eyes and I have complete faith in him...not withstanding the notification of the dire consequences that could possibly happen...at least they were given with the percentage of possibility which made it somewhat better...a 1% change of something isn't too bad...

I am looking forward to next week, as I play some more with my felt and start painting with the colors of Lyon...and then we will see where that all goes!

Still in Switzerland

2010-06-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, I was able to see the Alps outside my hotel room...

Because of the weather, many people who had come to hike the Alps were not able to....

My students worked very hard and I am quite happy to show a few of the more finished pieces.

These are just a few of the pieces that were done...one was finished, one was fused and ready to quilt and the other was partially quitled.

The greatest part about being a teacher is when the students make a gigantic, or sometimes small, breakthrough in their point of view. For many of the students, they had done none or little free form work. This opened up new horizons and helped them take those first steps in to creating their own works.

I love this! I love to see people "get it" and really get excited about making their own work rather than just doing things like someone else's.

It is so gratifing to do this....many years ago while in college I turned my nose up at teaching but then, what did I know at the ripe old age of 21? What a snob I was! I do have to keep teaching in balance because it is so easy to get caught up in teaching and not spend enough time in my studio which is most important to me. It is where I keep fresh, try new ideas, follow my ideas to where ever they go, and just absolutely be myself. I am in solitude there with few distractions.

I am truly blessed to be able to live this life both teaching and working in the studio.

I stayed with Patrica after the workshop;

Her home is out in the country in a little village and is absolutely delightful. It is very modern and comfortable with a beautiful garden. Her home is filled with art she and her husband have collected from all over the world. As her husband travels for business frequently, this collection has become quite large and very interesting.

The garden is in a Japanese style as you can see from the Bhudda sitting outside the window.

As it was late spring, everything was blooming and the iris were most impressive. I took many pictures of the koi pond, and other flowers and various decorations.

Marianne Bender was also at the seminar taking a workshop with Dijanne Cevaal's workshop. Sophie had taken my on line classes and it was great fun to see what she was doing. She had worked with some photographs in one of my classes before and was continuing to do so in Dijanne's class.

This is one of the two pieces she was working on in the class.

Marianne Bender was also taking Dijanne's class and is the one who was responsibile for getting my name to Christian Sauder who put on the seminar.

Later, we went to Marianne's winery and had a delightful time eating little bites of cheese, bread, meats and tasting five different wines they make. Absolutely delightful as Particia Sylvia, Marianne and Margo, all from my on line classes got together with their husbands for this fun time. What a wonderful experience to be able to visiti someone's winery and share with them in their home.

this is inside the outside of their home and tasting room and the other picture is from inside with Marianne. I neglected to get a photo of her husband who was watching the weather constantly while we were there.

Patrica, Sophia, and Patricia's oldest daughter, Enodie, went to see a wonderful retrospective exhibit of Nicolas de Stael...he committed suicide at a young age (45) but went through cubism to his own work and it was great to see the transformation of his work over his short lifetime. His color work and composition are truly outstanding and I was so happy to be able to see this artist's work and to add another artist to my library.

At the museum there was a wonderful sculpture garden which we enjoyed walking through. While there we saw this woman sitting and joined her for a conversation.

Great artwork, including one of Rodin's five, The Kiss, a Henri Moore piece, a large, three sided mosaic by Chagall and many others. A delightful day which was finished up by searching for appropriate tee shirts for my grandsons.

I did it again! My students' work

2010-06-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

I actually got on blogger again! I found the right button, found the place to put it in Anglais rather than French and off I go! Now I will see if I can upload any pictures!

One of the students, Anne, brought in a lot of fabric swatches which greatly improved our ability to find the right color for our exercises...I just thought they made beautiful pictures by themselves!

so now we start with my students! Some are Swiss, some are German and some are French...but all spoke French except for me...

Anne-Marie (above)

Anne (above)

Catherine (above)

Caty (above)

Christiane (above)

Marie Elisabeth (above)

Marianne (above)

Marie France (above)

Martine (above) who was also my translator

The other Martine (above)

Nadia (above)

Suzanne (above)

These pictures were all taken on the last day and also show the quilts they started. We had a lively discussion about art quilts and traditional quilts and how difficult it is to be accepted in a club when you do art quilts. (sound familiar) Also a lot of discussion on when is a quilt art...at least Europe has a strong respect for craft which made it a little easier!

This was an outstanding class and it was wonderful as we got to know each other, even with the language difficulties.

More to come...

My apologies to the Pointless Sisters of Sonoma County

2010-06-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

From across the world from home, I took a few minutes to try to bring everyone up to date with what had happened to me in just a few weeks.

Working from my poor memory I mistakenly called the Pointless Sisters by another name. Some one wrote to me about it but everytime I went to pull up my blog, everything showed up in French and I could not figure out to to do a new post.

Finally, I have. So I am sorry, Pointless Sisters, you are not twisted, and you are of Sonoma County and not Rohnert Park.

so that is all for now until I get home to the States and can work more comfortably and I won't post anything with out checking the facts...

and so much more

2010-06-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have continued to be very busy.

My son got married on May 22 in Michigan so we were all there for the wedding...there went a week away from home.

I returned home and got ready to teach with the Twisted Sisters group at Rohnert Park We had three days of hard work creating new fabrics with various surface design techniques. They certainly made of a lot of new fabric! What fun it was!

And before I knew it, I was packing for Switzerland. I have much to write about but not tonight as my time is very limited here.

This is outside the hotel where we are having our seminar. We are up in the mountains at about 4200 feet and it is a steep climb to get up here. I arrived via a cog train which brought me to my final point for five days. It was a long flight from SFO to Heathrow, and nice flight to Geneva but we could not fly directly for some reason and were 30 minutes late in arriving so I missed my train to Leysin. I caught the next one but this put poor Chritiane Studer (the very nice woman who has put the seminar together) in to almost heart failure as she had gone to the train station to pick me up and I wasn't there. She was so happy when I arrived by taxi!

Meals are huge! Breakfast has many choices, including various cheeses and bread which are to die for, cereals if you want, hard boiled eggs, and lots of other goodies including Norwegian smoked salmon.

and then we break for coffee after working 1.5 hours. Which includes coffee, tea, hot chocolate, etc and some kind of coffee cake along with more fruit.

and in another hour and a half we stop for lunch which is really dinner. The Swiss do not eat like this at home but this is at a plush resort hotel. He have had duck with a wonderful sauce one day, today we had sole, also in a delicious sauce, always with a salad before hand from a salad bar with wonderful goodies, the least of which is lettuce. Dinners are similar but we are served a first course...two days ago it was a plate filled with smoked salmon. And then on to dinner which has been lanb, or roast beef along with scallops in another wonderful sauce, beef, and already I have lost track of everything we have been having. And the desserts show up....four little scoops of special differenct sorbets in a chocolate line waffle bowl and other drizzles of some sort of sauce and other little special things. I have now learned to leave lunch before dessert comes as two a day is a little too much.

Oh yes, after lunch the class resumes at 2pm because it takes 1.5 hours to eat lunch. Then we stop for tea and some other goodie an hour and a half later. We stop the class at 5:30 pm and then have dinner at 7pm which will also last 1.5-2 hours...very leasurily and beautifully presented.

this is the smoked salmon before dinner

In between eating my students have been working exceptionally hard. Here is one group working on their color wheel.

And the other group just as busy.

I have 12 studetns who come from France, Switzerland and Germany. Of course, everyone speaks French except me. I am finding that if I really listen closely, sometimes I can tell what they are saying. Christian has supplied with with Martine, who does a wonder job translating for me. And if she isn't sure there are other people in the classroom who also help.

I have left them finishing their first quilts and staring on the second one. We will put the work up and I will be taking pictures of everyone with their work.

And, very special, three of my former students from my online class are here. It has been wonderful to meet them in person and there are giving me a bad time about why I haven't done the advanced class so they could take it...well, decision made, it will be offered in January.

So, I must get ready to go for dinner....oh, this is so difficult! And so very much fun. Everyone is absolutely delightful and a joy to be around. They are all very excited about what they have been learning and are looking forward to "new horizons".

So much has been happening

2010-05-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

I truly apologize for being gone for so long and neglecting my writing.

For the past two months have had a lot of ups and downs with my art work. I have been very excited about some things I have been doing and new directions I have been taking and then wondering if it is the right direction. So let me tell you how this has all developed.

Earlier this year I began doing some work that was much simpler, painting on canvas, collaging fabric on to it, stitching and then cutting it to fit prestretched canvas. I did a number of these and was really enjoying it.

My work has started to become much more minimalist. The use of lines and circles has become extremely important.

Then I started doing a bunch of mark making on my IPhone...I love this thing! I have created pages of these on my phone and have printed them out for contemplation and consideration. It has begun to feel like my own alphabet. Again, lines and circles along with other shapes such as triangles and squares.

That got me thinking about mark making, and of course, one of the marks that I create the most is a circle. While I was making the accordion books, I was painting on water color paper with inks and acrylic paints. I also did a lot of linear mark making on them, using my new found favorite painting thingie, a stick off of a vine near my studio. I love the lines I am able to make with this stick.

These accordion books have had multiple layers applied to them. It is really a lot of fun working with a whole sheet of watercolor paper and then creating the books which become separate compositions. I love the serendipity of this project.

I then started doing thumbnails of pods...from my own creation, but these have come out of a lot of thought about home, safety, nourishment, loving, cocooning, etc and I began making a number of pieces on painted canvas and then sketched in with ink and then stitched in a free motion style, again creating circle shapes and lines. And again, the lines are all very organic.

Each of these are actual quilts, with a backing and batting. They have been finished on the edges and then mounted on painted stretched canvas. They start at 6 x 6 inches and move up to a canvas size of 18 x 81 inches with a piece of art on them that is about 16 x 16 inches. These four just represent a few of the pod series and I have many more in me.

So back to the mark making. Since I was painting on unstretched canvas, I slapped some gesso one a large piece of canvas, about 3 x 4 feet in size. I then began making marks on the canvas by dripping it out of a paint bottle and allowing it to dry flat. As a result, the red paint actually stands up and is not flat and has a shin to it which contrasts nicely with the blotchy white. I machine quilted it using a hard sharp line, another contrast.

Boy, now I am really getting minimalist!

I had come across the work of Rebecca Howdershell, who works on industrial felt and paper and stitches them together. These are white on white compositions which are stunning. So back to my sketch book I went and I started drawing lots of thumbnails of various shapes and lines.

This also began the search for industrial felt. I now know more about industrial felt than I ever imagined.
I have spoken with various people trying to speak in a language I am just starting to understand. Having never seen industrial felt before but reading a lot about it on line, I came up with some ideas of what I wanted. I had circles cut out of industrial felt in various thicknesses from 1/4" to 1/2" and the circles themselves range in those sizes. The first company agreed to ship the waste that they throw away to me for the cost of shipping. (little did I know what I was getting in for) And then I contacted some other companies and finally settled on one company and ordered 2 sheets of industrial felt in white in an 1/8" and 1/4" thickness. I also order circles cut out of 1/8" thick felt that are 1.5" in diameter.

And then I waited, and waiting for stuff to come.

1000 circles of cut industial felt...1/2" high by 1/2" wide

First the box of cut circles that were smaller. They arrived and I had four thousand felt circles of various sizes and thicknesses. But nothing to do with them yet. I had some ideas from a book I had gotten on felt when I was at the Surface Design/SAQA conference and was eager to work with them but did not have a base for them yet.

Then two huge boxes arrive...one I can not even lift and it sits in our entry way in the way.
I tore open the smaller one and found dark grey industrial felt that was the waste from cutting out gaskets.

So I had to play to see how it worked. First I just needle felted some beautiful turquoise yarn around the shapes to see how it worked. Then I cut pieces of the yarn in to smaller lengths and used the felting needle to attach it to the industrial grey felt.

I also opened the other big box and found a huge roll of grey industrial felt that is about 24 " wide and rolled into a tight roll about 2.5 feet in diameter, with small circles cut out of it. I have died and gone to heaven. My husband said he wished he had had a camera when I opened up that box. Still thinking about ideas.

But then the sheets of felt finally came and then I was off and running. Right away I sat down at the sewing machine and stitched lines in and then took some of the felt circles and needle felted them to the background piece. Then I added a short piece of red wool yard, which was needle felted down. I am having way too much fun with this now!

this is sidewards but how cool is this! Too much fun!

OK, so then I go off to the studio with my 72 x 72" inch sheets of white industrial felt. I am in Seventh Heaven! Whoa, watch out for me!

I cut pieces and then start playing, first doing a lot of stitching, this time using George which absolutely loves sewing through the felt.

This is just a snapshot taken and unfortunately, it it off white thread on off white felt. But you can kind of get the idea. And then another

But, what I haven't told you is about another artist whose work I came across. Kazuaki Tanahashi gives workshops and I would love to take one of his. He has been a life long student of Zen and one brush stroke painting.

As a child and then again as a teenager I lived in Japan. I took sumi-e painting, along with my mother but I really did not enjoy doing the stylized paintings. My mother continued with lessons from a master sensei and became a certified teacher of sumi-e. I was drawn to calligraphy even though I could not read the writing. I loved the movement and strength of the brush strokes and while in collage I did a large etching utilized brush strokes to create the etching plate. Very Japanese in character.

I have found myself using that type of writing, although it has not recognizable characters in it, in my surface design when I want ot have a sense of text without having something that is legible. So finding Senei Takahashi's work and information about Zen just drew me in. Five books later, I am still studying the art of the brush stroke and keep at it.

But this led me to some beautiful black wool roving I purchased at the SD/SAQA symposium....and before I knew it, I was creating my own Zen circle...a very different method than using a brush but I love it. Without realizing it, I have been making this circle for years and it shows up in my silk screens and painting. Now I understand why.

Not stopping there, I went on to make a couple of other characters that I had created

and this one

This last character is also in my big red and white piece. Circles and lines.

So I am on a delightful journey, finally feeling like I have truly found my art. Sensei Takahashi speaks about the emptiness of self as being extremely important in bringing the art from within into a form which others can see. I have so much to learn but it is all coming together.

Interesting art in the art world

2010-03-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

I want to spend some time talking about the SDA/SAQA conference and what came out of it...however, as a direct result of that, I found some interesting information about current "textile" work...ie., tapestries.

I was looking through my Art In America magazine from January (I am sometimes slow) and on the first pages was an ad for "Demons, Yarns and Tales...tapestries by contemporary artists" at the James Cohan Gallery in New York.

Wow, tapestries in New York? Went to the website for the gallery and found a show of a number of pieces of tapestry but then in the descriptions I realized that these were sold in editions of 5...meaning that five exact copies were available for each of the pieces...how can this be for original work?

I found nothing in the gallery information about how these were made or exactly what they were. So I went to the artist's web sites and found their paintings but no tapestires...none of the artists actually worked in fiber.

So then I went to the small print in the ad in Art in America and found out that the exhibition is curated by Banners of Persuasion. So I went to their site and found all the information I would like.

These tapestries are actually rugs that have been made under the artists' supervision in China....talk about outsourcing! This company, Banners of Persuasion puts together shows of various artists with work that has been recreated from paintings and then they are sold at very high prices...if you read the article you will get a sense of the price of these.

So where is the orginal fiber art?

Previously I had found the art of Sati Zech who is represented by Howard Scott Gallery, also in New York. Take a look at her work. This is fiber art done in a very different manner. She paints on canvas and then puts it all together via sewing....

So, all this will lead to more discussion about the conference but please take a look at these artist's work to see what is happening in the galleries in New York!

Were you left hanging?

2010-03-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

I just returned to post about the SAQA/SDA conference the past two days when I realized I left everything hanging with my last post.

Thank you everyone who offered to let me use their photos. I had a great time looking at other peoples works and finally came up with an image from Carol Suto, Hannelore Nunn, and Linda McLaughlin.
I enlarged the images so they would show up easily on TV, and then created 2-3 small quilts (11 x 14), using fusing methods that were inspired by the photos...in one, I took it fairly far along in the abstraction, three were made from Hannelore Nunn's picture of trees next to a lake in Scotland with mountains in the background and changed those quite a bit with color and style. It was a lot of fun to do.

I got to watch other people who were there for taping while they were taping by sitting in the green room, which had lots of space for setting things up and getting orgainized. There was also lots of food available. I had completed several step outs for each picture (only one quilt per picture) in order to show how it is done. This is a piece in the 600 series of Quilting Arts TV and will be out in June, I think.

Pokey also asked me to do a "can this UFO be saved" segment, looking at four quilts that people had started and then were stumped on. They are all posted on the QA blog and are fun to look at. People can comment about them and I think 12 were chosen with Terry Grant doing some, I did some and I don't know who else did them.

Had my makeup done professionally...for TV which is very different. The woman first put white every where on my face that wasn't light...under the eyes, around the nose, around the eyes, where wrinkles are, etc, and then started adding color.

After the taping and lunch, I drove around the area and wandered around taking pictures of trees in the snow.

I had dinner that night with Susie Monday who had been there to tape her segment and also to do a video workshop...what fun that would be.

Pokey and everyone was just delightful and really put us all at ease. Pokey, of course, it the absolute professional and makes it so easy to look good!

The next day I wandered over to the small town of Chagrin and took pictures of the waterfall in the middle of town and the frozen parts of the waterfall. It was fun to just wander around and I shopped for
old photographs while I was there.

Then off to the airport for my flight to Chicago which then got delayed in Chicago for an hour but somehow I made it home only half an hour late.

I have been busy since then...various stints at babysitting...including being at my daughter's at 4:30 am so they could take Jacob, the 5 year old, off for a day of skiing. Ashton and I had a fun day together with his gandpa coming in to help out so I could do a little business.

It's been hectic. I have gotten new work photographed, and have been busy resizing it and getting ready to upload it to my website which has been neglected terribly. I have a lot of catch up work to do on that site!

And then the past two days at the SAQA/SDA conference which I had hoped to talk about today but found I was too far behind to do so...so you will have to wait a day or so for all of them.

I Need Help! Urgently!

2010-02-06T23:35:00.001-08:00

Did that get your attention? I hope so!

On March 2 I will be going to Cleveland to shoot a short bit for Pokey's tv show.

I decided that I would show how to create an abstract from a photograph.

I have been spending days going through my photos and have not found anything that appeals to me.

Do you have a photo you are willing to share and let me use as a basis for an abstract small quilt?

Let me know....I will give the original photo credit on the show!

A great day in the studio

2010-01-27T18:36:00.000-08:00

What a wonderful day today in the studio. I spent Monday there, only had less than an hour on Tuesday but I prepped canvases, and today spent the day and I feel like I did some really great pieces. I feel so good doing these!

I think this is my favorite piece...it is 8 x 8 inches. It is painted canvas, painted papers, batiked cotton by me and machine stitched.

I like this one alo also...it is much more subtle. Since I am home and these are still down at the studio, I just don't remember what size this is...oh, I think it may be 6 x 6

Avery different one that includes a silk screen print of one of the trees I took photos of in Unganda. This includes painted canvas, lutradur, printing and stitching. It is 8 x 8 also

Again, a very simple piece but I like this also. It is 8 x 8

And finally, a small one...4 x 4

And one one 4 x 4

I did one more today but the picture I took of it is too blurry so I will redo it. I also finished up three others that are 5 x 7 but don't have the stretched canvas to mount it on in this size. I should be able to get those done tomorrow!

More small pieces

2010-01-25T21:47:00.000-08:00

Well, this past week I haven't been able to spend any time in the studio as my daughter's babysitter got stuck up at Lake Tahoe in a very major snow storm and couldn't get back until Thursday night...which meant babysitting duty for my dh and myself! There went the studio! And then the weekend was spent in the beautiful wine country for a deanery verstry meeting. Beautiful! Since we have had so much rain, the grass was getting high and was very green.

But, today it was to the studio! All day! Even though it got a little cold! I worked at painting various sizes of canvas and get ready to do the collage elements and I am having so much fun doing this! This piece below has gone through several incantations and right now it is perfect for the background for another collage.

And then another one....these are really mini paintings without a focal point.

and another one....I actually have several of these ready to go tomorrow morning.

Well, then it was time to add the collage elements and do the stitching. I enjoyed writing something and then doing some mark making so that what I wrote wasn't legible. The two pieces of fabric are both painted.

Again, these are mounted on stratched canvas so they sit out almost an inch from the wall. The above piece is 6 x 6"

This piece is more subtle with some reds peaking out from the blue and white. It is 5 x 7"

And another 5 x 7" piece with painted fabric. I like cutting the fabric so the circle is incomplete and then finishing it off with stitching.

Again, I have realized that if I don't get my regular dose of art making I really start getting cranky. Not a pleasant person to be around.

I took a break this afternoon and ran over to Dick Blick and came back with 8 x 8, 10 x 10, 12 x 12 and 18 x 18' stretched canvases. So, I will be getting bigger. I was looking at the 30 x 30" canvas and will soon be up to that size! Then I had best find an outlet for these things! Fiber work mounted on stretched canvas takes up much more room. I have been putting a polymer varnish which provides UV protection over the entire piece and like the some sheen that shows when it is dried.

Working Small

2010-01-15T16:30:00.000-08:00

I have been enjoying working small and working in this mixed media style. I have been painting on canvas pieces for some time and of course have also been painting fabric to use in my work. This past year I did a lot of collages, and one series, In the Wooods, was all fiber and stitched but did not have a batting and was shown under a mat. I really liked the way it looked and have been trying to figure out just how I could get more painterly (and painting more) along with using the elements of design like I have used in my Color Block series. So I have begun this new work.

Two postings ago I introduced you to two of the pieces. One of them was done as a part of a series of collages but then I went a little further with it. But I wasn't completely happy with it so I reworked it today and like it better.

7 x 5 " mounted on stretched canvas

This is another piece that was part of the above collage series which is morphing into whatever it is.

7 x 5" mounted on stretched canvas

But I have really grown to love the small, clean compositions with just little bits of thread work. I am enjoying these greatly.

6 x 6" mounted on stretched canvas

includes painted paper, painted fabric, stitching SOLD

4 x 4" on stretched canvas

includes painted paper, painted fabric, stitching

4 x 4" on stretched canvas

included painted fabric, dyed fabric and stitching

7 x 5" mounted on stretched canvas

includes painted fabric, dyed fabric

The paper I have been using in these is from a big collection of paper that I created for an article for Cloth, Paper, Scissors a year ago, using pages from old magazines and working multiple glaszes and textures in to them.

The 7 x 5" pieces have multiple glazes on the canvas with various different surface design techniques before they are incorportated in to the collage.

I love the process. I love painting paper and creating texture on it and doing the same thing with fabric. I am also really enjoying the freedom of doing the background canvas pieces for the very new pieces as it really takes me back to my painting days but also lets me include more fabrics via the collage process. I am also enjoying just painted larger pieces of canvas with various glazes and then cutting them up, screening on them, stamping, what ever and then cutting them up to use as elements in the collages.

By working small, I am able to try lots of different ideas out without committing a huge amount of time or materials. I can work quickly, rework easily and just have fun. At the same time I am thinking about how this could be interpreted in a larger size. So far, 6 x 6 is the largest stretched canvas size that I have but the 8 x 8 and 10 x 10 are calling to me.

Jeanne Williamson has been working in a similar manner and she shared her process of mounting her work on to the stretched canvas. I really like the way it looks. Of course, our work is so very different but check out what she is doing.

I have mounted finished small quilts on to stretched canvas that is unprimed, or have been primed and painted a coordinating color. The presentation of small work is a challenge. Of course, in the painting community, something such as a 4 x 6 plein aire painting would have a huge gold frame around it! Ihave been framing some work but that is usually work the is behind a cut out mat board.

So I will see how all this goes!

Journal pages

2010-01-13T22:06:00.000-08:00

When I have too many distractions around me, I need to pull away andjust spend a little bit of time with my journal. These are pages from my journal that I have been prepping for writing. I don't do much of an art journal like those you see in themagazines but I keep two going...one for journaling my personal thoughts and feelings and one that has thoughts and ideas about art. Usually I just put down a color wash but during the New Year's weekend we were up at our small cabin with my husband, daughter, her husband, two grandsons full of energy, my son and his fiance...it got a little crowded. I was happy to be with them but I spend a lot of time by myself and I just needed to pull away for little bits of time.

So upstairs I went with my journal, small travel box of watercolors and the travel brush which is really fairly small. Not good for color washes which was good because I found myself just drifting off with the colors and using lines a lot more than usual. I had a great time...there is no right or wrong when doing this as it is all background for something else and thusly I can experiment and try new things. So I thought I would share them with you:

Most of these are facing pages but the left hand one on the third row is actually a right hand page without its opposite page...this was done while I was listening to Ravel....on my headphones so I had my own noise. It's doing little things like this that keep my going....just playing with the color, with the lines, with the washes, just enjoying the movement of my hand.....

Time at the Studio

2010-01-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was down at the studio for most of the day until I just got too cold. So I took off for a short trip to Dick Blick for some small canvases so I could mount stuff on them instead of putting them under a mat board. It was so nice to sit in the car with the seat warmer going and the heater on full blast. And then I returned to work some more at the studio but finally had to leave at 3:30 because I was just too cold. I had gotten a heater which just sends the heat straight up to the ceiling...not where I want it. Oh well, I have brought a piece home to quilt at home and will spend some time sewing the facings on to several other pieces. I feel like a starving artist suffering in an unheated garrett working away for my art...of course, I am certainly not starving!

Below is one of a series of collages I have been working on. It is painted canvas which has painted paper stitched to it and is further stitched for other design elements. I have mounted it flush on a 5 x 7" canvas so that the canvas does not show in front at all and it all sticks out about 1 inch.

This is a piece that I did yesterday and it is 6 x 6". I painted canvas, stitched painted paper and fabric down and did further stitching. It has also been mounted on stretched canvas of the same size. I really like this and have started several as I love the ability to paint directly on the canvas in a far more painterly way...ie., lots more paint than just a color wash.

And I did spend time with my embellisher adding silk pieces to a background of glittzy organza (polyester). I am trying to decide if I want to add any stitching, either hand or machine.

Understanding One's Own Process

2010-01-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

Creativity is a fascinating subject. I personally feel that we are all creative human beings and that we each find out our outlet for our creativity. It is important to understand several things about creativity in order for us to be comfortable in our own skin.

I know that my creativeness ebbs and flows. Although I may not always have a spark going and busy doing something that appears creative, my mind is always looking, seeing, visualizing, and pondering. At my best, I take notes and then can refer to many things much later.

I like to jot down ideas in my handy sketchbook which is part journal (strictly about art) and part sketchbook, but frequently a place where ideas are just noted. It is also a place where I put pasted articles from Robert Genn and other creative people who write regularly. I like to copy those out on the computer and stick them in. Sometimes I go back and re-read them and something they have said really connects with me again or in a different way.

I know that I must be comfortable with my creativity. For a long time I just felt different and strange when looking at other people. I acknowledge that I see things differently and that is just fine...but it has taken me 62 years to reach this point!

I know I am moved by colors and color interactions will make me swoon with pleasure.

I am fascinated with the intersections of lines. I love organic lines and writhe through a piece, changing width, colors, lengths and creating their own shapes.

I am not formal in my design, I love things that dance around.

I have come to understand the symbolism for many of the shapes that I use repeatively.

Circles are about life that goes around and around.

Vertical lines are fences, for setting boundaries, for keeping things/people close, for keeping things/people at a distance.

The moon and the sun are frequently represented in my circles.

But enough now...the studio is calling and I was awake for an hour last night just letting my throughts come and go and free associate. And then this morning the ideas continued so by, see you later!

Things are settling down

2010-01-10T17:02:00.000-08:00

As you may know from my infrequent posts the past several months, much has been going on in my life. Two months of babysitting my 2 year old grandson, Thanksgiving house clean up, Vestry meeting and dinner at my house which required even more clean up and then the holidays with family gone and family coming back.

During this time I have had difficulty doing much with my art. A series of collages have been in various stages during this time and I have had serious difficulties trying to figure out the next step for them. I have had too many ideas of going in different directions (too many directions) all because I have not been able to focus and spend time on my art.

Well, things have finally settled down. I am back in the saddle again and will spend all day tomorrow at the studio. I have moved all of my silks, roving, wools, and a bunch of yarns down there so I can work with everything at hand with the needle punch machine. I am still trying ti fiugre out how it is going to work for me and what kind of art I am going to do with it.

I have been doing alot of reading about authentic art, finding your voice and creating your own work. Most recently I have been reading "Creative Authenticity" by Ian Roberts. He discussed 16 principles to clarify and deepen your artisitic vision. I have underlined a number of things in his book but wanted to start off with this one statement that he makes which has really resonated with me:

Page 153, Creative Authenticity:
"I suspect that were are only two ways to deal with the creative process. First, with courage. Just recognize the need for exploration and storm on. Second, with experience. With experience we move the product thinking to process thinking. We still want a good result, but with time we become more relaxed about how we are going to get there and what happens along the way.

Own your creativity. You are a creative being by nature, and your creativity is one with the unending creative energies that flow throughout the universe. The question is not whether you are creative "enough" but whether you will free yourself to rexpress the creativity this is uniquely yours."

I have long preached just "do the work" and it will all come about. I really realized that I am a process person and not a product person when we had a house fire and I lost about 200 quilts that I had made over the years, and some special ones that were just the beginning of my art in quilting. I let it all go very easily as I knew that I would only get better and make better art and create a lot more so, in the long run, it really didn't matter much. There was no longer a need to hang on to what I had done.

Now, if I could just get rid of some of the pile in my storage room! No fire, please, but would prefer sales!

I have much to say about a number of things that have been happening and will include pictures as I know we all like the visual goodies but this is enough for today. Look for me again tomorrow!
Thanks for hanging out with me during this time!

The New Year and sneaking time to work

2010-01-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

During the past two months so much has been going on (Thanksgiving, Christmas, children coming, etc) that it has been very difficult for me to do much work. I knew this would be the case and I tried to tell myself that it would be fine but it is really difficult for me to not have regular time in my studio. Part of it is because I need the creatie time but the other part is because I very much need the alone time. I really don't like to go-go-go all the time, really, not too much of the time, but I did sneak in once in a while.

I had purchased the Pfaff needle punch machine a couple of months ago and would sneak in to my studio, which became the clean up the house dumping ground, and do little pieces of felted work, trying to understand how this type of process works best with my style of work. This has been a time of experimentation and play, which is so very important to us all.

Because these are small, I could have a sense of acomplishment.

This is the last one that I have done...I have been working on painted cotton batting, felted wool, or purchased felt. Ihave incorporated painted lutradur, wool pieces and roving, yarns, paper that has been painted, cheesecloth and wool fabrics that have been shrunk. I have also been using silk and silk chiffon and I love the texture of the silk after it has been punched. The bright blue is chiffon. I am still playing along so we will see where this goes.

Finally my county commission work

2009-12-16T10:43:00.000-08:00

I have just received the professional images of the three pieces that Alameda County Arts Commission commissioned me for the Juvenile Justice Center. I haven't seen these pieces since last June and the photos I had taken just did not show the detail. I am blown away by the true color of these photographs and the very sharp, clear detail. These are all about 50" by 40" and one is 50" x 36". The process was a long one to go through and there is another call for the registry but since I had this commission, I am not eligible for this upcoming one...but there will be more, I am sure!

I have been extremely busy babysitting my 2 year old grandson for the past six weeks while his regular babysitter has been off on maternity leave. This past Monday was his first day back with her...it is very quiet around the house (which I am enjoying) and we went over to my daughter's last night for dinner and to see both boys. During this past six weeks I have spent almost no time in the studio except for one afternoon when I took the five year old down to learn how to use the sewing machine. I have pictures on my phone and will upload them later.

I have done a little bit of playing with my Pfaff embellisher and like what it does, especially the texture created when working with silk...very interesting possibilities but so far I haven't had enough time to really get in to it. But time will arrive in January!

I was down at the studio yesterday...it was in the high 50's outside and not much warmer on the inside. I don't have heating nor cooling so there are some times during the year when it is just too uncomfortable to be down there.

Oh well, more to share later...and this time I won't be gone for so long. I have continued to think a lot about my art and read a lot and have come up with some realizations that I will share with you shortly.

Getting it Straight

2009-11-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

There has been much discussion on the SAQA Yahoo group about finding one's voice. I have been thinking about this for a long time, as it shows up in some way or other during the past year's worth of postings here.

I think the biggest problem is not in finding one's voice but recognizing it. I think that is why other people can recognize my work even when I change styles or medium that I am working in.

So after some thinking I have come up with some thoughts on my work:

I work primarily with color and line

I love organic lines and shapes

I enjoy working with geometric shapes

I like multiple layers in my work

I like simplicity in my work

I like to work in series

I like to problem solve design issues

I like to share with others

I have a difficult time talking about my work

I like to change styles

I like to work on paper

I like to work with fabric

I like to work toward combining the two

When I am working with paper collages, I really feel like I am playing with paint and images. Lately I have done quite a few (over 40) in four different series. Many things are the same in them: they have multiple layers of glazes and colors; I incorporate pages from old books; I incorporate transferred images; I like to include stamping and silkscreening; I like to include some type of text. I have realized that I tend to work in series of colors also.

I have always believed that the most important thing for an artist is to do the work. And do more of the work. And do even more. The more work I do, the more comfortable I am doing it. I am not afraid to make mistakes or have work not turn out right. I can just do more and keep doing it until I do get it right. My studio has piles of papers that I have started and left behind, some to come back to at a later date, and some to just consider cutting up and including in bits and pieces. But then, that is what is fun about creating art.

I used to teach a lot of classes of machine quilting and stopped that when I realized I had the patter down completely and it was all getting pretty stale...time to shift to something else.

What I enjoy doing the most with other people is helping them to free themselves from their confines and look at new ways of doing things...getting that "Ah ha" moment...so much fun when the light comes.

Missing in Action

2009-11-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess it is time for me to show up again...seems like time has really been flying past me.

I have been working on various projects as a result of the trip to Uganda...finishing my journal (which still isn't finished), creating note cards made from paintings done by the kids at Sunrise House, creating a pattern for a small cell phone case to send to Sunrise House for them to create and sell, selling the cards, printing out the cards, etc....

And then there is the art which I have been doing a lot of lately. Mostly small things, lots of 5 x 7 pieces with the most recently finished pieces using bristol board and then stitching fabric on to it.

Now I am working with canvas which I have been painting and creating multiple layers of glazes, adding silk screening, sketching, mark making and what ever else I come up with. There are also layers of fabric and now I am at the point to putting more fabric on it and doing the stitching.

This is a small series called Hidden Science. The underlying image is a page from an old science report hand written and corrected by the teacher, then painted over multiple times with glazes and then a glazed piece of fabric was stitched down. There is a lot of depth in these although it doesn't show up well on the web

Hidden Science 1

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my art and trying to understand my voice and style. I have been reading about the importance of having a cohesive body of work which I don't really feel I have. I seem to do series of works in different styles and then move on to another series. I am not sure this builds a cohesive body of work.

I especially enjoy working with glazes and being able to create depth and layers in that way. The incorporation of images via papers, drawing, silk screening or stamping and then adding more layers really fascinates me. Now I am working at bringing this all together in fabric, using canvas as the substrate instead of paper.

So I have decided that I need a mentor, someone to discuss my work objectively with, someone to give me honest feedback, someone who will push me in my art work. I don't need a coach. I am not afraid of doing the work, I do a lot of it. I need help in the mentoring area. I have mentored others and now find myself in need of someone with a lot of expertiese. Oh well, this shall happen at some point.

My husband and I are babysitting our 2 year old grandson, Ashton, for about 6 weeks while his babysitter is off on maternity leave. Ashton starts out at our house, I get breakfast taken care of and then head off to the studio for a good 3-4 hours of intense, focused time, and then come back, pick him up and take him to his house for his nap, which means I have a couple of hours of quiet time! We have just finished week 2, although the first week was not as great as my husband was sick with the flu and consequently I spent all my time with Ashton for the week...not much time at the studio a week ago!

I have just finished a new piece based on my mediation along the pathway which is about how I am not walking the pathway alone. It started out with white fabric and then I fused painted fabric cut out like stones to create two pathways and then decided to paint in between the stones. It is filled with a lot of machine quilting. Not sure if I will show it for now or not...have to see what else I come up with!

Third Series from Playing

2009-09-25T15:36:00.001-07:00

So, here are eleven mixed media pieces from my play time. This series is called Currents and they are each 5 x 7" matted on archival mat board and backing board ready to frame in an 8 x 10 frame. As before, they are $75 each.

Currents #1:

Currents #2:

Currents #3:

Currents #4:

Currents #5:

Currents #6:

Currents #7:

Currents #8:

Currents #9:

Currents # 10:

Currents #11:

Thanks for taking the time to look!

Mary Buek Art

2009-09-22T08:51:00.001-07:00

I just thought that I would share the art work that I recently purchased.

I came upon the work of Mary Buek through Karen Stiehl Osborn's blog and just fell in love with her work. She is a painter and I purchased a piece on paper some time ago.

And then these pieces came up and I knew that I wanted them.

Through the Keyhole

Hgher Ground

Circles with in Circles

She has been doing more work that I just love also along with some in simpler colors. Check out her work.

Rust and Patina

2009-09-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

I am now showing ten of the pieces in the Rust and Patina series. I have used photographs that I have taken of a metal sculpture made out of copper which has developed a beautiful patina as the backing image. I shot a lot of pictures of parts of this sculpture several years ago as I was fascinated by it and found so many different wonderful compositions in it.

As before, these are 5 x 7" on archival paper, matted and backed by archival materials. They are each $75 and shipping is included if you are interested.

Just enjoy!

Rust and Patina #1: SOLD

Rust and Patina #2: SOLD
Rust and Patina #3:
Rust and Patina #4:
Rust and Patina #5:
Rust and Patina #6:
Rust and Patina #7:
Rust and Patina #8:
Rust and Patina #9:
Rust and Patina #10:

Hidden Messages

2009-09-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

I have now scanned 32 of my new collages! Have I ever been having fun!

So I am going to start sharing them here with Hidden Messages, which are 5 x 7" and matted to 8 x 10 with archival mat and backing board, ready to frame for only $75, shipping including in the US.

Hidden Messages 1:

Hidden Messages 2:

Hidden Messages 3:

Hidden Messages 4:

HIdden Messages 5:

Working Hard

2009-09-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

This past week and a half I have been working very hard in the studio. First I began by working with several of the batik images I had purchased and have been adding fabric to those in order to make them into wall hangings. I don't have finished pictures yet because I responded to the need to be more creative.

I am working out what I want to do with fabric but in the mean time I have been doing small collages...a lot of them. At this time I have about 33 finished 5 x 7 collages that have been mounted under an acid free mat. I will be scanning them this afternoon so I can post them both here (some of them) and also on my website.

My goal today is to get those scanned, titled and listed. My poor website is so behind. That is because I work and then don't get the finished images for the website so they sit there. I am also way behind in cataloging my work.

During the past year I have had a hard time staying on top of the business part of my art...mainly because I just felt like it was taking the joy out of the art. But I need to get my work out there so I am bound and determined to start entering shows again and posting regularly here and to get my website back up and going properly. I will be putting a new page up on the website for mixed media work which will include work that is on paper also, mostly smaller things that are priced reasonably for sale.

I have really enjoyed the freedom of working in the 5x7 paper, ink, paint format and will probably look at taking some of the collages to fabric but I am still working on that one.

But, just so you don't go away image-less, I am including a few of the pictures of elephants that I will start working with...I want to do sketches and then incorporate them into art quilts...still working out how I want to do that but what fun that will be.

We saw lots of elephants and I took more pictures of them than there were elephants but I will spare you and just share five:

The herd walking away from us...look at all the ages of elephants in this herd.
Isn't this one just majestic? (above)

these are has been cape buffalo...too old to mate or defend their harem, they get kicked out and tend to live with in a group of old men...the elephants chase them away but what is even funnier to watch is the hippo chasing them away...

mother and young

Children of Uganda

2009-09-11T16:55:00.001-07:00

At first, children were shy and would peak out at us from behind corners of the building or across the road.

But curiousity got the best of them and we all became great friends.

These are images of children from the neighborhood where we stayed and neighbors of Sunrise House.

I enjoyed taking pictures of the children the most, followed by pictures of the elephants.

Uganda, continued

2009-08-27T09:15:00.001-07:00

We did a lot of work at Sunrise House, and learned a lot also. We bought all of the tools and equipment that we used and left all with Sunrise. Sunrise takes in mostly secondary children who are orphaned due to AIDS and most have some family around so they can spend the holidays with them but the families are unable to completely care for them.
One of the rooms was burned in October and we were able to completely clean it, sand the walls down, hire a carpenter to pull out the burned ceiling and replace the ceiling. Then it was repainted. Below are a few of the Sunrise boys working on the cleaning.

Everywhere we went there were children who came out to greet us and would just hang around. These are some of the children from the neighborhood.
In the picture below, our girls and girls from Sunrise were busy painting. At times there were so many people in the room to paint that it was difficult for our girls to adjust to the idea that the efficiency was not what mattered but working together as a group was. People are always helping each other here.
The last two days of our trip were spent at Queen Elizabeth National Park. We went on a boat tour to see the water and animals and also went by this small fishing village. They are getting the boats ready to take out. Two men will go out in each boat int he afternoon, sleep on the boat and start fishing the next morning.
The picture below is not an uncommon sight.
Small trucks, large trucks, laden down with produce to take to market with lots of people piled on top. I was always surprised that people didn't fall off but then the traffic doesn't move very fast either.

We accomplished a lot at Sunrise House. We met James, the manager, whom we had only been in touch with by phone and email. We learned that the long gaps between emails were due to the fact that he had to go in to town to use an internet cafe to get his email and to respond. And he would only go every three days or so. When we left, we left extra money and he was able to purchase a mobile modem and buy air time so he could use his computer where ever he was.
We took craft supplies, three lap top computers, soccer balls and a host of other things. We purchased the materials to finish the front the front of the building, which had remained only partially done. We left enough paint to paint the remainder of the rooms. We feed the orphanage lunch three times while we were there. We met the kids and made personal relationships with them. We met the staff and became friends with them. We saw with our own eyes what was needed and discussed various ways to work to sustainability.

I started both an art project and a sewing project. We purchased fabric to make small patch work table toppers or placemats which they can sell at the local African crafts stores in town. We brought back lots of paper beaded necklaces to sell here and send the money back. I left the kids with a lot of my personal art supplies so they could continue with their painting and I brought back lots of the pictures they did so I could use them to make cards to sell.

But most of all, I brought back visions of the future for a very poor country that is struggling to pull itself into the modern age with little infrastructure outside of the big cities. I also left with a lot of very personal experiences that will stay with me for ever. More on all of this later.

Reflecting back

2009-08-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

I spent time on the airplane today reflecting back on my past two weeks. I had tried to write in my journal regularly, had done a lot of writing on the computer, but it seems that it just didn't happen the way I thought it should.

So, today I starting putting down my observations on various subjects such as education, infrastructure such as water, power, waste management, etc and have pages going on with my thoughts. I plan to print out some of my pictures to illustrate what I am talking about.

But, for now, I am going to start sharing pictures from the trip.

This is a picture which includes Fr. Rob, Rachelle, Briana, Alicia, and Laura, in front of the hotel where we stayed for the first two nights in Kampala. Kampala is the capital of Uganda and is the largest city there. It teems with life, smells, noises, sights, and textures.

Taxis operate in a different way from what we are used to in Uganda. These vans are everywhere and are licensed to seat 14 although we had 21 in ours one day. To see one filled with people and goods that they are transporting hanging out the back end is quite a site. The taxis dart in and out. The driver is on the right side since they drive on the left. Just behind the front passenger seat is the person who rounds up fares. People check to see which taxi is going where and if where they want to go is on the way, they negotiate their price and hop on. They actually become mini buses and are a very reasonable way of getting around.

Much cheaper transportation is on a boda boda, or motocycle. These small engine machines have a cushion on the back and will take one passenger and sometimes two to where ever they want to go. They are also used for transporting goods, like something you might have ordered. I have seen them with women sitting neatly on the back with their legs on one side, nicely dressed, keeping balanced, while the boda boda winds its way through tight traffic.

I saw some traffic lights but it didn't seem like anyone paid attention to them. Roundabouts are far more hazzardous in Uganda than in England. People just cram on in. Large buses, taxis, private cars, boda bodas, bicycles which are similarly for hire, and people on foot. Pedestrians absolutely do not have the right of way.

The taxis maneauer in and out of the traffic, with the driver watching one side while his fare taker watches the other side. Many times people, bus, taxi and boda boda all come within a couple of inches of each other. At first this was really frightening but as we left we realized it was just the way it was. Only sometimes did we shut our eyes to what we thought might be a terrible accident which didn't happen.

On the drive to Fort Portal from Kampala, we stopped at this outdoor market. Under the tent are lots of people roasting things like bananas, chicken on sticks, goat on sticks, etc. The bus (another form of transportation) will pull up and the sellers run to the bus with their baskets of wares including bottled water, drinks and the roasted food. People lean out of the bus windows to buy what they want.

Sunrise House now has a guest house and we were the first to use it. We purchased the beds, linens, some kitchen supplies, etc to help get things together for use....especially so we could sleep there.
This is a picture looking out from the front yard through the garden and across the way to the hill which has homes and more small farms.

The house is surrounded by banana trees. We had banana at least three different ways every day. My husband had bananas here at home waiting for me but I am passing on them for a little while. When the banana stalk is harvested, the leaves and trunk are cut down, chopped up, and left in the field to return to the ground. New sprouts come up and continue growing.

Shops abound in Fort Portal. Many of the shops are very small, all open on to the street and business will flow in to the street also.

We were the talk of the neighborhood...everyone would watch the white people coming and going, but most of all the children. They would initially creep around the house to look at us and we would wave and they became bolder. We became good friends with many of the neighbor hood children through the use of my art supplies and paper. They would draw for an hour on the front porch.

Sometimes the children would call out "amerika" "amerika" to try to get the girls to come outside. We also had a small soccer ball which was used a lot at the house.

The girls received lessons in the proper way to wash clothes. They washed, and rinsed, and through they were done until Grace, the 20 year old who was cooking for us, told them they needed to do it again...two times in all for the clothes to get clean. Clothes would be layed over a line or placed on the grass or on bushes to dry.

So much is done with manual labor. No washing machines.

The kitchen has an electric stove and a stainless steel sink with small drain area and no other furniture. Grace would squat down to mix things in the pots on the floor. There was a small pantry that had a bottom cupboard only and that is where we kept the food and dishes.

We had cereal such as corn flakes and rice krispies for breakfast and Grace would go to the store each day to buy food for our dinner. She ate with us and would explain what she had made. We ate traditional Ugandan food. We could have, however, used a few cuts of meat that had more meat than bone on them but did just fine.

Amsterdam again

2009-08-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Well, my thoughts about keeping this going the entire time went up into nothing as we have not had internet access while in Africa. I did briefly at the hotel in Kampala but not since we left there.

Right now I am at the Amsterdam Airport waiting for our flight back to SFO. It is a non stop flight lasting about 11.5 hours, after taking 13 hours to get from Queen Elizabeth National Park to Entebe for the airport. We had a three hour wait in the airport which was extremely hot and humid. Now we are sitting in Amsterdam again waiting after finishing a nine hour flight. We have a five hour lay over and arrive home on Saturday Afternoon...right now I have no idea what day it is...

I have taken about 1600 photos, have many notes, lots of things I will never take for granted again, and tons of emotions, impressions, thoughts, etc to process. On Sunday afternoon I am going to Asilomar to spend a week with a group of quilting ladies and will catch up on so much.

I will be sharing regularily to get everthing caught up...there is so very much to share.

See you all tomorrow, many pictures to come!

Fort Portal

2009-08-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

A long adventure yesterday as we left Kampala, drove in our 14 seat bu (which was a taxi) crammed full of nine people plus a driver and many pounds of luggage. We ad to make the one hour drive back to the airport to retrieve two bags, one that didn't make the connection and one that got left behind.

Then waiting at the airport for another hour and then back to Kampala and finally on the way to Fort Portal. It was a beautiful drive up into the mountains, passing many interesting things.

I am on a computer at the internet cafe at the hostle we are staying at. The connection is very slow and I am having trouble with the touch on the keyboard so it is taking me a long time to type a I have to make a lot of connections.

There is so much to share but my time is very short so I just wanted everyone to know we arrived at Fort Portal safe and sound and after breakfast we will be going to Sunrise House.

Will write later and hopefully load some pictures.

More than Half the way around the world

2009-08-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

Doug had to at the church by 5:20am and I was surprised to see people already standing in the parking lot but they were not the people who were going on the trip. We had a wonderful contingent from the church there to send us off and pray with us before we left. We also had three members from the San Leandro Lions Club there to send us off. A couple of the girls had done a presentation at the Lions Club and they generously donated $250 toward our trip. They had made contact with the Lions Club in Kampala and also Fort Portal where we will end up.

My goodness, what a difference there is. Fascinating, unusual, interesting, confusing differences.

Of course, spending about 28 hours in travel made the first impression a little different.

We spent that long waiting at SFO, traveling to MPLS, waiting briefly there, flying to Amsterdam, waiting there for six hours and then flying almost nine hours to Entebe in Uganda.

Our seats tended to be in the very back of the plane which meant that it took us a while to get on and get settled but took us even longer to deplane because everyone in front of us left first. And when we arrived at the airport in Entebe, we waited in line in the hot, humid airport to go through immigration and then we had to deal with only one lost piece of luggage but that took an hour. A mini van had been arranged to pick us up and take us to Kampala, the capitol city of Uganda which was about an hour ride. However, before we got out of the airport, we were met by a wonderful group of people from the Lions Club in Kampala. It was a very warm, welcoming feeling to arrive in another country and been welcomed in such a wonderful manner. The Ugandans hug and kiss both sides of the cheek followed by handshakes. Big smiles everywhere even though we were absolutely beyond exhausted. We had made arrangements for a hotel and driver but the Lions had made arrangements for us at another hotel. So we ended up paying for one night at the hotel we didn't stay in and the driver gave us a ride to the hotel we are staying in.

We left the airport at about 11pm Uganda time, after spending three hours in the airport and then it took an hour to get to the hotel. Our luggage willed up the entire "trunk" space in the rear with more around us inside. I st in the second row so it was hard to see much besides what was right in front of us. So many motorbikes which are also used as taxis and will carry up to two people in addition to the driver. They don't go very fast but they do dip in and out between other vehicles. Additionally we were driving on the right hand side of the road so we have to be sure to look the other way before we step into the street. But more about that later. Lots of people out, even though it was late at night. It was also much cooler. We passed a lot of clubs with lots of loud music and people. Because it was dark I was only able to see what was right in front of me but I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore...

We all climbed into our beds and I was fast asleep but we were to meet for breakfast at 9am the next morning which left barely 7.5 hours for sleeping. I felt better this morning but still somewhat groggy and filled with jet lag. I was sure someone had told us the water at the hotel was safe to drink so I had a glass of water and brushed my teeth both before going to bed and upon rising. Then I found out it really wasn't safe. So uncomfortable abdominal feelings, probably due to the complete confusion of time and food my body had gone it to, immediately became a bacterial infection in my mind...oh no, I didn't want to be the first person in our group to start taking cipro...Fortunately, eating a very light breakfast and a light lunch helped and a 2.5 hour nap really made the difference.

Fr. Rob made arrangements for a tour guide to show us around on a walking tour. We didn't get going until almost noon and by then it was very hot and humid. We started out from the hotel and the first thing I noticed was all the traffic which had been quieter the night before. We took off at a very fast pace and then turned down a narrow alley way which had vendors in little shops along the way. The walkway was dirt and some steps here and there and rocks sticking out. I was having problems walking on the uneven surface. Then we rounded the corner on to the main street and were hit full face with Kampala! Loud horns honking, people shouting from taxis looking for business, people stepping in front of you offering their wares, people everywhere, diesel exhaust fumes galore, taxi vans everywhere filled with people, lots of cars and then even more scooter taxis dashing in and out of the traffic. We went first to exchange US dollars for Ugandan schillings...3 $100 bills turns into a big stack (618,000 worth) of smaller schilling notes! A big Stack!.d I am not used to looking at a bill to determine if it is 1000 or 10000 so I am somewhat slow. Armed guards were at all the exchange places..armed with rifles, not handguns. Very different but it was fascinating as people were exhanging money into all sorts of currency from all over.

And then the heat hit us. We also noticed big differences in smells, from different body odors, different food smells, different air smells, etc. At one time group went to the open market and there was a big dumpster filled with rotting fruit pieces and skins of the fruit which made a strong smell. I had to give up the walk because the heat was just too much and my knees and hips were really starting to hurt. Fr. Rob graciously sat with me and then we began a slow walk back to the hotel while the four girls and Anne went on.
Fr Rob and I really took it slowing with frequent rests. This was actually a good thing as we sat on the stump at the sidewalk and would just watch things happening.

One big thing that was happening is that people would really look at us...we are quite easy to tell apart from the Europeans and the Caucasians who live in Uganda. We were the strangers, we were white and a very black country. Some of the girls felt very uncomfortable about this but are getting used to it. What they are not used to is how many people have reached out to touch them and we are not quite sure what this is about. I really enjoyed watching women walk down the street with their beautiful clothes made from batik fabric. Probably one in three women were traditional clothing. I looked at a number of traditional dresses in the area but wasn't really feeling up to shopping at all. I will take another look, if not here, then in Kampala. Fr Rob and I found at St Paul book store run by nuns and we went shopping for some time. I found a green stole which had a Ugandan shield on it along with a cross so purchased it for him.

He and I had a leisurely lunch, because everything here is leisurely, on the terrace of the hotel, getting fogged out by exhaust fumes. After lunch I dropped quickly off to sleep for two and a half wonderful hours and woke up feeling so much better, including my intentional tract!..I I am sure you are happy to know that!

The girls come up to my room to work on their journals, painting, gluing things in etc. I have shown them the fine art of ephemera gathering and they are taking to it like good collectors. While in Amsterdam, I bought a newspaper in Dutch and we have taken out lots of pictures of airplanes from the magazines in the seat backs of all our flights. I have shown them how to look in magazines, not for articles but work text that is meaningful to them. They are working hard on these journals and are really happy they made them. This of course, made me feel great as they were not quite sure whey they were making them before we left. They are not firmly entrenched in an art journal habit!

We have spent a lot of time talking with the girls about their feelings and what they see and what they experience. One of the girls had only been as far east as Arizona so this is a very big change for her. No one had ever been in a culture like this.

It is exciting to be here. I feel so blessed to have been able to come, even though I am not able to physically keep up with everyone, it is working out just fine.

Tomorrow we head off to Fort Portal and Sunrise house. Sunrise House is turned Irene's sister's house in to a bed and breakfast and we will be the first to use it...of course, we have bought sheets for it and will see what else they need.

All I can say it that this is absolutely wonderful. Uncomfortable sometimes, but wonderful. We are looking eagerly to getting out of all the hustle and bustle of a big city and getting into a small town and more rural areas.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the support so many people have given me through purchase of my work to make this trip happen for me, donations toward the orphange, and the prayers of so many people while we are gone.

As it is now after midnight I haven't uploaded any images but hope to soon.

to Disneyland and back

2009-08-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

I am so glad I got to spend some time in the studio last week because I have spent the last five days with my grandsons and their parents and my husband on a long drive to Long Beach and then to California adventure and then Disneyland. And, of course, the long drive back.

Today I had a completely adult day, spending it with Marjorie De Quincy and Marion Coleman at the quarterly SAQA meeting in Petaluma. I haven't been able to go for some time so it was really nice to see people I haven't seen in a long time.

Best of all, I saw Cathy Ortelle who suffered a stroke a couple of years ago and is finally able to life her left arm up to her shoulder and to even touch her head with her left hand. This is just wonderful because Cathy is a die hard quilter with a long arm machine and just a fe months ago she got a quilt on her long arm and quilted it. I have mentored Cathy for several years and really appreciate the gains she has made as a quiltmaker but most of all her ongoing recovery.

I was also able to see Karen Flamme who had an aneurysm several months ago and is now on the rapid road to recovery.

Keep Miriam Nathan-Roberts in your prayers; she is again fighting cancer.

I finished the day with a nice Thai dinner with other great friends, Robin Niderost and Carol Suto. Carol had three pieces accepted in to a recent show of small works and received a Juror's Choice award for one of her pieces. Way to go!

I have started my typhoid vaccine, I have gotten a new day pack, we have our plans for the trip and tomorrow I start packing.

Saturday at 5:30 am we leave from the church to go to SFO and on our way to Uganda.

This is getting exciting now!

We have all made journals which are just beautiful and I will start putting things in now, like the map, itinerary, etc

It's a reality I am still finding hard to believe! I am going to Africa! I have been ready Lisa Call's blog and she is in South Africa now.

Roots continued

2009-07-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

I am having a fascinating time with the idea of roots. Our roots, the families and background we come from, our birthing roots, our historical roots, our familiar roots, our cultural roots, the roots of trees and plants, the roots we set down, the root of it all, all these things have been dwelling in my mind as I work on more roots pieces.

Yesterday I work on this piece which is a cross section of something...not sure what but is related in some way to roots.

I finished it this morning and worked on this second roots piece. I am finding the quilting time so meditative and quieting. I listen to my music of the day, allow my mind to wander on thoughts of roots and my own personal roots and George and I just hum along.

Then, this is the second of the commissions but is not finished in this image. I will have professional images at some point.

I also finished another journal today. There is such a feeling of completion when I make these books. I fondle the paper, I take joy in the stitching of the signatures, and I love creating the canvas covers. Perhaps I will have an image of the new one tomorrow.

almost as promised

2009-07-22T09:37:00.001-07:00

This is one of the commissions for the county. Doing public art over a nine month period of time is a very interested project. The process to get hired takes a lot of time. And the, I had to submit drawings of the three pieces I was going to do.

I tend to work very spontaneously, with the image of what I want to do in my head. Once I commit it to paper, it feels done. So doing something that I have drawn five months before isn't as much fun.

But the county was happy so I am happy and I delivered as promised.

Another picture from Lake Siskiyou...the little blues. What a beautiful color...they were at the lake getting little tastes of water. Fascinating to watch.

this is the stitched and then painted tree which is becoming a part of my roots series...very interesting subject to contemplate.

and then, this is a detail of it.

After stitching, then painting, then painting some more, and then some more, I took a pen with black ink and started doing some more stuff to the bushes and grasses and then created leaves for the tree. don't know if it is done yet

and finally, one of the sunsets at Lake Siskiyou

the Lost Blogger

2009-07-20T22:46:00.001-07:00

During Open Studios, I hurt my back between the weekends. This then turned in to sciatica which put me into the recliner for two weeks, including sleeping. I managed to get about 5 hours or sleep a night so was not doing very well.

I was getting better and then I decided it was time to pull some weeds in the front yard. Wrong thing to do. The back acted up again. Another week in the recliner. Not fun.

Mt Shasta

We took out the RV and headed off to join our daughter and her family at Siskiyou Lake near Mt.Shasta in northern California. They had been camping in their tent trailer for a week when we joined them.

Ashton with a very dirty face

I spent a lot of time on the couch which was fine because I got to listen to music while everyone else was out watching the parade, fishing, etc. I enjoyed the down time and did a lot of observation of the light on the manzanita outside the motorhome. I even did some sketching.

Jacob with his dad and hisfish

The Sacramento River in the mountains
Another view

I am finally back in the studio and doing some different work. It feels good to be there.

George and I rekindle our love affair

I started dong some doodling on plain which fabric after finishing several other pieces. It has turned in to a roots series.

Roots
Roots detail
New untitledwork
Another new piece untitled

Well, I have more to share but it is time to go to bed. I promise I will put up more images tomorrow.

Open Studios are over for the year

2009-06-14T20:33:00.001-07:00

Last week I put together a 40 x 40 inch quilt so I would have something to do during this past weekend of open studios.

It is made with dyed fabrics and the red actually goes from a blue red to an orange red. I just liked this configuration of fabrics. Wed. I started sewing the circles using a variegated thread which goes from red to orange and made circles forever! Then, yesterday, when I came in for open studios I sat down and quilted the rest of the day, stopping when people came in. By doing the quilting it gave people a chance to see how it all works and also the noise of the machine brought them in from Donna's studio. But most importantly, I had it all done with really intensive quilting by the end of the day and time just flew by yesterday.

The upper image shows the circles being done. The bottom image shows how I quilted around two of the round pieces.
I also used two different blue threads, one that went from dark blue to a light blue and one that went from a medium blue to a dark blue. I mapped out areas and did a lot of tight stitching.

It's a little hard to see in these snap shots but I am quite happy with it.

It has been a good two weekends. My only problem happened when I came home Wed. from the studio and decided to continue being industrious and pulled weeds. That wasn't the only thing I pulled...my lower back started to really hurt. That night I tried to sleep in two different beds and ended up on the recliner where I still continue to sleep. During open studios this weekend I have had a bag on ice down the back of my pants...thank goodness it never leaked! Now the pain has moved into my right leg. I can not lie down and I can barely walk. And I have a very busy week coming up!

Tomorrow after lunch with some friends, it is down to the studio to paint the rest of the fabric for the county commission. Then I need to pack up all the art work that I had down there and bring it home. I think, altogether, I sold seven items during the two weeks. Not too bad.

People have been very generous and have been purchasing my art work during my sale for the trip to Uganda. I still have to figure out how much I have made but it is about 2/3 of the money I need...it covers the airfare plus some of the other expenses. This is such a big help!

This week we sign papers for refinancing our house and taking some money out so we can actually start a building project that we have been talking about for four years. We will be adding a second garage to the house which will hold another car and our motorhome. Upstairs will be a studio that will be about 45' long by 15' wide. I have the plans and have been placing little squares everywhere but I won't get excited until we actually break ground and I can see it happening.

I will keep the studio in the main part of the house as there is no way I can fit everything in to the new studio. However, I will have a commercial kitchen sink and a large table and area for dyeing fabrics! WOW! It will also have an outside entryway so if I want to participate in open studios from my area here at home, I can do so without having people go through the house.

Friday I start my shots for Uganda. And there are meetings three nights this week with church and my father has a doctor's appoint and I have a dentist appointment. Nothing like a busy week. And I really need to make headway on this last quilt so I can do the paper work and deliver them next week and put in an invoice for the remaining money. I also need to start shipping quilts out to people who have bought them.

Whew...I am tired already but that is probably because I have sort of slept in the recliner for three nights and have spent two whole days at the studio talking to people. Since I work alone, it seems to take a lot out of me to be social all day! Oh well, that is how it goes!

Trip to Uganda

2009-06-08T15:56:00.001-07:00

I am very excited to announce that I will be traveling with four teenaged young women, our priest and one of the mothers on a trip of a lifetime to visit an AIDS orphanage that we help support in Uganda.

Sunrise House takes in children whose parents are no longer able to care for them as they have died or are very ill. Our Church, All Saints Episcopal church in San Leandro, CA has been providing a monthly payment to help pay for uniforms for school, etc. The Lions club also provides a great deal of support.

The young women going on this trip decided that they wanted to do more hands on work with Sunrise House rather than just raising money, and also collecting shoes to be sent there. They have been planning this trip for almost a year and time is getting closer. Our priest just recently asked if I could go with them as he feels I can give the kids, ours and theirs, support in creating some art projects that both groups of kids can enjoy.

It will cost me about $3500 for all of my expenses.

I have decided to do a sale of art work to help me get there...20% off and you can make the payment to All Saints Episcopal Church and have a write off for IRS to boot.

Just let me know if you are interested in anything and we can take it from there. We leave the first week of August and will return two weeks later.

Any help is very m uch appreciated.

First Full Day of Open Studios

2009-06-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

I am having a wonderful time talking to everyone who has come my way. Several friends of Donna's, my studio mate, have been very generous in their complements to me about my art. What is really nice is that these are people who go and look at art alot. In addition I have met several more people from the building...lots of younger people with assorted holes in their heads, fun hair colors and a great deal of interest in art. They are all fun to talk to and I have enjoyed my day even though it has been slow sometimes. But, I have gotten several pieces sewn onto their painted canvav, have gotten several sleeves sewn on to quilts and gotten them hung up and talked a bunch.

The image above shows the length of my studio from near the front. Just to the left of where I took the picture, George resides handsomely and awes everyone who sees him.

This is what my work table looks like right now with art work on it. You can see the end of the table in the rear which is the point from which I took the first picture. This table is 4 x 8' and stands at waist height so I use it all the time for layout, cutting and ironing. It is wonderful and I can't live without it.

Here you can see the table head on and just catch a glimpse of George sitting to the left of the table.
Further down the studio, right next to the big table are two of my shelving units that hold all sorts of paint and supplies, soy wax, tools, and stamping thingies. The table is holding art work.

From that table on the left front you can see down to the very back of my studio which used to be occupied by someone else who is fortunately left so I get all the space. On the right are shelving units my husband and son-in-law made with wood that was there, it will not fall down as it is made with 4 x 4" lumber. It holds bins of fabric of all types but I still have a lot at home in my studio there. In the very back you can see some rolls of white fabric and black fabric. I moved my chair to the back next to my bookcase and got a cheapo floor lamp and assembled it so I can plop myself down, take a break and read and/or look at books. All I need now is a footstool but I think one of the bins will fit that purpose just right.

On the right wall you can see my table where I do some painting and also my collages.

Coming back toward the front from that table is a shelving unit with fabric paints, sponges, plastic knives for digging out paint (sounds almost like an operating room, especially since I have several boxes of examination gloves sitting on top!), various grouting tools for monoprinting, assorted texture tools, my Createx paints, my printing paints, my dyes and auxiliries, and stuff. You can also see the food table sitting in front of a sort of closet space that I put a sheet curtain over to help cover up some of the junk, like plastic garbage bags, pieces of batting, etc.
And, coming back toward the front on the righ tis my design wall which is 8 x 8", some collages and my little bulletin board. I forgot to take pictures of the fourth wall and George and my thread drawers in all their splendor so I guess I will have to do that tomorrow.

We have had a slow but steady stream of people coming through. I am finally getting people who have come as a result of receiving my post card announcing open studios so I know that some people have responded!

See ya all tomorrow!

Reception

2009-06-05T22:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight my studio mate and I had a reception in our studios. I had not been able to get invitations out for this night although I did get postcards out for the two week ends of Open Studios.

So, I hung on to the kimono tails of Donna Fenstermaker, a painter and print maker. She had a number of her collectors come and also a number of other artists who are friends. One of her collectors bought three of my pieces, each small, but together they made enough to cover my food expenses for the next two weeks. One more sale such as this and I will have my other expenses covered.

If was fun, and I really enjoyed meeting a number of different artists. They were fascinated with my work and gave me some very supportive comments. It is very different hanging out with the art world rather than the quilt world...I am not sure how to describe the differences but I need to think about this.

First thing in the morning I need to put a sleeve on one of the small pieces I sold. I have quite a few collages and my "In the Woods" series has received a lot of compliments. Also my California Dreaming is hanging up and it seems to wow people...they also enjoy learning about the processes I go through to create my work. And they are not there to learn how to do it for themselves but to appreciate the art work.

Tomorrow I promise I will have pictures. My studio is so nice and orderly, spacious and clean. On Monday I need to start doing some work so two of the tables need to be cleared off, the design wall turned back into a design wall and not a gallery wall and get cracking on painting some fabric for my final commission piece.

Long time

2009-06-02T18:12:00.001-07:00

It has been a long time since I have updated this blog. Three weeks ago I was busy providing child care for my two grandsons, along with my husband...and then the following week the babysitter's son was sick so this went into the second week. And then I was very behind in just about everything and all this past week I have been really busy creating Pentecost paraments for church. I dyed yards and yards of silk into multicolored red fabric...it is really not pink but the way the flash took the picture makes it look like that. Our professional photographer took a really nice picture with available lighting and it looks great, it also shows our priest with the stole on and the veil that goes with it. I was pleased with it although there were a few problems that I need to corrent but since it is up for only one day, it can wait!

I got tons of work shipped off to Galesburg and they sent me pictures of the opening and my work looks very nice hung in the gallery. You can go here to see the pictures on their website.

And then I have been working hard trying to get postcards done for Open Studios which are this weekend and next. Nothing has been easy for me lately...it always seems to be that way when time is tight!

I spent a lot of time doing hand stitching on the long banners for Pentecost. That time was used for reflection on a number of things, some of which were about the Holy Spirit, which Pentecost is all about, but other thoughts were about my art. I have been working with collage type work for almost a year, both with commercial fabric and also with my silk screened fabric. The "In the Woods" series has been very busy and I am feeling the need for simplicity. So my thoughts are returning to things like my red boxes and other relatively simple work, just working with design elements, especially lines.

I have one last piece to finish for the Alameda County Arts Commission and after open studios this weekend I should be able to start painting the fabric for the piece, another landscape. Once that is done I can do the paper work, turn in the work and submit an invoice! Whee...I have enjoyed this and have not felt rushed but I have had so many deadlines lately that I am looking forward to getting rid of another one.

I had an ephipany...I used to tell people I had retired but now I realized I never did retire, I just changed careers. I am now working on a career that I really want to have and am working toward making it successful, but I am still trying to decide just what success will look like. I do know that I would like to get my work in several more galleries that sell my work periodically so I can just keep doing the work and shipping it off to them.

The hardest part about this career is the business side of it. I know well the many things I need to do to market my art but just seem to run out of energy. One thing I must do is to be more consistent with this blog and say something interesting so people will want to come by! And especially show art work!

I watch younger artists doing all the right things and I applaude them for their hard work. I do put in a lot of hours on my work and the business side. I have found, tho' that sometimes doing the public art seems to take so much time...going to meetings, filling out paperwork, etc but it is a good thing to get the art work out and about.

So, rev up the engines and get going!

Galesburg Civic Art Center

2009-05-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

My work has been shipped off in four boxes to the Galesburg Civic Art Center in Galesburg, Illinois. Galesburg is in the northwestern part of the state...right near Iowa for of you in the midwest...

My two woman show, my work and that of a local potter, will be on display, with an opening reception on Friday, May 22 from 6 - 8 pm. If you are in the area, please go and take some pictures for me! I would love to see how everything shows!

somebody, please, go see my show.....

So very busy

2009-05-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

It seems like time is just flying and I have really been busy working on a number of things, some have worked out and some are frustrating.

I have finished the second commission piece for the Juvenile Justice Center.

I have realized that I much prefer painting fabric than dyeing fabric.

I sure can't figure out why that upper part came out blue and underlined...anyway, here are four pieces of fabric I have recently painted. I just love the way I am able to control the colors and work in multiple layers, especially the ability to add white.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about where I want to go with this and have decided that I want to do some more minimalist work like my red squares which I had done previously. I really like that type of work and have been thinking about it for some time...I know it doesn't appeal to a lot of quilters because there is not a lot of quilting, etc. But I sure enjoy it and I will have to see where it leads me.

I am now in mourning...my gallery representation in Scottsdale has closed. Hard times for them. I am so sad because my work has been fairly well received in that area. Now I have to really get going on finding more gallery representation.

So the next couple of days will be getting my slide list together and creating a new CD of work to send off to the multitude of galleries I have been making a note of....can't keep putting it off.

With all my thinking I have also been considering what success means to me...I am not sure that I have come up with a pin point statement but I know that being able to make the art I want to make teaching sometimes but not too much, spending time in my studio, and selling my work are what I am currently doing and that sounds about just right.

Two years ago I was going through all sorts of angst because I knew there were so many more things that I should be doing to develop my goals and reach them. I just found that by entering as many shows as I had been that I felt I was always trying to keep up with deadlines and getting those forms filled out and work shipped off. Now I have slowed down on that for the past two years but know I need to do more in order to sell my work. Any body want to buty some art?

I have become very comfortable with my own creative process and recognize the down times are not negative times but time to regroup and fill the brain back up. I find so many things are inspirational and get me jazzed. But sometimes I just need to stick with one thing for a while and see where it will go.

I like to teach in other parts of the country. I don't like flying any more. It has become so uncomfortable and unpleasant even though I smile at all the TSA people, chat with others in line, keep my elbows in in my narrow seat, do nothing about the man next to me who spreads his legs out and takes up some of my leg room, pay too much for food at the airport and it now takes me a day to recoup after a cross country flight. I wonder if I can upgrade to business when I fly to Switzerland and France? Not just for me but for my husband also.

I am feeling my age...but that is mostly because I am carrying around way too much weight and haven't been able to make the commitment to do something about it. Compared to losing weight, stopping smoking was easy. I just stopped but with food you can't stop eating. And I really like the way food tastes...what a major mind trip.

See what happens when I am away from the blog for too long?

I will be pulling the pieces for the Galesburg show this week and shipping those off. The first two weekends of June I have open studios at my studio in Oakland, and then I have to get the last commission done for the Arts Commission by the first part of June. Right now I have been completely frustrated as I try to create the postcards for the open studios so I can get them sent out to people.

oh well, such is life. I did clean two toilets yesterday! And I had a wonderful Mother's day with my daughter and her family. My husband brought me a nioce vase of very fragrant roses from our yard and they sit on my desk and remind me of the beauty and wonderful smells that are so nice. My daughter and family came over and helped fix my sprinkler system, helped week my front yard which is all flower bed and then helped me get the rest of the 48 4" pots of new plants planted...I had started the evening before but it sure kills my knees. Then to their house later for lobster on the barbeque along with roasted potatoes and fresh asparagras. When a treat!

OPEN STUDIO SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
JUNE 6 AND 7 AND 13 AND 14
11:00 AM UNTIL 6:00 PM
REFRESHMENTS SERVED
ART FOR SALE
COME ON DOWN
4401 SAN LEANDRO ST. STUDIO 27
OAKLAND CA

Better Art by Design in Florida in Sept.

2009-05-03T18:41:00.001-07:00

Better Art by Design Retreat
Liz Berg & Mary McBride
September 14 – 18, 2009

September is time to go back to school so join Liz Berg and Mary McBride in New Smyrna Beach, Florida for a wonderful retreat in the woods where class work becomes child’s play. Members may stay in the motel type rooms on campus at Atlantic Center for the Arts or drive in daily. But even if you don’t want to take a class, you can still join us for meals and use separate studio space for your own projects.

The multi-day class has been created to give quilters the confidence to design and compose artistic art quilts. It is also appropriate for those who are already creating art quilts and want to improve their skills in design and composition.

The elements and principles of design are discussed at length. There are a number of small, fast exercises which are geared to help the student understand the individual elements and the principles which combine them into successful art. When finished, students have learned about harmony and unity in design, contrast, rhythm, repetition, gradation, balance and dominance in order to use the elements of design to create a good piece of art.

Students received frequent group critiques by the instructor so everyone learns from other’s work.

Two and a half days are spent on the exercises. The remainder of the time is spent in developing ideas into small quilts which may be finished during class time, depending upon the students’ methods of work. The instructor is available to frequently interact with the students during their design and creation process.

Fees

Private room and bath, all meals, studio space and instruction: $800
All meals, studio space and instruction: $600
Private room and bath, all meals, studio space: $700
Studio and meals only: $400
Cottage with queen sized bed, add $825.
Facts

Students who are staying on campus may arrive on Sunday, September 13 and depart on Saturday, September 19.
Bedding and towels supplied. Small refrigerator in each room.
Personal Chef Sue Flynn will prepare all meals. She can adapt menus to special diets.
Arrive and depart from Daytona Beach, Orlando or Orlando/Sanford airports.
Deposit due now: $100 non-refundable, balance due August 15. If cancellation due to weather or small attendance, full amount will be refunded. If attendee cancels after August 15, and spot cannot be filled, a portion will be retained to pay instructor fees.

www.marymcbridearts.homestead.com – MrsGorgon@gmail.com
www.lizbergquilts.com - LizBerg@sbcglobal.net

To register by credit card, go online to www.AtlanticCenterForTheArts.org and go to the DONATION button. State that the $100 is for Liz Berg Class. You may also mail a check to Atlantic Center for the Arts, 1414 Art Center Avenue, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168. Make sure to denote it for Liz Berg Class. Then just email Mary McBride at MrsGorgon@gmail.com with the receipt or check number, and your contact information.

McBride runs Focus for Fiber retreats at Atlantic Center for the Arts each spring with great success and has decided to expand the experience so others can attend programs with her.

Berg has taught this class for several years and the work the students have produced has been exciting. Students from classes, both on line and in person have made the following comments about Berg’s class:

“I just wanted you to know how VERY useful and inspiring I found your class. The exercises were rich with possibility and, at the same time, very easy to tackle. I will continue to collect images as you showed us how to (with the little view-finder, or ones of different sizes, etc.), and I am eager at this very minute to play with some
small abstract quilts made from images I collected yesterday. Both activities really brought home the principals and elements, made them stick in the mind, and helped me to articulate intellectual knowledge with practical application.

“You are a superior instructor, with great content and a warm, irreverent, accepting, and very amusing style. Thank you, again, for an absolutely swell day of learning!”

“By the way a side-effect is I'm picking up confidence and working more playfully than I would usually do - also what I'm producing is unlike my usual stuff, which is interesting...”

East Bay Heritage Quilters

2009-04-29T22:03:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday I taught beginning design to a great group of women from East Bay Heritage Quilters, a group from the Berkeley area in the San Francisco Bay Area. What a great group of people, ready to work hard...I had them moaning for relief!...well, not really but they were wonderful about doing all the exercises I gave them in a very limited period of time. We spent the last hour of the day with me doing critiques on the last three exercises that they had done. What a great time and so many told me that the class had been so helpful to them...

I went back on Monday and taught a day on color. Some people were a little reluctant to donate their fabric strips to the pile. Everyone layed their strips out in the color ways and when everyone was finished getting them on to the table, I walked over and mixed them all up. I had four groups at tables so would have them work together for some of the exercises, and then alone for some. Their first task was to come up with the primaries and secondaries in pure hues...a little difficult but they got it done. A great lesson in relativity!

Had dinner that evening with the program co-chairs and then off to the meeting where I did my presentation. I had been able to get a slide presentation done in short order on my new Mac using Keynote which was so much easier than doing it previously on Power Point. Oh,how happy I am to be back to Mac!

The entire group was very generous with their compliments! I felt like I was on the top of the world...very tired but very happy.

Back down to earth yesterday taking my dad out for pre-op appointments for his cataract surgery next week. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be able to get down to the studio for a while! I want to do some more painting as I figure out where I want to do next with my work...all this is a way to procrastinate about pulling together the things I want to ship to Galesburg for my show which is in only three weeks! Yikes! Can't procrastinate too long!

New Work

2009-04-23T22:24:00.001-07:00

I got out my tubes of acrylic paints and started playing on a couple of canvases. It was fun to work with paint again, not painting fabric but working toward a finished piece.
I did this because I have been working really hard getting other pieces finished...quilts...for the county commission and for my show in May.

this is another painting...still thinking about these

So I have been quilting and finishing off three larger "In the Woods" series.
And another one
and another one
Before I left for Florida I did this silk piece:
Tuesday I had an appointment with the Alameda Arts Commission to show them the first finished piece on the commission. They really liked it. I also took the next piece in that I had just started and had only gotten the applique stitched down.
I have finished the quilting, squared it up, and am ready to put a facing on it.

I have also been really busy with my on line class and will be teaching this Saturday and the next Monday with the East Bay Heritage Quilters in Albany, CA. I will be doing a lecture at their guild meeting on Monday night...it is open to anyone and is in the evening.

Quilting with Aliens

2009-04-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

While I was in Florida, I met a delightful young woman who was fairly new to quilting and wanted to get in to doing art quilting. She came to New Smyrna Beach that Saturday to take my one day Better Art by Design class. She was there for the weekend and several of us went out together a couple of times. Lisa-Marie Sanders was an absolute delight.

But, more interestingly, she has written a little book about "Quilting with Aliens", those who are quilters who speak a different language. Her entry into the quilting world was through her mother-in-law who has become her best friend. This is a delightful book and, since its price is very reasonable, I suggest you order one for yourself and enjoy some good laughs at our quilting world. And then order a couple more so that you have them on hand to give away to another quilter for their birthday or use as a hostess gift.

You can order this book through her website www.quiltingwithaliens.com You can also read an excerpt from the book at the website.

Enjoy this treat!

Collage Mania is Coming

2009-04-16T08:22:00.000-07:00

It's getting closer! Collage mania will soon be here! When the preview opens, I peruse the wonderful art work and pick out all the pieces I would like. Usually it ends up being about 10 pieces or so...this year may be harder as there are so many great ones in the group!

Then, I create a draft email and list all the pieces I want. Last year immediately upon the time to submit bids, I sent mine in and was able to get three of the ones I had asked for and was offered the opportunity to take another artist's work that I had wanted but not the piece I had first wanted so I really made out with four new pieces of art! Oops....I just told you my secret. I had been away from home teaching and I did not want to miss out on this opportunity.

So you don't get left out you can get all the information.

Collage Mania 2009
Collage Mania opens Tuesday May 5, 2009 with 383 collages donated by 161
artists. Preview of all the collages begins April 29.

100% of the proceeds go directly to the American Cancer Society through
Fiberart For A Cause. For all the details on how Collage Mania works and
how you can purchase an original, one-of-a-kind collage:

http://www.virginia spiegel.com/ CollageMania2009 .html

I have ten pieces donated which I have shown previously but will dig up again to show them to you so you can keep your eyes out for them!

Support the American Cancer Society through Collage Mania.

Florida some more and current news

2009-04-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

Before I return to Florida and then discuss some new work, I wanted to show you a picture of our feeders in our back yard. In the late fall flocks of gold finches come swarming in on their migration. They come down from the Sierra and have already started going green from their breeding bright yellow. We have a lot who hang out with us as I put out a lot of Niger thistle see for them which is their all time favorite food. Usually, as their plumage starts to turn bright yellow, they migrate on so we seldom see them in their resplendent colors. Here you see them just before I left for Florida just turning yellow.

When I returned home, I found that almost all the finches had flown off. We have two pair that seem to be hanging around. And we finally get to see the male in all his glory along with his mate.

I spent an entire day at the wildlife refuge at Merritt Island while I was in Florida. Following are a few of the pictures I took while there...I am not sure what kind of bird this is, I haven't had time to look it up yet...just one of many
and of course, a snowy egret
and an egret
an alligator I almost didn't see in the dark pond where I was about ten feet away...got two pictures and then backed up quickly!

and palmetto bark which will probably end up in some art about Florida...like in the woods Florida!
trees which help make up the woods
This is my dye studio at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. I am on a side porch of the painting studio. Behind the building to the left are two more tables which everyone used for mixing dyes, discharging, etc. By being on the side I could stay out of everyone's way. You see the table will layers of plastic...I would put a piece of plastic down, lay down a soda ash soaked piece of cotton or silk, add the concentrated dyes, cover with another piece of plastic and repeat the process until I have about 10-12 yards of fabric being dyed.
I was working on dyeing some fabric to use in my commission pieces for the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, one of which needs to be finished shortly after I return home. You can see the sketch that was given the ok to do for a piece that is 36" x50" along with a pile of some of the fabrics. I dyed cotton, silk habotai, charmuse, and silk chiffon. Beautiful colors! Deep, rich, intense.

And here is the final pile of fabrics ready to be packed up into my suitcase for the trip home. My suitcase only weighed 16 pounds over the limit, both coming and going. I had figured that using up the dye and auxiliary chemicals would have reduced the weight...but I guess I found more things to put in there. In hindsight, it would have been better to ship all my stuff the ACA and just carry on a bag of my clothing since Delta now charges for just checking one bag...I would have saved me a ton on money...now I know better!

This is the image in the sketchbook, the proceeding page has images of two other pieces that are part of the commission.

Once I got home it was time to get to work. This piece uses dyed fabrics I did in Florida plus some painted fabrics. This is before quilting. It is now quilted, trimmed, has a facing which I am half way done hand sewing.
I also did a couple of drapes for my church so the two weeks before Easter have been really busy. My Better Art by Design class started up a week ago so I spent today doing critiques of work from the first lesson. Several of this class's students are from other countries, three from Switzerland...I don't think there will be anyone for me to teach when I finally get there next year!

I am also finishing up three larger pieces from In the Woods for my show in May in Galesburg. They have a show right now, a juried art show called Galex and one of my pieces was accepted and is the only fiber piece in the show.

Florida continued

2009-03-25T14:30:00.001-07:00

We have had such wonderful weather here. Not too hot although today was warmer than previously.

I promised you pictures so here are a few. You can see the two tables that I do my staging on and then I move outside to another table. I have sheets of plastic which I lay down and then put a piece of soda ash soaked fabric, do my thing to it, cover it with a sheet of plastic and the do another piece of fabric.

I have been screening some of the fabrics and will take some pictures of them and show you tomorrow. I am really enjoying myself although, since I am so used to working by myself, I find I am getting more tired with all the people around. I guess I must seem unsocial.

I have gotten just about all the fabric done for my Alameda County commissions and am now playing around with different things Just enjoying myself. Tonight I will rinse out a batch of fabric and then take it to the washing machine for a good wash.

Food has been outstanding. Last night we had pork loin, fresh pineapple casserole, and a wonderful rice and black bean dish. Chef Sue has said I can have the recipes if I email her...now I just have to remember to email.

I have included some pictures of the high windows in the painting studio where I have been working. Out on the porch is it quiet and people walking on the boardwalk can see me but since I have my ear phones on I really don't notice them.

Cookies each day after lunch, wonderful breakfasts and great lunches but the best of all are the dinners.

In Florida

2009-03-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am in Florida. I left home at 4:30 am on Friday and arrived at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida Friday early evening. After I got settle in in my little room I went out for dinner and had great scallops and shrimp and then headed back to sleep. On Saturaday I got myself located, met up with someone new, Patrica, went out to breakfast at Mom's and spent the remainder of the day in Valerie Goodwin's class on map making. What a fascinating thing to do and it has put in perspective for me my love of maps which comes from traveling all around and using maps to get around. I didn't bring the supplies necessary to make one during the class but took in all the information.. All of us who were here on Saturday went over for a wonderful dinner at Peggy's house.

On Sunday I did a full day of teaching to twenty students the one day rush class on design. So far we don't have enough students signed up for the color class for next Sunday, if we get more sign ups then we will have the class. I do hope so as it is a good class.

People have been arriving during the weekend. Pamela Allen and Rosemary Claus-Gray have arrived as well as Jacque Davis who is helping to provide some supplies for me to work with my dyeing.

Finally we were able to get set up in the studio and I went right to work. I have gotten ten pieces dye painted and tomorrow I will wash them out to see if I used enough dye to make it worth my while. I have silk screens and will be screening, etc. The nice thing about dyeing is that if it doesn't come out right the first time I can do it again.

We are in a fascinating area. I haven't had much time to go looking around...Saturday I had to make a quick trip to Wal Mart and the grocercy store as no meals were being served over the weekend. I have had a nice time getting together with various people to go out for dinner and am making sure I get seafood every night,

Tonight Chef Sue was here and fixed a delicious dinner for us...that is, after the oven caught fire!

The server has been down here so I haven't been able to get on the internet. Will start taking pictures tomorrow. The "woods" here are very different...palmetto trees, scrub oak and some sort of pine tree. What a combination! I can sit at my desk in my room and look right outside at the woods and watch the lizards running around. They flash their necks as it is mating season, jump from branch to branch and chase each other around. Some are a beautiful green and some are grey...sorry, don't know what kind they are.

So, I promise some pictures tomorrow!