All You Can Art

“Who knows, maybe the root is the flower from that other life.”                   Mary Oliver

Being an artist is sometimes like having an endless smorgasbord of inspiration and ideas. I try to tend to it. I never take it for granted. I like to share regularly. Most days I can’t help noticing the density of life around me, the lushness of sight and sound, making note, taking shots with the camera, cataloging and processing in darkness and silence.New work can emerge from playful splashing in muddy puddles – in the garden, in the palette or the dye pot.

Like the germinating Japanese indigo seeds in my kitchen window that warm and incubate, imagination simmers, distills, materializes.

Even my seedlings enjoy a view of the mountains.

Some pods birth today. Others will relish the soil a bit longer before promise turns green with fuchsia stems.

How will I tend to the seeds of imagination today?

Piles of raw eco-printed paper-mordanting

Raw Material

Turned into something

Done or not-so-done.

Making sun tea. Or rose dye from the wabi-sabi petals.

Marks on paper, paint, pencil, stencil?

Over leaf impressions

Straight to paper

Plotting for the “Roy-B-Giv Game.” with Jennifer and Julie.  A hint…

Tutu’s on the brain.

Tree climbing tutu.

Digging with bare hands into the microbes of well-balanced soil.

Reading: The Alphabet of Trees Rearranging the furniture to make more room for the creative mess.

Finishing some stitching from “yesterday’s” bits and starts.

And stitching and stitching.

It must tell me “done.”

Let the floss bin spill thread formations in perfect bends and turns.

Fabric wisps blowing into position.

Looking at friends projects on the internet – stirring my duende.

Going to work at the little quilt shop up the road.

Pleased and pressed to celebrate lots of babies with sewn confections of another sort. Binding, binding, binding, Thimbles aren’t enough to save my fingers this week.

Some things never change:  Birds, feathers, houses rear in abundance.

Minor mechanical malfunctions: resolved.

Making a list.

Trying to find meaning.

“Who knows, maybe the root is the flower from that other life.”                   Mary Oliver

Farewell to summer

Too much rain, but I think the garden loved it.  Here are a few photos as it fades into autumn….

Busy Bee: last licks

will we get to Elephant's Trunk before it closes?

There’s a sign

 

posted inside the glass of the front door of our shop.  It says: “No cameras or recording devices…”  We adopted this manner of managing uncontrolled photographing of quilts to protect the rights of the designer-in-absentia, by giving everyone who enters our store fair warning to our belief that creative work has value.  While ideas cannot be copyrighted, in-the-flesh samples, with kits and patterns made readily available for sale are!  Therefore, photographing on digital camera or cell phone is like stealing the unseen time and thought that went into a design and with it, the potential profit to the creator. Haven’t these hard times of late, given pause to the folks who still think it’s okay to take the food from someone else’s mouth, possibly literally?

 

We spent the  weekend vending at the Empire Quilt Guild’s, bi-annual quilt show.  It’s a terrific opportunity for us to make the public aware of the creative possibilities we offer to the crafts of quilting and sewing.   We love meeting new folks and hearing that what we’ve put  together is beautiful or just what their project has been waiting for.  We’re on our feet for three days,  packing, loading the car, unloading while dodging NY City taxis and making everything look pretty, so that it can be picked over and hopefully purchased before the show ends.

Snowing on the First Day of Spring

 

10 by 20 and counting

Voila!

 

 

We see friends  from our local Ridgefield area, who make us feel like we’re really home.  Thanks Dorma, Annie, Laura, Susan, Janice , Tasha etc.  Thanks also to our guild friends who really make us feel NOT like out-of-towners.  We’ve developed a lot of  good  relationships in the time we’ve had our store and the Empire Guild is one such.

Folks are allowed to photograph, but NOT touch the quilts in the show.  We watch and wonder, what-all they will do with all the memorabilia they collect.  The cameras are out and snapping the whole time.  Occasionally, someone visiting our booth will ask to shoot one of our display quilts and they may if they purchase the pattern and just want a better shot to help them while making it.  Another type of person takes the picture without asking, and I fault my lack of vigilance.  But  it’s the person, who when you tell them that the quilt design is copyrighted and “I would appreciate if you don’t take a photo.  The pattern is available for sale, if you’re interested,” and she proceeds to blatantly shoot away,  that I wonder if  trace of conscience exists.

 

We got permission/Miss Fanny Apron happily modeled

 

 

 

I really do believe that most people are good, and even more are good when they know someone is watching.  So I decided to try to capture the culprit on film myself, and hope that if she realizes we actually are watching and just trying to pay the rent and feed ourselves, she might recognize how inconsiderate she has been.  We’re not just objects of entertainment, but real.

 

Still At-Large

 

Making their Get-Away

We love Manhattan and we’ll be back undaunted!

 

George Washington Bridge in Sunshine

We’re back from Convention

This has been the most amazing week!  Going to the Husqvarna VIKING Convention is lots of work, but loaded with fun and excitement.  The sky in San Antonio, TX is big and blue.  Our hotel was luxurious.  Most of all, the Designer Diamond and other new products that were introduced made it an inspiring trip, with lots learned and much to share now that we’re back.

Here are a couple of highlights:

This is a view from our hotel room window.  18th Floor.

A conversation with Martha.  It was like being on her TV show.  We were among the group who met her earlier, one on one, as well, and then got front row seats for this part. She has created a new line of embroidery designs which we will be carrying.

Husqvarna Viking and Scott Fox giving Martha the 1st Designer Diamond as a gift.

 

 

Sew, but don’t stop blogging.

We are all in the same craft boat with our doubts, insecurities, lack of time, multiple interests.  I, for one, am so sad, in my isolated creative space,  that so many blogs are going away. Blogs I’ve grown attached to. It’s like the blog is just another craft project. that is finally finished.  Are any of you out there noticing this trend?  But people need to hear what you-all-too-busy-to-blog people have to say and what you are making to keep us all feeling okay about what we do. 

Now a yahoo list I just joined about a week ago… this is spooky!

I know there are still many of us out there, online, flickr, blogging, but I’m afraid I’m losing heart myself, with all the “endings.”  Something cheerful to close…

 

 

Talking Dresses

I’ve dredged up a old icon to spend time with lately. It goes back several years, and, as I mentioned in my last post, sometimes I revisit the sketchbook storehouse to get myself back into inspired mode.  So I decided to cut some templates and print the silhouette on plain fabric.  Then I dyed and painted more stuff.  I used my favorite green fabric paint color, with my favorite brown color and made some murky images. Then I took brighter fabric and traced the silhouette with bleach pen.  Then I dyed over some of the cheerier color and I got some murky thing again.  Some of the dresses are cut out and sewn back onto other fabric.  Some are just squares of fabric. All in all, I’ve tried to brighten them by surrounding them with more color, whether with fabric or stitching and I like what I’ve got. So far I’ve made four…and counting, I’m still not done.  These gals have become simple bags which may end up on (that labyrinth called) Etsy.

 

Nothing’s Original?

 

I came across the whole “copyright” issue of sorts (blog-style), which is a real hot button for me.  I am constantly producing ideas that turn into making stuff. I usually draw the idea in my sketchbook, or go backwards in my years of sketchbooks to discover an underutilized idea.   I’ve already lamented the insulated life of a shop owner a bit – not getting out much. My “excursions” mostly take the form of books (text and pictures), magazines, the prints on fabrics and notion catalogs. Now blogging. Even in isolation, creative people are bombarded with things that inspire and generate work. Being open to what is outside ourselves grows ideas. Being creative also demands a public life of sorts.  Putting our work out there is part of the process.  We are at risk as copiers and copied.

I don’t want to be scared to look for fear of being a “copier.”   On the other hand, how is a truly “original” idea defined?  

I look at the creative work I do as a commodity, especially now that I am trying to make a living with it.  I also represent a lot of creative people in that I sell their work, their cloth  and patterns.   I am constantly defending someone’s copyright and the labor that gave it to us. 

I came across liesl’s blog  “disdressed”  last night, purely by accident.  I know Liesl because I buy her patterns for the store, because she’s a talented designer who is trying to make a living too. I read her frustration and the mixed comments – pro and con,  with no easy answer.  In this visual world, there is no safe place to divert the eyes. Create honestly.

 

grow

I wasn’t planning to add anything today, but was inevitably inspired by my blog searching. Everywhere I look are beautiful images of ordinary things made important by a closer view. Here is my contribution.  When people view my word houses they generally glance, but better to peek inside.  This is good advice for everything. The image is a close-up  of the one I made for my friend Pam.