After the Harvest

"After the Harvest," 17.25" x 30.5"

It's Friday....and time for participating in Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" blog hop.  I must admit, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I have been working hard on straightening up my sewing room, trying to beat the cold weather outside, mourning the loss of many of my favorite large goldfish to a raccoon, and re-working "View from the Abyss" for another show.

So, I was a bit annoyed when I went to my photo files and couldn't find what I intended to write about tonight....but then I realized that I never showed you the result of the work I started in Montana for "The View from Here," a SAQA regional show.  So, here it is.  I'm not entirely happy with it...but I think that that is quite often the result when you imagine something and think you know how you're going to do it and then you realize that that won't work.  You see, I intended to show a cornfield which had been harvested right in the early part of December or so...Here in this part of the Midwest  snow comes and blows across, catching in the stubble.  I thought I would represent that by taking strips of sheers which were shredded on the edges...but when I tried that, it just didn't look right.

So, when that didn't work, I couched strips of confetti yarn down, then hand stitched over the top with hand painted variegated perle cotton I purchased at the Shibori Dragon.  The confetti gave the feeling that it was loose pieces of corn leaves fluttering in the wind, which is pretty much the feeling I wanted to express.  The ground is some of that rust dyed fabric I wrote about here and the sky is hand painted.

The trees didn't turn out quite the way I imagined.  I hand stitched in blacks, grays, and lavender over the top of netting, then cut the netting away to give the trees the branch effect.  I stitched this for hours in the car while driving around Montana and then back to Olympia.  Needless to say, all I could see were cottonwoods with leaves on, so I fear that they look more like cottonwood rather than oaks and maples which line the fence rows of Ohio and Michigan...and more Michigan than Ohio!

I'm tempted to rip the quilting out of the sky and do it over again....I think that the pattern obliterates the shading in the sky, which as you can see from the first picture look very much like the Midwestern sky.
I wanted to indicate wind, but these are just far too tight.  I was also struggling yet again with my hands. The barn sort of bugged me too...I wanted to thread paint it, but in this too I don't have the control I once did.

So, I hope you enjoy it, and take the opportunity to go to some of the other blogs.  I have to get back to finishing up the re-vamp of "View from the Abyss" and look forward to taking in the last of my big ceramic pots from outside and washing windows.

Losing Part of our Heritage

 When I was in high school, my mom used to tease me that she was going to find two bumperstickers for me.  One was to say "I brake for barns." the other was to say "I brake for cemeteries."  I love both, and you probably have noticed my love for old barns just by reading my blog.

I suppose part of it is that when I was a child, I lived on a road which we were the only house on the entire road which was about 2 miles long.  I most often played by myself, and the barn with its lofts was  a favorite place.

A couple of weeks ago, we had two very large windstorms which came through.  They didn't bring us much rain, but they brought us some pretty significant destruction.

I have been worried about this barn....although it was painted with a quilt pattern not too long ago, I noticed this spring it was missing many shingles and the roof line was beginning to look a little swaybacked.

It was build probably around the 1910s and in all likelyhood was a dairy barn.  It stood in West Milton, Ohio, on the east side of Rt. 48 just south of town.  According to a friend, it managed to survive the more significant blow on Friday, but when Sunday's second bout came through, it crumbled.  I am hoping that one of the German Baptist barn salvage people will come and at least salvage some of the wood...but I suspect that because of it's collapse, it is too dangerous and will probably be burned.

What Images inspire you?

 Every week when I drive to go to my oncologists, I pass these cooling towers.  I have to figure out where to go  to get a better picture, as obviously I will not take a photo while speeding down I75 on the way to my appointment and having my daughter shoot it for me was less than what I want.  I love the shape.  I want to do something with them.  I think it is partly because I have been following Elizabeth Barton's work (please visit and take a good look at her landscape gallery and you'll see what I mean) and partly because I have always been drawn to industrial buildings...ok...buildings in general.

The next thing which I have been thinking of is a question that Lynn Krawczyk posed on her blog in January.  "What images do you love?", she asked.  For her, she takes inspiration from birds on a wire. 
Not only in screen prints that she has done from her images, but she has incorporated them in other ways as well.  For me, it is nature and architecture, particularly industrial and agricultural with decaying architecture right up there.  I also love details.

These grain elevators in Pleasant Hill just make me want to whip out my fabrics and roar into it.....it is a series waiting to be made and I have everything gathered...I just have to clean out my sewing room, reserve 1 hour a day for me in the mad rush to get things ready for graduation and commence.  The stumbling block at present is the sewing room....and my fatigue....and my eyesight which is failing because of the type of chemo I'm on (don't worry...it's supposed to come back within three months after I finish).

 Barns have always been home to me.  Growing up on a farm as a much younger child than my siblings meant that I amused myself well.  My amusement was often climbing in the mows, playing with the sheep and watching the golden light filter through the cracks.  I shiver when I look at the heights I used to scale alone....up into the topmost mow. 

I admit, it makes me cringe to see all these wonderful wooden barns falling to wrack and ruin.  When it costs as much to re-roof or paint a structure as it does to tear it down, many of them go down.  Especially since the move now is to larger farms and agribusiness rather than the smaller 80- 360 acre plots with house, barns and other outbuildings.  

Churches, nestled at crossroads in the middle of the country are also falling in.  This one is near New Lebanon and I was hesitant to pull off closer to get a shot.  Even so, there is something majestic in the trees with the shuttered windows.

This shot, however, is one of my favorites.  Its the grain bins at a very wealthy and well kept farm not far from my house.  No, I didn't use any filters for this shot, they just gleamed against the early morning light while on the way to a cross country meet in West Milton.
I can't wait to do something with this.  I love the light and the skies that you can find in this part of the world.  I knew I missed it when I lived in Connecticut, but I didn't realize how much until I moved back.  The light and the skyscapes are breath taking....even if most people do consider it a fly-over state. ;)