Working Through a Disability

If you have been following my blog, you will know that I am currently fighting my second go-around with Stage IV cancer...and since I've been on chemo since November 2010, I have experienced a lot of disabilities.  Some are only temporary, some are permanent.  Working with the disabilities sometimes makes me try to find out different ways of doing things so I can continue, and sometimes it means that I have to take a little break from blogging.

I'm also interested how others deal with debilitating health issues, particularly ones which affects their artwork.  In this case, Tom Watson III has an interesting story.  This triptych is made salvaged cardboard.  Tom is showing us his recovery from a stroke in this piece he calls "Stem:  Reassemblage, Series II."  The first piece you see his brain stem, the second it is shattered and spread apart, showing the impact of the stroke.  The third piece it is reassembled onto a watercolor painted background which has been mounted once again on the cardboard.  His artwork is there...but you see that missing lower left corner...things are together, but not exactly completely whole.

I thought this was a pretty interesting piece and I love it when people use art to express what has happened to them.


Of course, very little art has been being done around here....last night we were without power for 4 hours....which I am grateful for as our neighbors on the other side of the street were out of power from the first windstorm on Friday night until this afternoon.  An amusing thing was that I had made dinner for them on Sunday...only to have to wait until the storm passed and that brought our own power outage!  Food was all made and was yummy and the company was good.  With temperatures well over 90 and high humidity....being without power is not something you look forward to.

Fiber and More from Marianist Environmental Education Center Show

As usual, the Marianist Environmental Education Center's Show "Living Green" had quite a few fiber pieces.  While not in the preponderance, we did make a statement.  At left is Anne Wolf's "Let Nature do the Work" reminding us that clotheslines are really a good idea.  Too bad that clotheslines are outlawed in many developments and subdivisions.

Cindi Remm is a fellow Miami Valley Art Quilt Network Member.  This little piece, which is about 9" x 14" is entitled "Yellow Bird."

Cindi also did this piece with a repurposed (worn out?) dish cloth.  She calls it "Trees."  Really a quite wonderful piece, great texture, and really inventive.













Christine Bohner Stewart did some pieces last year which I was quite fond of, and this year is no different.  While Christine actually is making jewelery (in this case made with polymer clay and stones), she usually mounts them in very artistic ways and combines them with poetry.

I love the texture of this piece of birch bark.  The poetry for this piece is as follows:

Earthgreen


Shades of living greens
Weave themselves through earth and sky, 
God's breath in the world.

A very neat sentiment given the fact that trees, grasses and plants provide us with oxygen!

Living Green at the Marianist Environmental Education Center

It has been a very busy and very "fiberfull" spring.  So much so that I wasn't able to get to reviewing the annual Marianist Environmental Education Center's show while it was up.  Busy-ness, fatigue, guests, trips, all sorts of things got in the way.

This year's show was "Living Green."  The call for entry suggested these items to consider:
 · The color green, the color of plants that sustain all life;

· Reused or natural art  materials;

· Inspirations for sustainable lifestyles; and

· The virtue of simplicity and reflective consumption.

The show had fewer entries this year, but it was really spectacular.  Several pieces really were wonderful, and many pieces were submitted by a Cincinnati artist who just blew me away.  This show is loosely juried...that is to say, if the pieces don't follow the theme, then they are not accepted.  It is open to anyone, people of all ages and I have always been pleased to see children's work next to professional artists.  Most of the time, the children's work is solid and CAN stand up to the more seasoned veteran....At the very least, it is refreshing.

These shots portray the gallery overall...I missed taking the back and one of the sides, but if you compare it to last year's show beginning here you'll see that it wasn't smaller at all...just a feeling.   I won't share with you my quilts...I had four in this show, but the one I did especially for this show I spoke about here.

This is Kate Santucci's "Microbial." It is in a small box, the left side shows some sort of microscopic mite, and the other is an etched and painted eggshell showing strands of microbes.  The back side is painted as well and the work is just fabulous.

This is one of my absolute favorites.  It is gorgeous...and Nicole Wentz' elementary school students made it.  If you are familiar with Dale Chihuly's Glass work, this is a Chihuly inspired piece made of recycled plastic bottles.   It is just amazing and I'd love to see them make others.  I'd hang this in my house in a heart beat.

More later...off to regenerate some red blood cells...if only!

Mad Deadline Dash to the End of May....

 I need to have my head examined.  Well...you all probably knew that before.  At the end of March, I went to the SAQA conference, then there was Easter, then 5 days spent with the International Quilt Festival (I went down on Wednesday), doctors visits (a lot of them, with spraining my foot at IQF and with starting the new Chemotherapy, and the failure of the previous drugs and the P.E.T. scan)...and the opening of the SAQA Ohio regional show in Zanesville (2 1/2 hours away).

I usually try to enter the Marianist Environmental Education Center's art show.  Every spring, they have a show which is themed...this year's theme was "Living Green."  I prefer to put in new pieces rather than use pieces I've already done.  I especially make sure that my pieces fit the theme.

This little piece is called "The Stream" after my friends vetoed "The Waste Stream."  The base for it was made from a pair of shorts which were consigned to the rag bag because I had mended them so many times and the fabric was thin enough that I put my fingers through the leg one day.

I free-motion quilted the stream with some rocks, and added rocks made from a used Tyvek mailing envelope which I had painted with acrylic paints and "tortured" with my heat gun.  The fish were made from a pop (soda) can that I cut then filed the edges so they weren't so sharp, and then used Adirondak alcohol inks to give them color.

The white water is made from an old produce bag, and I also used the gold and green mesh bags that apples and Vidalia onions are purchased in.  The netting, sheers, and various greens were all scrap.  The backing is fabric that a friend had cut away from her borders (she's a long arm quilter and thus had quite a bit which was scrap), and the batting was Quilter's Green....which I don't as a general rule like as it is very thin...but it is made from recycled plastic bottles.

I am now madly trying to finish quilting and binding two quilts, one of which is very traditional, These need to be done by Wednesday as the Miami Valley Quilters Guild (Dayton Area) show is going up on Thursday with the the show being held on Friday and Saturday (Green County Fairgrounds, Xenia, Ohio).  Saturday, I'm demonstrating some art quilt techniques for the Batty Binder's Quilt Guild of Troy (my really local guild which is very small).

The end of the month is the due date for Art and Old Lace (which I have started) as well as the due date for the Aullwood Nature Center Show.

Not to mention the other show's I'd like to put stuff in....

And to top things off....I decided to buy an old Ken Quilts 622 machine and quilting table because I'm having trouble with my hands free-motioning on my domestic sewing machine....and I'm also spoiled because I used a friends long arm and decided I far prefer moving the pencil over the paper rather than moving the paper under the pencil (free-motion quilting on a domestic means you're moving the quilt (the paper) under the needle (the pen) whereas on a long arm or a machine mounted on a track, you're moving the machine over the quilt (paper). Which means, I have to clean out the area to put it because I have to pick it up from my friend as she bought a new really cool, up to the minute long arm set up.

AND....to make things really interesting, my daughter has developed TMJ and we had to retrieve her from college (3 hours away, so a total of 6 hours down and back, to be repeated tomorrow) to get that taken care of and I started new chemotherapy....hopefully, I don't have any side effects and it works.

I really shouldn't be doing little silly quilts like "The Stream" as they aren't really helping me progress...but maybe they are....at least it is giving me practice, but it is a venue that I believe in and want to support.  But I really have to get back to the nitty gritty.....I must admit, finishing these two quilts for the traditional show feels good...one I started in 2001; the other is an art quilt done in the style of the button blankets of the Northwest tribes....and I started that one about 3 or 4 years ago.

Meanwhile, my garden is thumbing its nose at me while growing copious numbers of weeds.

More MEEC Exhibition Part 4 Brother Andy's Quilt and a Piece of Wearable Art

I admit it, I am focusing on the textiles/fiber art at the Marianist Environmental Education Center's Show.  While I have shown some of the other pieces, there was a lot of very nice photography and other works...in fact, some knock your socks off sand paintings...  But I know that a lot of my readers are interested in the quilty, fibery bits.. One piece which was interesting was this quilt called "First Flowers" by Brother Andrew Kosmowski, SM.  The piece is fairly simple, it incorporates traditional applique with embroidered embellishment with broderie perse, the method of cutting out a printed element from a commercially printed fabric and appliqueing the piece down on a background.

I was interested in how a Marianist brother came to make a hand quilted, hand appliqued quilt..so, I asked him a few questions about his piece.  Here are his responses.



> How long have you been quilting?
I started First Flowers in Jan. 2009.  This is the first quilt I finished by hand.  I also worked at a parish school at that time, and the ladies' sodality quilted as a fundraiser.  They saw a quilt top I made and then outsourced to one of them and said, "If you can hand-appliqué like that, you can quilt."  So I saw them quilt and ran with it.


> How did you start quilting?
When I came to Saint Louis, where I now live, I expressed to one of the brothers that I wanted to do it.  He encouraged me, and so I started.

> What was the inspiration for "First Flowers"?
I saw a pattern at Jackman's Fabrics in St. Louis and wanted to do it.  This was before I got a sewing machine, and it was "Quilt with your embroidery machine" pattern by Smith Street Design.  Fortunately, it also had paper patterns, which I used.

I bought the panels on the cheap.  They were from a Jo-Ann's near my parents' house.  I think they set of the appliqué nicely.

> I am pretty sure that you didn't use any stamping or embellishing,  but I wanted
> to make sure that what I saw as a commercially printed fabric was indeed that
> (the center of the reddish colored flower with the line/print on it).

You are correct; just appliqué and embroidery.
>
> What would you like to share about your work?

1) The sashing material was a Halloween print. Those bright dots are eyeballs!  I just looked for the right material at one of the local quilt shops.  If they had it with the Halloween prints instead of the green, I easily could have overlooked it.

2) I wanted to make some of the flowers based on real ones, even if the scale was different.  I just made up the four lilies, located on the centers of the outer rows and columns.  I don't recall the panels, but they had boring names like "large leaf bouquet."  The others, not counting the panels or lilies, are as follows:

Top row: pitcher plant, purple trillium
2nd row: poppy, ox-eye daisy, purple coneflower, forget-me-not
3rd row: Indian blanket
4th row: aster, tahoka daisy, black-eye Susan, violet
5th row: white trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpit

3) I prefer hand-quilting because I feel I have more control over it.  This may be because I don't have a lot of experience quilting by machine.  It also makes it easy to work when I travel, wait for doctor's appointments, watch television or the fire, wait between sessions at conferences or retreats, etc.  I also find the rhythm relaxing (until the needle or thread breaks or the thread knots!).

4) I often piece my backings.  I know some people want the quilting to show, but I find a pieced backing can mean a pair of quilts in one.  The fish print you saw on the sleeve is part of the backing.  So is a bit of the blue in the purple and blue lily.

5) I appliqué raw-edge because that's the only method I know.  It adds a nice dimension to this.

6) The daisies are palest.  My blocks are not trimmed to square.  "Show me a perfect garden" was my attitude.  Not all flowers are the stars; some back up others.  The daisies back up the Indian Blanket, which is in my mind the star of the show.


Here at left, you can see one of the squares with the Broderie perse, and the right a needleturned applique with embroidered elements.

This is the flower which had such great use of the commercially printed fabric in order to give the flower the shading.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see this piece of wearable art.  This is another piece by Chris Bohmer Stewart called 'Gift of the Sea."  I'm going to include the text of Chris' artist statement because she says it better than I could paraphrase.

"The original incarnation of this gently recycled shirt was made in celebration of the 60th birthday of a lifelong friend.  I incorporated 'combings' from her beloved Florida Gulf Coast beach, gathered over several years of 'girls trips.' It was, as is this variation, a veritable I Spy The Beach, with prints and silhouettes of mandrake leaves, shore bird feathers, sponges, starfish, crab shell, fish bone, lightening whelk shell and egg casing , scallop and ark shells, and spirals from shell interiors.  Only, the ripples are made from Mt. St. John sycamore leaves.

One month after Alice's birthday, the Deepwater Horizon  exploded- the worst oil spill in U.S. History.  I feared that "Gifts of the Sea" might become "Elegy for the Gulf" , as the world watched rusty ribbons of oil snaking around rich coastal islands and oil-drenched birds struggling to survive.

One year later,miraculously  no elegy, but restoration? Hardly. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration declared the Gulf "much better than people feared but the jury is still out on what the end result will be."

The earth as God's gift is a common metaphor but "gift" implies the recipient has no obligation to show how the gift is used.  The Earth is not ours to use and abuse, then hope to restore that which may be irreplaceable.  Creation is a trust , with the current generation not owners free to do as they choose, but stewards , honoring the Earth for those to come.  Can we prove worthy of God's trust?"

As you can see, most of the submissions to the M.E.E.C. show at Mt. St. John's are selected with care.  Artists who submit usually put a lot of thought in making sure that their pieces speak to the issue and theme that the center puts out.  The show is always a visual treat but is also stimulating for the mind as you can't leave without having something from the show resonate and provide food for further thought...and hopefully action.

So, artists..for next year's show, the theme is "Living Green."  M.E.E.C. has a facebook page in addition to their web page.  Details on the show usually hit in the fall or winter (deadlines...deadlines).  If you are so inclined, I suggest that you keep an eye out and consider entering your own work if you are so moved. Here's the website again: 

Fiber Arts as a M.E.E.C. Precursor

Wetlands Sunsest by Erin Murphey

Peace in the Woods by Christine Raber

 Usually the Marianist Environmental Education Center (MEEC) holds a series of programs to get people thinking about the theme of the yearly exhibition long before the entry deadline.  



I was tickled that that year Janet Olney Lasley, an art teacher at Dayton's Chaminade-Julienne High School used collages with fiber in her 90-minute workshop held during the Winter Wisdom Retreat (February, 2011).  In a world where fiber artists have to work hard to present and have their work accepted as "art" rather than "craft", I find this to be absolutely wonderful.

According to the information at M.E.E.C. (I didn't attend the retreat)  the "participants discussed the values of  restored natural  areas, places of personal and spiritual restoration and living in harmony with the land.  Prairie elements of fire, soil, water, tall grass and God's kingdom on earth were also discussed , and participants reflected on their personal experiences of the land and expressed them while constructing their collage.

Tree by Siobhan Finnen

The First by Pamela Dorsten

I'm afraid my shots of "The Tree" and "The First" don't really do them justice...they were over my head and hard to shoot! Ah, to be about 6" taller! 

I really love the textural qualities and the spontaneity of the pieces.  

More MEEC part 3

Janet Olney Lasley made this lovely mixed media  work called "Purple Sky, Purple Pond."  She used fabric as well as paint in order to make it come alive. 
The portion at lower right is very dimensional and sticks out from the face of the canvas.

This is Chris Bohmer Stewart's "Winter Solstice."  While another piece of fiber art, she also composed a poem to go with it.

Winter Solstice

Candles processing through the snow
    up slopes of dark woods
    to the bonfire
    at the edge of the prairie

                                                                            A   pale solstice dawn
                                                                             Point of balance 
                                                                                  between the cold sleep of winter
                                                                                  and the colors of Light 
                                                                           Restore us, we pray.
                                                                           Renew and rejoice.

                                                                           (copyright Chris Bohmer Stewart, 2011 used by permission of the author).   

Restoration...not just of the pairies, but of ourselves.  What fullness of restoration comes when we work to restore what man has destroyed?  In all things.  Lisa. 

More MEEC Exhibition

 The Marianist center in Dayton has a number of talented artists.  A. Joseph Barrish SM, or "Brother Joe" as he is known, is an internationally exhibited artist whose work just fills me with joy.  His colors are exuberant and I find myself wishing I could do similar works.  I could, of course, but I don't know if this is really the path I am meant to follow.


Some of Brother Joe's pieces reminds me of Elizabeth Barton's quilts.  Look at Brother Joe's pieces here and compare them with Elizabeth's here.  I am fascinated by the richness and texture both of these artist express so well.

 This offering really made me giggle. I loved it!  Vickie Fisher made these pieces from recycled grocery bags--a hat, at basket and my favorite? A grocery bag made from grocery bags!  This just tickled my funny bone.

 I love Bill Franz's photography.  I have seen some of his pieces before, but the tight color range in this humming bird shot "Feeding the Family" I thought was particularly good.  Bill is an amateur photographer from Oakwood, OH.  You can see some of his shots on flickr here.

 Winnie Fiedler usually tries to get something into the M.E.E.C. show to support this local endeavor.  I haven't seen Winnie in a while, but I was very pleased to see her "Color Song" here at the gallery.

This piece is called "Prairie Biodiversity" and is by Marilyn Bishop.  No surprise, this color pallet is one I adore and the movement of the shapes and general rhythm of the piece is very satisfying.  Obviously others thought so too as it was used s the postcard for the show information AND sold. 

Please check out Marilyn's blog.  In it she discusses a number of other pieces she did for the show but did not submit. I think it is useful and interesting to see how others determine what "works" and what doesn't for a show.

2011 Marianist Environmental Education Center Exihibition

 Every year the Marianist Environmental Education Center at Mt. St. John hosts an exhibition on an ecological them to "help people connect with the world's beauty, deepen our understanding of the ecosystem and inspire actions for sustanability."  This year, in honor of the 25th anniversary of obtaining and restoring the prairie and surrounds the theme was "Restoration." 

Over 60 visual artists and writers submitted pieces for the exhibition.  I have a piece in it, but it is by no means one of the only fiber pieces.  This show usually has a lot of fiber art represented.  The  exhibition runs through the 25th, then some pieces will be shown at a downtown Dayton church.  For more information, you can visit here

 I think this year's show is a little smaller than others.  I know that I had another piece I intended to enter but I didn't finish it in time.  All types of artwork is on exhibition, as well as poetry and prose.

One of my favorite things about this show is that it includes not only recognized artists, but pieces from our youth as well.  This is "Riding in the Meadow" by Trinity Raber who is in the 2nd grade.

Many of the pieces are for sale and quite a number of them have sold.  I'll focus in on the fiber pieces in the upcoming posts. 

Prairie Restoration Marianist Environmental Education Center Show

 Every year the Marianist Environmental Education Center has a themed, multi-media show at their Gallery St. John in Dayton, Ohio.  To acknowledge the 25th anniversary of their prairie restoration project, the theme for 2011 is "Restoration."    I thought of many things which would be great, but I wanted to highlight the intent of the show. 

In order to maintain a native prairie, fires must periodically sweep through the grasses.  Most native prairie plants are fire resistant, developed over millenia of fires started first by lightning strikes, then by man.  Failure to allow a burn means that invaisive (or non-native species) can grow and push out the natives, or that the prairie will go over to forest land.  Prairies are rich areas of marginal lands which provide homes for many species.  Here, in an unacredited shot which appeared in the Troy Daily News, a controlled burn is started at one of the several restored prairies around Troy.

In March, I went up to the Aquifer at Mt. St. John on the restored prairie at the center and took this shot.  I didn't know when they were going to do their burns, and felt that this was probably one of the more scenic areas.

I thought this might make a good project to work on when I took the class with Noriko Endo  at the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati.  I thought that the fire and ashes would really lend themselves well to her method.

 While making it, it was sort of amusing...since I had a specific theme in mind and it isn't really a "pretty" scene like most people were working on, people would walk past mine...look and pass on...not taking any photographs or making any comments.

I'm not sure if I really got as much out of Noriko's class as I wanted...it is a very simple idea and I had pretty much figured it out.  She's a good teacher and very supportive.  It was interesting. 

Noriko uses two layers of fine tulle (illusion or net) trapping one layer, then placing more "confetti" on top and trapping it with a final layer.  She added the purple in the background. 

I felt that the two layers made the sky too dull as well as the water in the aquifer, so I cut those layers away, leaving only one layer.  I had already thread painted the branches on the Burr Oak tree on the left side, so I left the second layer in place around the twigs to give it the hazy effect that the smaller branches/twigs on a tree would leave.   I used miniature oak leaves which were originally made as confetti for the young burr oak on the right side.

As I was working on it, a woman who is leading a trip to visit Japan and Noriko stopped by and saw the Troy picture... I apologetically explained that it didn't look like much yet as I had a lot of thread painting to do on the tree, grasses and of course I had to add the smoke.  She said that silk cocoons would give me just what I needed.  I tried that, but it didn't give the look I was going for.

This, however, I think does it well.  The fiber I ended up using was soy roving. 

To lighten the sky and give it more interest, I used a "cloud" of Angelina.  I don't like the quilting in it but at present with my hands and eyesight, this is as good as it gets.  I'm going to have to get some magnifying glasses on my sewing machine...and I don't know what I'll do about my hands other than accept that they don't work well until I can get off the chemo.  Maybe I'll "unstitch" the quilting and try again when my hands are better.

As always, critiques and suggestions are always welcome.

Better or Worse? Or what to do...

You've seen these little tootsies before. I did this piece in a 12" x 12" format for the Marianist Environmental Education Center (MEEC) show in February. I painted the feet, fused them on and quilted all the little blades of grass. There wasn't any quilting in the legs, except for around the toes.

The MEEC show closed and the pieces went to the Baptist church in Dayton where they were on display until June 20.

Meanwhile, The Aullwood Audubon Center in Englewood put out a call for entries for their exhibit entitled "It's a Green World."


Obviously, there's a lot of green here...but the title of the work is "Standing on Sacred Ground." My point is that if we treated the earth with respect and didn't do anything to the ground we weren't willing to walk barefoot in, it would be a better world.

This little piece gave me a lot of joy in the making and in looking at it. . . . even if my daughter did give me grief because I made her toenails be a different color than the polish she had on when I photographed her feet for a model.

The problem was, if it was accepted for the Aullwood show, then I had to have the quilt delivered to Aullwood by June 18th, and it was still hanging in the other show. In addition, I didn't want to have this piece in such a small format be at the Aullwood venue. So, I did a second one which was 24" x 24".

Since the original feet had limited quilting and I felt like the sort of "bagged out", even though they were fused, I did the second set a little differently.
First, instead of fusing them, I hand appliqued the legs and feet. Secondly, I did machine trapunto, and quilted the feet and legs along the muscles and tendons.

I don't like how it turned out. They are, quite frankly, scary looking to me. I am contemplating that I should tear out the quilting when it comes back and try to close up the needle holes. That is, if I can close up the needle holes.

What do you think? I really want to know.

Back from the Land of the Lost

Wow. What a month. Just after my last post, I managed to get the dreaded "Windows XP 2010 Antivirus" virus. WHAT a nasty thing. A pop-up appears (how it got around my pop-up blocker I don't know), which LOOKS like it is from Microsoft. If you click ANYWHERE on the box (the "x", in the body, or on the "yes" or "no" boxes, it downloads an executable file which wreaks havoc on your computer. If you should get this, shut your computer down and run a malware check and you may be able to get it off...or you can restore to an earlier restoration date.

I have spend almost a month removing it, restoring files (and not all of them are back) and programs...as well as dealing with other stuff.... Now, to add insult to injury, my husband had forwarded me a warning from his workplace IT warning me about this in November....and I forgot it.

Also, at the end of February, I finished this little piece, "Take off your sandals for you are standing on holy ground." It really is little, only 12" square. I made a drawing of my daughter's feet and then painted it on cotton with acrylic paints. I appliqued it onto the background (a spring green) and then fused little slivers of green onto the surface for the grass. My daughter complained that I didn't actually use her nail polish color on the toenails....hers was a deep maroon....a little clashy I thought.

This particular piece is going to be on display at the Marianist Environmental Education Center's Gallery St. John in Dayton, OH. This is a mixed media show. The theme this year was "Sacred Ground."

I really had fun with this piece and realized once again how much I enjoy using painted elements in my quilting.