"Demo at Sedona 2016 2"

This is the second demo I did on my Sedona workshop. The setup was typical, but I started to see something new: the game of warm/cool colors. I feel good about this one, but I can't articulate why at this moment. I think I need more time to digest what is going on. and practice a little more to make sure this effect is not accidental. Please be patient with me. I will show you.

Fancy screwdrivers -- the scoop

I wrote last week about opening up the top section of my Bernina with what I flippantly called a "fancy screwdriver" and various commentators corrected to "Torx screwdriver," "hex key" or "Allen wrench."  I was moved to do some research and in case you're a hardware nut, here's the scoop.

The Allen socket aka hex socket was patented in 1910 but it is just one of many, many, many variants in screw/screwdriver shape that are designed to improve torque, reduce damage to the screw by reducing slippage, and allow access in tight spaces.  Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are a bunch of other designs:

The closest thing on this chart to the Bernina screw is the Torx, but maybe just a tad off.  The cross-section of the Bernina wrench is a perfect Star of David, with the lines between every other point drawn ruler-straight instead of dipping down a bit as in the Torx diagram.  Maybe it's some fancy European screw that didn't make it onto the Wikipedia schematic.

I guess I don't really care.  But don't run out and buy an Allen wrench if you want to open up your Bernina.

Sunday funnies 7

Watercolor Demo Sketch

A costume sketch done with Winsor and Newton watercolors on arches paper.

"Demo at Sedona 2016 1"

I had a few days that I could not get decent internet connection, so I was not able to post my paintings up to date. After teaching at Scottsdale I went up to Sedona, AZ and did another 3-day workshop. This was my 1st demo. This time I kept the painting monochromatic such that I can emphasize the importance of the drawing and value. Many of my students (especially landscape artists) tend to go to color too quick and without enough awareness of the drawing and value. So this time I force my students doing monochrome on the first day. I feel it is a very good practice.

Disaster averted

So I've been a Bernina owner since -- I can't exactly remember, but sometime in the 1980s -- and I don't believe I've ever taken the opportunity to look inside the top section of my machines.  I didn't think you could even go inside if you wanted to.  But this week I had an epiphany.

It started badly, when the top thread got itself terminally caught somewhere inside the tension disk/takeup lever area.  There was a nice long end to it, so I got a good grip and pulled, but nothing happened.  I moved the takeup lever this way and that way but nothing would dislodge the thread.  And of course the mechanism is so well shielded that I couldn't see what was happening in there, just catch glimpses of the frayed end.

I contemplated having to take the machine in to Roy the Sewing Machine Guy (without whom my fiber art career would be a disaster) just to get that thread out, because you can't get inside a Bernina, can you?

Wait -- there's a screw in the middle of the side panel.  Not an ordinary screw, of course, that might yield to one of my dozens of home screwdrivers, but a fancy six-sided-star-shaped screw.  Trust Bernina to be fancier than your ordinary machine.  Roy must have that kind of screwdriver, because he takes care of this machine.

I cussed.  I sulked.  I pouted.  I tried to think of when I could get to Roy's.  I searched around my sewing machine things, found a box full of old presser feet that I never use, and there was no fancy screwdriver in it.

Pouted some more.  Then I found, in the back of a storage compartment at ankle level, the big plastic box that all the Bernina stuff came in when I bought it.  A cute cabinet with doors and little drawers that is stashed away and totally empty because it's totally dysfunctional -- it falls over any time you try to access it with only one hand, and besides, its footprint, with those opening doors, is way too big for my sewing table.

But wait -- it wasn't totally empty.  It held... a fancy screwdriver!

So I unscrewed the fancy screw, got inside the machine and dislodged the thread.  Contemplated how beautifully the sewing mechanism is engineered and how elegantly it moves.

And while I was there, figured I might as well clean things up.  Used my trusty sewing-machine-oil-on-a-QTip method and removed three QTips' worth of disgusting dirt and crud.  Put it back together and I swear it runs more smoothly and quietly than it did before.

Resolution #1: throw out that stupid empty plastic box/cabinet that's taking up space in my storage compartment.

Resolution #2: keep that fancy screwdriver in a more accessible place and go in and clean the machine up every month or so.

Of course there's still the big question: why didn't Bernina just build this machine with a regular screw?

Now this is gnarly

OK, fess up, folks, which of you would save this piece of fabric?

I suppose a few of you answered yes, but that's just the semifinals.  Which of you would actually use it in a piece of art?

I am thrilled to report that not only did I save that sucker, I am USING IT!!!!

I wrote last week about my sudden desire to make work that is gnarly, not neat, and yesterday I realized that somewhere in my stash was a box of distressed fabrics that would go so well with my red postage stamp quiltbits.  And what did I find in that box, but some seriously beat up materials, which I am using as the face layer of some more quiltbits.

I am deliberately being NOT NEAT, and let me tell you what a liberating feeling that is.  How many times have you started quilting and realized that for some reason your top layer is bigger than the rest of your quilt sandwich?

The old Kathy might have taken out the stitching and redone it, or at least spent a whole lot of advance preparation time to make sure it never happened in the first place.  But the new Kathy whips out her scissors, slashes into that bubble, pulls the edges together and just sews over the top.  Or maybe she leaves the bubble in and sews in a pleat where the stitches cross a previous stitching line.

And it's not just bubbles and pleats that I'm embracing.  It's dark threads that somehow sneak in between the batting and the white top layer and show through.  It's frayed edges.  It's wrinkles and creases where the fabric didn't get sufficiently ironed before sewing.  It's everything the quilt police abhor.

I even have a vision for how all these pieces are going to go together in the end.  I'll keep you posted, but remember, this is a Quilt National entry year so I'll only be able to entice you (incite you??) with detail shots.

IHQ on display

I've been working for more than a year as a volunteer to catalog the International Honor Quilt, a project undertaken in the 1970s and 80s as a companion piece to Judy Chicago's great feminist work, "The Dinner Party."  It consists of more than 500 24-inch panels made by women around the world to honor other women.  Many of the panels honor famous women, but most are less well-known -- perhaps the maker's mother, grandmother, aunt, third-grade teacher or stitch-and-bitch sewing club buddies.

The collection was donated to the University of Louisville and it is now on display at the Hite Art Gallery of the School of Art.  I visited the exhibit this weekend with several members of the Surface Design Association.

The panels had been hung once before, for a short period of time right after U of L acquired them, just so people could see the whole collection.  There was no attempt to make an aesthetically appealing display, just to get everything up on the wall and have all the panels right side up (some are upward facing, others are downward facing).  Here's what it looked like as we were putting them up:

Now. a year later, there's a formal exhibit up (through March 19) and the people who hung it decided to go for fancier visual effects. Which I think came off pretty well!  Some of the groupings were thematic, such as this bunch of panels honoring the same woman in Quebec (I think she was the grandmother and great-grandmother of the various makers).

Other groupings were geometric, although in some cases like shapes or images were put together.

I think the new arrangement is a good idea.  It's difficult to display hundreds of small units of anything, especially when they're all identical in size and individual bits, no matter how attractive, tend to blend into an allover effect.  With these geometric arrangements, the individual panels still are hard to differentiate from one another, but the smaller groupings draw your eye and make you want to come closer and look.

Environment Design Demo!

This is a step by step demonstration of environment design I did for an animated feature film. The project ended up being cancelled as happens all too often but we can take advantage of it here in the capacity of a demonstration.
My online classes can be found at http://ift.tt/1h8dvpA

Sunday funnies 6

"Demo at Scottsdale Artists' School 2016 4" --- Sold

For the 4th demo, I asked everybody: "What do you want me to paint?" The silver is most people wanted. So I formed this composition.

Now the workshop at SAS is over. I will come back here again in the future. SAS is such a wonderful place to learn and teach.

"Demo at Scottsdale Artists' School 2016 3" --- Sold

The third demo. The rose demo. Mid key. Slow down. Concentrate.  Think more, and paint less. Hope you like it. Forgive my broken English.

A new blog to amuse you

Every now and then I like to share a new blog discovery that has sucked me in to a black hole of back posts, just in case you need something a little exciting in your life.  Most of these discoveries come from checking out the sidebars on other people's blogs, where they post blogs they follow. You may have noticed that I don't post blogs that I follow, because it's a really long list, and changes frequently, but that doesn't mean I don't look at other people's lists.

This week's discovery came from the sidebar in Molly Elkind's blog, Talking Textiles, but it has nothing to do with textiles and only a little bit to do with great art.  It's called That Is Priceless,  and every day it presents an actual Famous Painting, with an altered title.  For instance:

Ralph Hedley, English
Sculptor Pretty Sure He's Going to Lose His Security Deposit For This, 1881

Kuroda Seiki, Japanese
When the NFL Experimented with Using Strippers as Refs, 1899

Nikolai Vasilevich Nevrev, Russian
Russian Monks Sending a Snapchat, 1880

Some of the new titles are sophomoric, some are raunchy and/or irreverent, and a few I just don't get, but I do reliably get a laugh out of most of them.  Don't you need 30 seconds of fun to start out your day?  Sign up for this guy's blog!

Breaking some more rules

Longtime readers of this blog may recall how for some time I have been chafing against the "requirements" of the traditional quilt format.  Not sure exactly what psychological itch I am scratching, but I'm wanting to break more rules and explore new territory, while still sticking to my existing to-do list.  Recently, for example, I've been experimenting with very heavy machine stitching, even to the point of totally covering the underlying fabric base.

Last week, while I was lying in bed at 2 a.m. not sleeping, I thought about a way I could adapt this new technique to one of my longtime series, the "postage quilt" format.  I've made six very large and maybe a dozen relatively small quilts in this format, in which I construct a whole lot of tiny rectangles, each of them sewed individually as a little two- or three-layer quilt, and then stitch them together in a grid and suspend the whole thing in air.

Here's a detail shot of my original postage technique.  You'll notice each little quiltbit (these are 1 inch by 1 1/2 inch) is evenly and identically quilted, and the grid holds them together in a neat array.

But I realized, thinking in the dark, that I didn't have to be so damn neat about it!  I could hold the quiltbits together with much more irregular stitches, and in fact, I could use the new technique I had just been doing with my stitched pyramids, dropping a whole pile of threads on top of the fabric and scribbling on top of them to hold them down.

So I went down to the studio as soon as it got light, and set up an edition of postage stamp quiltbits.  With the addition of thread piles, the bits took on interesting texture as well as color variation.  Here's what they look like, not  yet sewed together into a grid:

Quite by accident, this batch of quiltbits ended up less rigid than in my previous projects, because the red fabric was a lightweight polyester instead of my usual quilting cottons.  So the bits are curling up at the edges and refusing to lie flat.  Which makes me happy, because they're going to end up looking a lot more gnarly when I sew them together.  That's exactly the look I'm shooting for.

I'll keep you posted!

"Demo at Scottsdale Artists' School 2016 2"

My second demo is showing my approach to paint metal and glass. I like to use dark background and keep the edge of the metal object soft.

"Demo at Scottsdale Artist School 2016 1"

This week, I wear my teacher hat again, and this is my first demo. I have seen some influence from what I have learned last week. I want to thank the Scottsdale Artist School for giving me this opportunity to teach here, Specially I want to thank all the artists for coming to paint with me. I really like the atmosphere of this art school. So many great artists teach here. I am so honored to be here.

Happy Valentine's Day from Isaac

Isaac was visiting on Friday and wanted to sew.  When I said yes he dove underneath the sewing table and found the box to lift up the pedal, and got himself all ready to go.  After he had worked on a new collage for a while I realized -- the day after tomorrow was Valentine's Day!

So I found a piece of beautiful hand dyed red fabric sitting on the work table, and cut out two hearts.  Found a piece of hand dyed hemp that had never been put away since I worked on a project, and cut it down to work with the hearts.  Told Isaac that he could make something beautiful for his Mommy for Valentine's Day.  Then he found some sparkly gold sequin fabric on the sewing table (do you begin to see a theme here?  when you never clean your studio you don't have to look very hard for your raw materials).

I changed to red thread, which occasioned an explanation of how the sewing machine uses two threads and the second thread comes from the bobbin.  He was particularly excited at the intermediate step when we had red thread below and green thread on top.

Then he sewed and sewed and sewed and sewed until the hearts were nicely stitched down.  He would sew to where he wanted a sparkly gold square, and I would cut it out of the backing and put it in front of the needle.  He sewed and sewed and sewed some more until he was done.

Last time we sewed, before Christmas, I sat next to him and supervised closely.  This time I worked around the studio unless he needed a gold square placed.  He's getting more independent, and as long as he stays scared of the needle and keeps his hands away, I don't think he can get into too much trouble left to his own devices.

"Xidi Doorway 6"

Now this is the last (No. 5) painting at did o Derek's workshop. I used my own ref. photo this time. You probably have seen my other Xidi doorway paintings before. They were more monochromatic. Now this one is colorful. Do you like it? I am not sure myself. The painting definitely not as rigid as before. I have enjoyed the freedom, which I did not have before. However, do you like the color? let me know please. Thanks.

Sunday funnies 5

"Derek's Trees"

This is my 4th painting on Derek Penix's workshop. It is the best one I did during his class I think. Trees are not my cup of coffee (or tea) for sure. I felt lucky I have run into a few happy accident during painting this one. I like the colors and the harmony. I am glad I did not use much of the green colors in painting the leaves.

Watercolor Online Course Coming!

Working away on my landscape sketching online class for ‪‬Schoolism.com! Should come out this August.
These are my usual colors, they're from tubes of Winsor & Newton watercolors. Unmarked colors are simply repeats of frequently used colors.

Start with a piece of paper...

For a long time I  have recognized a fundamental difference between working on paper or canvas and working in fabric.  On paper or canvas, you start with a support of a predetermined size and shape, and have to decide at the very beginning how the composition is going to fit into that shape.  With fabric, your shape changes continually as you stitch pieces together.  If you have a beautiful red shape at the center of your composition, you're only a slice away from moving it to the edge; if your composition starts out squarish and you decide it would look better as a rectangle, you need only add more fabric or cut away some at one side.

As a result of decades of making art from fabric, I think I'm pretty good at composition, but have noticed in the past that whenever I have to make art to fit it's a lot harder.  I have written about this problem before in the context of making quilts, and acknowledge that my improvisational working style makes it even harder; my mantra is "sew first, plan later."  My inability to translate a composition into a space has not been helped by years of photography, where I have infinite capability to shoot and reshoot, adjusting the camera position to get the scene framed exactly as I want it.  (And if that doesn't work there's always cropping...)

Now that I am both taking a drawing class and drawing as a daily art project, my spatially challenged chickens are coming home to roost.  I am having a hard time getting my drawings to fit onto my paper.  Even when I spend time thinking about it and figuring out how big the drawing should be, I end up with it huddled over in one corner of the page or, more frequently, I run out of paper before I run out of drawing.




I guess the remedy for this is practice, practice, practice.

"Derek's Boat"

I did this painting yesterday on Derek's workshop. I started to practice the Impressionistic way of using colors. Since boats have more has more rigid structure, I felt more comfortable than the day before. I have really hard times doing rocks and waves because they don't have a regular structure I can following. It is really a good thing that an artist knows his/her weak points. If you work on improving your weak points, you will progress quickly to reach the next level.

Workshops reminder

The winter is coming to the end. I am looking forward to the beautiful spring time and visiting beautiful places. It will be my first time to teach plein air painting in France and feel so excited about this trip. It will be a great experience. So far we still have a few openings. If you enjoy painting outdoors in France, There is opportunity for you. I will also go to beautiful Southern California in March. We also have a few openings. If you are interested in my teaching, please visit my workshop webpage. I am looking forward to painting together with you.

Yet another new project begins

For some reason I'm bouncing all over the place this winter, one day on one body of work and then the next day on another so different that it doesn't even seem to be coming from the same person. Later this year I'll have to get focused on my Quilt National entries, but for now I'm happy playing with a whole lot of different things.

This week I've started a new project which is sort of a charity endeavor, the product of one of those daisy chains of friends-of-friends.  My art pal Keith Auerbach knows a young couple in Portland OR, Payal Parekh and Geoff Bugbee, who have a business selling artisan screenprinted clothing and scarves.  Several months ago when they were visiting, they saw Keith's Photoshop wizardry and asked him if he would design some images that would be suitable for silk scarves.

Payal's father has a silkscreen operation in India that makes scarves and other fine textiles for high-end designers, and he took Keith's designs and translated them into reality, choosing fashion-forward colorways and borders that will become one-meter-square scarves.  The theme of this collection is horses, and Payal and Geoff hope to raise enough money through a Kickstarter campaign to produce the collection and market it to horse lovers and racing fans; the campaign will begin in late March with fancy cocktail parties in Louisville and Lexington, the twin centers of the Kentucky horse community.

When they were visiting Keith, they saw a little wall hanging that I had made for him using cut-up postcards from one of his photo exhibits. (I wrote about it here.)  They liked it, and as plans for the Kickstarter parties proceeded, they thought maybe it would be cool to have a paper quilt made from their scarf images.  I agreed to make one, impelled by visions of some free silk at the end of the road.

A postage quilt from Keith's postcards

So last week I was thrilled to get a big package from Portland with proof sheets, I guess you would call them, of the scarves in the collection.  They are printed onto heavy paper, which I have cut into three-inch squares in preparation for making my quilt.  The paper copies are gorgeous; I can't wait to see what they will look like in silk!

Working with paper has some important differences compared to working with fabric.  In some ways it's easier to cut and sew, because it's naturally stiff and doesn't fray.  But in other ways it's harder: you can't make mistakes, because needle holes can't be concealed, and you have to take extra care not to crease the paper.

And you can't just slap the bits up on the design wall for composition, since paper doesn't stick to the felt backdrop the way fabric does.  So I had to improvise, and came up with this system:

Start with a strip of adding machine tape, fold it up to make a little pocket, pin it to the design wall and add a thread to hold the paper squares upright.

I've got the quilt almost entirely laid out, and after a day of contemplating the design I'll be able to start sewing.  I think the construction will go exactly like it does in fabric, which means I won't have to be inventing any more new techniques.

"My first seascape"

This is my very first seascape painting. I am not particularly like it, but here it is: a milestone for me.

"A yellow bird"

Click Here to Purchase

I felt so great to be a student again. For quite a few years I have not taken any workshops from other artists. I was so busy teaching, and forgot that I have run out of juice. Although I am research and investigate art issue by myself, but that is not enough. Now I am at the Scottsdale Artist School taking a workshop from Derek Penix. I really like Derek's impressionistic approach of colors, and his delicious impasto brush textures. I am so happy learning from him. This is my very first bird painting.  It is not too bad. I start to feel something new.

Good news!

So the good news is that my quilt has been accepted into the Marie Webster show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, June 24 to September 4, sponsored by SAQA.  The juror was Niloo Paydar, the museum's curator of textile arts and fashion design.

You may remember when I talked about this show earlier that Marie Webster was an Indiana designer who built a nice business selling patterns and kits for appliqued quilts in the early part of the last century.  Although that style and genre of quilts has never particularly appealed to me, I was challenged to find something in her work that I could translate into this century and explore on my own agenda of interesting concepts.

The quilt I chose as inspiration was this white-and-pale-blue number with a design of little kids looking at the moon and stars.

Marie Webster, Bedtime

I simplified the design to fit the much smaller size requirements of the show (my quilt is just 27 x 21") but pretty much replicated the two figures from the original.

I made this piece by heavily machine stitching the blue areas onto off-white canvas, leaving the unstitched fabric to bulge and ruffle. Then to make it fit the official SAQA definition of a quilt, which wants layers, I added a back and quilted that down with additional blue stitches.

Here's what mine looks like:

Zoe and Isaac Stargazing 


















And here's my artist statement:

In Webster's time a proper quilt was neat, attractive, symmetrical, perfectly executed to show off the maker's needle skills. Not her design skills, because the quilter would purchase the pattern, or perhaps a kit, from somebody like Webster, and follow the directions.  In the intervening century, many quiltmakers have chosen to become their own designers.  Quilts have come off the bed and onto the wall as works of art, not just functional decor.  A proper quilt can have non-straight edges, non-right-angled corners, non-flat topography and raggedy edges.

So much has changed, but there's still room in contemporary quilting to depict the wonder of children contemplating the moon and stars.  My riff on Marie Webster's "Bedtime" changes all the techniques but keeps the images.

Rio2 Mood Study

Photo suite 210 -- outdoor plumbing