Office Window, Digital

About 13 years ago I went through the transition from traditional painting for animation to digital. It was really tough. I prided myself on my brushwork but had to transition to tap tap tapping on a wacom tablet, no cintiq existed.
So to practice, I continued my habit of painting the view out my office window but now with digital tools. These are some of my first digital paintings.

Outsourcing the quilting 2 -- is it collaboration?

In the long discussion on the SAQA list about having somebody else quilt for you, there was a wide range of opinion about whether the quilter should be treated as an equal partner.  A few of the commenters believe that anybody who touches a quilt becomes a collaborator, an artist whose vision is just as important as that of the person who made the top.

One comment was:  "Even adding binding is an art and a major component of any successful work, therefore since part of a quilt is the binding, in my opinion if another person has contributed this, then this piece should be considered a 2-person collaboration."

This argument strikes me as kind of silly.  First off, binding is not a major component of any work, successful or not.  (Not to mention that binding is kind of passe in the art/quilt world, where the more common finish is to face the edges.)  More important, no matter how beautifully the binding is sewed on, it rarely involves artistry -- in other words, decisions to be made, choices, alternatives weighed to achieve just the right effect.  OK, if the binder chooses the color and width, and whether to miter the corners or not, that might make a tiny difference in the way the quilt looks, but no more.

And where does it end?  Do you give credit if your cleaning lady did the wash after you hand-dyed your fabric?  Do you credit your granddaughter who wound the bobbins?  Do you credit the clerk in the fabric store who rooted around in the back room to find a bolt of the perfect orange?  Do you credit your husband for cutting the hanging stick and affixing the eye hooks?  Do you credit your critique group for helping you decide whether you needed more of that perfect orange?  I say none of the above.

Sometimes when other people help you they have indeed contributed to the art.  Sometimes they haven't.  I think the former should be credited; the latter shouldn't.

When it comes to quilting, though, there are definitely times when your helper does contribute to the artistic vision.  But there's a difference between skill and artistry; skill is when somebody does a technically beautiful job of what they're told to do, artistry is when somebody's own ideas are part of the mix.

I'll give two examples from my own experience.

Several years ago Nancy Crow, who does none of her own quilting, asked me to machine quilt some smaller pieces.  She had been working exclusively with hand-quilters but wanted to explore whether machine quilting would allow her to finish more work, and more quickly.  She gave me detailed instructions, complete with a diagram of each quilt showing the direction of the quilting lines and the thread colors for each sector.  She send me the thread, the batting and the backing.  I was told to stitch parallel lines somewhere between 1/4 and 3/8 inches apart, and since her shapes were of course not perfect rectangles, I had to use my considerable mathematical skills to make sure the lines were the right distance apart all the way from top to bottom, closer together in the narrow places and farther apart in the wide places.  That was the limit of my "artistic input."

Nancy Crow, Constructions 90, 2007; machine quilted by Kathleen Loomis














She was gracious to put my name in small type someplace in the credits when the quilts were shown and published, but certainly not as a collaborator, nor did I expect that.

A couple of times I have had people quilt my tops.  On my large piece Entropy, I had no clear idea of how it should be quilted, even after working on it for several months.  I discussed it at length with M J Kinman, my friend and quilter, and after we came to no conclusions, she took some leftover piecing and experimented with several different designs.  The one I chose was her invention, and I sent with it because its seismographic zigzags complemented the concept, and because she thought she could get into a rhythm and make it work.  Had I done my own quilting I would probably have come up with something quite different, but I was willing to turn it over and be happy with whatever she did.

Kathleen Loomis, Entropy, 2014; machine quilted by M J Kinman (detail below)

Partly this decision showed my confidence in M J's abilities and artistic sense, but partly it simply reflected the fact that on a very large and complicated quilt, I didn't think the quilting was going to be all that visible.  As long as it was neat and consistent I really didn't care that much.  My emotional investment was in the design, not the quilting. I wanted the quilt to be done.

When the piece was accepted into Quilt National '15 I wrote in "Machine quilted by M J Kinman" in the box for techniques, and that's how it appeared in the catalog and signage for the exhibit.  That's exactly the way Nancy Crow credited me, and yet M J had more artistic input on my piece than I did on Nancy's.

But I would say neither of these encounters was a collaboration.  To me, collaboration means that both partners are in on the thinking and the decision-making from the very beginning.

What do you think?

Outsourcing the quilting 1 -- to quilt or not to quilt

Much discussion on the SAQA list for the last week about whether, how and how much credit and prize money should be shared with somebody who quilted your piece for you.  Opinions ranged the full length of the spectrum.  At one end, "I am actually a bit amazed that so many seem to hand their work to someone else.  I guess I puzzle about why choose quilting if you don't want to quilt?"

As someone who has done her own quilting for decades, and who has also outsourced some quilting here and there, and who has had some quilting outsourced to her now and then,  I have lots of dogs in this fight (and maybe a few of them are fighting each other).  Today I want to respond to the naive commenter above.  For her, and others who lead sheltered lives, I'll suggest several possible reasons why an artist might outsource her work.

1.  An artist may find it physically difficult or impossible to quilt her own work, but still wants to make quilts.  In my own case, after I free-motion quilted two huge pieces five years ago for an invitational show, and just about killed my back and shoulders, I swore I would never do anything that large again.  I relented and subsequently did straight-line quilting on some pieces almost that large, but I find it easier to deal with a roll of quilt with a walking foot than a big pile under a darning foot.

not so formidable when it's all rolled up!  

2.  An artist may want to make lots and lots of work but doesn't have time to both piece and quilt.  Nancy Crow would fall into that category, and she is famous for outsourcing all her quilting.  For many years she worked exclusively with hand-quilters but in recent years has had several people (including me) machine-quilt her work.  This approach allows a prolific artist to make ten or twenty quilts a year instead of one.

3.  An artist may like the piecing or surface design or applique or whatever much more than she likes the quilting.  Hiring somebody to do tasks that you don't particularly enjoy is a longstanding tradition among people with discretionary income, whether it's to clean your house, mow your lawn, change your oil -- or do your quilting.

Few people can quarrel with reasons 1 and 2, but a lot will balk at 3.  Isn't it intrinsic to being an artist that you do your own artistry?  There's a definite snob factor that enters the conversation here, where people who take justifiable pride in their quilting then extend that to taking pride in the very fact of doing it themselves, and feel superior to people who don't.

I've had those feelings myself, both toward quilters and toward famous painters and sculptors who have studio assistants to do some or even all of the work.  Damien Hirst, for instance, doesn't even tell the assistants who make "his" polka dot paintings what colors or sizes of dots to paint!  I've long been on the lookout for art involving fabric that was actually sewed by the artist's mom, and found quite a bit.  I still have some ambivalence on this subject, but as I get older and more decrepit myself, I think I'm more forgiving toward accepting help from others.

Besides, what's the alternative?

1.  I could buy a longarm machine, a popular approach among quilters who want to work big.  But I have no space to set one up, my ability to stand for long periods of time is compromised, I don't want to invest the time necessary to learn a new and quite probably temperamental machine, and I can think of many things I'd rather spend 10 grand on.

2.  I could work small, since I can easily handle the quilting on anything under 5 feet square.  But I want to work big!!

3.  I could abandon quilting as an art form, and take up collage or hand stitching or mixed media sculpture, all of which I have dabbled in, or learn to paint.  But none of those genres allow me to work as I like, making huge abstracts.  I love the quilt format, probably as much for emotional reasons as for artistic.  And more practically,  I am already established in the art/quilt world.  It's easy for me to enter shows, get teaching and lecturing and juror gigs, and get published.  I have lots of friends, both in person and on the internet, with whom I can network and consult.  If I were to switch to another medium or approach I'd have to seek out a whole new world in which to operate and become comfortable, and that might take a long time.  It took me a good decade or more to work up to that comfort level with quilting; not sure I want to devote the next decade to climbing another mountain.

So I'm sticking with the quilts.  If that means I have to outsource the quilting, I'll do it, although a bit of reluctance remains.  I'll tell you about another alternative in a later post.

Photo suite 217 -- three chairs

September!

Time to change your desktop calendar.  September is my birthday month and I conveniently highlighted the 15th so you won't forget, hehe. Click on the image below to download from there.