Calligraphy update -- my new pen 1

It's been a while since I wrote about my daily calligraphy, except in passing.  Recently I bought myself some new pen nibs, spiffy ones from Japan whose packaging I can't read, except to see that these are G nibs.  I searched them out because I wanted the pen to spread apart under pressure, making a much thicker line.  These are quite springy and give a good contrast between thick and thin strokes.

This feature is most dramatic on swoopy curves, but other letters can also be attractive if you put wide strokes in some places and hairlines in others.  I have watched some videos on copperplate writing, which would use this kind of pen, but I don't think that's a direction I want to go.  I'm happier continuing with writing-as-drawing, in which the words take a back seat to the overall visual image.

Here's the full view of that composition: the writing makes right turns every time it gets to the end of the space, and spirals in to the middle.

I like that effect and need to explore it more.  The problem, of course, is how to deal with the absolute finite amount of space left as you get to the center.  Do you write smaller to make sure you finish your phrase (as I did in this sample) or just stop writing when you run out of space?  Does it matter?

The learning on this one: watch your hand while you're turning the book around so it doesn't smudge.

I am so happy with this new pen!  Its only drawback, I was warned by the people in the art supply store, is a tendency to drop blobs of ink.  Yes, that is true.

For purposes of my daily art, I don't care at all.  The blobs add character, I tell myself.  If I were addressing wedding invitations for a living, or making a piece of actual Art, maybe I would have to start over (or at least learn how to control the ink flow better) but for now I'll embrace the blobs.

Calligraphy update -- adding collage

As the second quarter began I thought maybe it was time to shake it up and add a new element to my daily calligraphy -- collage.  My first experiment was to cut up one of the "home song" pages that didn't make it into my artist book, paste the bits down in my sketchbook and then write over the top.  Unfortunately the card stock was so tall that the brush stuttered when it went over the edge.

I found a piece of thin paper on the work table and tore it into strips.  The pen hardly noticed the difference in height so the writing continued seamlessly over the collage, more what I had in mind.

I also tried laying down blue painters tape in strips, writing over it and then removing the tape.  I thought the composition was more interesting before I took the tape off, so maybe this approach is a dead end.

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All those rejected homes 2

Even though I didn't use them for the "home" show at PYRO Gallery, I thought my three machine-stitched pink houses were worth finishing.  Like the postage stamp quilt I abandoned early on, they're kind of cutesy, but maybe they will be OK for low-price gift items or impulse purchases.  I took the three finished houses to one of my art support groups and asked what to do with them.  I showed them against a plain wood panel, against a black canvas, and against some plain blue fabric I had grabbed from the work table.  Not much enthusiasm for any of these approaches.

Then I noticed a blue batik napkin on the lap of the woman sitting next to me, grabbed it and wrapped it around the wood panel and plopped one of the houses on it.  YES!

I did show restraint in not begging to take the napkin home with me, because I have a full drawer of batiks at home and it was easy to find suitable candidates.  Wrapped them around the wood panels, with one layer of thin batting underneath to make the fabric fit tighter, stapled them down, then nailed the stitched panels to the wood.

I also added doorknobs of bronze and silver metallic beads, and done a bit of hand stitching to make greetings for anyone who opens the doors.

I think these three may be the entire series of pink houses -- there doesn't seem to be much room for further exploration.  But I am happy to have them finished.  What I like: the way the shapes distort under heavy stitching, the way you can put bits of thread or fabric down on the background as you start stitching and they become little hints of color, the contrast between the wonky stitched panel and the neat, firm, taut batik background.  Maybe these qualities can come back again with a different shape in the future.

Here's what they look like all done:

Last week on Art With a Needle

The mailman brought a surprise: the catalog for Forced to Flee, the SAQA exhibit about refugees.  The designer had a good idea in getting rid of the gray background in my photo, so the refugee quilt people are floating on the white page. 

It's a classy catalog and I found the juror's statement interesting. She said she "found the attempts at abstraction less successful" than the figurative images that dominate the exhibit.

That's understandable, because so much of the world's attention to the various refugee crises stems from the dramatic images that photographers have captured of people in distress. Think of the little girl crying as her mother is frisked by U.S. Border Patrol agents, of the dead five-year-old on a beach in Turkey, of a crowded raft almost engulfed by waves on the Mediterranean.  Indeed, the latter two images were translated into quilts for the SAQA exhibit.

I've always thought of myself as the queen of abstraction, having made all of two figurative quilts in my whole life, but I too went figurative for this exhibit.  And it's probably good that so many of us did; when you think of a problem like refugees as an abstraction, it's easy to be dismissive and cruel.  When you think of it as people, perhaps you get closer to a solution.

Tiger Woods has always been our favorite golfer.  We got to watch in person on the pivotal hole when he won the 2000 PGA tournament in Louisville, and in 2012 I noted each of his tournament victories in my daily stitching.  So to mark his Masters victory on Sunday, here's my favorite miniature of the week: