Getting Ready

I haven't accomplished a lot of stitching or felting recently but I have done a load of desktop publishing to get ready for my exhibit at the Downtown Kingsport Association's gallery.

I'm really looking forward to interacting with visitors as well as with my inspiration and materials. So please spread the word and I hope to see you there!

Speaking of Trees . . .

Yesterday we went to the Eastman Recreation Area at the bottom of Bays Mountain in Kingsport, TN (where we live). There's a great little stream there--lots of rocks to walk across--as well as scads of gorgeous trees. There are so many varieties.

My youngest whittled herself a wand, my oldest played frisbee with her dad and grandad, the grands took a short walk, the kids and I popped balloons with the sun and a magnifying glass, I whooped them at tether ball.

Every once in a while we'd hear an enormous CRACK and realized eventually that it was walnut fruits hitting the metal roofs of picnic shelters. Grandpa also found a beautiful hulled chestnut. Life was quiet (except for the ocassional CRACK or POP) and wonderful.

And on our way to the car I saw these leaves. Aren't they cool?

I love the symetry and the asymetry of them. I am intrigued by the almost-but-not-quite right angles, and by how the veins are prominent on the outside edges of the bottom two points and almost nonexistent on the side near the center vein. And I think it's pretty cool how they fit into the rectangular field of my camera so tidily.

I see a work in here. Hmmmmm.

Duh! Can't see the forest for the trees!

I've been working on a second wool painting. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided that since the first hard and shiny subject worked so well, I should do another hard and shiny subject. And I chose hard and shiny . . . and iridescent . . . and transparent carnival glass. What was I thinking?

The hard and shiny and iridescent and transparent parts are not the biggest problems, though. Carnival glass is also cut glass with lots of facets. And wool roving doesn't really want to do fine detail. But that still isn't the biggest problem. That took someone else to pinpoint, someone who was not invested in the piece. An objective observer. Tony Henson

After I explained my process and griped and winged a little, he said, "So it's sort of like me trying to make a realistic drawing of you on a regular sheet of paper with an inch-wide hunk of charcoal."

Well, yes, it is very much like that. The problem is not any of the difficult things I am tackling, but rather the scale at which I'm tackling them.

Thank you, Tony!

So yesterday I pulled the carnival glass off my foam and set up a still life to work on at a large scale.

I'll be doing this on a lovely dark green and blue wool backing I dyed. And once I've been successful in this medium again perhaps I'll retackle the carnival glass. On a much larger scale. Duh!

Englandsickness

So I was going through some photos to make prints for the ArtCrawl a couple of days ago when my youngest walked in. She looked eagerly through the photos then declared glumly that she had Englandsickness--like homesickness but more complicated and expensive to cure.

I'm right there with her. We miss our friends and their little town and the grand, glorious, mysterious Dart Moor.

Anyhow, I'm getting these up on my website soon, and on my Facebook page sooner, so if you find these give you Englandsickness, you can buy your own little window onto the moor (or Cornwall, or Ireland, or industrial Kingsport).

Arts Crawl in Downtown Kingsport

 

Thursday night (9-30-10) from 5-9 p.m., KingsportARTS (full info and admission @ their website) and downtown Kingsport shops, eateries, and studios are hosting the semiannual ArtsCrawl. This event has expanded significantly in the last six months (along with business in our real city center), so come support the arts in our fair city and see what's hopping in downtown Kingsport.

If you do come, say "Hi!" when you're at the Kingsport Ballet's new digs--I'll be there with the Kingsport Art Guild.

 P.S. I'm tagging this with food and cheese because there's always good nosh!

A lighthearted reminder . . .

. . . that the unexpected can be fabulously fun.

So do something unexpected today! I know I'm inspired!

The Good, the Bad and the Lovely

Well, time passes swiftly and a lot has happened in the past two months. The highlights are these, though.

The Good: WOOT! The City of Kingsport purchased my "Labyrinth" for their permanent collection. It will adorn the new V.O. Dobbins Community Complex. I hope to attend the opening on Friday and will be recording my artist statement for the cell phone audio tour of the public art later today!

"Labyrinth" (c) Cindi Huss.

The Bad: I accidentally felted the commission I was working on. OY! Forgot about the felting properties of the wool batting I was using. How? How could I forget?! Beats me since wool has become one of my major materials. Perhaps fatigue? Perhaps trying to do too many things at once? Perhaps because it was inside rather than on the surface. Anyhow, I've recovered from my initial shock and dismay and have decided it actually is a good thing because I am working on an even more wonderful version of the piece now. (Pascale, you are not alone. Unfortunately, the product has not been transformed into a coordinating rug.)

The Lovely: I got together with a couple of friends last month and we dyed. For two days! And we're going to do it again on Wednesday. We dyed yarn (for the knitter), leotards, tights, and silk gauze (for the dancewear designer), and I dyed wool prefelt and natural woven wool fabric to be backgrounds for my felt paintings.

Also, about three weeks ago, fellow quilter Pam Morris announced that she was done dyeing and ready to quilt up all her lovely fabric, so she was giving away all her dye supplies. For Free! So I drove over to Burnsville, NC, to pick up many containers of fiber reactive dye powder, many containers of mixed dye (poor thing sprained her shoulder before she could use it all up), a small plastic table, and loads of measuring implements, dye containers, rags, and auxilliary chemicals. I really appreciate it, Pam, and will let you know what we do with it!

Also, I'm about to send a couple of quilts and some fabric off to Timna Tarr of Q Tailored Quilts. I haven't plugged her recently, but Timna is fabulously talented and highly reliable, and her services are reasonably priced. I'll post photos when I get the quilts back.

Model City Art Show

Well, the awards for the Model City Art Show at FunFest were announced at a reception last Sunday while I was on the road from Wisconsin to Iowa, but my piece "Wending Onward" won one of the two presentation awards for the most effective/professional presentation of work.

I used a serious amount of stitching at the edges to create a quilted frame. This allows the design to continue all the way to the edge while still creating a visual "stop."

Congratulations to all the other winners:

Margaret Helvey (best in show)
Nancy D. Bilbro (second)
Tony Henson (third)
John Hilton, Rebecca Dunham, Diane Nelson, and JoAnn Wilkerson Lyle (awards of excellence)
Lily Horton and John Denner (student awards)
Thelma Wyatt (the other presentation award)
JoAnn Wilkerson Lyle again (Celebrate Kingsport award)

Roving II also is in this show, and here is its premier online showing as seen in the gallery:

Details aren't up on my website yet, but the background is a piece of fabric I dyed stretched on a frame over cotton duck, and the trees are a separate piece applied to the background. The main tree is needle felted and the other trees are created dimensionally with the quilting.


This is similar to the piece that appeared in the April 2010 Quilting Arts mag, but I wanted to try this presentation with something small so I could decide whether it works before committing to a larger piece.

The show, run by the Kingsport Art Guild, will hang through July 28, 2010, in the Main Art Gallery at the Renaissance Center, 1200 E. Center St. in Kingsport.

3132 Green Mixing Bowl

Well, I managed to make it to one meeting of the Kingsport Art Guild's June paint out, but it was one productive session. Found a great green mixing bowl (stock or booth number 3132) in the front window in great lighting with a table and chair just the right size to set up my felting. And here's the result:


This is the first time I tried "painting" with felt from life. Didn't know if the process would be fast enough or if it would be nerve-wracking, but it was very meditative and satisfying in the end. The only thing I'd have done differently was lifting the piece from the foam more often--the foam nearly became part of the final work!

It's hanging right now at a small exhibit of work from the paint out entitled Textures and Treasures at the Main Art Center in the Downtown Kingsport Association Building at the corner of Main and Shelby Streets.

Wazzup?

Well, it's summer and there is no such thing as routine for the next two months (and the one month behind us). That means there is no such thing as regularly getting work done, so I'm fitting in what I can when I can and joyfully enjoying my children, too.

When I'm waiting during dance or instrument lessons I'm usually sketching or stitching samplers for Sharon's commission. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that if I do my "draft" on muslin I don't have to rip it out if I don't like the color--I can just change the color and then stitch on the actual piece. So, for instance, here's a little piece I did last week.


I like the shape, but refined how to make the intersections less awkward as I went and tried out some other color combos along the edge.


Now I'm adding this motif to the final product--and I'll have a little mini "study" quilt to sell at some point as well. Muuuuuch better than ripping out stitches!

Had the blocks done for this.


My oldest, who likes things just so and symetrical, finds its asymetry annoying, but my youngest thinks it's swell.

It was to be a king-sized quilt for my bed, but hubby wants another "Almost Amish" quilt, so figured I'd had enough fun with these blocks and put them together.

I am very pleased with the result, particularly as I managed a horizontal rather than a vertical orientation for the first time in, I think, ever. I kept meaning to do a horizontal piece yet it would morph partway through and come out as an exaggeratedly tall and slender piece.

I am using the last two chapters of C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle to inspire the quilting and provide the title: "Further Up and Further In."

I have a couple of other thing in the queue, but Sharon's commission is my top priority this summer, so everything else is more of a back-burner project. She gets to be the first to see that piece, though, so no sneak previews here except the sort that you see above.

Chaos in the Studio

My natural state seems to be somewhat organized chaos. The degree varies, but I think chaos is a necessary part of my creative process.

Yeah! That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

And then I'm cleaning up so I can find what I want to be creating.

Edward Tufte, aka ET

I heard a story on NPR this morning that both resonated with me and made me aspire to do and be more than I am. That doesn't happen all that often when I listen to the news, particularly both in the same story, so I thought I'd share.

The article you can read online is abridged from the audio version, which is certainly worth taking 9 min, 8 sec to listen to. NPR has images of some of his work, but you can see it all at his site. Enjoy!
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Edward Tufte is a professor emeritus of poli. sci. and statistics at Yale who is well-known for his work in presenting data clearly and graphically. He was recently recruited to the Obama administration's Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, to advise and devise ways to track and present in an easily digestible but meaningful form how the $787 billion stimulus package is being spent.

Yawn. That's all well and good and I applaud him, but neither resonates with me nor inspires me to aspire to more.

But ET is also an artist. A large-scale sculptor to be more specific, who does, IMO, some very fine work. He has just opened a gallery, ET Modern, in NYC. But he doesn't necessarily want to sell his work.

So here's the resonating part. In the article he says:

"I have a very big problem selling pieces, because I don't want them to leave," he says. "For a long time, I believed that any successful piece was a tremendous luck-out, and that I'd never be able to do it again ... My fellow artist friends, who are serious with me, told me to grow up."

I tell myself to grow up all the time. He went on to say that it's not necessarily the entire piece that he clings to, but rather elements that he's not sure will come again. I so get that, and suspect many artists feel the same, even if they don't say it out loud.

He also talks about giving back, which I love. He's smart, positive, creative, particularly in fields (poli. sci. and statistics) that are not generally known for creativity in a positive way, and not stuck on how wonderful he is. That combination is appealing and certainly worth aspiring to.