Finished!

Wow! It has taken more time than I wanted to finish these three pieces. Life just kept getting in the way. They are part of a group show at a community sports complex so I decided to frame them behind glass to protect them from 'little fingers'. I prefer them without glass as the colours become muted and not as bright but caution prevailed.

Each piece incorporates fabric, wool, beads, Shiva oil sticks and pastel into the mix to create a range of different textures.  Though inspired by photos the style is abstract. I have developed a new method to finish  the edges that I think looks tidy but is not too obtrusive. Each piece measures 14"x18" and is framed with a matt border and final sizing of 20"x24".

'Silver Moon' has an analogous colour scheme of blues, pinks and reddish tones that are meant to suggest a nighttime scene of sand, water, landforms and sky.

'Summer Day' has a more complementary colour scheme of greens and pinks with a dash of blue and yellow in the sky.  I wanted to convey the feeling of a bright sun shining over green fields.

'Leafy Canopy' depicts the heavy green canopy of leaves over a green carpet.

All three pieces have a flatter profile than  'Red Sky", a previous textile piece. This is in part  because of my desire to avoid so much needle breakage by reducing the number of fabric layers.  I have also used grey wool as a base fabric. This has created a softer feel to the work. Summer holidays are fast approaching so my time to work will pretty spotty, but I plan on continuing to experiment with various fabrics and techniques. The goal is to find an approach that integrates the different materials in a harmonious and practical way without an excess of needle breakage. I will also work with different images and styles.

Fresh start

I am back at it and starting fresh. Though I am attempting to maintain a similar feel and style to the "Sea" piece, the subject matter has changed to trees and and palette to  green and gold.  I began by layering strips of fabrics in various  green hues, slashing through them to create texture, felting them down and then adding wools and the wool roving or "dog fur" as I fondly refer to it! The natural coloured wool roving softens the greens and creates a woven appearance. 

I am constantly breaking  needles with this felting process even though this time I am taking care to felt only a thin layer of fabrics and wools.  I might rethink the process again when I have finished these pieces to reduce the amount of felting required. The needles cost $14 for 6, a bit pricey to break on a regular basis.

This time I will work hard  to not as they say "over work this piece!"  Deciding when to stop is always a challenge when creating any kind of art. It is very easy to go too far and lose the freshness and charm.

Anyway, I am posting photos of two pieces along with the previous "Sea" piece for comparison.  The first photo also includes a selection of fabric paints, Shiva oilsticks , threads and beads I am considering for addition later. At this point each piece measures 14" x18" without a border.

 

Dead ends, Detours and Play

Sometimes you just get  detoured off the main road, possibly to a dead end.  These photos illustrate my detour into a folksy, cutesy direction with two of the pieces. I rescued the last piece before I completely lost my bearings!  Perhaps I just needed to get that out of my system before moving forward.  This really is the value of play, to be able to explore different possibilities  and just see where your imagination takes you. Funny how an image will appear seemingly out of nowhere. 

Anyone old enough to remember the stories by Thornton W. Burgess such as The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat or Reddy Fox will recognize Old Mother West Wind and Mr. Sun as characters from his children's stories.  I have a special fondness for Folk Art and these pieces demonstrate this love. 

Both pieces are heavily felted giving them lots of body but making it more difficult to add decorative stitching. I have discovered that it is best to limit the felting to the base layers only and then use the regular sewing machine to apply other wools and fabrics later. The felting process destroys the fabric  and a new base layer must be added so the sewing threads have something to catch onto.  At this point I am going to put them aside and return to a simpler more abstract vision. I have one of the original three pieces to work with and am planning on creating three more in a similar style.

Perhaps in retrospect I should have resisted my urge to play but I think I needed to give in to a bit of silliness and  explore different avenues of expression. As my children will attest to, I am a little crazy about mazes, particularly corn mazes in the fall, and enjoy  following a new route even if it leads to a dead end!

Progression

Initial broad strokes of colour have been replaced by a more refined layering of fabrics and wools to show a gradation of sand and water.  The wool roving I have used for the sand almost looks like dog fur when it has been felted with other materials.  This creates  interesting possibilities for future work. Woof! Woof!

The land in the background has been depicted in a simple abstract style as a contrast to the more textured foreground.

Having cannibalized one piece for materials to use with the  others, I am only working on three pieces now.  I suppose it is a bit like eating your young!  Quite acceptable in the world of collage. 

I have been working indiscriminately back and forth  between the different pieces- sometimes one becomes a favourite but then loses out to  new  excitement about possibilities in an other.  Again, a silly correlation  to parenting, but somehow working in a series like this enables me to switch my focus between the different pieces and still create a cohesive grouping.  When I am stuck on one piece it helps to direct my energies elsewhere for awhile.

The photos have become a starting point for some compositional elements such as broad areas of light vs dark and colour choices but I am  not bound to striving for any particular degree of realism.  They are merely to inspire! What more can I ask of nature.

Realistic, Abstract, Non-Objective

Between domestic duties, I have spent some time deciding on the materials I will use to create the 'ocean' images. This is a fun, relaxing part of the design process where I shift fabrics, yarns and beads around until I am satisfied with the result. Because I am doing a set of four 'ocean' pieces, I am working on them all at the same time to keep some continuity of colours and design. My large art table is littered with pastels so I have moved to the dining table.  Collage of any sort is a messy, ever expanding process that once started takes over all available surfaces until completion.  I am prepared and don't intend to serve any dinners in the dining room until my muse abandons me.

Fabric collage can be realistic in style but is most often abstract or non-objective. An interesting article in " Arts and Activities, Jan.08 issue"  states that all art falls into three  categories: realistic, abstract and non-objective. 

To quote:

"realistic  is defined as the depiction of an object as it appears to the eye. Abstract is defined as the distorting of an object's natural appearance without losing all it's recognizable features. And non-objective is defined as the depiction of no recognizable or identifiable objects; however, the final product may be derived from a real object."

The article goes on to list examples of realistic art- da Vinci, Michelangelo;  abstract art-  Picasso, Braque;  and non-objective art- Kandinsky, Pollack and Mondrian.  It is worthwhile to refer back to these terms and the various artists associated with them, many more than I have  listed, because it helps further define my objectives  for my work.  Am I aiming towards an attempt at realism or  just a broad sense of the shapes and colours of the scene. Or, is the image just a jumping off point to explore colour, pattern and line.  I will develop my direction as I continue working on the 'ocean' set. 

I am posting the original photo images along with images of the  fabric design process as it is unfolding.  No pun intended!

Blank white paper

I am starting on a new series with the fabric collage. So far I have researched ideas for subject matter and settled on two different themes: oceans and trees. I am planning on doing four pieces for each theme so I suppose it could be labelled two series though both sets deal with nature themes. Each set will have it's own colour palette and compositional style.

'Oceans' will have a linear composition much like the previous fabric collages.  This will help illustrate  a scene of calm, sparkling water  and a sandy beach at low tide. I will concentrate on establishing values to depict a sense of space and create rhythm. The colour palette will include shades of turquoise, cool blues and beige-pink sand shades.

'Trees' will focus on proportional placement of shapes, large/medium/small,  to define the composition. I am looking to create a lush, deep green/gold scene. The colour palette will include mossy greens,warm orange, gold, and a bit of cool blue sky.

Rather than just dive in I have taken a more measured approach to getting started by first defining the compositions, then creating a set of value studies for each and finally doing quick colour studies in pastel for each image.  This helps me to define my ideas and visualize where I want to go with them.  And strangely, it also helps me to get engaged and really excited about my next project!  It gets me past the "blank white paper" stage. Now I can focus and start making my ideas come to life.

I have included pictures of both  'oceans' and 'trees'  done as value studies and colour studies. You might call them "my stretching exercises" before the marathon. I guess we all need a way to jumpstart our engines now and then.

Hallelujah

I love new... new foods, new versions of a song, new artwork, new ways of thinking, hearing, and seeing.  My favourite floor at the Seattle Art Museum was the floor exhibiting Modern Art. It was always exciting to see what new approaches an artist had taken to express an idea.

'New'  reminds me of two things. One, that nothing is set in stone, and that we all have our own way of interpreting and expressing what is around us. And two, that a good subject is always a good subject however different the new 'spin' on it.

"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen has been covered by many, many different artists but this is neat one, four guys, one of whom, Norwegian Kurt Nilsen,  is a World Idol winner. It's neat because of the casual, intimacy of the setting and because it it comes from four guys in a country that I don't think much about when it comes to music and art. It is easy to live in a creative cocoon unaware of the heroes writing, singing and creating in the rest of the world. It's also neat because it illustrates how  a good song has a life and energy of it's own outside of the original creator. Like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going and going.

Good art is the same. A landscape, a still life, a portrait, an abstract painting... all subjects painted by artists throughout the world. Hallelujah for the ability of modern technology  to transport me across the globe  to see a familiar song with a fresh approach. It doesn't really matter how we travel as long as we do.

Check out the video.

"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen