vulcanizations tweeny infernalizes

“you don’t have to use abstract language to explore abstract ideas”  

Vito Acconci

The Facebook 'thing' going on this weekend is about mean-girl quilters bullying other quilters who are not of the same religious and/or political beliefs.  Do you believe it?  Who would have thought it would edge into our little insular quilt world?  Before this virulent strain hit us, we could belittle someone for their thread choices or perhaps even how closely their quilt resembled their stolen internet images , but neither entered the political or personal arena.  I followed the trail to see what was going on and scanned all the messages and accusations and nasty comments, and found I didn't recognize any names that I knew.  And I can go on quietly unfriending and blocking people who are too vocal in their mouthing off about one thing or another I don't want to hear about.  What a discomforting change of attitude in these women.  Wow.  They are threatening to interfere with teaching jobs, publishing opportunities, and workshop bookings.  The threat doesn't extend to me but I am way disturbed that these Quilt Nazis even exist.

Today, after a night of debauchery and too much shish kebob and wine, I hit the studio with verve at the early hour of ELEVEN.  I was dressed and headed for the door at 8 but got waylaid with a bit more kitchen cleanup, a doggie who won't eat and therefore can't take her insulin, and another doggie who refused her morning pee time.  It took until 11 to get them sorted out, the dishwasher reloaded and the tablecloth back on the table (when it's damp it's easier than ironing it!)  But when I finally got there I dove right in and completely finished one side of the appliqué, a daunting amount.  I got the 'wind' strips pinned in place of the second side so MAYBE I will still make the deadline if I can work tomorrow for a few hours around a dumb pool party 

(Hey, bring your suits to jump in the pool!!!  As if.) 

and Monday nonstop, then get it cleaned up and photographed Tuesday.  But it felt good to be so into working that the phone woke me from my task at 6 PM.  

Hmmm, it's not nearly as crooked as that...

And all these wind strips have been replaced with bias.  Oh well, stay tuned for a Real Image.

So, more shish kebob tonight and it's do-it-yourself as I am still putting away dishes and licking out bowls of mezze.  There's a ton left, we will be eating it in different forms for days.  

So, here I am giving YOU your Memorial Day ARTY PARTY, no swimsuit required!  You're welcome.

Inka Mathew, a Texas-based graphic designer and owner of Green Ink Studio, matches tiny, everyday objects from ladybugs to jelly beans with their corresponding Pantone colour swatches.

In a personal project called Tiny PMS Match, Mathew combines everyday items with their Pantone Matching System (PMS). The objects she uses “pique her interest and/or have special meaning.”

And a short note memorializing my brother, Lance Cpl Gary R Townsend, USMC, who lost his life in Vietnam 49 years ago in 1968.  His life was not the only thing we lost that day-  his whole family lost their future, their hopes and dreams for their son and brother forever more.  You wouldn't think after all this time that it would still eat at my heart the way it does but I watched both my parents carry unbearable grief the rest of their lives.  I am the only family left to carry on his memory.  I've given my kids the stories but they never met him so don't carry the weight of memory.  Thanks for listening.   You won't hear me again until next year on this!   Sandy

relinquishes muddlers pave

"Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." 

(Saul Bellow) 

Tresors Miniscules,  which must mean a squirrel taking a whipped cream bath.  I dunno.  Looks like he has his own atmospheric bubble too.

I finally got back to the studio for two full days.  i enlisted TY to carry my new printer over for me-  couldn't get the box into the Mini it's so big.  I can't set it up until I can hit the Apple store and get a new computer so the box sits in the middle of the floor.  I found out the emotional purchase Long Arm Quilting Machine won't be here until after I'm back from Boston so there will be all sorts of new learning curves going on-  lettuce prey they don't turn into learning KNOTS.  And we know they will.  Anyway, I am getting myself outfitted for my last quarter and I ain't gonna pay it any worry at all.  The Quilt Museum is taking FOUR of my quilts so that about cleans me out except got three pieces it seems are on an extended vacation-  been gone over 2 years for both of them and I checked schedules and both are adding new stops.  Keep hoping someone will actually buy something but it doesn't look like that will happen.

I was able to move some furniture around to see where the new machine might fit best-  I have a little sitting area and I think that will have to be dismantled to make room for all this stuff.  Mostly I just stack stuff on the chairs and hassock anyway.  I think I can move some shelves back farther into a corner but that will ned=cessitate taking everything off of them and stacking it somewhere while I move it, then restocking when it finds it's place-  a lot of work ahead of me and that isn't even counting finishing up these 2 pieces!  I can't make the deadline on the first piece and I am bummed out but thee is just too much going on these days to spend day in and day out away.  I tried to bring a piece home for handwork but the lighting here isn't working-  I thought the dining room table would be perfect-  chandelier, big picture window, and cans in the ceiling, but it doesn't hold a candle (get it?) to the daylight flourescents in the studio.  I LOVE them!  So I hauled the whole big fat quilt back and will do whatever I can.  Quilting is perhaps 1/4 done, too much to do in just 1 week.

As you all know about my rodent issues these last few months, Robbie My Ratcatcher showed up today-  it's been 4 weeks clear of Rodentia and he thinks it's a good idea to keep the outdoor traps baited to keep him out of the house for a return engagement.  Fine with me-  I am certainly enjoying not listening to find what drawer he's tearing apart!  May he be lying on a beach somewhere in Tahiti enjoying himself, while I have joined the following:

I do have something for the ARTY PART  to share with you today:

I LOVE this!!!

Artist Lorenzo Quinn  just finished the installation of a monumental sculpture for the 2017 Venice Biennale. Titled Support, the piece depicts a pair of gigantic hands rising from the water to support the sides of the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel, a visual statement of the impact of climate change and rising sea levels on the historic city. Quinn is known for his work with the human body—specifically hands—that he incorporates into everything from large-scale sculptures down to jewelry designs. 

Okey, I'm outta here, headed out to dinner and I deserve it-  I've been cooking all day for another dinner party this week.  I escaped a few this year so felt I was under the gun to do something before everybody is gone.  Tomorrow I intend to spend in the studio wearing my poor hands to nubs getting the 'wind' appliquéd down.  Wish me luck, send me jokes, call me and make funny noises-  I will need distractions!   

viz vocable vocabularian

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. (Frank Lloyd Wright)

Yes, this IS about squirrels!  Apparently a few early versions of Joy of Cooking contained directions on how to peel a squirrel-  these volumes re now worth thousands-  the about are taken from the illustrations.  You need a heavy boot.  I rest my case.

PROCRASTINATION, thy name is Sandy

Still folding, folding, folding-  today I finished up two more stacks of black prints and black and white prints.  I still have what will amount to another stack of blacks that I will tackle tomorrow instead of actually working on quilts.  Handwork, ya know, it boggles my mind any more

Here we have a glimpse of the sick dog sporting her IV port when she came home last night. The sign over her dish reads, "Beware, Strange Dog"  She ate a whole bowl of chicken and took her pills in the new pill pockets.  She slept all night, and the house was clean when she woke up.  All's right with the world.  I took her back to the vet early this morning for a spot check and it's all clear.  We removed her blue bandages and now, with her shaved leg she is a Poodle Pup.  Really, thanks for all the sympathy and cai=ring notes and phone calls-  I was wrong-  she apparently does have another mile or two in her and I'll take as good care of her as humanly possible for as long as she is OK with it.  I think she is hoping I slaughter the other dog but that won't happen either.

And finally in the parking area of the studio there's a car detailer that comes by every week or so to clean regular customers-  stuff all hooked up in the back of a truck and I noticed the outside door windows on my unit are filthy.  I asked hi if he would do the window and in a few high pressure squirts I suddenly had light coming through illuminating the whole place.  Why didn't I ask before???  I am so happy with the sun coming in! And these are tinted windows too!

ARTY PART-  shortened version after yesterday's glass houses!

Using found objects collected from within big-box stores, artist Carson Davis Brown creates color-specific installations for his photography series Mass. The works are organized conglomerations of basketballs, laundry baskets, wrapping paper, and other mass produced goods, each arranged by color within the stores they are found. After photographing the works they are left as is, experienced by passersby as a break from the monotony of the weekly grocery store run and eventually disassembled by the store’s staff.

 

  

I'd love to walk into Walmart and see this being arranged-  I'd even help!

oven silversmith ouzel

“being a painter means knowing how to paint, 

and when to stop.”   Picasso 

Yup, STOP!

My old friend Pablo has something there.

My face now looks like a I'm wearing a plastic dry cleaners bag that somebody has shrink wrapped and then let loose a herd of mice to chew me out.  Fortunately I can still breathe, but look worse every day, not better.

So to escape the chances of anybody seeing me, off to the studio I went.  I mostly messed around folding more fabric and throwing small pieces into a box to take to the class I'm teaching in July.  It helps to de-scrap much more frequently than I do.  But I am also finding lots of things I forgot I had stuffed into the shelves so that's good. BECAUSE...

I also started sewing down a few more strips to look like wind on the Hurricane Gates and just wasn't happy-  which is exactly why I've been so good at avoiding working on it.

See original strip on the left, just basted down.  The plan was to simply raw edge stitch but it looks like hell.  So I decided to cut new strips and make them into bias binding-  they nave to be bias to turn all the circles.  I thought because the whole quilt is raw edge, the wind should be too but nope.

So, I threw out all the strips I had cut, smack, right into the basket:

And this is where the folding=Good Thing because I found a whole new stack of B&W stripes in the jam packed stacks-

and cut up some double wides and was sewing the edges closed to make long strips most of the day-

So, now see how much better the bias folded over strip looks than the raw edge shredy one?

So I am pulling out the bad ones, double stitched on each side by machine-  ugh ugh, ugh but it's what I need to do to make it look better.  So, it's kind of a slap in my face for being too hasty and it means I won't make any deadlines I have ahead of me but at the very least I am happier with the whole project and maybe by tomorrow will stop beating myself up over it.  Maybe by Sunday?

So, I got a ton of thinking-work done, a bunch of preliminary work done, nd yippee, have started on the black fabric shelf.  So today I am having a celebratory 

ARTY PARTIE!

actually a 3-parter!

 As part of this year’s DUMBO Arts Festival, sculptor Tom Fruin installed his famous plexiglass house, Kolonihavehus, in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The multi-colored house was lit from inside and temporarily inhabited by performance duo CoreAct who engaged in a collaborative physical performance that is described here by DUMBO:

The colorful glass house is inhabited by two performers, who portray everyday dilemmas and lifestyle paradoxes in a subtle manner. They have lost the ability to meaningfully discriminate, and are trapped in a long chain of procrastination, mirroring our current social patterns.

Tom Fruin Studio is pleased to present Watertower, a new sculptural artwork by Brooklyn artist Tom Fruin. For the US premiere of his internationally recognized Icon series, Fruin has created a monumental water tower sculpture in colorful salvaged plexiglas and steel. Watertower is mounted high upon a water tower platform becoming part of the DUMBO, Brooklyn skyline. This project is the fourth work in the plexiglas and steel patchwork Icon series which features scavenged, reclaimed, and recycled materials constructed into sculptural tributes to architectural icons around the world. The series began in Copenhagen with Kolonihavehus in 2010, and can be seen as a three-dimensional evolution of Fruin’s found drug-bag quilts and flags for which he is well known.

Designed and constructed by artist William Lamson, Solarium is a functional greenhouse with 162 windows made from carmelized sugar at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York. Via his artist statement:

Like a mountain chapel or Thoreau’s one-room cabin, Solarium references a tradition of isolated outposts designed for reflection. Each of the 162 panels is made of sugar cooked to different temperatures and then sealed between two panes of window glass. The space functions as both an experimental greenhouse, growing three species of miniature citrus trees, and a meditative environment. In warm months, a 5×8 ft panel on each side of the house opens up to allow viewers to enter and exit the house from all directions. In addition to creating a pavilion like environment, this design references the architecture of a plant leaf, where the stomata opens and closes to help regulate the plants temperature.

 

Stained glass artist and jeweler Neile Cooper had a vision for a sanctuary: a small cabin behind her home in Mohawk, New Jersey that would feature her glass designs on every available surface. The result is Glass Cabin, a structure built almost entirely from repurposed window frames and lumber that features dozens of panels of her stained glass work, depicting flowers, birds, butterflies, mushrooms and other scenes from nature. Cooper explores many of these same motifs in her popular jewelry designs. You can see more photos of Glass Cabin on Instagram.

                                      👍
There-  I'm done, waiting now to take the dogs out to pee so I get more time in the studio.  Pepper is too anxious in the car to take him anywhere-  he jumps down into the foot area where the gas pedal is-  He Who Must Be Restrained.  Fortunately I wasn't in traffic last time he tried that.  And today especially I must stay Police Free because if I have to have a mug shot taken I could be in big trouble when I try to run for office.  Maybe dog-catcher wouldn't be appropriate.