amphitheatric droll features

“To make ideas effective, we must be able to fire them off.” (Virginia Woolf)

But I have some 'splaining' to do, thanks to the comment from Anonymous yesterday!  So, if you want to hear it, hop on the squirrel with me and we'll talk while we ride!  First of all, here's the comment, and I have broken it down into a couple of different ideas:

             Well, don't stop blogging even though over half the time I read you I feel as though I am watching/reading an obsessive maniac about to self destruct.

After all these years blogging, I don't know if I could stop if I had to!  And OK, I will copt to the obsessive maniac part, but there is no self-destruct program in my life so don't worry about that!

Take a deep breath and slow down. 

Easy for you to say!  The deal is that I am running out of time (not fabric!) and there are so many things I need to do before my fingers or my eyes give out.  I do have a little head-rule that I must finish everything I start so I generally work until something is almost finished, then start letting my head wander to whatever possibility (New Shiny Thing!) might be next.  I don't consciously work in series though when I line up everything I have ever done, there are most certainly many series within it-  guess I have a very pervasive personal aesthetic that keeps showing it's ugly head.  I don't care, I just keep editing things until they look right, and there ya go, they all have the same DNA!  

I used to make about 6 major pieces a year-  by 'major' I mean size mostly.  I used to work on my dining room table so I had years of quilts that fit pretty closely to that.  When I started working in an unused bedroom (we are talking the early 80's now), sizes diverged but got somewhat smaller as they were easier to work on and easier to ship off to shows or new homes.  I am not able to work on 6 pieces a year any longer in spite of now having a giant studio and no family except a husband.  Funny how activities grow to fit the time available.  One would think I have nothing but time but I have taken that opportunity to try other things, explore other art, take some classes in encaustics and book arts and even returned to figure drawing last semester.  I hope to grab another drawing class this fall because it's been a long time since I have done drawing with any regularity.  And, as they say, 
                                 IT CAN'T HELP BUT HELP...

Why drawing?  Because it is an exercise in learning to see, to studying minute details, finding relationships, and developing a discipline of intent that I don't see in many fiber pieces.  I used to have a professor who would patrol the room with a roll of tracing paper to 'help' his students-  when he would catch an incorrect angle or a juxtaposition of items that doesn't work, plop would go the tracing paper and his big black mark would show us the way.   Rule #1 of teaching art is NEVER touch a student's work and this was his way of correcting without touching!  I still do this to my own drawings when it just ain't working!  I have four rolls of tracing paper in different widths that I rip off every day!

You are among four to five textile artists I read regularly, largely I think because of your arty pieces (where in the world do you find time to collect them?) and the opening aphorisms. 

Thanks for reading and being a regular.  I always enjoy your comments.  I'm glad you like the ARTY PARTY stuff too-  I don't go looking for it, it finds me.  And when I see something I like or that's intriguing I stick it in a folder and use it when I post.  Sometimes, like yesterday when I discovered I had three posts about wood, I stuck them up together, but usually they are something by themselves ranging from cake decorations to pretty bugs to planetary explorations, as long as it speaks to me.  I grab the quotations as I find them, again I have a folder of them.  Glad you like them.

And I suppose because I am intrigued with your East coast life --- how or why did you end up in Florida? 

My East Coast Life...  HA!  I grew up in Buffalo, that's the Lake Erie life!  As soon as I got out of college I grabbed one suitcase and a one way bus ticket to Boston.  I had friends there from my first 2 years of college and one of them was gracious enough to need knee surgery that summer, so I moved right in!  I love Boston, never planned to leave.  There were so many opportunities to see great art, classes to get involved with, shows to attend.  Within an hour we can be in the mountains of New Hampshire, the green valleys of Vermont, or the rocky coast of Maine.  Then there's the Cape and Island beaches where my friends all migrated in the summers.  Not being Irish we never did that, instead preferred to stay in the city when all the students moved out to take advantage of things without crowds.  My kids loved to ski so we would take ski weekends up north but never wanted to buy into that.  My husband is a golfer, loves his club in Boston and has been a member since the early 80's.  When he wanted a vacation he needed to play golf in the winter, all I wanted was to get out of the snow.  For years he would come to FL for weekends with friends until one time he found this place we are in now.  He brought me down for the weekend, admittedly kicking and screaming because only old people go to Florida.  But he insisted and I came along just to see...

We got lost coming from the airport, and didn't get into our little rental cottage until 1 AM where we fell into bed exhausted.  I hated it-  chrome furniture, black leather, pink and turquoise accents.  He had a golf game that day and left early with his friends, so I pulled the vertical (ICK) blinds on the slider and OMG, it was like watching Dorothy land in Oz!  Technicolor!  I watched an egret hopping along the top of a hibiscus hedge looking for breakfast, the sun was blinding and it was so beautiful it took my breath away.  Later I was driving around exploring the town and found a giant antiques mall next to a nice quilt shop right across the main street.  I decided right then that this was the place I would be happy vacationing.  We bought a little lot and built a cottage that year.  And we would come down for weekends, holidays, whenever we could in the miserable Boston winters.  By then the kids were gone.  My own stays generally grew to include 2 weekends, and my husband would come on the bookends.  So, every year I extended my stays, I explored the area, made some friends, found a guild and a group of art quilters that are still in my life so I had the commraderie that helps so much.  I became a resident maybe 5 years ago and am here full time now.  We visit Boston to see kids and grandkids frequently-  our new 'vacations'.

There was one more comment from Anonymous where she actually asks about my art, and that could be a very long answer so I'll wrestle with that tomorrow. Hope you come back.  Meanwhile here is the ARTY PARTY direct from the hot folder

Using a process that could be the new definition of meticulous, Korean sculptor Seung Mo Park creates giant ephemeral portraits by cutting layer after layer of wire mesh. Each work begins with a photograph which is superimposed over layers of wire with a projector, then using a subtractive technique Park slowly snips away areas of mesh. Each piece is several inches thick as each plane that forms the final image is spaced a few finger widths apart, giving the portraits a certain depth and dimensionality that’s hard to convey in a photograph, but this video on YouTube shows it pretty well.  Amazing.

Remember to come back tomorrow when I tell you about my art.  It too will probably be a very long post!