Posted 12/30/09

As promised, here are my woven shibori results! Quite lovely texture and patterning in “Naomi” green. It was such a nice way to end my weaving class.  This piece was created with cotton 5/2 yarn. I really liked the other pieces in my class that were created with 10/2 yarn. With the finer thread, the pattern results were even more dramatic.

It was a fun filled, fabulous, and a bit of a frenetic first semester. I just took a holiday break with my sweetheart, and am now furiously back to work. I am making messes in my studio and taking advantage of my gift of 14 days before I go back to being a full time grad student/teaching assistant/art history paper writer.

Welcome 2010!

Posted 12/7/09

I made it! The first semester of my 3 year MFA program at UNT has been amazing and quite a whirlwind. Here are a few photos of the unpacking of my studio space on campus. I am fortunate to have a large, private studio space with dyeing facilities and all sorts of other great amenities. 

I have tackled an amazing amount of techniques and had all sorts of fabulous adventures, many ending with my hands a new and exciting color.  Potato and corn dextrin resists, dyeing batting, screen printing, rusting, smocking, devore, flour paste resists, you name it, I’ve tried it this semester.  I can’t wait to get to the rest of my list of things to try.

This last photo is a piece that is still in the dye bath right this minute. It is a piece of woven shibori, still on the loom. The pink threads are the gathering threads to make the shibori resist, and will be taken out when the dyeing and washing is complete.   I’ll get you a photo of the completed woven shibori piece, disaster or not.

Posted 7/9/09

Having a little time to sketch, I have been retrieving some images from my trip to Prague last year that I wanted to explore as art ideas. I recorded lots of imagery of vines, and this photo in particular was interesting to me.

I drew several explorations and this image above was an “early in the process” sketch. I do like the fun patterning on the drawing. It’s just not a sophisticated composition.

The image above is the last sketch I drew, and it is my favorite of the lot. Hopefully it will morph into an art quilt this fall and I can show the whole progression! I drew these sketches with sharpies and Inktense/watercolor pencils.

Posted 7/6/09

I drove over to the Austin Museum of Art over the weekend to check out their current exhibit, The Lining of Forgetting: Internal and External Memory in Art.  In my last post, I noted that I have been recently exploring my own visual memories. Most of my memories are visual, and for a long time I thought everyone’s brains worked this way.  My sister noted that she remembers the smell of my parent’s closet, and I can’t place it at all. Contrastingly, my husband’s memories are very auditory.

The exhibition explores memory, forgetting, and editing. The exhibition was really interesting, with lots of interesting pieces. My favorite was a dual screen computer generated work by David Rokeby.  It included a full year’s worth of surveillance of a small area in urban Montreal, with the images of the same little place in the world shown at various dates and times of day.  Really mesmerizing.

I created the woven image above in the hands on section of the museum, trying my hand at a grass mat weaving technique used by one of the artists in the exhibit. The artist, Dinh Q. Le, weaves C-prints together for his work included in this exhibit.

Here is a link to the museum site: http://www.amoa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ex_exhibitions

BTW, the gift shop was chock full of super crafter items and local artist wares. Thanks for supporting handmade and local, AMOA!

Posted 7/2/09

Here are a few drawings from my mobile studio, my sketchbook.  The above drawing is my cute ipod in it’s crazy holder.

The above drawing is a belated shout out to my Dad for Father’s Day. I recently attempted to draw the contents of my parent’s closet when I was young.  It’s probably weird that I spent so much time there, but my parents had a lot of cool stuff in there. And besides, did YOUR Dad practice a brass instrument in his closet? The drawing of these memories led to more specific drawings of items in their closet. This is just a memory drawing of one of many Audubon guides my Dad always had. As a kid, I spent lots of time flipping through them and considering species of birds and plants.  I really enjoyed drawing the cool plastic texture of the cover. They were drawn with a sharpie, watercolor pencils and my cool watercolor brush.

Posted 6/17/09

I don’t know about you other creative obsessed individuals, but my skin starts to itch when I haven’t made spent some time physically creating something.  Without my studio handy, I pulled out my sketchbook and started to draw away. This sketch is drawn from a photograph my lovely sister took of my oldest niece. My niece created and sewed this “ice cream cone” herself and wanted to share it with me. I have had the photo on my bulletin board at work for a couple of years and just love it. I am enamored with the idea of an older version of Cat discovering this photographic documentation of one of her young creative endeavors. Also, I am super interested in self portraits in particular, but have never had a lot of drive to do any portraiture myself.  Lately I have been interested in working with crosshatching on drawings and a portrait seemed like a perfect exercise. It was a complete relief to do something creative, anything, NOW. Yes!

I feel less itchy now.

Posted 6/8/09

I’ve been missing in blog land because we have a contract on our house!

My normal packing style is simple. Naomi packing = efficient, quick, put things in a box with other like items, label well, pack carefully, when in doubt toss, cross the room off the list when I am done.  Very type A. I believe that this is approximately move 11 for the Adams family, so we’ve done this all before. However, I think we have a billion times the amount of stuff compared to the first time we moved. And most of it sits in my studio.

I started packing my studio first, because I need to be the one to pack it up. Instead of my usual packing style, I found myself packing “straight up Tyler style”. For anyone who hasn’t seen my other half pack, it is a truly unique (and adorable if you’re not under a time crunch) process. He thoughtfully considers all of the items he unearths and the memories and events and good times attached to those items and lovingly packs 3 boxes. Meanwhile, I have packed the kitchen. I say this in love.

I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t take the brightly colored items off the studio design wall or pack up the lovely bits of this and that which hold promise for future art.  I spent practically a whole day packing one shelf of my lovely wall racks and realized I was in big trouble.

The deed is now done, but it wasn’t pretty. Here’s to new adventures in graduate school and unpacking my studio, which is ALWAYS fun!

Posted 5/5/09

It’s up! You can see my work during the whole month of May 2009 at the Robert and Helen Griffith Library in Round Rock, TX.  Drop by and enjoy the show. The library is on Main Street in Round Rock, which has tons of good places to eat or have a cup of coffee.

The Robert G. and Helen Griffith Library, 216 E. Main Street, Round Rock, TX  78664
512-218-7000 | Circulation: 512-218-7001

Hours
9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday - Thursday
9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday - Saturday
1 to 6 p.m. Sunday

The library director, Dale Ricklefs, was kind enough to ask me to share my textile art at their new gallery space on the first floor. Thank you, fellow quilter, Dale.  Thank you to Said Horozovic at the library, Jason King, and my ever enthusiastic husband, Tyler, for helping me prepare and hang the show.  I neglected to take anything but my camera phone with me yesterday to put up the show, but I will go back and take some better photos later!

Posted 4/29/09

The Collage Mania preview is up! There are 383 collages available on May 5, 2009 for an $80 minimum donation. On May 6 and 7, 2009, they will be available for a $40 minimum donation. This is the last fundraiser for Fiberart for a Cause which benefits the American Cancer Society. Thank you, Virginia Spiegel and Karen Stiehl Osborn for all of your hard work on this project!

I donated 3 collages for the sale this year, which are located on page 15 of the Collage Mania preview. Take a look, find something lovely and donate generously.

Posted 4/12/09

This is my monthly journal quilt for April, 4/12 2009, 12″ x 12″. The way I figure it, April is almost over for me due to lots of things going on over the next 2 weeks, so I figured I better get to it!

This piece is created in the same way my small lines series is constructed. For this piece, I began with a background piece of fabric that I painted with blue/aqua paint with a handmade stamp. I then took a piece of purple fabric that I painted, cut it into strips and fused it to the background. I then sandwiched it with batting and backing and quilted it. Then, I cut it up into lots of pieces and reassembled them with a zig zag stitch. It’s a fun stripey puzzle to re-stitch together. I machine quilted over it some more and then finished it with a zig zag stitch around the edges.

This piece is for sale in my etsy shop.