2013

I had forgotten about my blog. This time I am not going to make any resolutions about keeping it up and then falter again. I will just post as and when I get to it.

I have made a number of new things in the past two years, but they are in storage as I have moved into a much smaller flat. So here are just some pictures of what I am busy with at the moment.

It still needs to have a backing put on it and be quilted, but first it needs a few beads to give it a bit more texture.

BEFORE my creativity dried up.

I must admit that it has come as a surprise to me that despite the dysfunctionality (or rather, non-functionality) of this blog, people are still reading it. Wow. Hi *wave* People. :) (I am not in a blog ring anymore, how did you find me?)

Only FIVE posts in all of 2010. That's ... sad. Well, the only way from there is up; I'm now on TWO already. *rolling my eyes and grinning*

It's now been several months that I have had no impetus to create anything and yesterday I decided that I have to do *something* so I started fiddling with bits of fabric. Not inspired, just "moodling" as dedicated blogger Robyn of Art Propelled calls it. ( "So you see, the imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering." - Brenda Euland) Thanks for the advice, Robyn. :)

No I am not going to post photos of it. It is just "priming the pump" and doesn't look like anything. Instead I have a photo of a quilt I am making, well "making" is more like "occasionally working on", for my mom's bed.


I made the top before my creativity dried up. Rather crazily I decided to hand-quilt it. Why O why? There are SO many seams that I am quilting through 5 layers most of the time. It's been a long time since I last worked on something this big and it will be an even longer time till I do it again!

My creativity dried up.

My creativity has all dried up. After the exhibition - I don't know what happened but it all went out of me. :( Hopefully just a fallow period.

I had an exhibition

I have given myself a kick in the pants. Following another recent browse through Robyn's blog Art Propelled I was inspired to give my blog another go. Thank you, Robyn! :)

I had an exhibition of my work last month. It went very well. I was dreadfully nervous and the logistics were hairy (oh, for the money to have a manager/agent!) but I managed to get it together with some help from family and friends.

Here are some pictures from the opening. It really happened!

Wine and snacks, including sandwiches and sausage rolls made by my mom and I that afternoon, talk about panic.
I even sold some work!
That's me on the right in the black and white. I only slept one hour after the opening! The exhibition opening Friday 1 Oct and was open Sat/Sun after that. I didn't advertise it enough, but despite that there were quite a few people coming in over the weekend. Had an article in the local paper, to publicise it, so maybe that's where people knew from.

I now know an awful lot of things for next time. What? Next time?????? I'm still saying "never again"!

I don't post :(

I really have nothing to say but somehow I don't want this blog to die.

Cobwebs!

Did I have to fight my way through cobwebs to get back in here! {rolling my eyes} This place needs a good scrub. Or maybe a bulldozer? Nah, not a bulldozer. Bring in a herd of cows, let them graze and fertilise and then send them home again. Then a light plough and it should be ready for planting again. :)

Ack! SPAM!

I'm being spammed :( I'm going to try and find out how I can delete these stupid "comments" and probably set Moderation ON.

Annoying!

It's a sad, sad world we live in

I've been away on holiday in Denmark where I was born. While I was there, several major events occurred, some of which hit hard:

1. The attempted murder of Kurt Westergaard, he of the Mohammed cartoon fame, in his own home. He was in fact only one of 12 cartoonists, but became the "face" of the issue. I'm a staunch defender of the right to free speech, especially where this is enshrined in one's own country.

2. The shocking attempted bombing of the plane bound for Detroit. It is chilling indeed that a single deranged individual has the power to sow havoc around the whole world and demonstrate how fragile our safety is. We were subjected to intense searching at the airport after this, with random body scans and sniffer dogs. Must say I was grateful for that.

3. COP15, the world climate change conference. There was no room at the inn during the conference, but I made it there the day after it ended. Many exhibitions and writings on the subject were still available and I learned a lot about just how urgent the problem of global warming really is and how much evidence already exists to demonstrate this urgency. We have fouled up our own backyard and our own children will pay the price. One day they will ask us "if you knew it was happening, why didn't you act to stop it?" But too many countries lack the political will to take it seriously. Depressing. It reminds me of what TS Eliot wrote in the poem The Hollow Men:
"This is the way the world ends.
this is the way the world ends.
this is the way the world ends.
not with a bang, but a whimper"

4. The heaviest snow conditions in Britain in the last 30 years. We made it out of Heathrow at midnight on 5 Jan, after a 4 hr delay to deice and redeice the plane. At one stage the captain announced it was "not looking good". It reinforced for me, how the world weather is changing, with more extreme events. Some say we are headed for another Ice Age, and will become extinct like the dinosaurs. We certainly deserve to.

Well, there, I have minced no words about my opinions. (It is my blog after all.) Why am I writing this in a blog about fibre art?

On the plane home, in the middle of a sleepless night, it all got to me. I sat for probably half an hour with tears rolling down my face, silently listening over and over and over to Katie Melua's "Spider's Web" on the headset. My head filled up with images of destructiveness, hate, arrogance, the complexity of protest and convictions, consequences, sorrow and fear. We will succumb to flames that will burn to our own destruction.

I will probably try and use these images in a visual composite of all my impressions. There's a danish 'silver lining' proverb - probably has an equivalent in every language, but I learned the danish one first - "There's nothing so bad that it isn't good for something".

I'm a speck of dust in the universe and cannot change the world. So perhaps I can just make a statement about it, as I see it.

Just found this

Untitled

2008
35cm x 35cm
Fabric
Machine pieced, hand appliqued

I must've finished this some time ago. I don't even remember it. I found it in a pile of fabric I was cleaning up. That's actually quite b-a-d! :)
Ah well, nothing like discovering something you thought you hadn't finished, but in fact, had. There's hope for me yet!

Heritage, completed

Heritage: Viking girl's longings
2009
43cm x 54cm
Fabric, leather, beads, stones
Hand embroidered, -appliqued, -beaded. Machine fastened.

Here is a photo of the completed work. I carelessly didn't take a picture before sending it off. Silly me :)

An easy Sunday

I picked up this work from when I was in hospital in 2007, during what I can now see was a mixed episode. I was very depressed, but did a remarkable amount of quite frenzied art during that time, not exactly typical of my down times. Each square is an individual quiltlet 10x10 cm. I've been pinning them in various combinations onto my polystyrene design board. It's all still very much "in-progress".
I don't know where this is going, but I am thoroughly enjoying the journey! This intuitive working is a bit of a leap of faith. I'm a hard taskmaster, so I must say it's wonderful to just ignore that inner critic and go ahead and PLAY and remember there's no such thing as wrong.

Why is that so hard to learn? Or to remember? Why such guilt associated with FUN?
"I command you to have fun. Now!"

What is "Gel Medium"?

I subscribe to two American magazines: Quilting Arts and Cloth, Paper, Scissors. Both of them frequently mention an art material called "Gel Medium", used to stick/glue/adhere things together. As I am using more and more "mixed" media, other than fabric, I'm wanting to glue and not just sew.

Can anyone who might read this, tell me what "gel medium" is, so I can find the equivalent here in South Africa??

Here is what we have here, and what I have used:

Wallpaper paste comes as granules, that you mix and whisk with water to the thickness of paste you want. It forms a gelatinous, clear mass, that also dries clear. It's used, not just to hang wallpaper, but to do papier mache. It's my favourite: it works well, it's cheap and has a nice finish, and I'll be so happy if this is the same as the mysterious "gel medium".

"Modge Podge" is a runny substance, used for decoupage (ie paper). It comes milky and dries clear. It also works well to stick things to each other. It's good, but it's expensive.

Clear, water-based varnish. I bought this in a hardware shop once, when I was needing a lot of Modge Podge, but the Modge-Podge just proved too expensive. It worked just as well as Modge Podge. I wonder if "Modge Podge" is just a brand name of water-based varnish?

Wood glue, also known as craft glue or white glue. It is also available in a "Quick-Dry" version. Where does this fit in? It's white and dries clear. You can water it down to whatever consistency you like, it both sticks and "varnishes" to a nice finish. I've also wondered whether Modge Podge is a watery form of wood glue (?)

I can't imagine that "gel medium" is some foreign substance we don't have here. It must surely just be a matter of matching the names! I don't know how the above relate to each other, but they are all water-based.

I'll be grateful for any help. :)

Slow Cloth 1

Slow Cloth 1
93cm x 87 cm
Fabric, yarn, beads, metal castings
Hand applique, -beading, -quilting. Machine finished.

From Wikipedia:
"The Slow Movement is a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace... (It) began with a protest against the opening of aMcDonalds restaurant in Piazza Di Spagna, Rome, that sparked the creation of the Slow Food organization. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, such as Slow Travel, Slow Shopping, and Slow Design."

The Wikipedia entry is worth reading in its entirety. The Slow Movement spread to Slow Life, Slow Parenting and Slow Art. And, of course, it was picked up by fibre artists.
There's been much interesting discourse about Slow Cloth. Read Slow Cloth/Slow Craft: Is This the Birth of a Movement?

Another good article is entitled Defining Slow Cloth: 10 Qualities. Though I only read this AFTER Slow Cloth 1 was finished, my heart is singing with joy at how the process has intuitively incorporated many of these qualities, without my knowing.

I began with the intention to create something meandering that would develop by itself, through whatever took my fancy at each moment. The process was daunting as it ran the constant risk of producing a complete flop, after months of effort. At several stages I thought I had overdone or otherwise ruined it, but I read somewhere that if you think you've overdone it and you can't undo, keep going! Layer over layer also works.

It's been enormously good for me and I know it's the start of a satisfying and therapeutic series of works. :)

I'm sure most of us live the dilemma of how to slow down in a world that moves so fast, that if you stand still, you're going backwards. Since being unemployed (since Jan this year) it's been easier for me to slow down, but I fear employment will force me back to the hectic pace. When I read job advertisements, they inevitably say "Must be able to multi-task and work under pressure" and my heart sinks. I know well that situation where there are 5 things that have to be completed yesterday. I used to do this, and somehow cope, but it took a heavy toll, and I'm sure it contributed to my recent long bout of continued illness.

Part of Slow Cloth 1 is three-dimensional, and design credit for this goes to Jenny Hearn, a South African artist, who incorporates this in her work.)

Enjoying the Nature of Cloth

Robyn, your blog is like having private art lessons in my home! Can't begin to tell you how much food for thought you give me. Not to mention pictures in my head and a need for several clones of me, to make everything I want to!

Your last comment, referring me to your post Neville Trickett of Saint Verde fame
with the link to the Antique kimono set set me thinking, about why I did indeed love it, as you said.

These days I'm enjoying the NATURE of cloth and wanting to let the medium itself have a showing too, in addition to the message that I want to impart.

To use for art that lasts, cloth needs some taming, some imposition on its qualities to make it strong enough to hang and not fall apart. But beyond that, cloth has unruliness, edges which fray unless fastened, pinned down or hidden inside seams. It bends, stretches and unravels. It's not that I'm against seams or binding or straightening or catching down, at all, but rather that I'm enjoying letting the cloth be itself and not trying to control it too much.

The thing that draws me back to fibre every time, when I've played with other media, is that fibre has such ACCESSIBILITY to it. It is held in the hand, taken with me in a bag to work on when waiting to pick girls up from school, held while feeding it through the machine, and thrown over the back of the couch, in between hand-working it. When completed and "released into the world", it begs to be TOUCHED. People don't feel drawn to touch an oil painting (no offense to oil painters!) in the way same way that fibre is inherently something we feel with our skin.

Stark in my memory, is something I once read on Winnowings, Christine Thresh's blog (in her "About Me"):

"We are born to cloth. It is the second thing we touch after our mother."

Such a powerful way of putting it! All fibres (cloth, paper, wood) are archetypal. All of us have always known them; they're integral to our lives.

So, these days I'm enjoying intuitive, ragged, fraying edges, threads hanging down, hand-stitching. We teach best that which we most need to learn, and in a way, perhaps I am trying to say something about letting things be as they are and accepting their, and our, basic nature...?

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Untitled
25cm x 25cm
Fabric, beads
Hand-dyed, - quilted and -beaded.

I'm on a mission to COMPLETE things. Since the pile is insurmountable if viewed as a whole, I began with this small bite.

Detail:

I'm in...

"Dear Karen
Congratulations! Your application to join Fibreworks has been successful."

I should perhaps have waited to blog about this, until I felt more elated about it. Don't get me wrong, I am really, really happy. It's still a bit unreal, but it IS a dream come true and a long-time aspiration.

It's just that I'm in a bit of a down-swing and can't really feel the delirious excitement of it. It will come. It has to, because this is really significant for me.

Fibreworks application

I am now applying for membership of Fibreworks, a group of fibre artists in South Africa. I've been wanting to do this for two years, but their AGM is in October every year and I have been in depressive episodes the last two Octobers and just have not got my act together.

Putting a portfolio together has proved to be a far greater job than I had imagined!. But it's done now, at least of most of the work. Once again, the most embarrassing pile of unfinished works looms its incomplete head, the by-products of great starting enthusiasm followed by great starting enthusiasm, followed by great starting...
... and some loss of focus along the way. Just a little, you understand.

The last sentence, obscured by the flash, reads: "If my work strikes a chord with any other person, I feel heard, and it is my fervent wish that the reality of the viewer is likewise validated."

I'm nervous. The words 'portfolio' and 'artist's statement' feel pretentious, (but looking on the Web, this seems to be how it's presented). The front cover looks a bit pretentious too: Monotype Corsiva makes it look more flashy than it is! Great font, that. :)

It's also the first time I have shown many of my works to anyone else and these are very personal and revealing, so I have that scary "heart-in-my-throat" feeling of disclosure. You know, that fear that others may recoil from the dark stuff in your thoughts and mind. I see it sometimes on people's faces when I've said too much, or said something uncomfortable that we'd all rather not think about, but which stares me in the face so often.

But I suppose the worst that can happen, is that they say it's not suitable for their group. I won't die.

Still walking on sunshine

I found a photo of my other Vuleka entry, which I had taken while still working on it. It's not the finished work, but here is the work-in-progress photo for now:

Heritage (Sept 2009)
Roughly 30cm x 50cm

Fabric, beads, stones, leather, sisal twine
Hand embroidered and beaded, machine stitched

I'm working on cataloguing my works - what a JOB.

In Future I Will Catalogue As I Complete Each Work.
In Future I Will ...

I'm walking on sunshine :)

Protect Me (2008)
Fabric, yarn, beads, stones, cooldrink can metal, hair extension fibre

Detail

Here are pics of one of my entries for Vuleka. As I said previously, I didn't take any pics of the other, so that will have to wait until I get it back in early October.

Looking at the pics above evokes a curious reaction in me: "Did I make that? Where did I get that idea from?" Perhaps because it was made a couple of mood cycles ago, by a different me(?) Well, no matter, I'm intrigued with the possibilities of the new media and this is the first in a series. Never done series before, so that should be interesting.

I was standing in front of the hair extension fibres in Clicks, choosing colours, when a school friend of my daughter's came up to buy some as well. I could SEE her puzzled brain trying to process what on earth I could possibly be doing there.

I didn't explain. It just causes more bewilderment...

I think hair extensions are just too beautiful. Why don't they make the fibre in blond? But I've been told by a hairdresser that my hair is too straight and too fine, and they'd just slip out; you need curl to hold them in place and as soon as my hair reaches 5cm in length, it succumbs to gravity and falls over. :( Perhaps if I had a tight perm first(?) And people use hot irons to flatten their hair...? Hey, let's swop! :)

Gosh, we're a strange species...

I was accepted!

BOTH of my works were accepted to the Vuleka competition! :) They are currently hanging in the exhibition in Belville. I can barely believe it. I'm delirious. I get tears in my eyes every time I think of it. I cry at anything these days, my emotions are so heightened. Now, euphoria is an appropriate emotion! There is a review of the opening here. 57 entries were accepted out of 397, and I had TWO accepted, can you believe it? I feel soooo honoured. My head is now so swollen, I'm going to have to go see a shrink, oh, I forgot, I already see one... ;)

I WISH I could actually go and see the exhibition. When you see your work hanging amidst all the others, it really hits home that you are in the illustrious company of REAL artists (yeah, ok, ok, I know, each artist is as real as any other...) and that somebody who knows something about what constitutes 'good' art (whatever that is) judged your work to be arty farty enough to be there. :) I've been able to attend two openings before, both for Innovative Threads and when I saw my work on the same wall as that of (fibre) artists whose talent I am in awe of, whose work I can marvel in front of, for ages, soaking up every detail, and whose work I have followed for years and years...

... whewwwww, now that is a trip! No drugs needed. :)