colored thread

Notan meets zentangle

2012-02-14T22:19:00.000-05:00

I've been having a really wonderful time with my young screenprinting students on Saturdays. I've got 6 quiet, focused 12-year-olds this semester, three of which have come back for a second semester. After working in public schools with 30+ kids it is an absolute indulgence to teach just 6. It's a wonderful opportunity to really push the possibilities of screenprinting, too. Usually I plan 3 projects and they complete 2, but this semester I'm positive we'll complete 3 and maybe even 4!

Our very first project this semester was a group print using contact paper to block the screen. The kids each cut one shape out of a square of the contact paper for a notan-style positive/negative exercise. They did a rainbow pull of green and blue ink. The following week we experimented with different patterns for making visual texture, much like how zentangles are made.

They used sharpie marker to draw patterns in all the negative white space, and then added color and shading with colored pencil. Some kids ended up doing sort of a color wheel arrangement.

I've been slightly obsessed with the whole notan and zentangle trends this year, so it was fun to combine the two styles in one project. I was so pleased with how well they turned out, that I requested and got to have a hallway exhibit from our gallery director. At Fleisher we have 3 hallways that we use for rotating displays of student artwork from both the children and adult classes.

I think the kids must have really enjoyed this project- when they made their T-Shirt designs for their second project at least 2 of them used similar line and pattern elements:

Having explored screenprinting for fine art and fashion, our final project will explore the idea of advertising to make a 2-3 color print.
PS: Happy Valentine's Day!

Announcing Solo Exhibit!

2012-02-13T00:52:00.000-05:00

Today I hung my solo exhibit at the Speer Gallery of the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA. On display are about 20 embroideries and watercolors made over the past two years, all related to the urban environment. It is quite a privilege to exhibit in this venue. Considering that it is part of a K-12 school, the caliber of the work and the artists they bring in is on par with college galleries. The school is right across the street from Bryn Mawr college.

I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough work to fill the space, especially when I walked in and saw the incredibly high ceilings! However, everything fit perfectly, and there are even a few double-hung pieces. The artwork is hung a bit higher than I normally would, but the ceiling height kind of demands it, and there is concern for the amount of student traffic through the space every day (every hour!).

I've spent the last 2 days and nights framing everything! Originally I was planning on T-pinning the fiber pieces, but I found some great frames. That final touch really sets off the work well and gives them a certain bold presence. Otherwise, they would get lost on those huge walls! Only the larger embroideries that had been bound were left unframed, and are mounted onto a bar with velcro.

There will be a Coffee Hour Reception on Thursday, February 23rd from 9:15-10:30 with myself and the arts committee to which all are welcome. The gallery is open Mon-Fri during school hours 8:30-4:30, and the exhibit will be up through March 23rd, 2012.

In addition to this exhibit, I also have a piece in the Heart Print show at Fleisher Art Memorial Works on Paper gallery. There will be a reception for that show this Friday, February 17th (my birthday!) from 5:30-7:30 pm.

An afternoon at Abington

2012-02-07T02:19:00.000-05:00

After a Sunday afternoon volunteering at Fleisher's Print Love-in (Valentine printmaking!), I managed to get up to Abington Arts Center to see the opening of their solo series exhibit.

Colleen McCubbin Stepanic's work commands the largest gallery. I had the pleasure of seeing these pieces grow in her studio over the past few months, but even so, the scale of her final triangle piece stunned me. I think it has great color and scale shifts throughout the composition, and she was smart to leave it in sections that could be rearranged for future exhibits.

A more sculptural hanging piece in the center, which seemed so overwhelming in the studio now seems almost understated in the gallery. I feel like it could keep going to take on Richard Serra proportions to dominantly control the viewer's experience of space.

My favorite part about this piece is the contrast between front and back- the front side is all soft, cupping forms of various sizes, but the back is prickly with zip-ties. Colleen is an artist that transforms the mundane through repetition and accretion. The piece catches light beautifully, and there are intriguing small windows to peek through. I wonder how this piece looks with full light from the windows during the day.

In one of the back rooms were the quirky enlarged newspaper doodles of Emily Steinberg. I especially liked these 3 large heads with some mapwork backgrounds. I really enjoy artists that have "characters" in their imagery- some recurring or morphing to be narrative archetypes. I think it reveals a glimpse of the artist's imaginative life.

Two other artists round out the exhibition spaces, and you can visit the website to learn more. My daughter and I were lured outside by the woods and sunset light for a stroll through the sculpture garden.

Woods in winter have so much line and texture that is totally obscured in the summer. If I ever got to make a piece for this sculpture garden I would want to do it in Winter.

I especially liked this wall structure of charred wood by Alison Stigora. The stark black makes it stand out when seen through the trees from afar. Up close it seems more fragile- I was wary of getting too close. Like Colleen's wall in the gallery this one had a distinctly different appearance front vs. back. What seemed fort-like from the front seems precarious from the back.

There's a performance stage set at the foot of the hill below the center that I don't remember seeing before. Framed by the stage roof and structure is an incredible swarm of yellow sparrows made of corrugated plastic strung to catch the wind slightly. I wish I could see this every day.

Such a beautiful crisp afternoon for a walk in the woods surrounded by beautiful public art with my silly girl.

Some Screenprinting

2012-02-05T19:42:00.000-05:00

I had a great printing session in the silkscreen studio the other night. I came in early before teaching my embroidery class to get my bridge repeat printed. Above you can see my 2 pieces of fabric pinned onto one of our big fabric printing boards. Usually the boards are stored away in a closet, and it's a bit of a thing to prep for printing on fabric, but I'm so glad we have them.

I'm trying to figure out an easy registration system for fabric printing.Our boards don't have stops, so I tried marking out the measurements with masking tape to help me line up. My first repeat worked out pretty well mathematically, but I totally screwed up the 2nd repeat measurement.Luckily printing in navy blue made it easy to see the image through the screen, and I ended up lining up the image better the 2nd time than the 1st on my long border-style repeat.

Here's the screen I prepped for it. I've got my mandala embroidery ready to go next week on the same screen to save time. When you have small enough images you can fit 2 or more on the same screen easily. i just have to keep one blocked with tape or paper while printing the other.

I also tried repeating it vertically. This one was easier to do- I printed from bottom to top in alternating positions (1/3/5 then 2/4/6) I only goofed on the last registration- I registered vertically but not horizontally that last time!

The image started as a photo of the Ben Franklin Bridge which connects New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I've been thinking about how many times in my life I've probably crossed that bridge. I'm originally a Jersey girl, but feel more of a Philadelphian now. I'm hoping to add some embroidery to the horizontally repeated one by the end of this week. My solo show deadline looms!!!!

First Friday at the Painted Bride!

2012-01-31T22:55:00.000-05:00

Come out this First Friday night to the Painted Bride to see "Reforesting" in person.
For more information visit the website.
The Painted Bride is on Vine Street between 2nd and 3rd St. The reception goes betweeen 5-7 pm this Friday, Feb 3rd.

great color video for kids!

2012-01-31T22:06:00.000-05:00

I really love OK GO.
They also have a great video inspired by Rube Goldberg machines:

The latest sewing basket rescue

2012-01-30T16:36:00.000-05:00

Have lots to do in the next few weeks, and a few more pieces to pull together for the solo show. Rather than start totally from scratch I'm weeding out the "UFO's" from my sewing basket to transform into "WIP's" and finally into complete works of art. This patchwork started off as 4-patch squares from my gran's 1930's era stash. I pieced them together into a 20x30 inch piece with a contrasting neutral/black/white side and a green side to roughly represent the geographical boundary between PA and NJ. I'm originally a Jersey girl but have become a Philadelphia transplant. My gran was a dairy farmer but also a great seamstress. So for me this piece will talk about family history and location, and it will pull taut the thread between my and my gran. A work begun by her hands and transformed by mine. I intend to continue the sashiko theme of patterned stitching and build up the color and texture to unify all the patchwork.

sashiko and origami think-cloth

2012-01-29T20:56:00.000-05:00

Last Winter I had my Stitch and Surface students do a sashiko project (a Japanese patterned quilting/mending tradition). As a sample piece I had done a little piece of black thread on white cotton sandwiched with a black calico and had stitched an intersecting key pattern onto it. So it's been sitting in my sewing bag all year waiting for inspiration. At first I thought I'd make a whole bunch with different patterns and then sash them together as a quilt, but who am I kidding!

I haven't taken down the garland of paper cranes we made for Christmas yet- they're not Christmasy and they brighten up the winter doldrums- and as I stared at it I wondered if I could make an origami crane out of fabric. A scrap of orange and an iron later, I had a slightly floppy fabric crane and a sudden inspiration for that sashiko piece.

Every once in a while I make a little "thinking cloth" to get ideas out of my head. I heard this week that we're receiving a ton of radiation due to massive solar flare activity. With the word "radiation" in my head and these Japanese-style elements in my hands I started to think back to the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima last March. I wonder how things are in Japan nearly a year later...

The black areas of the radiation symbol are stitched in black running stitch, and the yellow areas are colored in with fabric marker. Then blue waves were added in, inspired by the warning symbol for tsunamis, and with a slight reference to "the Great Wave" by Hokusai. Two of the lines were whipped to make the edge stand out more.The orange crane was added last with a backstitch around the perimeter of each folded area, flattening it out. Finally the whole thing was bound in black double fold bias tape- my latest favorite finishing technique.
This piece might end up in my solo show with other "thinking cloths". What I love about it is how simple running stitch can work.

I've had a really relaxing Candlemas Sunday- stitching all morning, a gorgeous choral service at the Cathedral, and some good home cooking tonight. It certainly recharged my batteries for the coming week.

urban inspiration

2012-01-28T02:29:00.000-05:00

Today I visited one of the artists who will be in the show I'm curating at Fleisher in April. She is a second year at PAFA, so I got to see the studios for the first time. It was a great visit, and I can't wait to see all the work together and be able to share it all with you. Leaving the 8th-floor studios of PAFA, though, I was greeted by this awesome panorama of the city to which the photo does no justice whatsoever. I think if I were at PAFA all I'd do is sit in the elevator lobby and draw and stitch all day:

My perception of the city panorama is usually from afar as seen from 95 or the hint of skyscrapers down the tunnel of my street, a good 5 miles away. Or if I'm downtown my view is always from street level. This was a startling new perspective for me.

The panorama can go up and down as well as side to side.

Street stitching

2012-01-24T00:04:00.000-05:00

One more piece down! This panorama started off 2 years ago while I was taking a graduate fibers course at Tyler. I don't remember what originally made me decide to do the drawing in pale grey threads on transparent white cloth. Ultimately, it wasn't what I wanted because it sat at the bottom of a work basket for 2 years. However, since I've been doing cityscapes, I pulled it out to see if it could be resurrected. Really, the problem was the transparency of the ground fabric and the lack of color. So I found a rust-colored background cloth, laid a piece of sparkly black behind the "road" area, a piece of light blue-green under the sky, and a silky green behind the trees. The embroidery was laid over top so now there is a lovely hint of color behind all the shapes.
I added in some stitches to help hold the pieces together and emphasized the tree and the lightpole with dark brown. The visual bounce between the 2 inspired me to call this "Urban Trees". There are few mature trees in my neighborhood, but there are a lot of newly planted saplings. This represents the block where I live, and the subtle color reminds me of how the world looks in an early morning fog. I've seen a lot of early mornings lately. Not easy for this night owl.

4th grade maps

2012-01-20T21:56:00.000-05:00

The 4th graders in my residency have finally completed maps which were a culmination of 3 months of arcing lessons on how earth, weather, and water interact. They began with a button and embroidery project to focus on "meandering"- how water moves around obstacles following the path of least resistance.

Then we did a contour print project. The kids placed rocks in a takeout salad container and drew the contours of the rocks on the lid with water soluble markers (not permanent). They added colored water to change the visible contour and drew again 3 times. Finally they printed their drawing by placing a dampened piece of paper (wiped with a soft-wipe) over the drawn-upon lid and rubbing the back. They colored in the spaces between the lines and drew a grid over the whole thing. The grid helped us later enlarge the shapes for a sculpture.

The enlarged the shapes onto corrugated cardboard, then coiled up strips of cardboard to hot glue the layers together for a relief sculpture. Each child made 3 small sculptures to match their print, then they paired up to combine onto a new layer. The pairs at each table combined onto one larger piece, then the class as a whole combined their sculptures onto a blue background. This was to show the process of erosion.

Once the sculpture was complete, we imagined we were explorers to a new land and had to make a map to send back to our governor at home with recommendations for where to build a settlement. This provided some geography/social studies integration. They first sketched our sculptural landforms in their journals, then drew on larger white paper. We looked at many maps to see what information should be provided. Students drew symbols on their maps to represent roads, bridges, houses, stores, landmarks, cultural areas, parks, etc. Each symbol was also shown in a map key. They named their landforms and bodies of water and added a compass rose. Everyone used crayon to color in symbols and roads. Then we used watercolor to paint the background water and landforms.Finally we learned about coordinate grids to integrate with math and drew a coordinate grid over our maps. We used the coordinate grid to play a game where I named a coordinate and the kids tallied up points for the landmarks at that coordinate. The winner table got to hang their work first. (prizes don't always have to come from the dollar store!).

I allowed a student to be the photographer for these pictures- which is why the perspective is a little skewed. I've decided I could let the kids be responsible for documentation once in a while, and I might get more extensive documentation that way.

Some kids drew more symbolically, and other more pictorially.

I have a few islands named after me!

I am huge map lover. Children's maps are particularly exciting because these spring directly from their imaginations and reflect the interests they have. Some of the worlds they created had pirates and crocodiles, another had amusement parks everywhere, a few had "danger zones", some were full of houses, castles, and flowers, others had jails and stadiums. I have a very distinct mental map and sense of space and geography- a very well-developed spatial understanding with a pretty good inner compass. Not everyone has this and I wonder at what point in a child's development this occurs.
I'm so pleased with this entire series of lessons and projects that incorporated so many different artistic skills and experiences, included individual and collaborative work, and integrated science/math/geography/art all together. I'm also ready to move onto a new topic!

sampler mandala, or 3 birds with 1 stone

2012-01-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

My Stitch and Surface class began last week at Fleisher, and I launched my students off with a mandala sampler project. This idea is very simple: start with a button or bead in the center, and then complete a ring for each stitch you want to practice. The hard part is keeping the circles circular! Below is a scan and photoshop manipulation of a 6 inch mandala sampler I stitched this week as an example (bird #1):

The stitches from the center outwards are: eyelet, french knots, running, chain, whipped backstitch, french knots, buttonhole, lazy daisy, stem, twisted chain, french knots, herringbone, chevron, straight, fly, french knots, and interlaced running.
I made the photoshop manipulation so that I could transfer the image to a screen to print as a motif. Next week my Silkscreen on Fabric students will be doing a motif printing project, and I thought this could be printed out as a pre-printed sampler for someone to stitch over (bird #2).
I also thought this motif could be put into repeat, so I played a little more:

In March I will be participating in an exhibit called "Not a Stitch" which will have works that contain textile-inspired imagery, but which are not themselves stitched. I think I might have found the project I want to do for it! This would be printed in repeat and would reference both embroidery and fabric design (bird #3). The tough decision will be whether to print it on fabric or on paper....

Playing with pictures

2012-01-13T01:30:00.000-05:00

I am the screengrab queen. No photoshop, just the crappy paint program, and some screengrabs from my good friend g o o g l e. I have 2 pieces that are panoramic "drawings" in thread of views of the city, and I'm wondering if I can whip out one more before February and my solo show arrives.

I would use these photo collages to create a line drawing to transfer to fabric. they're views of 2 places I've lived. I think the streetviews are funny time capsules. I don't know how often they are updated, but not very. Sometimes the streetviews are a shock- like the empty lot on the right in the picture above used to be a boarded -up building that gave you chills to walk by. In the picture below there should be a whole new building mid-right.

I've always loved panoramic photos. When I was a teenager I had a "panoramic camera"- it had a lens that just cropped the standard photo format to a slice. Although it might have had a slightly fish-eyed lens... I forget. I loved the pinhole cameras made out of oatmeal boxes we'd use in my first photo class. The paper bent around the back of the canister would create great distortions of perspective but in incredibly sharp focus. I also have a series of family photos in vacation spots made much like my collages above- but with one of us standing on one side of the photo, then a quick photographer switch for the other to stand in the opposite side of the photo. (I really don't like handing my camera over to strangers). One of my favorite photographers was Art Sinsabaugh who took amazing panoramas of the midwest and Chicago with one of those cameras that was meant for taking long group photos. Come to think of it, my grandparents had one of those panoramic graduation photos hanging over the "davenport" (as they called the sofa). I think this love for panorama might go back farther than I realized....

This whole streetview thing is a little creepy. But I think I might be on to something that I want to work on.

More finishing!

2012-01-11T22:42:00.000-05:00

Another one is done! The "Repercussions" piece now has a beautiful brown border. Of course as I was doing it I realized I really should have had a backing layer behind the patchwork- there are a few thin spots in the 80 year old patchwork. So after the binding was finished I went back to mend a few spots with a patch on the back.
A few more are waiting for binding. Maybe I can get one more piece done for the solo show. Maybe. Although it will be hard as my schedule is filling up like crazy!! I just got news of another teaching artist residency!

Finishing things

2012-01-08T01:29:00.000-05:00

I got a call this afternoon asking if I'd like to come down to the Painted Bride to help install my piece in Wendy Osterweil's show. She decided to put it in exactly the spot I was hoping it would be in, right at the entrance to the downstairs space. Her tree/spirits and leaf shadows are all hung and looking ethereal. My piece blends in so well since it used many of the same organza fabrics as her trees and has some similar textures. The swoop of it leads the eye into the space, and it's at such a great scale. The show opens February 3rd. More info here including a video of me working on this piece- although there's so much background noise I don't even know what I'm saying! I love collaboration- and Wendy was very trusting about what we would do with the materials and inspiration she provided.

I spent this evening binding a piece that was started almost a year ago, but which has been sitting, unbound for about 6 months. Pieces like these nag on my conscience. I really don't like having unfinished projects hanging around. After a loathesome trip to Walmart last week to get double fold bias tape, I'm ready to bind several pieces. This one looks so great with its crisp black border.

I even added a little signature to say it's REALLY finished. There's a sketch of this project on my very first post about it. Click over, scroll down, and take a look for comparison.

I think this one will go in my solo show next month. More news on that soon.

First art of 2012

2012-01-07T00:24:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! Starting this year off right with some creativity! One resolution for this year is to find a better balance between making art and teaching art. I noticed my blog posts this past year are mostly showing my student work. While I'm blessed to have great teaching opportunities, I'm also realizing what a challenge it is to balance those 2 creative endeavors. Of course, this year I no longer have the title and responsibilities of "grad student", so perhaps things won't be so impossible to balance out. It also helps that I have a bunch of exhibits scheduled, so the motivation factor is high.

My first exhibit of this year will be at Fleisher Art Memorial- we're having a printmaker invitational exhibition to coincide with the annual "Love-in"- a Valentine-making print workshop that's open to the public. The artists include Fleisher's print faculty (I teach silkscreen to adults and children), and artists who have donated images for the Love-in in past years. The exhibition runs January 14 – March 10, 2012 and the reception will be Friday, February 17, 5:30 – 7:30 pm (my birthday!!).

This piece started off as an experiment in 4-color process printing. I was trying for a format and effect that might suggest the "instagram" photo look. Unfortunately, the cyan balance was a bit off and I wasn't totally happy with the results. So what do you with "unsuccessful" prints? Alter them!! I started off by stitching into one print with some pale yellow-green straight stitches to suggest grass in the empty lot, and then went wild with feather stitch in the foreground foliage. It wasn't quite working though, so I made a bold move! I cut the middle- and back-ground out of my print, and grabbed 2 more prints from my edition. A print for the middleground got a new smattering of grassy stitches as well as some blue-green fly stitches, and the background was cut away. Finally in the background layer print I outlined the mural framing with some long floats (I would never have such long floats on a fabric embroidery, but it works on paper). Finally, I bought some double-side adhesive foam squares so that the 3 layers could be assembled for a 3-D effect. Photographs don't really do this piece justice, so you'll just have to come out to Fleisher's Works on Paper Building at 705 Catharine St. starting January 14th.

PS: the trick to stitching on paper is to pre-pierce your holes. It also works better on thicker paper!

Ending on a good note

2011-12-31T23:30:00.001-05:00

In this last week of 2011 I spent most of my daytime with my Winter Camp kids at NLArts and most of my night time stitching away. The project I was most pleased with at Winter camp was our winter bird sculptures. The kids made a paper and tape armature and wrapped it in plaster gauze. They painted their sculptures (which would have turned out better if the sculptures had been dried overnight instead of just for 2 hours or so), and arranged them in a flower pot/stick/rocks setting.

A cardinal in a nest of plastic leaf vines

a duck and pigeon

a graceful chickadee

Our city kids were most familiar with sparrows and pigeons, which are ever-present, but we also had an owl and even a squirrel on a branch (not a winter bird, but anyway).

Today I brought the final addition to my organza piece over to Wendy Osterweil's studio. This is part of a collaborative wall of tree/skin textures she wanted as part of her Painted Bride exhibit in January and February. I spent a couple of hours on the final assembly and a few extra details, but here it is:

Adrift

If time and organza supply had allowed this could have kept on growing indefinitely. It reminds me of driftwood. It reminded Wendy of a bird with swooping tailfeathers. I loved how substantial in scale yet delicate in presence it became. Working on this piece was very freeing- I let it happen and "listened" to the organza. I didn't worry so much about any raw edges or "mistakes". I let it grow as big as it had to be and didn't feel weighed down by the scale and pressure to make something large. The final dimensions are about 10 feet wide by about 4 feet high. I felt unconstrained by the rectangle or grid, and allowed it to take on organic perimeters as a somewhat sculptural piece. I can't wait to see the entire exhibit installed with my contribution included.

the beginnings

The major work of this week was this little piece. It started with the square of pieced scraps from my gran. On Monday I finished up all the reverse applique windows of various dimensions.They are loosely based on a map of my neighborhood. Last night and tonight I worked till the wee hours filling the entire space with concentric rings of running stitch. Red lines spring from the top circle and fill to the edges and 2 smaller black rings expand from the left and right center. I think I might call it "repercussions". On Wednesday night there was a huge fight with a heavy police response on the corner of my block. I think it might have played a factor in the direction of this piece...

the endings- "Repercussions' (still needs binding)

It has been a tough but rewarding year. I survived student teaching and now am certified to be an art teacher. I completed my thesis and will soon receive my Master's degree diploma. My daughter now attends a middle school where she is flourishing and more herself than I remember her being at her old school. I exhibited work in a museum. I've had numerous opportunities to teach and work with children. Many, many prayers have been answered (with a YES for once!). In this last week of the year I can give great thanks for all the opportunities I've had, for friendships and family, for creativity and inspiration, for the generosity and kindness of others. Thanks for reading this year.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T14:51:00.000-05:00

We save decorations for Christmas Eve- It makes it more special I think when it's not up for a whole month. I have a tiny tabletop tree and I let my daughter pick out the ornaments this year- many of them are handmade from years past.

The windows are covered in snowflakes (my mother cut and laminated- the images in them tell the Jesse tree story) and some bright Waldorf stars made of origami paper. I got the pattern here.

We made some origami garlands too. My daughter folded 24 paper cranes and I made a string of stars. The black and grey star is not a waldorf one, but the end-product looks similar. I like garlands- they really make things look festive.

One of the presents I received this morning was a Frido Kahlo finger puppet my daughter thought I should have. It was made by Abbey Christine and can be found on Etsy if you need your own. She wasn't sure if I'd like it, but I think things like this are great gifts for art teachers! I can't wait till I have an opportunity to use it with some kids.

My creative forces are being directed towards the kitchen now- I'm the official dessert baker for family dinners. I think this is my 99th post of the year. I'll make one more sometime this week to make an even 100 for 2011.
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday, making things and spending time with friends and family.

letting things happen

2011-12-22T23:30:00.000-05:00

I have so much I could be doing. I thought finishing grad school would mean lots of time opening up, but lots of other things have filled in the negative space already! Looking forward to the next few months brings a solo exhibit, 3 shows I need a piece ready for, and a new opportunity to curate an exhibit. Making enough work is now filling my mind. Unfortunately, my mental energy has been so much on thesis and residency work that there hasn't been much room for thought on artwork.

Last night I sprung out of bed at 1am, rifled through my scrap bin and found a hand-dyed handkerchief i didn't know was in there. I quickly ironed it and pinned it to the square of pieced vintage fabric from my Gran's stash that has been pinned to my design board for a year now. That was enough to let me go back to sleep. Sometimes having the "studio" at home is a good thing.

This morning I basted the two fabrics together and grabbed scissors, needle, and thread to bring along on a road trip. We took a little family day up to Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty. Two hours in the car allowed me to begin some reverse applique on my fabric sandwich. The problem with the pieced square was that it was too busy to accept decorative stitching on top. The soft pinkish/yellow cotton over top provides some resting points and structure over the randomness of pattern. I'm not planning this one out. I'm going to let it become what it wants to become.

Maybe something organic will get superimposed on the double grid of piecing and reverse applique. Winter trees are calling out to me again.

Here's Lady Liberty peeking through the trees.

The solstice light was too dim for the ride back home to stitch. But for the shortest "day" of the year I feel happy and productive.

Erosion Relief sculpture

2011-12-20T01:13:00.000-05:00

The 4th graders I've been working with just completed their collaborative erosion relief sculpture project. It's all made out of colored corrugated cardboard and lots of hot glue. They've been learning about water and its effect on landmasses and vice versa. They learned about contour and concentric shapes- we imagined our scissors on the paper were like the erosive forces of nature on rock. Each layer in the relief sculpture is connected by coiled paper columns.

Tomorrow is my last residency day before winter break. There have been lots of crafty things going on around here (including a slight origami obsession).

Winterbird collage project

2011-12-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

This week I'm getting ready for an ornament workshop with a crew of 4th graders to be hosted over at the Northern Liberties Community Center/NLArts. One of the ideas I came up with was a "Winter Birds" ornament. I've drawn 7 different birds that are commonly seen in Pennsylvania during the winter months, including blue jays, chickadees (both shown below), sparrows, red-breasted woodpeckers, cardinals, titmice, and the ever-present pigeon. We'll use the bird templates I've made and magazine collage paper to create colorful birds with a small clothespin to attach them to a tree.

Start with a piece of rectangular cardstock (I used cereal boxes) that is slightly larger than the template, find magazine images that fit the coloring of each bird (look for interesting textures), and glue magazine pieces to both sides of cardstock with a gluestick, trace template onto magazine/card sandwich and cut out. Extra collage elements can be added on to make birds more dimensional or detailed.Use white glue or hot glue to attach bird to small spring-clothespin.

To see all 7 birds and get the templates click here for a pdf. I've never offered a pdf before-I hope this works!
I'm intending this for 4th graders (they should have decent scissor skills), but even my 6th grader thought this was a fun project.

Quaker Medallion

2011-12-11T01:34:00.000-05:00

Last year I wrote a paper about Quaker schoolgirl needlework for my History of Art Education course. My professor mentioned recently how much she enjoyed that particular topic, (perhaps wondering why I didn't expand on it for my thesis) so I decided to make a little medallion for her as a parting gift. All my grades are in and I'll be officially granted my Master's degree in January! Goodbye Academia!

Anyway, back to the medallion.

Medallions like these show up in the samplers from the Ackworth Friends School in England. As 18th-19th century Friends were quite the travelers, these designs spread quickly among Quaker schools from England to America. The ornate medallions may seem to contradict the "plain-ness" expected of Quaker needlework, but their monochrome colors still make them acceptable. They are often seen as half-medallions around the border of a sampler, but the half-medallions are easily adapted into a full circle.
I generally dislike doing cross-stitch, but it was kind of fun to follow this radial design. I really only used the pattern for the first quarter, and then just copied the quadrants. I used the pdf pattern available on Needleprint, a wonderful resource for Quaker schoolgirl designs. I left out some of the doodads in the pattern and used the remaining negative space for a monogram. With only the botom part filled in it has taken on a slightly heart-shape! I used a slightly variegated red/red-violet DMC thread for some subtle color shift that makes it look a bit older or more handmade, on a tan aida cloth for an antique look. I expect to turn it into a little stuffed ornament- now if only I had a bit of red and white toile for the back- it would be perfect.
This kind of monochrome stitching makes me want to get back into some blackwork....

Art and about

2011-12-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

Normally I'm teaching on all the official opening nights around town, but since we have a bit of a break now, I was able to make it out this past Thursday night for "Second Thursdays" at the Crane building. It was a perfect night out with my family (they found quite a bit of amusement along the way while I checked out the art). It was also a great surprise to see art by some friends plus a huge exhibit of children's artwork!

Printmaker Rebecca Gilbert was showing work in the Inliquid hall. I first fell in love with Rebecca's work when she was showing at Nexus a few years ago, and I own a small woodblock print of hers. These blew me away, though, because her woodblock technique has become so refined as to give them the appearance of soft watercolors. Most of these prints, she said had around 12 layers- her color gradations are therefore so subtle that the edges of the reductions are almost imperceptible! Another formal aspect I enjoyed was the use of shadowboxes and cut layers of prints to create a relief image. It echoes her process of carving into the wood to make the prints, and then carving up the prints again to prove the layers. Her larger pieces were cut out and mounted on foamcore, which gives them a more demanding presence than if they had remained confined inside their paper boundaries.

The panning image, below, was especially impressive. I enjoyed her concepts, too. The imagery included panning for gold, coins, mud pies with buried treasure, and a child building an intricate worm house. To me it spoke of creativity, innocence, and wishful thinking, but also a kind of naivete about how money is made or life is sustained.

In the University of Delaware Gallery there was a group show entitled "Decadence". I was pleasantly surprised to find the work of Pazia Mannella, a former fibers instructor of mine at Tyler. She had one of her zipper pieces upstairs, but downstairs was an installation in shocking fluorescent pink.

One first sees a curtain of crocheted plastic spilling onto the floor. The irregularity of the netting reminds me of camouflage, but the color screams for attention. The color and the inclusion of a few plastic hair barrettes in equally bright colors have a girliness to them. Behind the curtain there was a wall piece of crocheted plastic encrusted with the hair barrettes. I preferred the density of the barrettes on the wall pieces over the random addition of barrettes on the curtain, for when amassed they transform from object into texture. This kind of hair barrette are found in litter all over the city- they snap open quite easily. They remind me of certain students I've had with their hair plaited into hundreds of braids, each with one of these barrettes on the ends making music as they walk or turn their heads.

They create a fascinating texture together. I'm reminded of Sonya Clark's use of haircombs. I'm excited to see some new everyday materials in Pazia's work, and I wonder what she'll incorporate next.

Also in the exhibit was a pedestal covered in cake plates and cloches. Upon each was a beautiful "cake" made of fire crackers by Timothy Belknap , another instance of the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary. I'm reminded of birthday candles that can't be blown out, as well as the "can't have your cake and eat it too" analogy. We can have the beautifully constructed cake or we could have a sizzling display.

The Ice Box and Gray space were taken over by the Mural Arts Program Artists-in-residence and their student work. It took a moment to understand that the work in the Ice Box was indeed children's artwork. Many children's art exhibitions try to jam as much of each student's artwork in at once so everyone is represented. This was installed more like a gallery installation of professional artists- very well-edited. The dynamic installations show the power of collaboration and creativity that can occur in a residency.

The "ransom note" above was about 8 x10 feet big. I wonder if it was done on parachute cloth and we're seeing it before its final installation on site. I was excited by all the variety of color, pattern, and typography in it.

These 2 pieces reminded me SO MUCH of the "weight of the world" project I did with my high school kids last spring- object drawings in charcoal and figures collaged together! They're amazing. I want to go back and look some more at the individual drawings.

My favorite piece by one of the residency artists was this one by Marcus Balum. This was the piece I saw that made me want to go home and WORK. It's the scale I want to be working at. It's cityscape. It's exactly what I needed to see that night.

The opening reception for the Mural Arts exhibit will actually be next Thursday, December 15th. I highly recommend going to see it.

It's so great to be going out to see art again! Now that my thesis is finished and grad school is coming to a close I feel so free to work on my own stuff, see friends again, and get out and about. It's wonderful!

Looking for texture

2011-12-09T17:36:00.000-05:00

I spent the morning with a friend in the conservatory at Longwood Gardens down in the Brandywine Valley (someday I wish I can live down there...). It's a hot and humid building to escape to on a cold day. It was bright and sunny out and the light throughout the greenhouse was gorgeous. Especially in the "silver garden" full of cacti and succulents. They have such interesting textures- it's always a favorite spot to photograph

Lots of the ferns are in hanging baskets over the pathways around the conservatory. The root systems are as interesting as the foliage...

I've been thinking about pattern and texture a lot as I prep for the silkscreen on fabric class I'll be teaching in the winter. Maybe something here will inspire me...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2011-12-08T23:21:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and decided to be productive. Shouldn't every day start off that way? Well, I intend to every day, but things don't always work out like that. TODAY, they did. I finally got some signs edited, printed, and laminated for the silkscreen studio at Fleisher, and then headed over for a day of printing. When I'm working in the silkscreen studio I always marvel at how much I can get done. It's the accomplishment that comes with the mentality of "going to work", which I lack when I'm working on art at home. Ah if only I could afford a real studio- imagine what I could get done!

After finally finishing up the Y and K layers of a print I've been working on a 4-color process image I decided to make my Christmas cards as well! I cut down a sheet of 30x22 Rives BFK to get 20 pieces of 5x6. The final card dimension is 3x5 to fit into envelopes I already had. I made a simple flat stencil from contact paper to print a snowy hill on the inside of the card. I drew the 3 trees for the outside and wrote out the lyrics of "In the Bleak Midwinter" (my favorite Christmas hymn) for the inside on 2 pieces of duralar to use as photo stencils. I was a bit impatient on my emulsion, but it turned out okay with some masking tape fudging. (that's why they call it "masking" tape!)

The printed cards were folded in half, and the silhouette of the tree was cut away to reveal the inside hill. A final touch up of glitter glue for the snow and they're done! Of course, after writing out a list of recipients I'm wishing I'd made more than 20.... c'est la vie.

In other craftiness, I've started my annual snowflake ornaments. This year it's white cross-stitch and rice stitch (a big x with crossed legs that ends up looking like 5 crosses) on black aida cloth. There's no pattern- I'm just improvising as I go, and want every one to be different. I might look up a Quaker pattern later to make one for my grad advisor (remember my Quaker needlework paper last year? she loved it.) Freehand embroidery patterns kind of bother me- I see lots of embroidery patterns for sale on-line, but I don't see the appeal. Find any picture you want and trace it onto fabric with some carbon paper- Voila. Cross-stitch when it's linear is kind of easy to figure out. It's only the multi-colored ones you've got to get a pattern for and I would say get the software to turn your own images into patterns for cross-stitch. If you can figure out the pattern from my pictures you're welcome to it- better yet pick up some aida and some thread and play with vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines until you get a snowflake-looking thingy. Sorry about my horrible photography lately- I'm stuck with the flipcam photo option. If Santa wants to get me a digital camera I will be most appreciative! You can still get the idea though:

random moments

2011-12-04T19:57:00.000-05:00

I don't really know why things hit me as beautiful or interesting. Does it happen to everyone? Or is it just that I have a trained artist eye? Usually it's something about formal compositional qualities or because I see something abstract. So once in a while I have to stop in my tracks and take a photo- it drives my kid crazy and she tells me I'm weird. Having an artist for a mother is a great burden you know...

Anyone else see the tree? Maybe you had to be there...

One day the cloud banks made it look like we were headed into the mountains. Felt like up in New York

a walk down a different street brings different perspectives

and peeking through a fence reveals hidden views

don't forget to look down at your feet to find pattern on pattern

Art of Student Teaching Exhibit

2011-12-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

Student teaching was one of the hardest things I ever did, and so I have great appreciation for the emerging artist-teachers who put up this show. There's a reception tomorrow, Sunday December 4th from 2-4 to celebrate the accomplishments of the newest round of student art teachers at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. I got a sneak peak this past week after my thesis meeting. There's a lot of things that are familiar, but these projects stood out (forgive me- I totally forgot to write down names and schools, but if I make it over there tomorrow I'll try to catch them).

There's an awesome elementary (1st grade?) collaborative project themed "The Lion Hunt". It reminds me of a Rousseau painting with wild animals peeking out of the dense jungle. The students each drew their own lion as well as a leaf with bugs and flowers. I even like the non-rectilinear format of the final assemblage, as it looks like an exploding flower off the wall/

I think the rest of these are from high school level Art I classes, so they deal with a lot of elements and principles and could be done with lower age groups as well. I've seen a lot of mandala/radial symmetry projects out there, but this one wowed me. It combines a sort of Andy Goldsworthy approach to using elements from Nature for art, a Victorian found object collage style, and of course, radial symmetry. I imagine this is an easier project for those who have more access to natural materials than here in the city...

This project was from the same school I believe- They are organic shaped slabs of clay with various sneaker prints smushed into them for texture with color to emphasize the texture. The best thing- this was by a special needs class. I think it might be my favorite project in the whole show.

Finally, I was impressed by these large abstract pastel drawings, which apparently started with scattered torn paper across a background, which was then then looked at through a viewfinder for interesting compositions to sketch. The best sketch was then enlarged using grid method and then colored with emphasis on contrast or color and value. They're really dynamic.

I really enjoy kid art shows- especially when I see evidence of teachers encouraging creativity, process, and critical thinking. I also think it's really important for kids, families, and communities to see the artwork of children. It gives us clues into how they experience the world and what different things they are capable of. Extra bonus for us art educators out there- we get some cool ideas for what to do with our own students.

Awards and Rewards

2011-12-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I've lamented that artists don't have the equivalent of the Emmy's or Tony's or Oscar's. Artmaking doesn't build up quite the cult of celebrity that the performing arts tend to do. It's a good thing in some ways- perhaps visual artists remain more authentic and less swayed by the public that way. And no paparazzi hassling you. But surrounded by media all our lives, doesn't everyone harbor a secret desire to be famous?

I'm nearly finished my master's thesis which is on the topic of blogging for reflective practice in arts education. One thing I wrote about was how opening up your teaching practice to the world on the internet builds community and creates an extrinsic motivator to continue writing and reflecting. Time is crunched when you're an art educator- how do you make time to be in the studio let alone do all this reflective writing on top of teaching and planning for teaching (hello- I was up till 3 in the morning caught up researching for a lesson for next week). While in school we have the guidelines and deadlines imposed by teachers to motivate persistence in studio and academic work, but out in the real world we have to set up our own assignments and purposes.
So what I'm saying is, blogging is something started off in isolation, but the longer you blog, the more people read it, the more you want to blog. It's a great way to feed a healthy habit of reflection as an art educator because it sets up a sense of responsibility to your readers. You gain self-confidence as an authority on your own expertise, and you don't want to disappoint your "followers". It gives you your 15 minutes of fame and fulfills the desire to somehow be "famous".

Today I get to thank Deborah Schlegel of Art Threads for selecting me and Colored Thread for a Liebster Blog award! Blogging is its own reward, but it's extra-special to know that people like the things I have to say and share. Here's how it works:

The Criteria: The Liebster is meant to showcase bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers. This is all done in the spirit of pay-it-forward.
The Rules: You must mention and link to the person who awarded you the Liebster, and mention 5 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers who you think are worthy of the Liebster!
'Liebster' means "favorite" or "dearest" in German. This award, which originated in Germany, recognizes up and coming bloggers. In accepting this award, I agree to:

-Thank the person who gave me the award, and link back to their blog.
-Copy and paste the award to my blog.
-Reveal the 5 blogs I have chosen to award and let them know in the hope they pay it forward by awarding it to bloggers they would like to honor.

And here are my picks:

I'm a big fan of Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists. I love how she shows process and product and how innovative her art lessons are. I wish I could be a student in her class!

Experiments in Art Education is another one of my favorite art ed blogs. She shows projects that connect with themes and cultures that are inspirational and classroom organizational stuff that's really helpful. She makes me want to steal all her ideas to use with my own students someday.

Drucilla Pettibone- I love that she follows fiber traditions, uses vintage textiles, lives close to the land, and blends her love for animals and textiles so organically. I can't tell how many "followers" are on her blog, but hopefully she still falls within this category.

I always enjoy what Martha Knox at Words on Woodcuts has to share. She posts her own work as well as that of other woodcut artists. Her descriptive and critical writing is a great contribution to the world of printmaking (in my humble opinion), and I think it's a great example of how art educators should be looking at art and modeling how to discuss it critically. She hasn't written much lately, but she has a good excuse- she just brought a new member of the family into the world! I hope she'll have time soon to continue her great discourse on her blog.

And Finally, there's Cocoa Eyes the Stitcher, whose bold graphics and incorporation of printed fabrics into embroidery are amazing. I've just recently found her but I'm looking forward to more from this artist.
Here's to 15 minutes!

color fact family/notan

2011-11-28T20:52:00.000-05:00

My 2nd and 3rd grade residency kids have just completed a Notan/expanding the square project intended to reinforce their mathskills of addition and subtraction (part+part=total). We did a lesson on the color wheel and created fact families for the 3 secondary color families. We learned about geometric and organic shapes. Students practiced at least 3 different times how to draw a line from an edge, into the space, and back to the edge before drawing on their colored squares to cut out. They were encouraged to make simple shapes that would be easy to cut out, although not everybody kept it simple. The versions I've seen elsewhere on the web typically just use black on a white background, so I think incorporating the analogous color families makes a new twist.

Students glued a primary color square on the background, then glued their other primary and secondary squares together into a color "sandwich". They drew their lines on the primary side and cut out the shapes.

We glued the leftover negative space onto the background color, preferably with the secondary color showing up. Then they fit their pieces back into the square like a puzzle, flipped the piece out to reveal the primary color and glued them down. This project took about three 40 minute sessions with my second graders (including our color wheel and color fact family stages), and it took two 90-minute sessions with my third graders (with plenty of time for the color wheel, fact families, drawing practice, and looking at some artists like Mondrian, Anni Albers, and Josef Albers).

I find this notan project so visually exciting! The symmetry is like magic, and changes the composition so drastically when the pieces are flipped out. I've seen art teachers doing notan with nearly all grade levels- it's a fabulous basic design project. With younger kids it really stretches their cutting and gluing skills. Older kids could get super detailed with an x-acto knife.

I'm planning on doing notan with my 11-13 year old silkscreen students next semester at Fleisher too. Except, we'll share a square of contact paper, pass it around so each student cuts a piece out of the edge and the pieces all get attached to a screen to print from. I think I'll combine it with the zentangle idea too- after printing the collaborative print each kid will get to individualize their print with drawn texture zen-tangle style in the negative spaces. I can't wait to try it out in January!

Sun Bunting

2011-11-26T20:56:00.000-05:00

impressive stencil-making on this one

In my residency the 5th graders have been working on learning about the sun in its various aspects. We created this fabric/stencil/poster as our wrap-up to the things they've been learning. Originally we were going to do sunprints, but my experiments weren't working- it's too cold and not bright enough for sunprints to work in November!!

reflects our learning about sunlight, prisms, and color

We ended up stenciling instead of sunprinting. Once the prints were dry the kids went back into the images with Sharpie marker to add text, changing size and shape of their letters for emphasis. I brought all their prints home and have sewn them all onto a length of black twill tape to make a bunting. I thought it would be a cheery way to display them all and bring some sunshine into our winter days. One class's bunting is now complete- 38 fabric panels! Which means it's at least 40 feet long!

some talk about light and plant growth, others about solar energy/solar ovens

In Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T12:23:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

I'm thankful for a roof over my head, food on my table, and a family to share that with. I'm thankful for all the opportunities I've had to teach this past year. I'm thankful to be almost finished my Master's degree and to have received my certification this summer. I'm thankful to have inspiration and the work of my hands. Peace be with you.

This print is a linoleum cut that my 12-year-old made in her art class at school. She chose to depict Gandhi. I love how she made a sort of halo of emphasis lines radiating behind him- he looks like a saint. He's certainly a good example of how to live in peace and gratitude.

Time to sign up!

2011-11-23T17:08:00.000-05:00

The Fall session at Fleisher has just ended, but I'm already working on plans for the Winter session! Course offerings are available online and registration (after a brief technical hiccup this week) will open up on Monday, November 28th.
For kids I'll be teaching my usual Saturday afternoon silkscreen for 11-13 year olds. I'm planning on a T-shirt project and a reduction print among other things. Lottery forms are available online and must be turned in by December 2nd.

I'm also scheduled to teach a Wednesday after school Softies class for 8-10 year olds from 3:30-5. We'll do a 2-sided critter, a self-portrait doll, and a mythical patchwork creature. This is perfect for students who live and go to school close to Fleisher or for home-schooled students who would like a fiber art experience with a certified art educator like me!

For adults I've got 3 options:

There's Monday night Intro to color theory from 7-9:30. We use acrylic paints for color exercises to build up a sketchbook for future reference. Topics include color characteristics, mixing, harmonies, contrast, symbolism, and illusions. If interested in this one, register ASAP on Monday morning- There are 25 slots, but free classes fill up very quickly.

Stitch and Surface will be on Thursday nights from 6:30-9:30. I'm thinking we'll do a mandala sampler, some block printing on fabric, and perhaps a scrap collage/fused surface, but I haven't totally decided yet. There's a maximum of 14 students for this class, and it usually fills.

My newest course offering for adults is Silkscreen on Fabric!! We'll do pigment and dye printing and learn how to put an image into repeat. We'll mostly use photo emulsion to burn images into screens to print. This is open to all levels like all my classes. There are only 8 slots open for silkscreen due to limited space, so sign up early!

Since this is a brand new course I'm doing more preparation than usual. This week 3 books I ordered arrived, and I'm in surface and pattern design heaven. I love having really good resource books available for students to browse through, and these are real winners. I'm especially happy with "A Field Guide to Fabric Design" by Kimberly Kight. She has a really simple explanation for putting motifs into seamless repeat, and beautiful illustrations of modern fabric designers' work.

It might be hard to think past the holiday season, but classes can make a great gift for a creative loved one, and just think how great it would be to have some artistic exploration to brighten up the winter season!

Stitch and Surface Fall 2011 wrap-up

2011-11-22T22:59:00.000-05:00

Another semester has come and gone over at Fleisher. I really enjoyed working with my Stitch and Surface students, who were quite a creative group. They included 2 of my former students and a member of the Fleisher staff, as well as several women with a more formal artistic/design background. Here's a glimpse at our final night crit wall:

The dress piece in the center by Glynnis may be the most ambitious (scale-wise) piece any of my students have ever attempted. She began with some thrift-store remnants including a rather interesting patchwork dress of various tribal prints. I helped her baste it onto a backing cloth, and she's been steadily stitching away for several weeks.

I wasn't sure where Lisa's piece was going for a while as at first it just seemed a random collection of motifs on the rust-printed fabric. However it suddenly made sense as she added in the vignettes containing laser-cut rubber motifs of the plane, scooter, and dog and began the meandering path at left that started connecting all the elements. It became a narrative of travel, love, and life with the base fabric's rust adding a sense of age and nostalgia.

Sandee played around with found textiles to create this peacock fiber collage. She built off of the bleach-drawing fabric we made in class and combined it with a bird print and a piece of commercially chain-stitched and sequined floral applique. The best part is the variety of stitches she used to embellish the bird and the real feather that tops it off.

Shelby has a small art quilt ready for binding (at right). She combined a rust dyed cotton print background with rusted canvas, lace, embroidery, and found objects (the iron that started the rusting!). It's subtle in color but rich in textures, and again has a an aged, nostalgic look. Her piece on the left is the foundation for a beaded piece. I love the rich complementary contrast of the orange wool and blue cotton. She began experimenting with surface by slicing the wool and weaving strips over into the blue. I like how it breaks the diptych-like boundary.

Kara loved the circular hoop format! Her compositions grew organically and intuitively, combining found textiles and tons of beading. She has a playful style, and exclaimed during our crit how stitching has been such a stress reliever! We could all use a hoop of fabric as a playground for imagination.

Brenda wowed me on the last night by bringing in a piece she'd been working on at home that used all the stitches she had learned all semester. It's a sampler piece entitled "creative embellishment" at the top. This central fabric is a piece of batik she created with my Fleisher colleague Nikki Virbitsky. She attached it to a foundation/border of Kente cloth inspired-print, and even used some reverse applique technique, cutting away the interior negative space of some of her batik motifs. I love how this piece combines work from 2 of our fiber courses and shows a lot of stitch exploration.

I was so excited watching Sarina'a button mosaic grow. I like the slow shift of value and hint of color that flows over the buttons, especially how they pick up some of the teal of her background cloth. This was a great example of how shifting the scale of a thread or bead can have a dramatic impact (and make a piece go faster!).

I leave you with Leah's delicate rusted gauze piece. It has an unusual format- long and thin. The gauze has a subtle feather pattern through it, which she very slightly "emphasized" with some tracery in a neutral thread. Select areas were cut and reverse appliqued with lace. Some satin stitch organic shapes are scattered from the top left- they look a lot like the pebbles I've been making on my own long cloth. his piece sort of escapes description. It feels ephemeral and ghost-like because of her fabric choice.

It's been a very productive season, full of collaboration experimentation, and camaraderie in the studio. I truly enjoy helping my students discover their creative voice in stitch!
I have about a month off before classes begin again. More on that another day.

Kids exhibition

2011-11-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

I'm really proud that the community arts center I work for makes time in their gallery schedule for children's art exhibitions! At Fleisher the galleries are an important part of the life of the school- we have contemporary artists exhibiting and the kids have a chance to speak with the artists about the work, and every year in the Fall the kids get to take over the space too.

My daughter has been attending classes at Fleisher for several years now. The vanitas drawings above and below are hers. I'm very impressed with how her drawing skills have advanced in the last few months. For the longest time she would just draw "fashion girls", but lately she's been doing more observational drawing. As an artist/mother it's sometimes hard to find balance between making sure she has experience in the arts without making her feel like she has to be an artist like me. Sometimes I've heard comments from her like, "It's not as good as yours". Actually I've heard that from lots of students too- kids and adults alike. Sometimes I wonder why people think they have to be good at drawing or painting right away- they wouldn't expect to be able to perform a violin concerto or score a 3-pointer on the basketball court the first time they tried.

My students' work is in the show too. Somehow my silkscreen students pulled off their license plate project:

And my fiber art students pillows look great:

It's a really great show of kid artwork. If you're in the area get over to Fleisher Art Memorial before Saturday when it all comes down. This is my last week of classes for the Fall. Saturday;s last classes will be a whirlwind of softie-making and t-shirt printing to finish up! Registration for Winter session opens up next Monday, and then I have a month off.

Sculptural silk

2011-11-17T00:13:00.000-05:00

Crispy silk chiffon has a life of its own. I didn't really impose the pleats, but danced with the fabric as it flowed under my needle and thread. They're just little pin tucks with running stitch, but they create such interesting ripples in the fabric.

I left the green pretty much untouched. It has one pleat, but someone said it looked like a piece of sky among the bark. It had to stay that way.

I wish I could take credit for the beautifully subtle color and texture on this silk, but they were dyed and printed by Wendy Osterweil. This sculptural silk is for her installation at the Painted Bride in January/February. She has invited several artist friends to collaborate on a wall of fiber "skin/bark" to be very tactile and touchable. I feel very honored to be part of this collaboration. I love stitching this silk. I love working so big, so quickly.The surface is not as labored as my work usually is. It's just enough. It's even better knowing there will be a lot of it.

This piece is about 4 times bigger than the first piece I made. I didn't add any extra embroidery or any of the teabag paper that the other one had. The color in this one has more variation and contrast and didn't seem like it needed anything extra.

It was so nice to have this quick piece to work on. This week has been stressful- thesis deadlines draw ever closer. I have spent hours and hours writing, but I need to stitch too so I can get out of my head and relax.

Button, Button, who's got the Button?

2011-11-12T00:09:00.000-05:00

ME!

My aunt let me come over and relieve her of some of her stash. I got lots of buttons (and a nifty jar to put them in), plenty of quilt cotton as well as some pieced blocks, some lovely old linen, and some flannel. I think I'll be making some pyjama pants for my daughter (and maybe for me too), a new studio apron, possibly a duvet cover, and then lots and lots of art! There was a bunch of wool I'm passing over to my sister. There's quite a bit more quilt cotton and felt I'm bringing to school tomorrow, and some fabric I think I can use for my residency kids.

My other half wasn't too thrilled to hear that I was going stash-raiding- but I think I was VERY restrained. Ultimately only one big bag full is finding its way into my studio. As an artist, it's so hard to not save every little thing that could possibly become art....

art and about

2011-11-09T23:27:00.000-05:00

I've spent quite a bit of time in my favorite local cafe, Rocket Cat, quite a bit lately. Since parking up at Temple has been impossible lately (can there BE any more construction?!?) I've selected the cafe as my go-to thesis-writing space instead of the library. This week I've been very much enjoying being surrounded by a selection of paintings by Hamidah McCorkle.

They have thin, washy color that allows the woodgrain to show through, and it seems like she "finds" the painting as it emerges from the surface of the wood, rather than imposing an image upon it. They are dreamy landscapes.

They give me a moment of calm when I come up for breath from all the words on my computer screen. I've basically got 2 weeks left to finish up my master's thesis. I'm so close I can taste freedom in the air.

Fall at Fleisher

2011-11-05T21:09:00.001-04:00

It's been a very exciting week! The program I teach in at Fleisher Art Memorial has just won the National Arts and Humanities award for youth programming! My boss and one of our students went down to DC to receive the award from Michelle Obama. Here in Philly we had a huge party with Mayor Nutter and all our after school kids. I'm so proud to be a part of Fleisher's youth faculty!

We're nearing the end of the Fall semester. Today we handed in work for our annual kids exhibition. Here are some completed projects from my fibers and silkscreen classes:

wonderful abstract shapes and stitch exploration

My 11-13 year old fiber artists made embroidered felt collages of an image of their choice. Some kids went abstract and others did animal scenes.

This penguin has a bead lollipop!

All of my young fiber artists got to use the sewing machine to turn their embroidered pictures into pillows. We used pinking shears for a nice zig-zag edge and stuffed the pillows with fiberfill before sewing them closed.

apparently nyan cat is a youtube sensation- ah preteens and pop culture!

My silkscreeners worked on a "Vanity Plates" project. They printed flat backgrounds with simple stencils, then printed the license plate border (old school Pennsy plates!). Finally they collaged different vanity plate messages onto their 5 editions using either magazine papers or construction paper. They selected their best one to cut out and mount onto a 5x8 magnet for our exhibit.

Is it Philly or is it Fly? Double message ones are best!

Hello Yellow!!

We've got 2 classes left for the semester- fibers will be trying a stuffed animal project and silkscreen will be trying to do t-shirts. Wish us luck! If you'd like to see all the projects from all our award-winning kids classes, come by Fleisher's galleries some time in the next 2 weeks! We have amazing young artists!

Have a Happy

2011-10-31T20:19:00.000-04:00

Halloween

Back to reality

2011-10-29T00:08:00.000-04:00

I wrote before about the 2 day residency I did this past week down in Chester County. Here are some pictures of the kids' work-in-progress (2 days is not enough to finish an embroidery project!!).

3rd grader "explorer" maps - we reviewed where each of their explorers started and stopped, then sttched the route and colored in ther contintents. It was very fun and easy, and will make a wonderful final detail for the explorer ships they've made.

4th grade samplers- design stage was excellent, actual stitching was tough- 4th graders aren't really ready for 18 ct Aida cloth- the project would have been better on gingham with clear boxes to x out.We encouraged trying satin and running stitch to compensate for time. Cross-stitch takes too long.

Here's a 5th grade henna hand. We broke out the sequins and glitz for the embellishment. The kids did a really great job picking out specific elements to emphasize in their stitching.

7th grader "mourning/loss" embroideries. They didn't have long to stitch, but their stitching was excellent. 7th graders can really do good craftsmanship- who knew?

In some, the "grief" theme is more evident than in others, like the pet gravestone above.

I was so happy to get to go down to Kennett Square. The landscape restores me. I wish I could live there in the Brandywine valley, with the horses, mushrooms, and hills.

Residencies

2011-10-25T23:56:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel very torn by my artist side and my teaching side. This week teaching wins- I've had 4 weeks with my one residency with 2-5th graders, and our first projects are coming to a close. Time to start thinking up some more ideas for art/math/science. The picture above shows one of the 3rd grader projects in process. Kids are learning about counting coins in math, so we made our own quarter/dime/nickel/penny symbol stamps with foam, wood disks, and wood bobbins. We talked about patterns, and the kids created a stamped pattern with their "coin" stamps. Afterward we tallied up how many of each coin they printed to figure out the "value" of their prints. The one above had so many when it was finished!
Today I was a visiting artist at a private school in Chester County- deep in "horse country" an hour outside of Philadelphia. We're focusing on art- specifically fiber art, so I'm happily stitching with kids. 3rd graders screenprinted world maps and will stitch routes for the sails of an explorer boat project, 4th is learning about alphabet samplers, 5th is learning about culture of India and doing henna hand embroideries, and 7th is learning about mourning embroideries. I was worried that the 7th graders wouldn't hook into the "mourning/grief/loss" theme- but they really surprised me and came up with some quite thoughtful images and stories for our project. I'm going back on Thursday to continue.

I'm amazed at how different learning environments can be- I teach in community arts settings and urban public schools primarily. This experience in a suburban private school is so different. I'm reminded that reality is a very subjective experience. City life and city schools are one reality, rural life and schools are another. And yet, kids are kids. And they all need art in their lives. And I'm lucky to be a part of their creative experiences wherever we meet.

Where there's a will, there's a way

2011-10-21T23:06:00.000-04:00

So there, crappy camera! I have a scanner! This is many hours of satin stitch (and netflix watching), about 3x5 inches done so far on a 6 ft long pieced section of shibori-dyed fabrics. This pebbly texture will probably take up at least a foot of length I think. We'll see- I might get tired of satin stitch. You can't tell in this slightly flattened scan, but because of the various directions of the satin stitch pebbles, the surface really sparkles with sheen.

As I posted previously, I've been thinking about the issues of natural gas drilling and fracking. Living at the bottom of the Delaware watershed, I fear we will eventually suffer the impact of the drilling of Marcellus shale in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The news and debates of the past few years have had a steady buzz of discussion about the dangers of fracking and the lack of industry oversight in legislation here in PA. It might seem a strange subject for embroidery, but it's been percolating in my mind for a while. Time to stitch it out.

Tech sad

2011-10-21T01:45:00.000-04:00

I wanted to share all the exciting things going on in my stitching and my classes, but my camera has decided to croak. I've been seeing the phrase "mercury" in my horoscope lately- maybe that explains the tech problems. Well, I don't know if it's a corrupted memory card or a failing battery, but I'm very disappointed. I've only had the camera since last May.
Ah well. This is the topic of the current embroidery I'm working on (and it's a fun video to explain a difficult issue):

Fresh off the needle

2011-10-13T12:59:00.000-04:00

I'm happy. I've been stitching a lot, that's why. On Sunday I visited a former professor of mine, Wendy Osterweil, who is holding some stitch workshops in preparation for an exhibit she'll be having at the Painted Bride this winter. She had a wealth of dyed silk organza and various screen-printed papers that she made available to us and inspired us with images of tree bark to create "skins". I couldn't wait to get my fingers on this piece of chestnut silk organza...

I started with random undulating pleats in the silk to produce a curling, sculptural effect. Then I cut and sewed on a few pieces of printed paper in leaf-like sections. I only sewed them down on one side to let them flap a bit, except for one circular printed teabag that made a "knot" as you can see in the top image. Finally I used some ecru pearl cotton to stitch concentric lines in running stitch which look a bit like woodgrain. I think this piece is finished, and it looks very nice when pinned up to the wall. I forgot how fabulous silk organza can be.

Also this week, I completed the panorama cityscape stitched line drawing. Now it just needs to be blocked and bound. I have a few pieces lying around needing the finishing touches. In fact two more small embroideries and a giant collaborative piece are waiting for some binding.

I'm looking forward to doing some more pieces for Wendy- maybe bigger next time. In the meantime, I better finish up some final details so the studio (haha- try the kitchen table) doesn't feel cluttered.

PS. It's Philadelphia Open studio Tour time- this weekend is East of Broad studios, but I don't know if I can go to anymore studios without feeling totally jealous. My artistic self is feeling cramped and stifled working from home...

Songstones

2011-10-08T22:44:00.000-04:00

My mother and sister finally recorded the album of hymns, lullabies, and family camp songs they've been longing to do for a very long time. I helped "produce" it by paying for a few hours of recording studio time for a fun, professional experience. My dad and I played backup on a few songs, and Drew Lawless provided guitar accompaniment. My mom wanted to title the album "Songstones" like milestones, for the songs she selected mark specific times in our life as a family.

Yesterday on a family walk through Wissahickon park I played a bit with some photos. For the ones above I painted riverwater onto the rocks. And the one below I arranged some sticks and stones. The sun was near setting and the color of the light was beautiful.

For something different I have a shot of a mini waterfall in the rocks which line the path.

And a more literal "milestone" from Forbidden Drive.

Let's see which image they like best- or maybe some readers would like to chime in and give an opinion.... Then I'll be able to play graphic designer and compose text and the playlist.

Fading color

2011-10-06T12:01:00.000-04:00

my sample strip with dots and stripes. I didn't leave the bleach gel on too long, and I've got subtle pink left behind

Last night was so much fun! I had my Stitch and Surface students experiment with rust dyeing and bleaching. The previous week we dyed a piece of fabric using the low-immersion method in multi colors, so there's a range of color there. Then last night I asked everyone to bring a Clorox bleach gel pen to see if we could get some bleached out drawings on our fabric. We're starting an abstract pattern project, so this will be a great first layer to work with.

I really like Shelby's experiment with a variety of morphing patterns

There's a diiferent effect when you drizzle vs. scrape the gel on. These were left longer and there's yellowish color left behind

Oh that Havana Brown dye!!!! Bleached to a greenish yellow.

Here's the wall of everyone's results. If you try this at home, make sure you are in a well-ventilated area and wear gloves to protect your hands. Use this on cotton- no silk- and work on a protected surface that won't be damaged by the bleach. Normally when bleaching fabric you'd want to dilute the bleach- and this was definitely NOT diluted and it was a very FAST bleach-out. It only took a few minutes for the color to leach away and we immediately rinsed off the bleach gel in water. This effect worked best on darker fabrics for high contrast results. Commercially dyed or printed fabrics took a little longer- the hand-dyed was best.

Unfortunately it's kind of an expensive process- the bleach gel pen cost me $2.99 and only covered about a yard of fabric before being used up. However, the instant drawing tool aspect of it being a PEN with dual size tips, made it very interesting to work with. And the fact that it was in gel form, not liquid made the results have more definitive edges.

Art and Science residency

2011-10-05T00:21:00.000-04:00

Last week I began the first of 30 sessions as artist-in-residence with 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at a school in Northeast Philly. We started off with an intro and some sketchbook exercises. This week we got to do some ART, which means I'm a basically art on a cart with how I have to manage materials and work in regular classrooms. My partner teachers are wonderful and accommodating, and I've worked with them all before, so it's been smooth sailing.

My 5th graders are studying the sun and shadows and elapsed time in science and math. To integrate the subjects we started off with this "water-color" painting. We practiced drawing ellipses to remove the fear of drawing a bottle to start off. Students used flashlights to project and trace shadows to mimic the sun's effect am/noon/pm. We also talked about prisms and rainbows and how light is refracted into the spectrum, but in paint the primary colors help put the rainbow back together again. So here are the results so far:

I love these. I'm so happy I got them to DRAW and PAINT! Usually I just do fiber art with my residencies. I'm branching out a little. Next time we'll talk a little more about shadows and form to paint our bottles. It was a feat of organization and direction following to keep the paint this contained in the beginning! Part of me wants to keep them as is. What's up with the heavy-handed drawing of 10 year olds? Or all kids? I tried so hard to get them to loosen up and sketch like their pencils were feathers, and sketch with the arm not from the wrist, but it didn't really work...

You can make a difference for Philadelphia sculptors!!!

2011-10-03T19:00:00.000-04:00

A fellow Moore Alumna and Fleisher Faculty member, Darla Jackson, is an amazing sculptor, and she is trying to raise matching funds for the Knight Challenge award for which she has been named a recipient. Unfortunately, she can't receive the grant until she raises the matching funds!!

Darla's vision is to open up a Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, where artists can have access to woodshop, metal shop, casting rooms, safety and technique classes, paying member fees similar to being part of an athletic gym. For sculptors without studio space, or the necessary equipment to achieve their creative potential, this will be a godsend.

So. Here's where you can help: Darla has set up a Kickstarter donation site to gather some of those matching funds she needs. She has some awesome gifts (um, like a shoutout in their next beatbox video with baby O'rae or your very own Darla Jackson sculpture among other things. How awesome is that??!) If not enough people donate, you will not be charged, but I really hope my donation DOES go through to support this wonderful resource for artists here in Philadelphia. Go here and pledge!

Magic feathers

2011-10-01T20:46:00.000-04:00

Off they go! 12 feathers are on their way to Jude's Magic feather project. I hope she likes them!
Now I have to think some more about my local collaborative project.

What am I doing?

2011-09-29T17:07:00.000-04:00

I'm not very happy with myself today.
I have to write a thesis by December.
Bear with me here, I'm reflecting out loud.
Somehow I don't mind spending time writing on here, but academic writing seems so daunting.
I can't let all the wonderful other things in my life like teaching and making art stop me from getting my masters degree by procrastinating on a 50 page paper.
I've not been posting on here regularly. Sorry...
I'm notorious for sharing images of work without crediting the source. Here I am trying to write about blogging in art education for my thesis and I'm a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen. (so is it okay if blogging is different from serious publication- is all this sharing of images in social media ok? Yeah, probably not.)
Research is not just description- there's got to be some analysis.
I can't let myself get so distracted. It's so easy to wander away from writing seriously when there's my blog, and email, and facebook, and news, and other people's blogs to check in on. I bet writers got more done before the invention of word processing and the internet. Maybe I really need a typewriter.
My brain jumps off into so many directions at once, that making something linear feels unnatural.

I made this over at Zefrank's scribbler. My "Thesis" is somewhere in this one:

Yes, that is my brain right now. It's a mess of ideas and emotions. And this doesn't really help me, as I'm not a single sentence closer to my goal after this post. I need a good kick in the pants.

Hey Jude

2011-09-22T11:20:00.000-04:00

My fabulous Stitch and Surface students finished up their feathers for Jude and brought them in this week. I can't wait to send these off to her!

In creating these feathers we talked a lot about various forms of collaboration. Personally I think collaboration is a vital part of being a contemporary artist, and including collaboration in the classes I teach to both adults and children is a form of community building and social consciousness-raising.

I'm going to wait till next week to mail these off in case any last contributions arrive. Then I hope they'll show up on the pages of the Magic feather Project. For more info go HERE.

Portraits, feathers, and collaboration

2011-09-21T00:14:00.000-04:00

It's been one of those weeks when I've done nothing but stitch- in other words- a good week. I've been feverishly trying to finish the portrait that has been a UFO for a year. I think... maybe... I can call it done. There are a few things here and there that bug me, but are mostly due to the inaccuracies of my initial applique, not the intense stitching that went on top of it. I can't bear to tear out stitching. Most of the piece is done in seeding and chain stitch. It's a bit awkward working from a sepia photo of a person you've never met.

My Stitch and Surface class kicked off last week and everyone seemed very happy to get to make a feather for Jude as a way to jump into our 10 weeks of stitching.

These 2 are my contributions. I made them both on a patch of the 4-squares from my great grandmother's stash. The top photo is of a ring of 4 in Jude's Magic feather style (but in some bright colors). The ring of 4 got me thinking about cyclical time and how I was stitching on something my gran stitched on too.

The single feather is a little more my style. I've been finding a lot of feathers outside the past few mornings. There was a nice pigeon feather on the sidewalk this morning that I'm recreating. It's almost done. Hopefully my students will have all theirs finished by tomorrow night and I can wing them off to join the others over at Spirit Cloth.

It's exciting to participate in collaborative projects- especially when they come through this technological medium of the internet, something that sometimes seems cold and impersonal, but which enables the world and our sphere of influence to shrink to something comprehensible and more human.

Speaking of collaborations, the collaborative stitch bombing project got some love over at Craft Gossip. Thanks everybody! PS: the piece of glass at bottom right in the photo was affectionately dubbed "the breast"- it was the bottom of a wine glass with just a nib of the stem sticking out and looked just like a nipple ;)

Stitch Bombing!

2011-09-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

So, you're walking (or jogging, or biking) down the path along the Schuylkill Riverbank. This is a daytime shot, but maybe it's getting on towards dusk, and you've got to go under these dark sections of bridge- just a bit creepy.

You're halfway through the underpass, and something catches your eye.

Wait, what? What is that? Is there something stuck in the fence?

Oh cool-that's all fabric and some shiny stuff over there.

Woah! that's all stitched onto the fence- and all those pieces are stitched onto the fabric- cool.

Huh- those bits and pieces are all glass and trash and stuff. Weird. But that's pretty interesting. hmm, why would anyone bother?

And you walk away. And you're thinking. And the place isn't as creepy as it used to be because you saw something- dare I say- beautiful?

Or that's what you would do if you were me and think some graffiti is really art and you actually look at stuff in your environment and get transformed by how beautiful this gritty city can be.

This is a project I've started doing with my artist friend Johanna Marshall. Last week we gathered the bits and pieces of debris from the path between the art museum and the 676 bridge. We shisha stitched all the pieces onto blue fabric to look like Nazar beads, and then met up again today to sew them all onto the fence. We got 23 pieces onto the fence. There were supposed to be a few more, but I didn't dig deep enough in my bag to get them all out. The Nazar symbol is supposed to ward off evil or danger, and we're planning on doing these in spaces that seem like danger zones to transform them.

It took about 2 hours to sew them on. A freight train went by 8 feet from our faces. Lots of people passed by without comment, but I saw a few back glances over shoulders and a few smiles. One guy tried to sell us a bike for $10. On our walk over, waiting for a light to change some lost-looking tourists walked by and I successfully gave them directions in French to get to the restaurant they were searching for. It was a truly beautiful day.

Where it's at

2011-09-11T22:05:00.000-04:00

All I can say is "Wow!" I went out to see some gallery shows last night, and started off with Little Berlin's show "Where It's At- Viking Mills Artists", which was a group show curated from the studios of artists in Viking Mill, which Little Berlin is now housed in. I feel like Little Berlin has really been taking things up a notch lately. They have a great new whitebox space, albeit off the beaten track, and this show really impressed me.

Reese Juel's spiderweb of reclaimed fiber strips was like a bulls-eye. Where's it At? right here. I wondered if this piece was going to evolve throughout the show- there was a huge ball of wound strips still connected to the spiral, ready to keep going. The ball was probably supposed to help connect the wall piece to the floor piece, but I could have done without the floor piece. It's a challenge to elevate simple/recycled materials and push them past their trashy boundaries. The web could have done it. The floor collage of cardboard and notes and scribbles didn't, although that's probably where her ideas were illuminated. I know I was immediately drawn to the fiber piece just because it was fiber, but this installation was a good bridge piece between aesthetics among various parts of the show.

There was some great sculpture in the show. Jay Hardman had several scale-model like constructions. One above) was like an architectural model for the aftermath makeshift building of flood disaster times, but so pristinely crafted. I love well crafted things. His pink lattice piece, below, was so simple in comparison, but had its own power. It reminds me of James Turrell light made solid and textured.

Ally Crow had a small-scale sculpture in carved bleached maple. I actually would have liked to have seen this piece on the wall instead of propped on plexi on the pedestal. I bet it would have great shadows. This kind of intricate carving thoroughly respected the material, but created a sense of fragility and tension, which is surprising to see in wood. It reminded me a bit of heart ventricles and veins. Aggh! I just visited her blog where she has much better pictures of this piece on the wall (great shadows- I knew it) and shown as a MASK! Now I like it even more.

Another fragile sort of piece was the wall of portraits on paper by Emily Kane.

The portraits walked a fine line between caricature and sensitivity. I liked her grouping of them- like a family tree or like a screen full of facebook friend suggestion thumbnails. they're all awkwardly stuck with each other. A light coating of beeswax soaked into the paper gave them an aged look- like old photographs.

I'm curious to see where Little Berlin goes in the next months and years. Their whitebox is beautiful, but their old space in its raw state and compartmentalization was so inviting for innovative installation. This show was really put together- is that a reflection of the artists in the show or new blood in the membership? I guess we'll see.
If you haven't been to Little Berlin yet, check it out. It's worth the visit to Kensington and the labyrinth of Viking Mill courtyards to find their enclave. Viking Mills is at the corner of Hagert and Coral st, just across the street from Coral Street Arts house.

Nature is winning

2011-09-11T02:10:00.001-04:00

Here on the East Coast things are very wet. I wish we could send some of our moisture down to the Southwest. It doesn't seem fair to have all this flooding when other places are having drought and fire this time of year. At the supermarket today there was a sign apologizing for the lack of fresh green beans due to weather and crop problems. ..
So anyway here are some recent photos that I'm finding inspiring:

Amazing mushrooms are sprouting everywhere. These are at the John James Audubon Center- an amazing place to visit if you've never been.

I love ivy-covered buildings. I used to live in an apartment with ivy covering all the windows.... but that also brought tons of ants all over the house. Ah well, I'll admire this wall on Frankford and Susquehanna and keep the ivy off of my walls. Actually at my house now it's the morning glories I have to contend with.

The Schuylkill river is raging. There's a small waterfall behind the Philadelphia Art Museum and just south of boathouse row. This week, standing at the pavilion overlooking the waterfall felt like standing at the edge of Niagara Falls with the incredible quantity of water rushing by.

The pathways along the river and near the Waterworks are encrusted with bracken. I went looking for glass and metal bits for a new project I'm doing, but the debris was mostly natural, with only floating objects like foam, plastic bottles, and a surprising number of balls (tennis, beach, soccer, etc) among the sticks and seeds. The number of seeds was amazing- a reminder that disasters like floods and fires are sometimes a necessary part of the cycle of life which spark new growth.

This beautifully patterned wrought iron staircase normally leads to a short path with various sculptures depicting river life along it- but the bank, the walk, and the sculptures were all completely submerged. Huge tree trunks and more bracken were caught up along the bank, looking like beaver dams. It's awe-some and scary- a dangerous kind of beauty. I think it's what "sublime" means.

In the whole man vs. nature dichotomy, nature is definitely winning this week.

Planning another 10 weeks of Stitch and Surface!

2011-09-08T14:19:00.001-04:00

My next session of Stitch and Surface starts next week, so I've spent the morning planning my syllabus and deciding on projects to do. It's a class that often has students come back for more, so I'm always looking for ways to keep it fresh. There's always some kind of sampler project, a surface design technique, and an extended image project. I aim for 3 total finished projects, but sometimes people end up only doing 2. Embroidery is an art not to be rushed.

We're going to start off talking about the communal qualities of the history of stitching and begin with 2 pieces to participate in group collaborations. I'm going to have everybody create a feather for Jude Hill's Magic Feather project. It's really lovely watching all the feathers float in around the world to Jude's call, and I think my students will have fun participating. Here's hoping for 15 more feathers for you Jude! Then I'll have everyone make a shisha patch for a collaborative fence tagging project I'm doing here in Philly with a friend. Since most people rarely show up with proper supplies the first night, this will put something into their ready hands right away.

In honor of Fall, I thought we'd do a leaf rubbing Sampler piece. We can start with using dye pastels for the rubbing and then practice various stitches for texture and detail over it.

The Wind Challenge exhibition will be on display, and first up are artists Alana Bograd and Sarah Steinwachs, both working abstractly. Sarah's work is especially entrancing with many layers of cut paper patterning. So I think we'll visit the show and use her work as inspiration for an abstract layered pattern embroidery project. Before that, though we'll try out some rusting and bleaching on fabric to get a base layer of color and pattern on fabric for our surface design technique.

And finally, if we can squeeze it in, we'll satisfy my current obsession with mosaics and do a bead or button encrusted piece.
The fun part about teaching, of course, is trying out all the stuff you wish you had time for in the studio, but never try for fear of veering from the "Body of Work" you're committed to. *sigh*
I think it will be a fun semester! The class is full, but I'll be teaching a new one in the Winter and Spring sessions at Fleisher, so keep your eyes peeled.

Polly and Pins

2011-09-05T18:19:00.001-04:00

The Artist's Life: Polly Apfelbaum from NYFA on Vimeo.

I love Polly Apfelbaum for color and fabric and playfulness.
I've joined Pinterest and have been exploring- it certainly has potential. I like it visually too- all the square thumbnails of pictures people like. I just started, but here are my boards.

Now back to my stitching marathon. I'm laboring away on Labor Day.

Some more black lines

2011-09-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

My summer camp work is over and I have a few moments to breathe and think and make some new things.

I'm doing a Philly skyline embroidery. I've been happily stitching on this in the evenings for the past few weeks, just drawing in black thread. It's very hard to share, though- the actual size is about 4 inches by 30 inches. It took 3 scans to composite the above image, and the huge width makes it hard to post in blogger. I've still got about 6 inches to finish stitching to bring the view back around to the Delaware river.

It's mostly whipped backstitch with some seeding, isolated chains, and french knots for foliage. I'm enjoying the panoramic length despite the documenting difficulties- it satisfies my love for the small scale while allowing me to work "bigger".
This weekend I'm picking up a standing embroidery frame- slightly scary to imagine I'll be making things large enough to require one, but it's free and will offer new possibilities.

How I spent my summer vacation

2011-08-27T21:49:00.000-04:00

Summer vacation? Nope! I've spent the last few weeks of my summer running an arts camp in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia out of the community center. We've had about 50 kids each week. During the first week I helped the kids create sets and props for their Friday performance. This week I helped run a puppet class, but both weeks I was in charge of organizing the teachers and kids and keeping things running smoothly. The teachers came up with the projects they wanted to do with the kids, so I can't really take any credit for the resulting work here, other than perhaps helping to brainstorm options with the teachers. I was really happy with how that worked out this year- instead of planning every little project myself, this delegation gave the teachers more ownership and autonomy in the lessons. I had a great staff to work with, and they created fun art experiences for our kids. We gave the kids a lot of choice as well- they were able to select 2 out of 4 options for arts activities in the morning, and 2 out of 6 options for afternoon play activities.
The mosaic above and below was created by our 11-13 year old "junior counselors". They worked on an art project in the morning, played "reporters" to document the week of camp, and helped out with the kids in the afternoons. For their mosaic they used tiles and sculptures that never got picked up after our wintercamp activities last December. Their mosaic creates a frame for us to post signs or pictures in the future and it brightens up a very dull wall to greet passersby.

We invited artist Matt Leines to do some jointed puppet-making with the kids. They are almost life-size characters that use brads to connect the limbs.

The kids started by brainstorming character types, animals, and emotions. They then created their own characters combining several ideas together. Our younger group was very inspired by existing cartoon characters, but the older kids were very inventive.

Our painting elective teacher, Natasha, had the kids do self-portraits in watercolor, a background/environment painting in tempera, and a large collaborative mural.

The 5 and 6 year olds were learning a lot of different printmaking techniques. They did fingerprint characters, cardboard shape printing, and cut paper stencil printing, which were all combined in a group mural.

Our sculpture elective teacher, Kelly, had the kids do air-dry clay realistic objects, and some found object sculptures as well. My favorite one was this "laptop computer" straight from the stone age.

In action art, the kids made paintings with balls, toy cars, and toothbrushes as painting tools in Pollock-inspired pieces, mobiles with cut paper shapes, chalk drawing on the wall following music prompts, and a zen garden in our gravel-filled yard.

It's been a busy 2 weeks of art-making with kids. The schedule makes me commiserate with school teachers getting back into the swing of things. Hopefully it helps the kids get back into a school frame of mind too.

One more week left- we're supposed to be taking lots of trips. Right now we're waiting out a hurricane.

Softie roundup!

2011-08-21T21:17:00.000-04:00

For the past 6 weeks I've been teaching a softies class at Fleisher for adults. Here's a glimpse of some of the creations my students came up with. We had 3 main projects: a set of "building blocks" of simple shapes to help teach some pattern and sewing skills and spark the imagination; a simple silhouette 2-sided piece with painted or stitched embellishment, and a final multi-limbed piece.

I posted my porcupine and floppy kitties before, and here are the last 2 sample pieces I made for the class. The gray kitty was a more sculptural/tailored piece, unlike the very simple shapes of my previous kitties. Unfortunately his back paws were angled wrong and he didn't stand up the way I wanted. Back to the drawing board. But it was nice to have a piece that required some adjustments, as it offered an opportunity to show how to fix some construction mistakes. The puppy was a quick handsewn felt sample I made in order to demonstrate a button joint. His 4 legs rotate very nicely. It was great to get to make a few softies and take a time out from my everyday studio work- I'm not going into business any time soon, but they're an awful lot of fun to make.

These are a collection of dolls one of my students created. She started off hesitantly with a simple pattern she found online (the red-dressed one on the left), but then went to town finding patterns and making all different kinds of dolls. She mastered hair and clothes, and expressions. I think she prefers machine sewing over hand-sewing, but she really got a lot done that way!

I had another prolific student who took each of the projects and expanded them with her imagination and creativity. She made all of her pieces in a nice fleece fabric, that was so soft and cuddly it makes these true "softies". These were mostly handsewn. The doll and frog both have button joints and are very poseable. The bird required some pipe cleaner mechanics to make it stand independently.

The sweetest piece was this little, handsewn felt and corduroy bear made for a new preschooler to be his nap-time buddy.

I hope my students enjoyed the class, and feel confident in their ability to transform their imagination into their own pattern pieces. It seems like they're off to a good start.

I'm on a little break from Fleisher for a few weeks until the Fall semester begins. If you're interested in Fall classes it's not too late to sign up! I'm teaching Color theory and Stitch and Surface for adults, an after school basic design class for 11-13 year olds on Wednesdays, and a fiber class and silkscreen for 11-13 year olds in the free Saturday kids program. Spread the word!

Stitch and Surface intensive

2011-08-15T00:01:00.001-04:00

Last week I spent every day from 10-1 at Fleisher teaching the week-long Stitch and Surface intensive to 12 fabulous ladies. For the week I had a theme of photography as inspiration, but it branched out a bit and we squeezed a LOT of stuff into 15 hours of work over 5 days. We made:

a doodle-inspired sampler to see how drawing marks and stitch marks correlate
a cyanotype on fabric
a shibori-dyed piece of fabric
a handbound book to hold our handouts and sketches
a final project utilizing our cyanotype fabric or something else

Kathleena used lace as a negative, stitched the outline of the shapes in orange double running stitch, added a dancer copper pin, a gold shisha mirror, and a beaded fringe eventually it will have a backing fabric like a banner and some more stitches and objects. It was a very experimental piece without too much pre-planning. Sometimes allowing your creativity to flow out can lead to great things. You just have to be open to it.

Bonnie had a beautiful photograph to work from of a seascape looking down along a cliff. It felt Irish or Northern Californian. She created a hand-drawn negative on mylar, and added lace at the top for a combination print. Then used a very painterly approach to her stitches for color and texture.

Donnetta had a lovely book of Vermeer paintings and created a hand-drawn negative on mylar for her "Girl with a Pearl Earring". She then took another painterly approach using satin stitches for the planes of the face and head scarf. A lace frame in the cyanotype contact print completes the composition.

Ellen had a book of botanical photographs in black and white. She photocopied a page and cut a paper stencil for her negative. It created a bold silhouette for her cyanotype which she then filled in with satin stitch, fly stitches, and backstitch with an eye for light and shadow in color.

Kathryn had an acetate negative of a forest mountainscape for her cyanotype. She then created a scrapbook-like foreground frame in fabric collage for color, and stitched a trompe l'oeil twig below the photo. She'll add more detail into the cyanotype, but it's a very soft-looking memory image now.

Julie announced at the beginning of class that she didn't like to hand-sew! But she ended up with a lot of embroidery after all. Her inspiration was a magazine fashion photo. She did make a hand-drawn mylar cyanotype print, but ended up scanning the photo and digitally printing it on fabric to add to the fabric collage. She used a lot of fusible web to applique the fabrics, but will add more stitches and embellishments later. I love all the color and pattern in this one, and the experimental way she went about building her image.

Nicole tried out the cyanotype, but for her final project did a straight embroidered image. This abstract-looking composition is actually a reproduction of a microscope view of liver cells. It fits so perfectly inside the hoop, I told her she should use the hoop as a frame like many DIY embroiderers are doing.

This last project was done by Mary Elizabeth Nelson, who teaches the book arts class at Fleisher. She had a real goal to learn as many stitches as possible, and explored each one in a series of sampler composition pages. It took some problem-solving to think about how to do each stitch on paper instead of fabric, since in paper you need to prick your holes prior to stitching, and too many holes can cause perforation and tearing (no satin stitch!). She ended up with 4 complete sampler pages which she bound together with vellum covers and interleaves between the pages.

What a productive week! And what creativity and individuality! I've probably said this lots of times before, but I feel like I've done a good job if everyone's voice shines through the projects, and they don't all look the same. Now I've got to come up with something new and wonderful for the Fall session!!

A bold black line

2011-08-14T00:17:00.000-04:00

I've been stitching up a storm over here ever since I was informed of an exhibition opportunity for February. I'll be having a solo show at the Shipley School's gallery, and I want to have new work for the show. My past 2 years of grad school have been more focused on education than studio work, and the studio classes have projects that aren't always related to my preferred focus of medium or subject matter.

So to that end, I've begun at least 2 new pieces- both long, narrow cloths. One will be a vertical river-like strip, and this one will be a horizontal panorama. I've been quite enamored by a spool of black tatting-weight thread lately, and have been enjoying drawing with it on cloth.

This skewed view is a night's worth of whipped backstitch to draw the Ben Franklin bridge and Camden waterfront onto some red silk I cut off my wall piece. The whole piece will be about 3 ft long and only 4 inches wide. I pieced together the panorama from various screen shots from Google street view, traced it onto vellum as a pattern, but forgot my transfer paper, so have been free-handing it. I really like line drawing in thread, and a whipped backstitch makes such a lovely line.

For the past week I've been teaching a morning intensive Stitch and Surface class, and the black thread was brilliant on this yellow arashi linen. This is my demonstration sampler which built up as I showed students individual stitches. The bits of color are either Shisha embroidery or reverse applique pieces. I love, love, love reverse applique....

The spool of black thread is nearly exhausted. I'm going to have to run out for more soon. I wonder sometimes how many miles of thread I've stitched in my lifetime...

Itajime results

2011-08-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

My shibori students at Fleisher were wowed by the results of their itajime/clamp resist shibori dye experiments. Clamp dyeing definitely gives dramatic and graphic results compared to the more organic tie dyeing and pole wrapping we've done so far. We also added in the fun of overdyeing some commercially printed fabrics from the scrap pile.

The center one above reminded us of skyscraper windows at night- it had been extensively pleated and clamped with binder clips.

The long piece at right above was clamped with wooden blocks, one of the largest shape sets we had, and gave a very bold butterfly effect

I really loved the snowflake results above left- showing that the wood cutout aisle at AC Moore can yield some interesting resists.

The red and blue pieces above both used a variety of plexiglass shapes and interesting folds for great variety and repetition.

This blue piece was really the most incredible! I'm wondering if anyone can guess what was used as a resist....

On Monday night we also revealed our sun-fade shibori. On the second night we had taken pieces of very dark solid-dyed fabric pieces out to the parking lot and bound them with tape resists, cardboard shape resist, and thread to various poles in very sunny spots. The hope was that if we left them long enough, the sun would fade the exposed areas. We probably should have left them one more week, but there was still some subtle fading occurring on the pieces. Enough to prove the experiment worked!

There's only 2 more weeks left. I'm hoping my students will put together some interesting final projects with the fabrics they've created. I really love dyeing fabric. It's an indulgence to get to teach this class and do some more myself.

Some more softie fun

2011-08-01T11:09:00.000-04:00

The great part about teaching a class sometimes is that I get the fun of making samples. The Softies class for adults at Fleisher is halfway finished, and I've been able to make a few myself to demonstrate specific skills. Below is a porcupine softie. He was made by drawing a pattern, tracing and flipping onto white broadcloth, using black fabric paint to create detail and texture, and then cutting out, sewing, and stuffing. He was a sample piece for the idea of a 2D silhouette shape becoming a 3D object when stuffed.

For my porcupine I actually asked on facebook for ideas from my friends what animal I should make. The person who responded is getting to keep this one.

My 2 kitty cats are sort of a sample piece. I'm going to use them to show how to make a more complex and multi-limbed construction. The ears, tail, and legs have to be sewn and stuffed before being inserted into the head and body pieces, and then the head and body are stuffed and joined together with a blind stitch.

I made these two for my niece's twins, because they got so excited by my student's cat softies I'd also posted on facebook. There's a calico cat which reminds me of my mother's cat, Putter, and a tuxedo/musical cat which is a lot like my own cat Jolie. They're an awful lot of fun to play with as a pair, especially when someone discovers a mouse finger puppet in my sewing nook, and ends up playing cat and mouse and laughing with me all night.

Adults shouldn't forget how to play- it's important to play with your kids, and the ability to play is a key component to artistic and creative thinking!

Process color experiment

2011-07-26T00:21:00.000-04:00

I've been doing screenprint for quite a while, but with my kids I usually teach using freezer paper or contact paper stencils to block the screen. I rarely venture into photo process with them because the added complication of coating screens isn't direct enough for my pre-teens. Personally I really like the hand-drawn qualities of using screen filler or the boldness of cut stencils. So I've never really done any 4 color process in screenprinting, and it's been niggling in my subconscious that I really should know how to do it.

So I started off with a photo I took at Cumberland and American Streets of the trash-strewn lot in front of this beautiful mural, and doctored it a bit in photoshop to boost contrast and saturation. I also tried to format it so it looked kind of like a Polaroid or one of those IPhone instamat pictures (I don't have an Iphone and I so want to try out some old-timey photo aps). Then I proceeded to get totally lost in Photoshop trying to figure out how to do the color separations!

Google to the rescue! I found this fabulous video tutorial that not only goes step by step for doing the separations, but also showed how to build the image back up to check if it was done correctly. Check it out. He's a little rambly, but it's slow enough to follow easily. I also kept stopping and starting so I could do each step as he described it. And here's the result:

That's my re-built image in CMYK. I'm hoping to burn my screens tomorrow, and then I can try it out with ink on paper. Unfortunately it probably won't turn out as perfectly as my lovely Photoshop play.

My very last grad studio!

2011-07-25T15:27:00.001-04:00

For the past 3 weeks I've been taking an intensive 9-4 bookbinding and print portfolio class at Tyler to fulfill my very last graduate studio credits! I'm both happy and nostalgic to be so close to the end of my master's studies (I want to be a perpetual student). But here's what I made this past few weeks:

We tried out a few different bindings including a Japanese stab binding, an adhesive flip book, and several maze books. I already knew how to do the stab binding with odd number holes, but now I know even-numbered holes as well (start at the top hole instead of the center). I've got my maze books corralled in a little purple sleeve with a notch clasp. We also learned how to construct various boxes, so my first book got a little purple magazine-style box/sleeve, and I also made a map-covered box just the perfect size for holding folded roadmaps.

My first real book was printed as one large image, below, and cut and folded into a little maze book. It has the map printed on front and back, a river-like path in green, a bicycle-chain path in purple, the words "Who is in the driver's seat?", and all of the various modes of transportation that have been a part of my life. There's my little red tricycle, my dad's big white van, a school bus, an Air France plane, a PATCO train, my first car (a chevy corsica), a SEPTA bus, a Turkish airlines plane, a Bosporus ferryboat, my white Jetta, and my current bicycle.

I'm very happy with how layered it is.

I also like how it starts and ends on a bicycle- the mode of transportation I love the most for the sense of freedom it gives.

Printing and finishing that up took up the first two weeks, partly because I missed the mornings of week 2 due to teaching camp. But the final project fulfilled an idea I've wanted to do FOREVER.

It marries my love of origami, coptic binding, color theory, and pattern essentials. I printed a gradation of flats from cream to dark brown, then printed subsequent layers of crosshatched stripes on the exteriors. The interiors have a gradation from pink-orange-yellow-green-teal- and purple shifting from stripes to squares to triangles in increasing complexity and back.

Each page (56 of them) was folded into an origami book that springs open and snaps shut revealing a surprising interior to these rather formal and monotone exteriors (got to watch out for the quiet ones).

The great part about the coptic binding is that it allows the pages to flex, snake-like. It's a very playful book/sculpture.

In critique, my professor noted how meditative it was- the layering of the print colors, actually crosshatching the print instead of printing crosshatch screens, all the folding, the one-by-one process of coptic binding, and the motions the viewer must go through to view the interiors. Seems I can't get away from that meditative process. It's the same as stitching- all that repetition and slow building of something.
I could use some meditation.

My "wall"

2011-07-24T15:18:00.001-04:00

In March of 2010 I began the biggest embroidery I'd ever made with this little sample piece as inspiration:

It sat in a corner untouched between August 2010 and June 2011, much to my chagrin because I absolutely HATE unfinished objects (no UFO's allowed in my house, haha...right). But i finally picked it up again, pushed through to the finish line, and here it is:

You can see my wall "Girard" at the Fleisher Faculty Show now on display through August at Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine Street, Philadelphia. There's lots of other amazing work by my fellow faculty including 2 other embroidered pieces. Check it out!

Critter Softies 2011

2011-07-23T15:16:00.000-04:00

It's summer art camp season! Critter Softies was such a hit last year, that we offered it again this summer at Fleisher. I had 8 kids aged 8-10 join me for a new adventure in fiber art. We did felt finger puppets, a 2-sided marker detail creature, and a multi-part patchwork creature. Here are some of he results:

I loved this monkey (that's a lot of marker coloring since we started with white muslin), and this patchwork duck. The duck's wings were left unstuffed for some flop, and the felt beak was sewn on before assembly so it would also stick out and flop a bit.

My one boy in the class made this "sick dinosaur" complete with thermometer, bandaids, blanket, and tongue sticking out. His felt creatures include a family, 2 dinosaurs, and a house for the family to hide in.

The rainbow unicorn was quite a feat to stuff with those skinny legs and the clumpy fill I got from DickBlick. I've now discovered that brand names in stuffing matter- Polyfil and Crafter's Choice are the best- nice and squishy.

The turtle at the top there ended up being a 2-headed turtle because I didn't catch her in time to remind her to flip her image for the 2 sides to meet up properly. But her teddy bear turned out really well.

This turtle had a whole patchwork of felt squares to applique on for the shell, and the bunny rabbit had a very complicated selection of patchwork that she planned out before we could sew it.
The kids were incredibly focused for a whole week of softie-making. It's always a bit of a whirlwind because I do all the machine sewing for them. But I love getting to be a part of their creativity and help them bring the visions of their imaginations to life!

This summer I'm also teaching a grown-up softies class. We're 2 weeks into a 6-week class, and there's already been some fabulousness I hope to share soon.

Wheatpasting!

2011-07-10T02:12:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy week writing thesis, starting a new bookbinding/printmaking class at Tyler, planning summer camps, etc. Today I took time out to complete a project I started with the artist-in-residence we hosted at Kensington Culinary arts High School during my student teaching this past Spring.

Students learned about portrait photography and created emotive expressions. Our artist, Alana Bograd, discovered a global art project started by French artist JR, recipient of a TED prize, where people could upload portraits and have them printed and posted back to them in poster size to be installed in neighborhoods around the world.

We had permission from the owner of the building across the street from the high school to wheatpaste our posters on a wall facing the school. Our Print Center artists, several teachers from the school,a few students, and even the Principal showed up to help with the installation. It was very messy and windy, but very fun and exciting to see these huge portraits lining the wall.

The Inside Out project to me seems to be about making the invisible visible, making voices heard, helping people take ownership of their neighborhoods and culture. How often do you hear something positive about urban teenagers? These kids' photos are larger than life and stare back at the school. Most of them were seniors who have now graduated and some of whom are on their way to college. I hope some of the students next year (if the mural lasts that long) feel inspired by it. I hope the students who participated feel proud to be present in their neighborhood. I hope the posters don't get defaced....

JR says, "Art can change the world."
I believe it.
Here's to changing one little corner of Kensington.

Multiple Perspectives

2011-07-01T22:55:00.000-04:00

I'm in full thesis-writing mode. Since my topic is about use of blogs in reflective practice for arts educators, it makes sense to walk the talk here. So here's where my head is at this point:

Reflective Practice requires taking multiple perspectives on a situation or experience. Like Duchamp’s cubist "Nude Descending a Staircase", the reflective artist-teacher takes a look back on a 4-dimensional experience(teaching being a time-based activity) and critically revisions it to fit together the multiple vantage points into a new understanding. I'm liking this cubist metaphor, and I wonder if/how I can fit that into the paper.

I'm also enjoying my moments of image connection to my research. It makes sense to me as a visual artist to use images to illustrate my ideas- it makes my thinking more concrete. By documenting my thought/images I can look back and track the train of thought.... Haha! more reflective practice! There's no escape!

In other news, my Wall piece is complete and delivered to Fleisher for the annual faculty show. I'll post some pictures of the final product once the installation is complete!

Reflection

2011-06-29T14:31:00.000-04:00

I played with the Thinker image, mirroring it, because that’s what I’m thinking about right now. The resulting image is even kind of brain-like! I'm working on writing my thesis, which will be a story of Reflective Practice, which to me means thinking about what you do, visualizing it, interpreting it, critiquing it, in order to improve your practice. By documenting what you do and how you think you can become the observer and not just the subject, take a step away from what you do in order to analyze it. By putting it on a blog and sharing with a wider public you create an opportunity to hear criticism, praise, commiseration, and suggestions for an additional outside observer to confirm or deny your perceptions. This also expands your community of practice from the narrow level of fellow teachers in your school, district, or acquaintance to a community that includes the nation and even the globe. Art teachers are often in the minority within a school, and need to find other ways to discover a community of other art teachers. Artists are often isolated in the studio and need to open up to a wider community to share with.

As an artist I think it's great to make art or sketches that document my thinking process as well. Visual Thinking. It's even a newfound research method to document the development of the researcher's ideas. This mirrored image took me less than 2 minutes to make in my laptop's Paint program. It's taken me longer than that to write this description. I wish I could just make a thesis of images and not 50 pages of words!

Picking things up again

2011-06-25T17:50:00.000-04:00

I was trying to figure out what work I should put into the annual Fleisher faculty show this year, and decided I REALLY wanted to try to finish my wall piece. This was started over a year ago for a final project in a surface design class I took at Tyler. It never got finished, because... well it's humongous for an embroidery. It's probably more of an art quilt than an embroidery. I hate having "U.F.O's" hanging around, so it will be a huge load off of my artistic subconscious to have this piece completed.

Above is part of the front and below is the back side. It's mostly silk, and it feels so wonderful between my fingers and draped over my lap as I work.

Below is little sample sketch piece I did when I started the project.

The final one is nearly complete now. The red and cream areas are finished. The blue has begun. I'm doing a large scale whipped lattice work over the blue section, but I think I'm going to crop the piece a bit to narrow the blue. Then I'll bind it and have a velcro strip attached on the back side for mounting.

Working with the dyed silk is making my fingers very itchy to start m shibori dyeing class this summer. It's running but still has some room. It will be a 6 week course incorporating various shibori dyeing techniques, an embroidery stitch sampler, and a final embroidery or quilt piece to incorporate the dyed fabrics. Monday nights through July and August! I'm also offering a soft sculpture course on Wednesday nights, but need more students for it to run. Sign up at Fleisher's website! Classes start July 11th!

Residency wrap-up

2011-06-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

Well, you know I've been busy when I haven't posted in a while. But today has been my first completely free day after completing my month-long residency at Comly elementary school. I worked with one Kindergarten, one 2nd grade, two 3rd grades, one 4th grade, and two 5th grades. Each group got 5 days of 90 minute lessons with me, except 5th which got 10 sessions to cover both a math integrated project and a social studies "Liberty Bell" project. This residency was a pilot for a more extensive Artslink residency next year for math, science, and arts integration funded by a federal grant through PAEP. Here's a look at the projects we did:

The Kindergarten class was working on various number models like 3/three/***/1+2 all mean the same thing. To focus on that we created number mosaics. Students drew their numbers large and fat onto 6 inch square canvas boards and colored them with warm colors in the numbers and cool colors in the background. We used warm color buttons to mosaic over the numbers, cool color buttons in the background, as well as a combination of sparkly sequin shapes and small pompom fuzzies to represent their numbers in another way. Sparklies were a huge hit with the 5 and 6 year olds, and it was a really fun, colorful project. On the last day we also did a directed drawing, where the students suggested shapes and followed directions such as "Draw one star, two circles, three triangles, 4 squares, etc. but could draw them wherever and whatever size they wished. After following directions up to 10 shapes they got to complete the drawing however they wished. there was a lot of counting practice in counting out buttons and sequins, and arranging our mosaics in an array helped us count by 5s.

The 2nd graders needed to work on telling time. We started off making a group demonstration clock with numbers 1-12 in warm colors, and counting 5s around the outside of the dial in cool colors to help them remember to read the hour first and then the minutes. Then they planned out a 4-square organizer to tell a time story. For each sketch in their time story students created a fabric collage with fabric marker details. On the last day we affixed each collage onto a long black felt banner like a film strip. Each student got to get up and tell their time story to the rest of the class to conclude our experience.

The 3rd graders needed to work on probability. Each student made a die and selected 3 colors to arrange on the 6 sides in either a 2/2/2, 3/2/1, or 4/1/1 combination. They then rolled the die 100 times and made a tally mark for each color they rolled to prove that the probability predicted by their combination really worked out. On gingham fabric we marked an array and graphed out the colors according to their totaled tally marks. Once their arrays were colored in we could guess which combination they had selected based on the color proportions. Some students were a little more creative and arranged checkerboards of colors like above. Once they'd marked their grids the students did cross-stitch X's to mark each tally mark in their picture/graph. On the last day I mounted each embroidered graph onto a 4-inch canvas block, and students drew a bingo-like gameboard so that they could continue using their dice for a game.

The 4th graders needed help with calculating volume of geometric forms, so we created needlepoint cubes out of plastic canvas and yarn. we did a lot of measuring and calculating of both length/width/height, surface area, and volume as we created our cubes. Students had to do at least one 1 centimeter stripe on one side to show that we were calculating in centimeters, and were supposed to use a different color on each side to help keep track of measurements. The needlepoint took a long time during the HOTTEST week at school- so hot that the district surprised us with 2 half days. If I were to do this again I'd have pre-cut sides and perhaps just have them construct the shapes by sewing the edges together to save some frustration and be able to get to more manipulation of the cubes. It was just a very ambitious project for a short period of time.

I've already posted the 5th graders math project, so here is the final product of our social studies Liberty Bell project. This project included a field trip to the Liberty museum in Old City, Philadelphia. We started by making 3-inch papier mache spheres in the students' favorite colors to represent the self who enjoys civil liberties. We then discussed the importance of respecting each other's space and right in order to enjoy our own and created the yarn spheres by wrapping yarn over balloons and painting them with glue. The small spheres were wired and suspended within the larger yarn spheres which make up the body of the bell. In envisioning this I imagined how bubbles can share boundaries but are very fragile. We moved on to learn about the Bill of Rights and students brainstormed what rights they would like to have. "No Bullying!", the "Right to Sing", "No taxes", "Right to Jobs", "Right to travel" were some things they came up with, and then designed either text or images to go with their ideas. These we stitched onto blue-jean fabric, something strong and classically American. I made a patchwork out of their embroideries to cover the yoke of the bell. Finally we talked about the "pursuit of Happiness" and students posed solo or in groups to express joy, hope, and dreams. I photoshopped

Actual construction of the bell fell to me, and I've spent a great deal of time on site at Comly this past week just building the sculpture out of the elements the children made. It's on a 42 inch square base and stands about 6 feet tall. I braced a 2 inch dowel into the base and rigged a supporting structure of basketry reed to hold the spheres together. I used a lot of wire to secure everything together. It was finished the day before the last day of school! It will be moved this week for an event at CBS3 downtown, and then taken over to the CONSTITUTION CENTER for 4th of July festivities. I'm super excited to have made a piece that will be displayed in a museum. It's a rather eclectic bell in terms of materials, but it was a successful collaboration.

Now to refocus on my thesis! No vacation for me!

RIP FiberArts Magazine

2011-06-13T23:37:00.000-04:00

I am so so sad. I received my VERY LAST issue of FiberArts magazine in the mail today with a notice that they will no longer be publishing the most wonderful magazine ever. I've subscribed to FiberArts for over a decade and it has been highly influential to me as an emerging fiber artist. I even had a letter to the editor published in it once. I never got around to submitting my own work to them for publication and I seriously regret not being brave enough to do so before now.

Goodbye FiberArts. This is a blow to my genre of Craft.

Graphic Tee collaboration

2011-06-13T01:16:00.001-04:00

This past semester at Fleisher, I teamed up with Liz Latham who teaches the teen Digital Photography course on Saturdays upstairs from where the screenprinting studio is. We arranged for our students to collaborate as designers and production team to create 2 layer graphic Tshirts. Her students took photos and manipulated their images in photoshop to make them bolder and more contrasted for print. My students designed background symbol layers to print in color. It was an interesting process of brainstorming, voting, and working together. I burned the screens with the teens' designs on Thursday and we were able to finish all the printing on Saturday.

The images were mixed and matched, and the images turned out quite interesting depending on which symbol they were printed on.

The meerkats and graffiti over the happy face is my favorite. In fact, I went and bought a Tshirt for myself today so I can print the graffiti one. (The great benefit to photo screens over paper stencils- the image can be reprinted easily!)

Of course the one drawback to photo screens is the extra prep time I spend coating, exposing, and then after printing having to reclaim them. Ah well- definitely worth it this time! These are the best T-Shirts I've seen my young screenprinters make yet! Collaboration is key. Talking them through symbolic imagery was extremely helpful. Democracy in action in my classroom studio! Can't wait for our next session. I have 2 morning screenprinting camps being offered in July at Fleisher. One is for 11-13 year olds and the other for 14-18 year olds. Go sign your kids up!

My pint-sized screenprinters

2011-06-12T01:14:00.000-04:00

After 2 weeks of no class due to Memorial day and an art streetfair, we finally got back into the screenprinting studio with my 11-13 year olds this afternoon. I'll post what we worked on today in a separate post. Today I wanted to show the final results of their multi-layer collaborative prints, which were turned into individual collages.

Students were encouraged to "Break the Rectangle". They were allowed to choose whatever size base paper they wanted, so some are only about 10 inches across, and one is at least 2 ft across.

They were reminded about geometric vs. organic shapes and encouraged to use arrangement of color as a way to organize composition and to consider the connection and movement of lines to direct the eyes around their image.

We discussed abstraction and the difference between representational and non-representational imagery.

The kids were a little unhappy with edges popping up due to insufficient gluing, so we coated their final images with gloss medium. It makes them very object-like I believe.

We had fun naming what we "saw" in their abstract images. The one above reminds me of a mother and child, and the one below is boat-like with its red prow and stern and black sails.

Through this project students learned all about the screenprinting process and various ways to block screens to create an image. We learned a LOT about the Elements and Principles of Design. Most importantly, students learned to collaborate in the process.

But after all that collaboration I was very glad to give them a chance to make something all their own. We did not use printmaking so much for making multiples in this case, but for generating a wide range of source material for our collages by layering over different prints each time.

I love how varied their shapes are as a result of this printing and collage process. I think kids this age tend to rely on symbolic shapes like hearts and peace signs, but they really pushed themselves to make something new and all their own.

This semester concludes one whole year of teaching screenprinting to kids at Fleisher. I've evolved in the process, and it keeps getting better and better. It's truly been a great semester in the studio with my teenybopper screenprinters!

New work

2011-06-05T18:56:00.000-04:00

While chained to my sewing machine last week making the pillows for the 5th graders I took some time out and stitched together a new background piece. I've still got lots of pieces from my gran's old stash and now have two more compositions stitched up. This one is a 9 patch arrangement of her 16 patch assemblies. There's a shift from greens into blacks/tans/blues. Staring at it on my inspiration board I decided the colors were representing city girl (me) and farm girl (her). It's basted to sandwich it to a piece of soft white recycled sheet cotton on the back. I've started some sashiko stitching over the "city" portion in a grid pattern. I'm thinking interlocking circles over the greens.

Here's a blurry pic of my gran from a snapshot that fell out of a book my mother gave my daughter yesterday. It was taken in 1949. I wonder what she would think of my quilt appropriations...

New Residency

2011-06-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

Life is busy as usual! Last week I began my Artslink residency at Comly elementary school in Northeast Philadelphia. This is the same school I worked in all last Fall with one class of 3rd graders, as well as last year at this time with the entire 3rd grade. This year I get to work with a Kindergarten class, a 2nd grade class, a 4th grade class, two 3rd grade classes and two 5th grade classes. The focus this year is art and math integration.

I've just completed my sessions with the 5th grade where the kids were learning about surface area. We reviewed the difference between geometric shapes and forms, learned the formulas for calculating circles and rectangles, and created a stuffed cylinder pillow form with block printing and radial designs. The kids designed a styrofoam block in order to print a horizontal and vertical line on the rectangular fabric for their cylinder wall to represent length and width, and they drew circles with a diameter or radius line incorporated into a radial design to remember the formula for calculating area of a circle.

Yesterday we used up 10 lbs of polyfil to fill up 30 cylinders!! The kids learned how to sew the openings closed, and we reviewed all the concepts we had covered. It was a fun project, and they really like this semi-functional object they made. It did take a lot of personal time, though, ironing all the surface designs to heat set them and sewing all the seams on my machine to save classroom time. But that's also the gift of being a teaching artist, they also get something of me in the work.

This week I've started with 4th grade on a volume project and 2nd on a time-telling project. Some of the math concepts are easier to devise a project for than others....

Arts Educators and Blogging Survey

2011-05-24T21:48:00.000-04:00

Hello! I'm trying to find out more about how arts educators (including art teachers in schools, art instructors in community centers, and teaching artists) use blogs as either readers or writers. So if you span the arts and educator spectrum in any shape or form and you have ever read a blog, I'd appreciate your taking the time to complete this 10-question survey. Your answers will help me out as I work on writing my thesis for my Masters of Art Education from Tyler School of Art. My paper deadline is August 1st! So please click on the link below ASAP. Thanks!

Click here to take survey

Stellaaaaaaaaa!

2011-05-16T22:52:00.000-04:00

For the past month my teenybopper screenprinters at Fleisher have been layering and layering prints in a round robin abstract exchange inspired by the prints of Frank Stella. Students learned about positive and negative space, geometric and organic shapes, lines, and color as well as representational and non-representational abstraction. Students worked in different pairs for each layer to learn how to work cooperatively. They also learned how to block screens, register, and clean up properly sharing responsibilities.

Their first layer was a full page rainbow print using only mylar strips and tape to block the frame. Not all the prints were clean and smooth rectangles, but the resulting textures were interesting and didn't interfere with any intentional imagery. It helped them get the hang of printing and working together.

Their next layer used designs cut out of contact paper to block the screen. Most of these shapes were geometric, and they had to decide whether to make their image a positive or negative print by choosing what part of the contact paper to place on the screen. They also had to work together to plan their design and how their own shapes would complement their partner's. Before printing, students picked out 4 different backgrounds to print upon, making all of these original monoprints- no editions.

The third layer was based off of organic shapes primarily. Students again planned designs with their partner, decided on positive or negative space, but this time cut designs out of freezer paper to use as a block. These were intended to be much simpler than the previous designs. Again before printing, students selected 4 different prints to layer over.

The fourth and final layer was more individual. Prints were exchanged yet again. This time students drew on the screen with caran d'ache water soluble pastels and pulled transparent base over the drawing to monoprint over their images to introduce the element of line.

So these images show a selection of final prints that resulted through this process. Students selected one print to keep as is. However, the other 3 prints they owned were carried over into one more process....

The prints were cut and glued into abstract collages, breaking the rectangular format. And for those images you'll have to wait, as they haven't been photographed yet. On Saturday the kids had a critique about the final works. They especially liked the opportunity to cut up their prints to turn into something else. We also had fun seeing images in abstraction.

Emerging

2011-05-15T23:53:00.000-04:00

The semester is over and I'm slowly emerging. This past Thursday I had my final portfolio review with my graduate advisor, two art ed professors, and a fibers professor. I had an opportunity to share the art I've made in grad school over the past 2 years and discuss how the studios I took have impacted my work and process. After a half an hour review, they conferred privately, and then brought me back in to announce that I passed my portfolio with distinction!

There's still a thesis to write and one more studio intensive this summer. Slowly, slowly, and yet all too fast, graduate school is nearing completion.

I'm toying with the idea of considering blogging as a reflective practice and tool for art educators(especially teaching artists) as a topic for my thesis. The more I repeat that statement , the more sense it is making to me. Poor colored-thread has been neglected lately- I'm not reflecting enough perhaps!

The viewers speak!

2011-05-09T11:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the Big Reveal of voting results for the Battle of the Sexes at the Delaware Art Museum. My Brick House piece was on display with only my last name on the label to obscure gender identification. According to the viewers my work is pretty feminine:

Votes in the 60% range were pretty ambiguous, though, so I'm kind of pleased to have tricked some viewers despite the work having some fiber included. Fiber was definitely considered "female" by voters, whereas tech-based and print-based work was deemed more "male". Here's a list of all the artists who participated. I'm in great company:

Finis!

2011-05-07T00:10:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed from my lack of blog posts, I've been rather busy this past week or two! That's because it was the final run to the finish line of my student teaching experience. We installed an had the "Art of Student Teaching" Exhibit at Tyler with a reception last Sunday of nearly 500 attendees! 2 of my students showed up, thankfully. Here's the layout of my wall:

My kids' sculpture projects were a big hit. Sculpture doesn't get much play in schools because it takes up so much space, but the kids really love it and need it.

Here I am with my wonderfully supportive co-op teacher:

After a last week filled with paper writing, binder completing, presentation giving, and very little sleep, I'm exhausted. Today was my very last day, and I'm so touched to hear how disappointed my students were to learn I was going. I'm really going to miss them, and it's nice to know they'll miss me too. As I drove away from school I said to myself, "I'm done!", but instead of relief it was bittersweet.

Next up: adventures in residency artistry and a printmaking studio class. Oh yeah, and my thesis. It never ends. And when it does I'll be sad.

Train of thought

2011-04-21T02:08:00.000-04:00

I went looking for images of the African dance masks that may have inspired Lucero's sculptures from the previous post:

Then that one reminded me of the giant monster Sweetums from the muppet show...

so now I know it's time to go to bed.

Texture sampler from my weekend in NY

2011-04-21T00:35:00.000-04:00

I'm currently enjoying a bit of a Spring Break, and managed to get up to NYC this past weekend! Mostly it was to do museum trips for my History of Modern Craft course. I went to the Museum of Art and Design to see their Global Africa Exhibit, SOFA at the armory, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Based on my photos it seems I was very drawn to textures!

closeup of rolled paper beads for Algernon Miller's "Change" hanging. The beads were made from Obama campaign literature and constructed by a women's co-op in Uganda. I think I'll write my final paper on this piece.

Detail of a collar piece of rolled paper beads by Sanaa Gateja who organized the KWETU co-op that worked on Miller's piece

Necklace of ceramic beads cut from a porcelain platter by Gesine Hackenburg. I like the heirloom made ornament idea.

SOFA was held at the armory at 67th and Park. Lots of ceramic and glass, but not much fiber =(

At SOFA Duane Reed Gallery from St Louis presented these ceramic and fiber sculptures by Michael Lucero which I'll use for my presentation in class

closeup of a wall piece by El Anatsui at the Metropolitan. The Miller piece above has a lot of similarities!

A resist-dyed tunic from Peru- I'm gathering resources for a shibori class this summer!

An incredible roof piece in the oceanic cultures section at the Met, with layered, patterned bark paintings. Incredible!

Lots of inspirations to think about. It was really exciting to see many of the objects we've covered in class in person at SOFA and the Met. I was intrigued by all of the open storage at the MET. Philadelphia Art Museum should do that. I don't get up to NYC very often, and this was definitely a great trip. I especially liked going up on my own instead of on the bus tour with the class, and taking things at my own pace.
Now, I'm looking forward to the end of this semester, the end of student teaching, and an upcoming printmaking studio class I'll be taking. I miss blogging on a regular basis! I miss time to focus on my studio. I miss going to see art more frequently. Thanks to any readers who've stuck around the last few months despite my slow post pace. It'll pick up again soon!

"one in the Crowd" project

2011-04-15T23:02:00.000-04:00

One of my Art I classes just finished their "one in the crowd" projects. It started off with a week of gesture drawing to generate lots of different drawings of figures. Then we studied perspective and students drew and painted in tempera a perspective drawing of typically crowded space using color to express mood. Finally students collaged their figures into the space using overlap and scale shift to emphasize the sense of space and placement and interaction of the figures to also create mood.

a crowded school hallway

a wacky art museum

a subway scene

another hallway

This was a challenging project for my drawing-resistant students. But they were intrigued by the one-point perspective trick, and became quite invested in their spaces. Many of them redrew gesture figures specifically for their spaces.

Spring Break next week! Then only 2 more weeks of student teaching! I'm currently planning the layout for my "Art of Student Teaching" exhibit. Here's the layout so far with a few placeholders for pieces I don't have pictures for:

I need to come up with some kind of low shelf or table for all the sculpture projects. We did a surprising amount of sculpture!

Weight of the World figures

2011-04-10T02:16:00.000-04:00

Only 3 weeks remain of my student teaching experience and we're wrapping up a lot of work. The district puts on a district-wide exhibition, the school wants an art fair at the end of April, and I have my own student teaching exhibit to mount. So we've been matting and finishing and weeding through piles of artwork. While this was going on I finally got to take pictures of two of the Kentridge-inspired collaborative works my students did near the beginning of my placement. Students helped collage the silhouetted figures and then drew objects of things they loved/hated/worried/hoped/feared to load on top of the figure.

The one above has gone off to the school district building for display. It contains some of my favorite student drawings including a graduation cap on the figure's head, a devil whispering in his ear, and a clock to show the passage of time. Below is the one I'll put in my students exhibit at Tyler. She doesn't seem as loaded down by all these things. it's more like she's offering them to us. My favorite drawings in this one are a bowl of noodles, a giant cell phone, and a bouquet of flowers.

Fleisher classes are starting up again this week! I enjoyed the little break from the crazy schedule, but it was great having a new crop of kids in the silkscreen studio today, and both my adult classes are running! Just a few more weeks of crazy to get through....

Giveaway Winner!

2011-04-02T16:06:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday, which means a winner has been selected in my little giveaway experiment. I'll have to try this again sometime and maybe get a few more takers. However 6 readers commented (thank you all!) and the random generator says the 4th commenter wins:

That would be Deborah from While I was Waiting who said:

Deborah said...

I'm a lurker and enjoy seeing both your work and your students' work. Blue is my favorite color but I would be thrilled if i won one of your pendants of any color!

So, if she'll send me her address I can mail off her new pendant. Congratulations!

In the meantime preparations are underway to do screenprinting, embroidery, and soft sculpture with my high school students next week. I'm a little nervous!!!

creeping along... and giveaway reminder!

2011-03-31T20:04:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted anything about my own work. It's still happening, just at a slower pace than usual. Being creative with kids all day long kind of satisfies that urge to make something.

My tendrils of vines are continuing to slowly creep over this piece, just as slowly as Spring is taking its time to arrive around here. So much for March going out like a lamb.

A comment on yesterday's post reminded me I haven't shared the portrait in a while either. But that's coming along nicely. Seed stitch takes a long time, but I love how it's ghosting this portrait over the quilty squares. I need to make him look happier. He needs laugh lines.

Don't forget- the comments are still open on my last post for anyone who'd like to try out for the giveaway! You have till Saturday!

Giveaway!

2011-03-29T23:36:00.000-04:00

Hello there........... I'm feeling generous today and thought I'd try out one of these giveaway things to see if anybody's actually reading this nonsense I post. I made these embroidered pendants a few years ago and have a few still floating around. If you'd like to have one of these for your very own, please post a comment with your favorite color and tell me if you lurk because you like when I show my student work or my own work or why it is you like reading Colored Thread....

I can't promise you'll get either of the ones above, but I'll try to pick one out that's closest to your favorite color that you tell me. You have until Saturday, April 2nd, noon EST to post a comment and I'll pick a name out of a hat or something. Ready, Set, Go!

Stitch and Surface embroidered books

2011-03-28T23:38:00.000-04:00

For a final project this past session, my Stitch and Surface students at Fleisher created embroidered handbound books. The idea was very open-ended, but most people chose to do a decorative cover for a blank book. Fran Schatz (above) used sun-printed fabric from last semester to embellish with buttons and couched ribbon for a "color" themed book. The inside pages are all sheets of felt in a rainbow of colors that she may continue to embroider. This fabric book has pages stacked on the cover with a machine-stitched binding down the center of the stack

Gail Corbett's notebook, "Seeing Red" has satin stitched letters and a selection of raw-edge appliqued circles from the same striped fabric tilted like sunspots on the retina. The fabric was adhered onto bookboard, the inside pages are craft paper, and it has a 3-hole Japanese Stab binding. Funny story- the last center stitch was so tough to pull through, I offered to help and ended up breaking the needle!!

Sharon Mastrobuoni created a blank notebook with an arrangement of fabric yoyo's and 4 different border stitches. Her covers were sewn with a contrasting fabric, bookboard inserted into the resulting "pockets", and final edge blind stitched closed before doing the Japanese Stab binding through 5 holes. Believe it or not we had another broken needle on this one!

Tiffany Robbins' book has satin stitched text and a feather stitch vine down the side. Her covers were adhered to book board, but she has a signature of fabric on the inside, using the coptic binding down the spine. After working on this one with her I realized coptic binding is way easier on paper than on fabric! It came out great anyway.

I love to see how my embroidery students grow and innovate with fabric and thread! If you'd like to join me next semester there's one or two more days left to register at Fleisher. I could still use a few more students for the class to run! Don't miss out on a new adventure in thread.

Come stitch with me!

2011-03-27T21:32:00.000-04:00

Tick Tock! Tick Tock! Sign up for Spring Session workshops at Fleisher Art Memorial before it's too late!

Stitch and Surface is a fun introduction to embroidery and fiber arts for those who've never tried it before, or great studio time with a chance for critique for the more advanced student. This semester we'll be doing a stitch-a-week sampler book, a Japanese sashiko embroidery/quilting project, and a few other things I've got tucked up my sleeve. It will be on Thursday nights from 6:30- 9:30 at Fleisher Art Memorial, 7th and Catharine in South Philly. I hope you'll join me for a stitching adventure, or spread the word to a friend or family member! Register here.

P.S. All these images are works by some of my past students. You'd be amazed at what you can do with some time and a little help!

"Buddha's Banana" a collaborative story

2011-03-27T01:33:00.000-04:00

Last Weekend my darling 11-13 year-old Screenprinters at Fleisher finished up their prints for our collaborative story print exchange. We started off playing a postcard game- each kid got a handful of art postcards and they had to put forward an image to fit the idea of "a setting", "a character", and "an object". Once images were submitted we voted on which ones to use and they did a "continue the story" game. So if the story below seems strange, well it just is. It's a surrealist exercise, so the results are bound to be a little odd. The kids divied up scenes to illustrate and created a 2 layer stencil print. Time was limited and only one kid got to do the final drawing layer monoprint which would have really pulled together their images. Next session I'll arrange for more "work" time.... So, let me present:

Buddha's Banana

Buddha's Banana Title page

Once in a dingy city there was an ugly woman who could not sleep.

She held a grudge against nature for making her terminally ugly and she was jealous of her beautiful neighbor.

To cheer her up, Buddha gave her a magical banana which made her extremely powerful.

But with her new powers she destroyed her beautiful neighbor's house in a fit of jealousy.

Buddha was angry and tried to convince the ugly woman to use her powers wisely.

Regretting her actions, the ugly woman put the "net of shame" over her head.

Buddha forced her to rebuild the neighbor's house and hold it up for all eternity!

The End. What's the moral? Ummmm, be happy with what you have and don't squander gifts from the Gods. Each student made 10 prints which were exchanged so that everyone would have an illustration for each part of the story. The exchanged prints were placed inside the portfolios they had made earlier in the semester.

This semester I started having the kids use stencils to block their screens instead of screen filler. We went through 2 boxes of freezer paper, but I saved myself hours of time not having to reclaim screens with screen filler. I also started having specific drawing exercises for their sketchbooks for the first 15 minutes of class instead of free draw time. This helped me target specific art concepts I wanted them to learn in order to understand composition and color.

Next semester we'll be doing an abstract layered series of prints and a T-shirt collaboration with the digital photography students. We have a break for a few weeks, but I can't wait to get back in the studio with them again!

I feel famous!

2011-03-20T01:26:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine recently visited the Woodmere museum and discovered this display of children's artwork. In the description it said that these "Teeny Tiny Art" pieces in fabric, embroidery, and mixed media were inspired by local Philadelphia Artist Marie Elcin! That's me! I feel so honored!! I feel famous! Thanks to the kids and the art educators who think local artists and contemporary artists are worth looking at for inspiration.