Artist Identity Crisis

For years I have made crazy quilts. I love them. I love everything about them. Making them, looking at them, touching them. If I could hear them or smell them I am sure I would love that, too. They are the original mixed media fiber art.

A few months ago I found myself drawn more and more to mixed media of a more contemporary nature. Those strange raggedy little fabric collages. Highly textured and passionately colored canvases. I took a calligraphy class with Lisa Engelbrecht and became enchanted with making marks on fabric. I learned about Lesley Riley's TAP, and now I want to transfer images to everything. I have two art journals and love painting and collaging in them.

And I have no desire to work on crazy quilts right now. How can this be? It is my passion, for goodness sakes. I am having the hardest time letting go and following what my heart is telling me. I should finish that big quilt that I have been working on for three years. I should finish all the other crazy quilt projects that I have in the works. I should be designing new crazy quilt projects.

But I don't want to do any of that. Will someone please give me permission to make what I want when I want so I can let go of this guilt?

Gold Foil & Painted Gold on Fabric

My local quilt shop has lovely batiks -- nice colors and designs. But the thing about quilting cottons is ... well, they don't sparkle or shine. I am all about sparkly and shiny. So, I got out a fat quarter of one of those batiks, fabric medium, jacquard sparkly powder stuff, foil, and foil adhesive.

First, I drew glue lines along the spine of the frond, then drew a few lines down the centers of the leaves. After it dried overnight, I laid a sheet of foil on it, rubbed it a little, and amazingly the glue was covered with shiny gold. Since I seldom want to stop with just a little shine, I mixed fabric medium with gold metallic powder, and painted that on more leaves. (It's a little hard to see in the photo, which I took with my iPhone and my hand must have moved a little.)

I like what I got and will use this technique again.

Pale gray twilight outlines the leafless black trees. I hear the blues coming from the living room where Bruce is setting up his ultimate iPod playlist. I sit in my studio, waiting for paint to dry and drinking a glass of champagne, looking out at wintry dusk. Barry is in Durango, and I imagine him missing Bandy and dreaming of his new Chum Bucket Red Karate Monkey bicycle, which is schedule to arrive any day now. We are reasonably happy, healthy, and productive. I am tremendously grateful for this life.

Art Journal

I am playing art with paper, paint, collage, crayons, pens, and pencils these days. I love working on my art journals for the same reason I love crazy quilting: the results are unpredictable and random. Unlike crazy quilting, however, the finished piece comes together very quickly.

The photo is a two page spread from one of my journals. I gessoed the pages because I wanted to use acrylics, then layered paint, stamping, and collage. For the collage I used an image from a Cherry Republic catalog, some torn strips from a linens catalog, and white tissue paper.

I know it isn't great art, but I am developing a finer sense of what shapes, colors, textures, and so on appeal to me. Lately, I have thought about using the art journals to explore what I'd like to put on canvas. How odd. I never imagined that I would like to paint.

Happy New Year!

Wishing you peace, love, and beauty in the coming year. And lots of time and energy to create. Joy and inspiration. Chocolate and champagne. Happy times spent with family and friends. The thighs you've always wanted. Only good hair days. Challenges. Naps. Laughter. The love of a good man (or woman, you choose.) Time to reflect. A sense of living your life well.

Spraying cheesecloth with dye

I wish I had taken more pictures because this was fun. In a nutshell:

You will need cheesecloth, several colors of dye in spray bottles, a bowl of water, and something to protect your work area, like a drop cloth.

• Unroll package of cheesecloth from cardboard.
• Do not unfold, leave it folded into multiple layers as it comes off the cardboard.
• Cut into sections approximately 12" long.
• Dip a section of cheesecloth into the water and wring it out.
• Lay it on the dropcloth. You can lay it flat or wad it up into a ball.
• Spray with your choice of dye colors.
• At this point I took the dyed piece outside and spread it on a bush to dry.
• After they were dry, I unfolded the cheesecloth to a single layer, which I will use for mixed media projects.

Notes:

1. Don't be put off by having to put the dyes in spray bottles. Get some little spray bottles from a craft store and mix about 1/2 c. of each color that you want. I put the dry dye in the bottle using a funnel, added warm water, and shook it up. It was easy and I mixed about 10 colors in less than 15 minutes.
2. If I were doing this for crazy quilting, I would use what I think is called scrim. It's like cheesecloth, but much heavier.
3. I used Dylon dyes from England because they do not require soda ash. The colors were not as brilliant as I had hoped. I don't know if I didn't use the dyes correctly or if they just won't give the results I want. I would like to try this with procion mx dyes and see if I get better results.

A mother's dilemma

When my 21 year old son told me he was bringing his girlfriend of a few months home for Thanksgiving I didn't give it a second thought. He is my only child and he has lived 750 miles away for over two years. I don't care if he brings Godzilla home with him just as long as he gets himself here.

I assumed that the new girlfriend would be smart because he likes smart girls. I assumed that she would be pretty because he likes pretty girls. And so on. What I didn't assume was that I would like this young woman as much as I do. She is accomplished, brilliant, funny, talented, beautiful, adorable, interesting, and kind.

They are very young, they are in colleges that are 6 hours apart. They both want to travel when they get out of school. I have no right to think that this will last.

So how are mothers supposed to keep from getting too attached to their children's significant others? What if she dumps him? I don't want my heart broken for me and for him. What if he dumps her? I don't want to have my heart broken for me and for her. While I think I have appropriate boundaries in most personal relationships, this one baffles me.