A Whale of a New Year

And so it goes, the years flow from one to another. Here we are in 2017 and that means it's time to assess and project all the actions in the studio.

It was a rejection from Quilt National. Expected, so I dusted myself off and entered Lady Feather and two others into SAQA's Layered Voices. That was a rejection as well. With over 500 entries each to this SAQA exhibit and the H2Oh call, my chances were better at Quilt National. I am rethinking my strategy towards entering all-SAQA exhibits. I will no longer go out of my way to create a piece for a SAQA themed show. If I have one done or if one of the ones I was planning on doing fits into their theme, good to go. If not, it won't be happening.

So this year, I am aiming at something a bit different.

I have a big goal of finishing up some UFOs this year. Needless to say, like so many of us, I have a huge pile of them. I also made a goal list for the business of art and for refurbishing parts of my studio. The later will hinge on my ability to make some money at this. First priority acquisition for my studio is an air conditioning system. Needless to say I have to sell a lot of art for that! Wish me luck!  

Some new things in the studio came as presents from Santa hubs. I have wanted to start using the Inktense pencils for a while to give depth to the fabrics I choose. So I am happy to say I dove right in with my first "new" project of the year. Each year since 2013 I have developed one of my Nature's Portrait Series with past personalities being Queen Bee, Mariposa, Empress of the Pines and last year, Lady Feather. 2017 is the year of the ocean for me. Meet Balena.

Balena is the Italian word for "whale." I have taken on a different approach to this year's personality by realizing that each character I create needs depth of understanding, not for the viewer, but from me. I really have to know who she is. So I have begun writing in journals about Balena. She is a 15 years old mermaid, a Pisces, a loner with a sharp intellect due to her voracious appetite for learning and inner curiosity. "Often quiet, she has a bond with a blue whale who always ends up showing up when she thinks about him." This is how my journal goes. It's storytelling. And I am indulging this practice in order to get a better feel for how to portray this character. 

I also am forcing myself to do several drawings before choosing which will become my major piece for the year. Some of these are Balena plays chess with the octopus (he's winning), Balena has lunch in a kelp forest, Balena hitches a ride with a dolphin. The above drawing is Balena with the whale, my first fully completed drawing.

I also decided to create sample pieces so that I get a full idea of how my techniques are working and to see if I want to make any changes to my drawings. I made a small sample to test the Inktense pencils and to get a feel for color and shading. 

And then I decided to push it a bit and see how the whale which is behind Balena would look alone. I actually completed this piece to stand alone and entered it into a show in Yachats, OR to which it was accepted. The show runs March 10-12, 2017 in Yachats Commons. My first acceptance of the year is Giant below.

GIANT

34' X 43"

January, 2017

So I am doing a dance between new work and finishing older concepts begun at various times. Here are some of the ones I hope to pull off finishing this coming year:

 ...the mountains behind the butterflies in Apollo

 ...the buildings behind the morning glory wicker bench

...and the drawing of A Child's Eye

...a portrait of love between a woman and her cat

...in Medonja Saves His Girl 

...the other mermaids in Beyond the Deep

These four are big projects partially begun. I don't have to reinvent the wheel, but there is a lot of work to do to complete even one of them. I have been plugging away at Apollo a little bit daily as I have also been drawing Balena. Once Apollo is complete, I will move to more samples of the Balena series, perhaps an octopus study next.

This is a heavy load of work to attempt. As I step down as a SAQA Rep for MA/RI in March, I am expecting a reclusive and steady diet of STUDIO-time all year long. Whoopee, just what the doctor ordered or should I say just what Queen Bee ordered.

28 Days

Setting goals and achieving them are two very different animals. Late last fall I did some planning with my mentor's guidance. Ultimately I came up with a list of major pieces I want to create this year and a calendar set for the exhibitions in which I wish to enter them. Easy enough task. I have more ideas in my head than time to complete them!

Time is a valuable commodity to an artist. I have learned a lot about what time means to my practice of art. I have never been one to seek the easy or quick way to do something. My art is evidence of the fact that my techniques take a great deal of time. The more time I put into a piece, the more technically sound it becomes. Conversely when the clock seems to be ticking way too fast, I feel the pressure and it often shows in the stitching.

My last piece was drawn, fused and stitched in 28 days. I conceived of the idea years ago but only recently did I see an exhibition come up that was a possible fit; SAQA's Balancing Act. 

My paternal grandmother was a strong woman and a very important role model for all of her granddaughters. She wasn't formally educated, growing up in rural Italy, the daughter of peasant farmers. After immigrating and working a lifetime in this country, my grandfather's social security check was not quite enough to make ends meet. So Angelina found a way to grow the cookie jar. She peddled her chicken's eggs door to door in the neighborhood along with the vegetables from their garden. Now called cottage industry, my grandmother worked hard for that extra cash.

While I had the concept firmly in my head, bringing my beloved grandmother to life was daunting. I struggled with color and fabric choices, changed the drawing, and I even altered my initial concept of having chickens hanging by beads below the bottom edge.

I spent quite a bit of time creating the chickens. I used my fabric markers to flesh out all the feathers.

I even hand stitched the ribs on the feathers, found a wonderful straw fabric and that got the marker treatment too. But as time progressed I found that I wasn't keen on how they looked with the body of the quilt. And time was running very short so I couldn't start over. Sometimes an artist goes down an unproductive path accidentally and WHAM, days are gone!

Geometric or architectural perspective is definitely not my thing so getting the coop put in took some more of my time. Before I knew it I had only one more day to finish and I ended up working all night to finish the border and binding, hand sewing it between sleepy nods of my head. 

I always take that one final critical look at each piece as I finish them and see them hanging ready to be photographed. I always see something I didn't see before and I almost always wish I had more time to alter one or two things.

With this piece, although it is emotionally dear to my heart, there are more than a few things I wish I had more time to correct. A few of those nagging self criticisms can't be altered without starting again. Maybe I am being overly critical because we all do that don't we. I'll know soon enough if it is good enough to be accepted into the SAQA exhibit. I have had a string of rejections, and without jinxing myself, if this one is also rejected, I will know why this time.

ANGELINA'S EGGS

32" x 45"

Completed 2015

Setting Goals

I have a mentor. For the year of 2015, I have the privilege of working with someone who has a wealth of information, experience and business savvy. And she is willing to part with some of that information to help me progress as a professional artist. Puts a smile on my face. 

So the first hurdle I had to face was in setting goals. Not unlike most moderately ambitious people, my first attempt at a list had way too much on it and in much too vague a way. It had 28 items on it. In my second draft I split my ideas into "artist goals" and "professional goals" but pretty much had the same amount of goals combined on the two lists. So then, as suggested, I broke what I had into "short term" and "long term" goals. This got me thinking about time, ability and reality.

As I slipped things into the long term list, I wondered if I was just tabling things that would never be realized due to lack of time. I will turn 59 in 2015. I have always found the "nine" years to be brutal and as I face the inevitability of aging, the looming 60 seems a mountainous hurdle with a hell of a backslide. How much longer will I be allowed to do this work? Will my eyes go, or my hands get shaky, or perhaps an illness or disease will table my goals. So I decided to burn rubber on the short term goals. Seize the day, right?

My business goal list has 11 items on it. My artist goals are 5. I have completed 4 items on my business list already. They were easy, relatively. I now get to dig in to the harder goals. Without listing all of them I will discuss a few key goals. My first artist goal is to create 5-7 pieces in 2015 for entering into specific exhibitions. I have now a detailed list of all the calls I want to enter with their important information, the submission due date and the piece I want to have completed for entry. While a heavy list, I will push to get all 7 done if possible. Having this list in front of me gives me a daily reminder that goal #3 which is to develop better discipline, is absolutely necessary. 

One of my business goals is to smarten up my blog page so that I can use it like a website, offering it to anyone who wants to see what I do. If you read my posts, you will see subtle and even some not so subtle changes happening. I am adding pages to my blog. One for a resume and artist statement, and one for my artist portfolio. Until I start receiving income from my art, I have to make due with an old, slow computer and I can't commit to paying for a website's monthly charges yet. As suggested by my mentor, "You don't need a website, just use your blog." Using my blog not only means adding pages, but also designing it to be a professional extension of my art. Soon you will see a redesign. It also implies that I have to be much more diligent about posting. So the simple goal of having stronger and more professional internet presence entails a moderate amount of work in making changes.

I will be talking about the progress I am making in defining and developing some of my other goals as time permits. In my next "Goal Post" I will talk about how I am developing a few concepts for articles as well as taking those concepts one step further into planning demos and teaching workshops around them.

As our professional lives as artists are so closely interwoven with our personal lives, I have allowed a certain amount of my life into these posts. I have a west coast family. My mother grew up in California with her three sisters. They all stayed in the west with the exception of my mother who moved to her husband's home town in the east. My maternal cousins are all much older than I, as my mother was the last of the sisters to marry and the last to start a family. I have seen some of my cousins on occasion, many of them I have not seen since I was very young. One of these cousins kept in touch with me via snail mail and an occasional phone call. Jeff had been battling with cancer for seven years and has recently lost his fight. In sadness over the loss of him, and in respect for his kindness, gentleness, and his sensitive, generous spirit, I honor his passing here with all the love in my heart. You will be sorely missed, dear cousin.

Jeffrey Wilson Helmer
July 15, 1945 - November 5, 2014