Wildly Wonderful

As a continuance of my previous post:

And my art? That will always be the wildly wonderful. A three month breather from stress and work was just what I needed to slide back into my little purple chair in front of the Bernina. A break to the wrist of your predominant arm is a scary thing when you use your hands for your art. About a month and a half after the break, I became strong enough to sew again. But it wasn't just all about the sewing. It was like coming to life again in the bright sun after being stuck in a fog for a very long time.

Buttons, lots of them! Tony and I took a small trip in August to our favorite vacation spot on Cape Cod for a couple of days. The Wellfleet drive-in theater is known for it's flea market on Sundays and there was this very large jar of buttons calling my name. You can see a few bakolite ones that were in it, probably by mistake, as a man sold it to me cheaply without his wife around. I love using buttons on my quilts, so this was a no-brainer. I started sorting by color in between exercising my wrist. Then we went to Brimfield in early September. More buttons. One large jar and a huge cookie tin full for only $20. So I must say a large part of my time at home was spent sorting buttons by color, cleaning them, and cutting old thread off of them then putting them into separate jars. This process started warming me up to get the creative juices flowing again.

I started looking around on line again. I had stopped just about everything having to do with creativity sometime around last year's holiday season. Checking out other people's progress with their art was making me feel a bit of a failure instead of spurning me on to work harder as it has before. My first stop was the SAQA website. I had missed the auction. Felt bad about that as I would have like to send in a piece to sell and contribute. But I was just in time to find out about SAQA's next convention which is in one of my favorite places in all of the US, Santa Fe, NM.

As you can see from the massive grin, my last visit there in May of 2004 was a happy one. I visited with a friend and her husband for 10 days and took in a lot of what New Mexico has to offer. Here I am standing in front of the statue on Museum Hill in Santa Fe. I took so many pictures with the lighting being so special there and the landscape, ruins, and architecture all so intriguing and different to this New Englander. Below is a photo of ruins from Pueblo Bonito. Shapes, shadows and lines are so interesting.

So without so much as the blink of an eye, I registered and paid for my spot at the next SAQA Convention. I have a room booked for 8 days and planned to rent a car so I can get around to more of the sights I missed in the last visit. Now with my job gone, I'm not sure how this is going to happen. A trip like this costs so much money. I may have to use money saved up in a 401K while working at the card store, or scrap the trip entirely. Just knowing that the convention was in NM was such a rush for me when I found out that my excitement level for all things art quilt rose exponentially. I took out a quilt started over a year ago that was based on a photo taken in Santa Fe and began working on it again. It will be the next post I make here as I am working to finish it. 

As I became increasingly stronger through the efforts of my Physical Therapist, Vickie, I felt an urge to express it, and she had shown an interest in what I do in the studio, so:

ANGEL
8" X 10 1/2"
September 2012
Machine stitched in commercial dyed cotton, buttons.
Collection of Victoria Moitoso

And I couldn't do this just for her when it was the surgeon, Dr. Lee, who put me back together in the first place, and both of these health professionals work in the same office:

MASTER OF HANDS

10 3/4" x 14 1/2"

October, 2012

Machine stitched in commercial dyed cotton and silk 

with ceramic beads, buttons and found objects.

Collection of Dr. Lawrence Lee

These two pieces were the first work in the studio I had done in months. While not my best endeavors, they were a key part of my getting excited again in the studio.

On a bit of a roll I decided to finish off a small quilt I started a while back which was inspired by my cousin's love of bee keeping. Judi was having a birthday and her daughter planned a surprise party for her. I just had to finish it and give it to her:

BEE KEEPER
13 3/4" X 13 3/4"
Finished October, 2012
Machine and hand stitched in commercial dyed cotton and organza with buttons.
Collection of Judi Membrino Madulka

So these few baby steps have helped me to find my way back into the studio. In a few weeks I will have much more time to work on my art. I am hoping for a good balance of work in the studio, work with my husband, caring for our home and plenty of time to enjoy life. 

 
 

  

Powerful Forces

There it is on the left side of my photo - the broken right wrist. I slipped in cat vomit in the middle of the night three days after the fourth of July. They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I don't know if I believe that. But what I do know is that in my case, it was sort of a gift or blessing, from God or the universe or my angels. Whatever. It stopped me cold in my tracks and changed the course of my and my family's life. I believe that blessings can come in any form; wildly wonderful or sometimes painful. I got a little of both. In this post I will talk a bit about the painful. Let me explain.

For five years prior to the wrist event, I have been trying to climb high enough in my retail position to afford Tony (husband) and I a little bit of ease and security. I have had many "day" jobs in my life. With a college major in fine art procured in the 70's, jobs/careers were limited. I started out as an artist in the art department of a silk screen company. Then my kids came along and the computer took over where my old job used to be. When the kids were in school I found employment for a used kid's clothing store. It was the perfect fit for a young mother. Later, and after my divorce, I found myself caring for my Mother at home. It wasn't until she passed on that I had to take stock of where I was in life and what I had to offer. I thought of going back to school for culinary arts but it was expensive and the schedules conflicted with my being a single Mom. So I found myself turning to retail and started working in a family owned fabric store. It was a great fit, however, the economy and life happened. They went out of business. So I sort of backed in to a job at the card store part time and decided to ride it out and try to move up. I did. I finally became a merchandising manager full time with the benefits my husband and I really needed. However, having a job you need to have doesn't always equate with the needs of the employer.

I really am just an artist at heart, a good Mom with some life skills but no real training in either retail merchandising or management. I was never meant to be a corporate climber. As the economy started to tank, my position became harder and harder. With less payroll available, those in management were being expected to do everything, seamlessly, quickly, and without error. Some people call this multi-tasking. I call it a recipe for a heart attack. From the end of January last year until my spill in the cat puke, I have little recollection of anything at all. I was working so hard - long hours, little sleep and a lot of stress. My studio was like a dream of another life. But I was providing for us, and thankfully I had the health insurance to cover the more than $35,000 it cost to fix my bones. What would we have done without this insurance.

Then I recovered. Having had a summer to recoup the bones and do a lot of thinking, I began to realize just how impossible my situation had become. I was looking at job listings often, feeling incompetent and developing a hopeless dread. There is nothing out there for me, calling my name; nothing I have the skills or experience to do without training. I had to return to my job with the cards. Tony needed me to suck it up and go back, after all, he works so hard that I just had to contribute. Needless to say, when I got back to the job it was overwhelming. My head was spinning every day as I tried to keep up and I was making mistakes that I never had before. I had stepped back into their busiest season and my boss had no patience for my flaws. Two days ago she asked me for my resignation. As if divorce is not enough to have dealt with in my lifetime, I now have another deep-seeded feeling of failure. It's taken me two days just to stop crying, not because I loved this job, because I was depending on it to survive.  And depression is creeping in to stay for a while; I feel it like the tickle at the back of your throat that lasts all winter long.

So you may wonder why I said something about blessings at the start of this post. Well, hard as it may be, I think this may be one of God's lesson "blessings" and may have saved my life. The stress was killing me inch by inch and day by day, driving my blood pressure to dangerous heights. I would have dropped before I quit. Tony and I still have quite a bit of stress as we try to figure out how to make up for this serious cut to our budget, but I have every faith that with both of us working together, we will get what we need. We will tighten our belts, remove the unnecessary, reevaluate everything and come up with a new list of need vs. want. Tony has wanted to develop his business for quite some time now, (he is a jewelry repair and custom design artist,) but as his work IS his hands he has never had the time. I have always looked externally to find that paycheck and the benefits that we need. But now I am thinking that two heads are better than one. I am going to step into the business with Tony and try to fill the holes and help him expand his business. Hopefully this will bring us what we need to survive and it may help take the stress away from him as well.

Life is such a mystery. We are never to old to realize that change happens and usually happens for a reason. It's a hard change for us this time, the dust hasn't yet settled. There are bound to be more issues to deal with, difficult decisions to make and there may be sleepless nights of another sort, but at least, this seems to be the right path finally and not just one taken out of fear or lack. We just need to keep ourselves healthy and open and learn to roll with it. 

As heavy and dark as this post was, my next one will be much lighter. After all, life provides the good along with the difficult. My blog has suffered under my suffocating job. Perhaps now I will be more able to communicate my progress in my art, as there may actually be time to create progress in my art. Hope springs eternal!

  

Expanding

Some times things just pop into my head at the strangest times. I'm used to having lingering dreams about quilts I want to create. Sometimes I dream that they are already complete and hanging. I've already had a solo show in my dreams. It was bitchin'!

Yesterday I was just hanging out on my day off, minding my own business when along comes this image into my mind of a huge dragon. Boom, there it is. So I set about drawing it. It's nowhere near complete but after giving it a day I think this idea is a keeper. Fits in with my other illustrated figures; mermaids, medusa, fairy tale wolves and now a dragon. I'm seeing it big too, like the others - almost square but not, probably about 6.5' x 8'. I've just expanded to 4 solid quilts in the works; the beginning of my body of work. We all know that 10 is the magic number. It's a start. No, come to think of it, I'm right in the midst not the start. Feeling good about that.

Mermaids is coming along well. I'm plodding along like a snail but making progress. We flung ourselves into the fourth and busiest quarter at work. I'm setting out Christmas shelves daily, lifting heavy boxes, dragging wooden shelves all over the place. Coming home exhausted. But in the studio I'm plodding, at least an hour a day. I aim to stitch all the pieces on "Mermaids," draw out the quilting lines and then start putting together "Medusa." Once I have the three quilts all set up, I'll concentrate on the quilting. Hopefully this will keep my stitching similar from one to another of the quilts. Tomorrow I have a whole day to play in the studio. :)

SOLD
to Michele Lea of Ohio
$150.00

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I am overjoyed to learn that my donation to SAQA's Benefit Auction has sold today for $150.00. My concern that no one really knows who I am or the quality of my work yet was niggling at me. I was thinking that it would be one of the ones left at the end for them to send back to me. I'm happy that it did not go that way. Thank you Michele, and I hope that you enjoy this piece in your home or studio!

There are still some wonderful quilts to buy. You may want to check them out at SAQA.com. Two days left!

Visuals

Visuals have been hard these past few weeks. Either they are disappointing like these of my new neighbor's house going up or they are impossible like the ones below which really show nothing of what is happening with "Mermaids" but are the only things I can show. I'm living with gallons of frustration. Each and every day this late summer has started at 6:30am with noise, i.e. chainsaws cutting trees and that sickening snap of the life of a tree followed by the resounding thud when it hits the ground, bulldozers and dump trucks complete with the wafts of sand blowing into my house on clouds of diesel exhaust, and now compressors and the constancy of nail guns. Not only are my nerves shot but I landed in the ER two weeks ago with breathing problems which they labeled bronchitis but I know it is being caused by the caustic cocktail of sand and diesel.
One day last week I was talking to my boss on the phone (I was out of work on a 'vacation', unable to really do my job well with breathing problems) and staring out over my deck into the back yard when I see two little dogs chase each other through my yard with a teenage girl in hot pursuit. My new neighbors. Trapped inside a hot house, (can't open the windows or sliders) looking at this scenario made me madder than a wet hen! We bought this place for it's privacy and quiet, knowing that the land next to us was up for sale but thinking that no one in their right mind would pay the $275 thousand he was asking for it and then have to sink hundreds of thousands more into clearing and building. Surprise to us! Tony has been looking at the real estate listings. He wants to move again but I don't know if I have it in me to pack it all up and start over. All I really know for certain is that the visuals directly outside my studio are making me sick - literally.
I haven't been posting a lot here because I just can't show what is going on with my work if I want to try for the next Quilt National. It's killing me because things are shaping up nicely and looking amazing. Above are the two hand dyes I chose to flesh out the skin of the two mermaids. Took me the longest time trying to settle on the exact placement of the tissue pattern. I spent hours looking to get the shades and blotches in the right place. The choice of color here really makes them look other-worldly. Above these base fabrics I have layered others to flesh in depth, but they are subtle and from a distance these two read as the main characters.
These fabrics comprise the major part of the fish tail of the mermaids. I stumbled on the fern fabric in a sale on one of my favorite online haunts and it is so perfect for that tail that I couldn't have done better if I spent two years looking through fabrics. Finding another which felt just as perfect was not easy. They are on the quilt now complete with their tail fins. Hair is coming next. I've decided how I am going to quilt this one too. I am mapping out the patterns of the stitching on my cartoon and will be using chalk pencils to actually draw out the patterns so I don't get too carried away and make a mess. Going to have to work with small sections at a time as the chalk wears off easily.

Looking at this becoming, up on my design wall is exciting and it is keeping me going. I can now really see what my mind's eye was visualizing. With this being the first really big venture for me, I am just loving it. It's taking twice as long as I thought it would, but I don't care. It's coming from my heart and soul. A slow steady flow. Turtles always win the race anyway.

As I look to my goals for my next year, especially within the Visioning Project, I think I am going to expect a little less in the "timing" of my pieces and more in the "development" of them. I am my best when I am working steadily without looking at the clock or at dates. This doesn't mean I won't be setting goals, it just means they won't have time limits. My goal has to be to just keep myself steadily working. Eventually they will all make their way out of me into the pieces I feel already exist in my mind but need to be fleshed out in fabric. Ultimately the goal of having a body of quality work with which I can begin to show, is the one true goal I am working towards. I am enjoying the process. I just wish I could share the visuals. All in due time.

A Trip To Lowell

Well there it is, the post card announcement of the art quilt show "The Sea." I went up to Lowell yesterday to see it. As the regional meeting for SAQA was held there, I raced out of the house quickly to get there by 10am. It's about and hour and 45 minutes away. The racing part is responsible for me forgetting to bring my camera as the battery was charging in the kitchen. What a day to forget the camera! Not only was there the one show but others all over the city and the trunk show for SAQA was in attendance at the meeting.

I was very impressed with the quality of the work hanging at the Brush. When you walked in there were two gallery walls, left and right with quilts greeting you. The one to the right had two quilts by Betty Busby which were phenomenal. Betty's quilt is the one chosen for the post card above. I just couldn't pull my eyes off them. With her two was a quilt called Loggerhead by Gay Young Ousley. Gay's quilt was rich in texture, a tortoise swimming in the sea. These three quilts made such a commanding presence as you walked in. There were so many wonderful quilts, that I wished I had brought the camera. As I was wandering from quilt to quilt it began eating at me that I had wanted to try to enter this show with "Mermaids." But there was no way I could get it done in time for the deadline. It would have looked wonderful there amongst the other sea inspired quilts. I left with a renewed urgency to get it moving faster and with more attention to detail.

I did bring it with me for show and tell at the regional meeting. I wanted to see if it was interesting at all to the other quilters. After all it is just a wave. I got some well needed feedback, especially from Linda Dunn, who told me she was wowed by the wave alone and was concerned about the addition of the mermaids. I instantly got it. Most artist renditions of mermaids are a bit tacky, dripping with shells and seaweed hair. I am steering clear of this type of rendition in creating what is in my mind for this illustration. While thinking about it on the way home, I honed the image I had of them even more coming up with the final title of this piece in my head, "Beneath the Deep." I see the mermaids as what they are in folklore, specter-like sirens, other-worldly in existence but alluring to men. Their tails are fish-like and their bodies voluptuous but not human. They're more to be feared than anything like a great white shark would instill fear in a swimmer. As forcefully beautiful as the wave is, the sirens will be equally as ominous. This is the story I am telling with this quilt.
On the way out of the Brush I looked at some local artist's wares outside in booths. I bought some wonderful hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns to use on the mermaid quilt. They will be couched over the wave to create swirls of movement. I'm really exited about the embellishments that I have set aside to make the water come to life with movement.

Back to reality at home, I hung a stained glass piece I found at the Brush in my studio window to distract me from the disturbances of what is happening in our neighbor's yard.

This has now become my view. The flowers just visible to the right of the window are the left portion of the Butterfly Garden. The only thing I can see as a positive is that the garden will get more sun. Soon we will be planting cypress all along the edge of what once was the woods to try to regain some of our privacy.

Vacation Bonus!

Look what I found going through a listing of activities for the weekend of August 5th and 6th. Tony and I went to Cape Cod for a mini vacation this past week. When looking for fun things to do I noticed a quilt show in Harwich, about 20 minutes from where we were staying. They named it "Sew Many Pearls! 2011" and it was sponsored by the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod. All the usual venders were present, local quilt shops, long arm demos, Pfaff, Bernina, and Viking, and even a button Godess "Dusty's Vintage Buttons - Tablecloths - Trim." I had lots of fun with the buttons. $30.00 worth of fun!

"Revelle" by Maggie Walker, hand pieced, appliqued and quilted.

All the quilts on display were from members of the quilt guild. The first room I went into had a long grouping of quilts, some Hawaiian, some traditional and some like the one above. There were about 15 in a row. As I was gushing about how much fun the chickens were a woman told me that all the quilts in the row were done by the same woman and introduced me to a rather elderly woman. I hope I'm quilting when I'm her age!
Most of the quilts were of the traditional ilk. They were just lovely. Above is a sampling of the 200 quilts in the show.

"Through Spencer's Eyes" by Julie Lariviere, machine pieced and quilted.

I just can't resist colorful quilts and this one caught my eye right away. There is enough diversity in the blocks of this quilt and the randomness of the arrangement that it captures your eye and doesn't let it go. Below is a detail.

"Endangered Species Tiger" by Barbara Delphos

A Rob Appell design with multiple irregular shapes. She used echo quilting to enhance features and to add dimension. Machine quilted, appliqued and quilted. I just loved all the contrast and stepping back from this one makes it look so alive.

Another one of my favorites in the show was called "Mom" by Paula Tuano. She worked in whites, greys and blacks to transform an old photograph of her mother on her wedding day in April of 1942. The puddle of a train was free form at the bottom of the quilt. They had it mounted from the ceiling and hung very high. It was so high up that I could not get a good picture of it. It was very intricate and extremely creative. Loved it!

What a great surprise on my vacation. I love those kinds of surprises.

Not these!

Upon returning home from the Cape it was clear that even though we were not there to hear it a tree or twenty fell in the woods! We talked to the workmen to find out that the owners were bringing the driveway along our property line, in 300ft, like our driveway. Then they would situate their septic system, the house behind and the yard behind that. They were felling the whole 600ft. Their house will be situated just behind my bank of studio windows and the woods behind my lovely butterfly garden are ripped out to leave a gaping hole of emptiness behind it.

Tony and I did some research into privacy plantings. The quickest growing plant is the Leyland Cypress and we will be putting in a lot of them to try to patch up the holes in our privacy. There are huge piles of logs and branches all over their property. It really is such a shame that this has to happen when there are an abundance of homes already built and on the market all over RI and even at rock bottom prices due to the economy. I'll tell you it is going to be really hard warming up to these neighbors when I already despise the first thing they have done.