When choosing fabrics for the new series, Traces, I kept the colorway limited. I want these pieces to read as individual elements but also work together as a whole.

I began my selection process by bringing a bunch of fabrics to the studio from home where I store them. I keep them sorted by technique but this time I sorted them by color. I decided to work with greens and browns (big surprise) and laid all the fabrics that I like out on my work table. From there I played with the colors, using the negative shape frames from my patterns as a way to isolate the fabrics and look at them together.

Here are some photos of the selection process.

final fabric choices

“A trace is, simply, a line etched across a plane. A feature like the famous Natchez Trace (featured in Eudora Welty novels) is, then, a line in the dirt etched across the land. . . . Traces are old game trails that have evolved into human footpaths. They are ancient thoroughfares first cut by hooves and claws, and followed by indigenous walkers.”

Luis Alberto Urrea
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape
Edited by Barry Lopez

I often find myself poring through this book when looking for a title for a new series. It’s an alphabetical list of vocabulary used to characterize the landscape. The short essays are written by forty-five writers, from journalists to novelists. It’s enjoyable to flip through and read about the landscape, its unique forms and its history. Goat prairie, hassock, infant stream, pahoehoe, racetrack valley all are described by writers including Jon Krakauer, Barbara Kingsolver, and William Kittridge.

This series was hard to title. It feels like both a zeroing in on the details and widening out to the panoramas of geography. It’s funny how these little pieces can come to be imbued with so much meaning. In the photo above, you can see their beginnings, edges painted and waiting for the next step. They look like the outlines of states to me, with their combinations of straight-edges and meandering lines; some edges cut by rivers and some superimposed by the straight lines of map makers who want to create order out of chaos.

The title Trace plays on all these meanings. It is both a verb and a noun. It is a path of desire. It is a hint of something left behind. It is the act of going over a line with a pencil. All of these and more. It works.

drawing lots of thumbnails

I’ve begun working on a series of small works. After completing the Stone Mothers I was kind of burned out with working big. I’ve wanted to do some small “sketches” and have been really interested in working with multiples. So, I’ve been working up these small squares. The squares are three-dimensional but not very deep. I’m mounting them on panels give them more visual heft.

I’m thinking of them as details, like the detail photos of my work. The square format emphasizes that for me, cropping in on the work. I also like the way it plays off the format of quilt squares. I’d like to see them hung in compositions, much like a modular quilt.

It took me a few days to figure out the patterns. There’s not been much square about my work up until now. The first couple of patterns were quite frustrating. But there’s nothing like multiples to help you figure things out.

There’s been a lot of learning in the this new, as yet unnamed, series. The work is about the details, the up close look at what I’m doing. And it’s also about a sense of discovery, about finding pleasure in the work itself. I don’t ever want to get to the place where the work isn’t feeding me. It’s important for me to take some time to play, to not take everything so seriously. Otherwise, Cameron is not going to be much fun to hang out with.

picks to be turned into full size drawings

editing down the full size drawings

Making patterns in paper

glueing up the first piece to a panel

the finished first piece