Category Archives: Shows

Yardage into Ribbon

Today I started turning the dyed silk yardage into ribbon for the Carkeek Park Orchard Room. I’ve been getting lots of help from my intern, Vivian. Here’s Vivian ironing the dyed silk.

Next we snip it at one-and-a-half inch intervals and tear it into 9 foot long ribbons. Removing the stray threads is a bit of a chore.

Winding it onto spindles is a cinch using a drill. I just put a 1/4 dowel into the drill instead of a bit. I wind each piece slowly then tie the next one on until I have a whole three yard piece on each spindle.

Look at those pretty spools!

A Morning in the Park

Today I did a site visit and test installation at Carkeek. I needed to see the site again and visualize how the ribbons will be installed and also take some photos for the printed map.

This is really my first experience creating a public art installation. The newest wrinkle is that the Parks Dept. is worried about ligature danger from my installation. They are worried that young children will go running into the ribbons and choke. Um, did I mention the ribbons are bright orange and that there will be 20 to 30 of them stretched across the span between the trees? I really think the kids will see them.

But of course, I need to work with them to allay their fears. It’s actually amazing and a big leap on their part to allow these art installations to happen at all. Part of my compromise is to install the ribbons more as a canopy than as wall in the orchard. Revisiting the site I’m not sure how well that’s going to work. My plan is to install all the lower ribbons so that they can be taken down easily if needed. That way it will be fully realized for the opening and if I have to take part of it later, so be it. I think once they see the installation they will realize ligature really isn’t an issue.

It was a lovely morning to be at the park. The grounds keeper was weed whacking the path and the air was damp and vegetal. It was good to be there and working.

 

Heaven and Earth: Rootbound

original sketch for the Orchard Room

 

It’s been over two weeks since my last post. Last week I spent on Orcas Island with 100 8th graders at Camp Orkila. I spent my time congratulating, consoling, coercing, and  chaperoning a bunch of great kids. I also did some tie-dye with the kids and got in a good beach walk (photos to come).

My time before and since then has been working on the installation I’m doing for CoCA’s Heaven and Earth: Rootbound at Carkeek Park. I’ll be creating a “room” in an historic apple orchard by tying silk ribbon in and around trees. The Orchard Room will not only be a stand alone art piece, but also a performance space with performances scheduled throughout the four month installation. I’m working with Lara McIntosh, a dancer and teacher, as co-curator for the space. I’ve been taking class with Lara for almost 20 years and we have collaborated on several projects for the Fremont Arts Council. Lara will also be choreographing a site specific piece for the Orchard Room. She brings a wealth of knowledge and contacts within the music and dance worlds of Seattle to the project.

There has been a lot of coordination with the Parks Dept. and with the Piper’s Creek Orchard Volunteers to get the project approved. I have really appreciated David Francis at CoCA and his willingness to go to bat for this project. I think it’s going to be wonderful once we get past all the obstacles. I won’t go into all the details but, for now, we have a site and a plan for installation.

Today I dyed 42 yards of silk to turn into ribbon for the Orchard Room with my new intern, Vivian. I’m going to have two interns from the UW Fibers Dept. this Summer! Both Vivian and Mia have graduated and are doing the internships for experience rather than credit. I’m very happy to have the help. Today’s dyeing took about a third of the time it would have taken me by myself.

 

sample ribbon for the Orchard Room

today's dyeing

Fiber Philadelphia

at Snyderman-Works Gallery

It would be impossible to capture the whole of Fiber Philadelphia in a blog post. There were over 40 scheduled shows of fiber-based artwork. I probably saw about 25 of them while I was there, most of them on one marathon day. It was exciting to see such varied and high quality work and I came away reassured that this is the time to be working in fiber. Sure Fiber Philadelphia was a bubble, but it was our bubble.

This blog post is not a review. It is a sampling of artwork from some of the shows that stood out to me because of a number of reasons: the quality of the artwork, the setting it was shown in, the unusual pairings of materials, or the way it was displayed. There is so much that is not shown here simply because I didn’t get a photo or my photos weren’t good.

There were several things I noticed over all the shows. One was that most of the artwork I saw was in neutral colors. In general, color was used sparingly. Whether this was representative of the state of fiber art or it was because of curator’s choice, I don’t know. I also noticed a lot of three-dimensional work. This may be because I had my 3-d radar on, but there was a lot of it.

Here are photos from Snderman-Works Gallery, Wexler Gallery, Muse Gallery, Space 1026, Borowsky Gallery, Outside/Inside the Box, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Some of these were big shows, some small.  Because of time and space I’ve only given the artist’s name and the name of the piece. I’ve done my best to attribute the work correctly.

I hope you enjoy my small and biased tour of Fiber Philadelphia.

8th International Fiber Biennial at Snyderman-Works Gallery

Jill Powers, The Small Winged Life

The Small Winged Life, detail

Lia Cook, tapestry detail

Norma Winkowitz, Hybrid

 

Narrative Thread at Wexler Gallery

Donna Rosenthal, Born to Be Wild

 

Diem Chau, Shadow

 

 

Sara Horne at Muse Gallery

Sara Horne, shibori and blown glass

Sara Horne

 

 

Optical Fiber at Space 1026

Allison Watkins, My Closet in San Francisco

My Closet in San Francisco, detail

 

 

Mending = Art at Gershman Y, Borowsky Gallery

Spinks, Random Act of Kindness #8

Ilaria Margutti, Mend of Me

Erin Endicott, Healing Sutras

 

 

Outside/Inside the Box at Crane Arts Building

Inside/Outside the Box at the Crane Art Center

 

June Lee, Bystander

Atticus Adams, Orange Grove

Orange Grove, detail

Reineke Hollander, Ancestor Chairs

April Dauscha, Exposed: An Armory of Physical Longings

Exposed, detail

Tamryn McDermott, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Tomorrow . . ., detail

Delbert Jackson, Sandstorm

Jackson Martin, Collapse (Until Death Do Us Part)

Birgitte Armager, Humanoids

Humanoids

Rachel Mica Weiss, Sagging Ellipse (After Richard Serra)

Marie Bergstedt, Dressing for a Delicate Condition

Joetta Maue, waking with you

waking with you, detail

Jenine Shereos, Leaf (Auburn)

Ann Wessmann, Words Unspoken: 37,499 days - June 9, 1932 - December 31, 1941

Words Unspoken Series, detail

Emily Dvorin, In the Eye of the Beholder

 

 

A Sense of Place at Philadelphia Art Alliance

Barbara Lee Smith

Barbara Lee Smith, details

Ke-Sook Lee, Green Hammock

Pat Hickman, River Teeth

River Teeth, detail

Marian Bijlenga, detail

Amy Orr

 

 

Where I Am

I was asked to give short talk at the reception for my show in Corvalis, Surface. Form. Stitch. I wrote the following about my work to present there but ended up giving a much more casual, Q and A. So here it is, a statement on Where I Am.

My work is about time, from the passing of the seasons to the geologic ages shown through layers of stone and its erosion. Nature, and the evidence of human hands upon it, inspires me.

Seattle, where I live and work, is a culturally vibrant city on salty Puget Sound, filled with lakes and hills, and cradled between the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. I walk on beaches, through woods, and on sidewalks. I garden. And I always have my camera with me to bring what I see back to my studio.

The palette of the Pacific Northwest is muted; our light diffused by clouds. Layers of gray are enlivened by pops of color as the seasons change. The first acid greens of Spring are followed by bulbs bursting forth in candy colors. Summer brings out the warm tones of flowers growing against the deep brown of loamy soil. In Fall, the leaves turn, bringing their contrast of orange and scarlet before they fade and fall. And all against all of this is the constant backdrop of our evergreen trees.

I am inspired by the textures and patterns I see in nature. As I walk along the beach I see a stone eroded into a fantasy of circular patterns created over eons by tiny pebbles constantly moving in the tide. Barnacles grow upon a rounded cobble until that stone breaks loose and is tossed through the waves, grinding away all but the traces of that tiny universe. A cliff reveals the strata of millennia, layers of sand and silt put down over ages, pressed by cruel gravity until they become solid stone.

Man puts his hand upon his environment. A piling is sunk into the sand along the beach. Years later it is cut down, its use forgotten, leaving only its pattern of concentric circles, encrusted with barnacles, surrounded and half obscured by sand. In the city the walls of an abandoned warehouse crack and shift, revealing layers of brick beneath the facade. In London I saw the remains of a Roman wall, finished sixteen hundred years ago, still standing in a busy, urban environment. Its stones were worn but solid, showing a pattern made by hands crumbled to dust centuries ago.

As an artist, I filter these images to distill meaning, abstracting them and then realizing them as sensual representations of experience. The resulting sculptures address our human need for physical connection to the earth.

The Blades series explores shape as a metaphor for human interaction with the natural world. Obsidian, fractured into faceted shards from solid stone, creates a sharp, cutting edge. Hoes till and reap. We can focus on a single blade of grass in the expanse of a field for just a moment before it is lost among the many.

The Cotyledons series examines the energy of growth as it bursts forth from the stasis of the contained seed. Shaken from a packet and pushed into damp soil by a child’s finger or planted by the million by an industrial agribusiness, the seed is an essential building block of culture. A fragile miracle of nature, the seed sprouts and feeds the hungry.

My most recent series, Stone, was inspired by a trip to the American Southwest. It evokes concepts of time and memory and explores the idea of stone as both permanent and ephemeral. The Earth is solid yet malleable. Time, wind, and water all leave their mark. The inherent contrast in these pieces lie in that they mimic hard stone, yet are made from soft materials.

I begin my process with white paper and white fabric and I finish with stitch.

I sketch forms suggested by my photos and experiences. I transform these sketches into three-dimensional patterns made of tagboard, a paper that mimics the strength and flexibility of my final materials. Once I finalize these patterns, I cut them from non-woven innerfacing, which provides the underlying structure to my sculptures.

In the studio I work with natural fibers: silks, cottons, rayons, and blends in weaves both plain and opulent. I use my extensive knowledge of surface design to create unique color, pattern, and texture on cloth. Low-water immersion dyeing, discharge, paste resists, silk screens, and shibori resist are all part of a lexicon used to tell a unique story on cloth.

Stitch binds my pieces together. I use free-motion machine embroidery to embellish and enhance the patterns on the cloth. The marks on my dyed fabrics are maps that I follow with lines of stitch. Thread strengthen the panels of the sculpture, each thin line becoming part of the whole. In the last step, I hand-stitch the finished panels together, revealing the final form for the first time.

This method of creating sculpture in soft materials, which I developed five years ago, has given me my voice. I integrate media and techniques from my varied background: fiber, sculpture, design, and theatrical arts. I have recently incorporated metal frames to support large-scale work, and am planning to study welding to further my learning and expand my practice.

Fabric is fundamental to my process. It is an intimate part of our lives. It protects us from the elements, gives us comfort, and a means to express ourselves. It is sensual and essential. I am drawn to fabric because of its changeability and its constancy. Fabric is the skin that clothes my work.

Time, nature, fabric, and form: these are the essential elements of my story.

Fairbanks Gallery

poster for my show at OSU

I traveled down to Corvalis, Oregon last week for the opening reception of my show, Surface. Form. Stitch. at Oregon State University. I finally got to meet Doug Russell, the curator after months of emails and phone calls. He and the students in his Installation Class did a very nice job of putting up the work. The show looks great. I hadn’t seen most the work in person in a while and it was a little like visiting old friends.

Speaking of old friends, I was happy to see my friend and artist, Margot Lovinger, show up with her son, Eliott. They moved from Seattle to Eugene about two years ago when Elliott was just a toddler. Now he’s four and quite a charmer. It was nice surprise to see familiar faces.

Foster/White usually shows my work in groupings of two or three. Here each piece was hung separately. It gave the pieces breathing room. It wasn’t a better or worse way to display them, it was just different and I thought very effective in the space.

During the reception I gave a talk to the students. I had prepared something but I realized when I got there it was much too formal. So I tried to make my talk more appropriate to students who are looking at making their way into the art world outside of school. They were very attentive and some were even taking notes, I still can’t get used to that. Doug assigns a student “host” to introduce them to the artists. He told me that if I was talking to a faculty member that I should excuse myself to talk with the students, after all, the show is for them. I really liked those priorities.

It was a good trip. I spread it out over a few days and stayed with my sister, JoAnn, in Portland for two nights. I had fun while I was there strolling the galleries, doing a bit of shopping, and going to the art museum. I even squeezed in a visit with Marci McDade and her husband, Eric Wert. I got to visit Eric’s studio where he had just finished a painting. Wow! He does photo-realistic work in oils and the piece I saw was  just stunning! To see some of his work click here.

So a good trip and I’m happy to be home for a week. In a couple days we are leaving for a family trip to Los Angeles. There we will visit family, see some museums, and soak in some sunshine. And then no more traveling until Summer! Hopefully I can finally get to work. It’s been too long since I’ve dyed any cloth.

Surface. Form. Stitch. at the Fairbanks Gallery

Disappointment

IMG_2339

For me, the hardest part of being an artist is rejection. As artists, it’s so hard just to get past our inner critics and put our work out for the public/curators/collectors to judge. And when we do, we open ourselves up to criticism and rejection. Now I’ve been very lucky, most of the time people ooh and ah, and I get plenty of compliments and encouragement. But when I hear a “no” it’s louder than any accolade.

I applied for the Bellevue Arts Museum Fiber Biennial and I didn’t get in. Yes, it was very competitive and there were many talented artists who didn’t make the cut. Yes, it’s not a reflection on the quality of my work but that it didn’t fit the curatorial vision. Yes, when one door closes another one opens.

Blah, blah, blah.

I’ve been moping around for a couple days, licking my wounds. I think it’s healthy and necessary to a point. We all need to feel those feelings of grief, of disappointment, of the loss of an opportunity. It’s not healthy to stuff our feelings.

Artist Trust put up a link to a Huffington Post article by Karen Atkinson “Reasons for Rejection and What You Can Do About It for Artists.” It’s well worth reading. My favorite quote:

“If you are not getting rejected often, you are not applying for enough things.”

So it’s time to go back to the studio, put on my apron, and make messes until I know what the next thing will be. I need to foster those little shoots of ideas, coddle them until they are strong enough to face the public. I need to make work, apply to shows, and take that risk of rejection.

Nobody is going to come find me in my studio to proclaim me a genius so I better get out there and show them what I can do.

Back Room Exhibition at Foster/White

back room

In January the gallery has a Back Room Gala where they clean the preview area from top to bottom, put up as much art as they can tastefully include, and invite their collectors over for some wine and cheese. This year they thought, as long as they were going to all that work, they might as well share it with the public as well. I visited on Friday and snapped a few photos.

It’s still a thrill for me to see my work up at such a beautiful and well-respected gallery. They show a variety of work by artists from emerging to established and the quality of work is top-notch. And the staff is so nice and so supportive of me and my work it makes me pinch myself.

I hope it was a successful night for them with lots of red dots!

back room 2

back room 3

Stone

Stone One

Stone One: Boulder, 2011

Here’s the artist statement for the new series.

This new series, Stone, is inspired by recent travels through the landscape of the American West. Evoking concepts of time and memory, the work explores the idea of stone as both permanent and ephemeral. The Earth is solid and yet it is malleable. Time, wind, and water all make their mark on it. The inherent contrast in these pieces lie in that they mimics hard stone yet are made from soft materials.

Foster/White January Preview Show

FW install

Last Thursday, January 5th, was the opening for the group show I’m in at Foster/White and the premiere of my new series, Stone. Uncharacteristically, I was working up to the last minute as you will know if you keep up here on my blog. I actually delivered the final piece on the morning of the opening after having spent 12 hours hand-stitching it the day before. But in the end, it was all worth the effort. The pieces look great together and the lighting makes them glow.

It’s a terrific show with large-scale installations by Evan Blackwell, George Rodriguez, and Eva Isakson. They are also featuring work by Rachel Denny, a Portland artist new to the gallery who works in fiber. There are also a number of new pieces by Guy Laramee, a sculptor who works with books, who’s work is fantastic. Other artists in the show include Stephanie Ashby, Merrilee Moore, Bratsa Bonifacho, Clare Belfrage, Kevin Piepel, and others. The show cohesive, with lots of sculpture and makes really good use of the space. My husband commented that it felt more like a contemporary art museum than a gallery.

See it if you’re in the Seattle area before January 28th.

Stone Mothers