Sweater, Australian Aborigine Style

Here is the sweater, sans sleeves, that I have been working on recently.  I stole the idea from a book and from a sweater I did a long time ago (and have since unraveled) so I guess I can safely say it is mine.  And, yes, things are not "even," intentionally so.

Work in Progress

This is my latest piece connecting three dimensionality in real time and place and the concept of letter writing.  I am slowly filling each box with a letter addressed to "dearest M" which is the actual title of the piece.  I continue to mull what it is I am trying to say and how to say it and am wondering if I should make the letters accessible to the viewer (personal?  all that pulling of box covers off to retrieve letters?  etc.).

I recently went to the gallery at Phillips Exeter to see an exhibit where words were actually applied to various art forms:  clay; paper; woven cassette tape; thread; cut up books in new assemblages.  I continue to think about Cy Twombley and his painting/pencil writing.  In a discussion with my niece who is also a painter, we commiserated about the hassles to maintaining an oil painting set up in one's room.  One of my issues is the amount of turpenoid  that I go through in order to maintain clean colors.  I should have buckets of the stuff.  This too will make itself known.  I do love the act of painting and splotching and spreading color.  How to utilize these without doing another (traditional) self portrait.

All my work continues to be personal and self-portrait like.

Next post will show my finished Australian sweater where I stole a basic idea from a book and made it into my own through color and design changes.

I spent more time trying to put this on line than I did in painting it.

I stole this idea from someone (thanks to my friend Maureen in Washington State who sent the little video of new things made from old things) but the paint job is mine.

Needlework update (better late than never)

I'm not sure why but I like how this work has progressed, and for me it is at a stopping point.

As for the other work seen in my last posting, I have dubbed that the last needlework piece I will ever do because I have no idea when and how it will be finished.

I could say that when it is done I will "go back" to painting but who knows.

Sewn Art

Technical confusion leads to hiatus

I'm back.

I got this email from Google and immediately assumed that they were going to charge me (how dare they!) for this free service, and then I couldn't get into my blog and assumed they had blocked it (the nerve of them!).  I hope you're getting the picture that my writing a blog to display my work is a stretch (give me a medal).

I have been working on my "cross stitch" lately, two new projects that I will photograph and add to this post at some point.  When I did my first ever cross stitch, it was of a bear (it was a kit) and I discovered that the back of the piece was much more interesting than the front.  That is how I am approaching the work with my Girl Scout badges.  It is, as they say, a work in progress.  The other utilizes a haiku--you could call it an acknowledgment of new discoveries in older age.

The other good news is that my ideas are starting to coalesce around a few ideas that keep returning to me:  family camping series, animal existences, letter writing.  I think I have found my painting "mentor" in Cy Twombly who uses written words and glorious colors on canvas.  Somewhere in all of that lies my future.

So, until the next post.

My Feathered Nest