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Archive for the ‘Inspiration’ Category

Inspiration Galore

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Today, I enjoyed a full day of visiting textile artist studios in the East Bay. We left the hotel at 9 am and returned at 5 pm. Above is a photo of Ana Lisa Lindstrom’s live work space. She no longer lives here, but she could.

Here is a sneak peek at one of her gorgeous art to wear pieces that I am bringing home with me. A photo on me later.

Yoshiko Wada and Jean Cacicedo had work at Ana Lisa’s studio, also.

Next, we went to Richard Eliot’s studio. Richard has been head of fibers at California College of Art. he says he makes work for himself and does not care if it sells. I like that attitude. These are rusted pieces stretched on round canvases. He meticulously rusts with steel wool to look like real cellular structures.

After lunch, we went to the shared space of Susan Avila and Candace King – both do amazing work. This is Susan talking about her work.

We then stopped at the home and studio of Robin Crowley who is just now getting her sight back after losing it as a result of two strokes. She did not have new work and as a result of her problems, she is looking at new ways to work. Her husband is a landscape designer and their garden was a delight.

Our last stop was the studio of Karen Livingstone who designs and creates fabrics for designers of clothing and home decor. I loved this piece of shibori hanging in her studio.

To see many, many more photos of the day’s delights, go to my Flickr site, SDA/SAQA set.

Fun With Laura

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Laurasetup

I am having such a good time hanging with Laura Cater-Woods – the very talented and generous Laura. Here she is setting up for the lecture yesterday at the guild meeting. Most members of the guild did not want her lecture to end, they were enjoying it so much. We had a long, chatty lunch with Terry Grant and then Laura and I went to the Coldwater Creek Spa for our massages – ahhhh!

This morning, after a nice breakfast, we arrived at the Mill Ends Store for the first of a two-day workshop, titled:A Sampler of Techniques and Off the Wall/Onto the Page.

lauraworkshop

Today we did fusion fabric/paper, using roving, stuff, fabric, threads with soapy water and white glue and water.

Here are my pieces wet. I forgot to take photos after they were dry.

wetfusion

fusion2

fusion3

We had a layer of plastic wrap, piece of tulle which is big enough to wrap over the fusion, then you make 3 layers using paper, silk hankies, plain roving, fabric, or paper on the bottom and top and dyed roving, ribbon, paper bits, Angelina fibers, whatever – as the middle layer. The tulle comes over the top and soapy water is brushed on both sides to help with the fusing. Then white school glue, watered down, is brushed on both sides. Set it out to dry.

fusiondrying

Voila, you have textured fusion fabric or paper. I really love how mine look. I will take photos tomorrow.  I promise.

Tonight, I am enjoying the company of Karen Miller who is taking the workshop and can’t drive because she recently had back surgery. Her husband brought her up and will come back and retrieve her tomorrow.

I am sort of living life in the fast lane and don’t think it will stop soon. My son arrives tomorrow. His partner, Jayme, will arrive on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the whole fam-damily starts showing up for the 3 days of festivities which start on Thursday.

A Green Flash of Inspiration

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

purpleorangeshibori

I love this purple and orange shibori and have wanted to use it in a piece. I started auditioning possible fabrics to go with it – different purples and oranges and a piece that I had painted. Believe it or not, that piece on the left is very purple.

shiboriandpaintedfabric

I decided I needed another color for a pop so I went to my color wheel to see what a triadic color scheme would add. I was so excited to see that it was one of my favorite colors – lime green!

triadcolorscheme

I immediately got the idea of an ocean sunset with the green flash that you hear about, just as the sun dips beneath the horizon.

Now we are getting somewhere. I went to Art Media yesterday to get canvas to stretch some work over and picked up some metallic copper paint and some pearl violet. I decided to over paint that other piece of fabric so that it would look like water with the reflection of the sunset. The colors on this are not quite true, but you get the idea. I really like it.

metallicpaintedfabric

Here is another audition of fabrics.

purpleorangegreenaudition

I wasn’t happy with that pure orange as the orange in the shibori is more reddish. So here is another audition.

finaltriadaudition

Ahh! I like this and I like the shimmering of the silk green and orange. I have actually drawn a sketch and done some chalk lines for cutting the shibori.

Yesterday was our 45th anniversary. We had a lovely dinner at Paley’s Place in downtown Portland. They knew it was a special day and treated us royally!

Sadly, we have come to the conclusion that it is time to let our beloved Maggie go. I talked to the vet on Friday and she helped me realize that we are not doing her a favor by waiting until she is even more sick. We decided to spend the week-end with her and will take her in on Tuesday and say our good-bye.

maggiecloseup

On a much happier note, I am picking up Laura Cater-Woods tomorrow at the airport. She is spending the next 5 days doing workshops and a lecture for Columbia Fiberarts Guild. I am so excited to meet her in person and spend some quality time with her.

Getting My Act Together

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

clothwardrobe

It is amazing what can get you off your duff and doing stuff. Number one is the weather. It is so nice here in Portland — perfect summer weather. Then, yesterday when I was shopping with M & M at Bi-mart, this cloth wardrobe was sitting there next to the toy department. I suddenly realized that I had found the solution to storing my growing quilt collection. This makes for a dust free and mostly light free storage area. Here you can see into the wardrobe and the rod and hangers that I bought.

wardrobehangers

I am making hang tags for each quilt that will have a photo, dimensions, etc. I will attach one to each quilt and rig up a method to attach them to the hangers. If I run out of room, I can buy another. It only cost $24 and was easy to assemble.

quilthangtags

The first thing I did this morning was to make a nice to do list of things that have been running around in my brain. It feels good to get started on this.

I found this piece that I started over a year ago. It is linen fabrics that I created in the indigo shibori class. It is all hand stitched. I lost interest in it because it really is rather boring. I am wondering if it can be saved.

linenwip

Tonight, I went out on the deck and saw this beautiful moon.

moonoverportland

Life is feeling pretty good tonight. Tomorrow, I am seeing Kevin for a much needed cut and color.

Inspiration

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

stashoregongarden

Today, four of the STASH group went on a field trip to the Oregon Garden in Silverton. A Frank Lloyd Wright house is next door to the garden and Reva and I toured it without Terry and Gale as they had already seen it. Here is the group waiting for the tram to give us a leisurely ride around the garden.

Here is the FLW designed house, known as the Gordon house. It was originally built nearer Portland and was moved, a few years ago, to its current setting. It was due for demolition – imagine that. The design for this house was a modification of a family home which FLW designed for Life magazine. (Note: I should have mentioned that FLW called these Usonian Houses. Click here for more information about the house.)

gordonhouse

Here are some interior shots. Here you see how the interior matches the exterior, an FLW design element.

exterior

For the less expensive family home, FLW designed these windows with an abstract wood design instead of the stained glass windows in his higher end homes.

gordonhousewindowdesign

The floors inside and out are stained concrete.

gordonhouseview

The kitchen was small and was designed so as not to be seen from te living area. How cool is that paneled refrigerator – original to the house.

gordonhousekitchen2

gordonhousekitchen

The house had 3 bedrooms – 2 up and one down and 3 full baths.

When the house was moved, the top half was moved intact. The bottom half was dismantled and only the built-ins, windows, appliances, etc were moved. The rest of the first floor was rebuilt and then the top floor was reattached. Pretty amazing.

After lunch we toured the garden and then did a little bit of walking around the water features. I got these interesting and inspirational shots.

lilypads

bullfrog

bullfrogeyes

inspirationfoliage2

inspirationfoliage

giganticleaves2

You can see all of my photos from the day on my Flickr Set.

Tonight, Terry and I met up again at the High Fiber Diet meeting. Terry was in the spotlight and got to tell about her art quilting journey. I learned lots of new things about her and saw some quilts I had not seen. I should have been taking photos, but was so enthralled with her presentation, that I forgot!

I did get a photo of a guest from Alaska who lives an amazing life, working out on the Alaska pipe line.

lindapowell

She has a wonderfully written blog. She does not blog often, but when she does, she writes beautiful stuff. Her name is Linda Powell. Her blog is called Sweet Dream Baby. I particularly recommend this entry: to walk is to dream. Linda is a fiber artist and a friend of Bonnie Bucknam. Bonnie is our current coordinator and keeps our meetings interesting and moving along.

And to close, I just had to share this silly photo of Scooter. He looks like he has a doofus grin!

sillyscooter