Ice Shards
Here is my first
posting.
After looking through
Wilhelmina’s vast collection of artworks, I settled on this one to interpret.
Shards of ice splintering in shock waves from a galaxy’s frozen orbiting satellite.
The group blog of four quiltmakers and textile artists scattered around the world in 4 countries and across three continents. Our aim is to create a small quilt every three months. The theme is chosen by the members in turn. Our website is: www.12bythedozen.weebly.com
Thursday, 31 May 2018
Ice Shards
How did that happen?
Wilhelmina Barnes Graham worked in a variety of styles, re-visiting old favourites on many occasions but of all her pieces it is her line series that I like most. This piece in particular - the use of space, the colours, the intersection of the lines all say gorgeous to me:
And then with this in mind I wandered off and created something without the colour or the intersections and my own take on the space:
And what was in my mind, rather than the work itself, also lead to this 9" x 7" stitched Journal Quilt for our Quilters' Guild CQ challenge:
What I really need is the confidence to produce something as sparse as this:
but this then begs the question why fabric?????
Sea Sketch
I had never heard of Wilhelmina Barnes Graham and enjoyed discovering an artist I knew nothing about. I particularly liked her line drawings, and wanted to try something similar. Originally I planned to use a yellow and grey colour scheme and had chosen all my fabrics and threads, but whilst I was searching for something else entirely unrelated to this challenge, I came across a piece of Bondaweb which I had painted several years ago, and which I had stuck to a piece of butter muslin. It seemed perfect for this. I covered it with a layer of sheer fabric before quilting as the bondaweb was coming away in places.
I'm not sure how well it shows up in the photo, so I am also including a close up.
MY WAY !!
A popular exclamation in South Africa is 'Eish!' and that is how I felt with this challenge. I found her work strangely interesting but nothing jumped out at me initially. After staring at an array of her work I had a light bulb moment and all I could see was the forever popular pics of our iconic Table Mountain in Cape Town taken from across the bay from Bloubergstrand beach.
There are two pics that probably sent me down this route and they are ......
There are two pics that probably sent me down this route and they are ......
I have very loosely based my subject matter on the shape of Table Mountain but I have allowed the quilting to flow as it dictated hence the title 'My Way".
The whole cloth was dyed and then I went in with Derwent blocks/pencils.
This piece is quite simplistic for me however I did enjoy doing it.
CIRCLE OF ICE
It was yet another hard decision as to what piece of work to choose to interpret/be inspired by. Our chosen artist's work was very varied and I really liked her lines depicting the sea and waves but decided in the end to use the one below. I liked the colours and perhaps as winter has reached our part of the world it felt apt that I use this one. I drew the design and it evolved as I went along as it looked a bit flat, so layered quite a few pieces of net in different shapes to compliment the design, which definitely added a lot of depth to my piece.
I really enjoyed working on this and I think I can safely say it is one of my favourites.
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham
Another previously unknown artist to me . She led an interesting life amongst groups of other artists but had a variety of styles of her own . She was varied in her work and I found it difficult to choose a particular painting or even a particular style . In the end I interpreted 2 of her paintings trying out different techniques . Here are the 2 paintings I selected :
The styles were very different from one another . Here are my interpretations :
I think I prefer the one on the right which is somehow gentler. For this I took a sawn off 2inch square piece of wood and used it as a stamp. The one on the left I used wool and free motion couched the lines of colour between the circles.I had good fun with both . Rosemary
Another previously unknown artist to me . She led an interesting life amongst groups of other artists but had a variety of styles of her own . She was varied in her work and I found it difficult to choose a particular painting or even a particular style . In the end I interpreted 2 of her paintings trying out different techniques . Here are the 2 paintings I selected :
The styles were very different from one another . Here are my interpretations :
I think I prefer the one on the right which is somehow gentler. For this I took a sawn off 2inch square piece of wood and used it as a stamp. The one on the left I used wool and free motion couched the lines of colour between the circles.I had good fun with both . Rosemary
Fuschia - inspired by Pink and Flame, 1958
Mine is also inspired by the dazzling colours of the fuschia flowers that are in bloom now. After an extremely long winter, colour is what I need right now!
Matsue Jo
Wilhelmina certainly had a variety of styles. It was hard to choose between the really contemporary modern work or the more traditional style. I wanted to incorporate one of my pictures from my latest trip to Japan and I have enjoyed looking at the work of Rosie James and our own Helena Scheffer and also Gillian Travis. So when I saw some of Wilhelmina's sketches, some of which were brushed with a hint of colour, I thought I would give it a try.
Here is a picture that I used for influence:
And mine. This is based on a photo of a castle in Matsue, with, as you can see, the cherry trees in bloom. It is all "drawn" in black thread and then I did a bit of colour wash using water colour crayons.
Here is a picture that I used for influence:
And mine. This is based on a photo of a castle in Matsue, with, as you can see, the cherry trees in bloom. It is all "drawn" in black thread and then I did a bit of colour wash using water colour crayons.
Monday, 21 May 2018
De Musei Fabrica
Cloth and Stitch inspired by the Maude Abbott Museum at McGill University in Montreal.
By happenstance Heather Dubreuil talked to Dr Rick Fraser who is in charge of the museum and somehow came away with the idea that our group - Text’Art - would do an exhibit based on artifacts in the museum. It didn’t take long for us all to say “yes” when she presented the idea. It was quite exciting, and a bit daunting but by the time all the pieces were hung we were all delighted with our output.
It was hung in an ante room to the William Osler Medical Library and the cabinets that are there were filled with items to complement our pieces. A vertebra , some 100 year old hearts in their glass jars, surgical instruments, books from the library….. It was very special.
Here are a few pictures that Heather took. I would like to send you the booklet, but will have to do it by email as it is a PDF file and it won't work here.
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| Michele |
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| Helena |
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| Colleen |
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| Heather |
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| Dianne |
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| Lauma |
Sunday, 6 May 2018
Hello everyone,
The past weekend was the weekend of my group, Auckland Quiltmaker's exhibition and market . As you know I was asked to have a mini exhibition within the main exhibition . There is a small side room which i was given and I found that I needed 4 drops (I chose black) on which to present all our work . I had information sheets made describing each artist and all our interpretations . It was very well received and engendered a lot of interest. We may have a few more followers of our blog ! I called it"BLOG IT". Here are some pictures and a not very good video.
The quilt under Wilhelmina was fun to do (and very quick) and based on her work but won't be my posted work at the end of the month -so watch the space!
The past weekend was the weekend of my group, Auckland Quiltmaker's exhibition and market . As you know I was asked to have a mini exhibition within the main exhibition . There is a small side room which i was given and I found that I needed 4 drops (I chose black) on which to present all our work . I had information sheets made describing each artist and all our interpretations . It was very well received and engendered a lot of interest. We may have a few more followers of our blog ! I called it"BLOG IT". Here are some pictures and a not very good video.
The quilt under Wilhelmina was fun to do (and very quick) and based on her work but won't be my posted work at the end of the month -so watch the space!
Tuesday, 1 May 2018
The Series 'Play of Lines' and how it came about
Hilary has asked my to write something about the quilt featured in the SAQA Journal. In fact, I haven't seen the journal itself yet, somebody only sent me a scan. I hope I will eventually receive a copy... but of course I did give input to the article.
The quilt shown is this one:
It is one of the early pieces in my series 'Play of Lines' (you can see more pieces from the series here), which, as the article states, was inspired by my son's early drawings. It continued up to no. 40, although not all of these quilts were made from his drawings.
In the series I was working on exploring the relationship between lines and their contexts, changing the original inspiration, working on color combinations, different arrangements - basically doing the 'working in a series' exercises that one does when one is trying to develop an own voice. One quilt would frequently lead to another idea, and I worked on that series for several years.
I used only hand-dyed fabrics, mostly my own, only very few from other dyers, and that was when I also started my business with hand-dyed fabrics. (Which I recently discontinued.)
This particular quilt was the first attempt at using a particular drawing by my son, and I was still struggling to find my bearings, but I was determined to use yellow, which is my favorite color. Because I ran into quite a few problems along the way while making this piece, I then started developing a technique of individually crafted paper templates that made it easier to achieve proper joinings of seams because I did not really like the effect I arrived at with this one. However, come to think of it, perhaps I should try again. Make this one over, in different colors, certainly it would turn out differently... As I often said to the students who were taking the class that was based on this technique: you never know when a series is finished, there might still be a piece waiting down the line that belongs into this particular sequence!
The quilt shown is this one:
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| Play of Lines IV |
It is one of the early pieces in my series 'Play of Lines' (you can see more pieces from the series here), which, as the article states, was inspired by my son's early drawings. It continued up to no. 40, although not all of these quilts were made from his drawings.
In the series I was working on exploring the relationship between lines and their contexts, changing the original inspiration, working on color combinations, different arrangements - basically doing the 'working in a series' exercises that one does when one is trying to develop an own voice. One quilt would frequently lead to another idea, and I worked on that series for several years.
I used only hand-dyed fabrics, mostly my own, only very few from other dyers, and that was when I also started my business with hand-dyed fabrics. (Which I recently discontinued.)
This particular quilt was the first attempt at using a particular drawing by my son, and I was still struggling to find my bearings, but I was determined to use yellow, which is my favorite color. Because I ran into quite a few problems along the way while making this piece, I then started developing a technique of individually crafted paper templates that made it easier to achieve proper joinings of seams because I did not really like the effect I arrived at with this one. However, come to think of it, perhaps I should try again. Make this one over, in different colors, certainly it would turn out differently... As I often said to the students who were taking the class that was based on this technique: you never know when a series is finished, there might still be a piece waiting down the line that belongs into this particular sequence!
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