Pop Art

Bridget Riley - Ra 2

Thank you Heather.  You gave me the opportunity to do something I have had in the back of my mind for ages - a piece paying homage to Bridget Riley.  I have long admired her work. There are some wonderful examples of her work if you google her name and then click on 'images'.  I have based my piece on the work she did after her trip to Egypt and seeing the wonderful colours in ancient Egyptian art.

Here's my piece.

Bridget Riley - Homage

I hummed and aahed about whether to try and piece or to fuse the strips. In the end I pieced them and it work relatively easily because I heavily starched the strips first.  This made them firm and they handled well.  I used the left edge of my 1/4" foot lined up against the previous seam.

Proportionately speaking the strips should be much narrower but I am happy with the first attempt.  I haven't quilted it because I don't think in this case quilting would add anything to the piece or improve it.

All in all I have thoroughly enjoyed this series based on colours.  One more to go.

Hilary

WHERE DID SPRING GO?

 

 

I love this colour and use it often in a lot of my pieces but as mentioned in one of my posts when using it against the blue / green it changed colour and looks more yellow than apple/lime green.  I too doodled and came up with this which is really just a design that evolved.  I named it as above as we seemed to go from winter one day to summer the next and there was no "inbetween" season.  With all this, we are now going through a terrible drought, so what was green is now slowly turning brown!  Thanks you - a great colour to work with.

DOODLING

I found this colour very difficult to give me something different to work with other than foliage or similar so I decided to do some 'doodling' on top of a whole cloth of a slightly cleaner version of the colour (I thought the black may have played more of a part than it did).  I doodled / stitched/ painted & bound.  Sorry Hilary I could not resist using my dot easy tool ! A bit of fun.

St.-Paul-de-Vence

In late September I spent ten days in the south of France. We rented an apartment in Nice and used public transit to get around the area, as far as Antibes to the west and Monaco to the east. I had a wonderful time, visiting many art museums, exploring markets and walking by the sea.

St.-Paul-de-Vence

One of the highlights of the trip was the ancient hilltop town of St.-Paul-de-Vence, the most frequently visited town in France. It is filled with art galleries, as you can see from the original photo on which I based my piece.

Having chosen this "apple green", I have been seeing it everywhere. The last time I met with Helena she was wearing a scarf of that colour.

Corner Art

The thread-painted butterfly is an experiment with "corner art". The idea is to mount only the butterfly and not the quilted background piece. The thread painting was done on water soluble stabilizer and the wings have wire couched on the back to give shaped. The piece is far more successful as shown, it looks rather wimpy mounted in the corner on its own. However, I think 'corner art' has potential and I hope to pursue the idea in the future.

Sphere

I had, of course, left any thoughts about this challenge until the last minute.  However, I have been thinking around this idea of spheres composed of bands of flying geese for a while, as a possible element of a larger quilt for a different competition.  This seemed an ideal opportunity to try out the idea and see what it looked like.  On the whole I really like it, and it has helped clarify my ideas for the composition of the larger quilt.

I found I had a perfect green in my collection of hand dyed fabrics, one from a range dyed graduating from deep purple to yellow.  I've used another form the range as the background.  Love this colour, even though it never would be described as 'puce' in my dictionary.  I also used a commercial fabric that also seemed to fit well.

Green, with a touch of surprise

This piece put itself ogether of it's own accord as one 'What if?' followed another. Even the colour of the quiltlines, which was going to be white, was determined by the serendipitous use of a blue marker pen - I loved the zing so decided to find a thread in a similar colour.
I enjoyed this one, thanks Heather!

FINISHED BUZZ ART PIECES

These are the completed Buzz Art Blocks. No fabric. Just paint/ mouldingpaste & lutradur. I repainted each block its main colour and then sprayed thru lace curtaining.  I used bird templates made from 4 layers of freezer paper ironed together and filled with moulding paste.  The flowers are painted lutradur and are nailed on. Behind the flowers I did fray out some string to give a vine effect and the nails in the flowers are covered with painted felt 'pebbles'.  Not very original but thought I would stick with what I new for my first attempt and am fairly happy.  As you go along you work out what you should or could have done different .... but that is part of the learning curve.

p.s. my challenge is finished as well!

Shock and amazement...

... I'm finished and it's days away from the deadline. When Heather posted her challenge colour my immediate response was 'I don't do green!' but looking back on my pieces for

12 By the Dozen it seems that I do, in small quantities:

      

Buzz Art Blocks

The blocks are 12 inch square and made of strips of plywood glued together, approx half inch in thickness. Very solid and quite weighty. This is because some may use mosaics or similar mediums.  This means that I will probably work on fabric and stretch it across like an artists canvas.  Still umming and aahing!!  

CHALLENGE REQUEST

During our National Quilt Festival which was held in July this year we had an incident and one of the husbands of one of our quilters went beyond the call of duty to assist. With this in mind the committee wanted to recognise and show appreciation for this act and asked that I make a 'Quilters Star' award.  I was asked to use a 4" square artists canvas and I had carte blanche!  Being caught in the moment I said yes!   

After much mulling around and going no where, I decided to work on two and they could take it from there.  They also were under no obligation to accept either.

These are the results.....

Ultimately I had great fun and have been inspired to do a small series (different theme) working on a slightly larger artists canvas. 4" is really very small but quirky.

Needless to say I have not started, however, I have just received an open request from one of our local galleries calling for 'local artists' to take part in their annual 'Buzz Art' exhibition.  You buy a canvas (or 2 or more) from them for a nominal fee, use any medium to create your piece of art and it goes on show and you may put it up for purchase if interested.

Closing date 17th November ...... so watch this space!

Renovated Marsala piece!

I have finally got round to adding more leaves to flow across the binding so it looks more natural.  I see I have left some marking lines on a couple of leaves which I will remove. Much happier now!