Four Inchies + mounted on a fabric covered stretched canvas. Working title : "Four-squared Flowers" and yes, they are re-purposed postage stamps, plus beads & other bits. I was aiming for a botanical theme on this one.
So here is my last 2 days of the CREATIVE EVERY DAY challenge.
This small "quilt" is titled HOMAGE TO TREES and is part of a series of small mixed media (fabric and paper) quilts I am making on the theme of the Earth and the Environmental Crisis. This is a creative work in progress or WIP.
I started with a vintage deck of Tree Spotter cards
---stitched some cards together, added batting and a fabric backing--and now I'm working on embellishing with buttons, beads and embroidery. I will use the green leaf fabric as a border---and plan to hand quilt the borders....
"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do." --Willa Cather
"When it’s over, I want to say: All my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."
---------Mary Oliver
I don't do new years resolutions---somehow, things never really change when I "resolve" to do something or to change something. Instead, I set an intention. Last year, I set the intention of buying nothing new for 6 months. That intention proved to be a very good consciousness raising tool for me, plus I saved money ;-)
This year my intention is less materially oriented, and more psychological. I intend to live my life more fully, to not hold back, to leap into the unknown....with awareness. I want to live my life with more attention to being here, with more conscious awareness of everyday actions, with the notion that life always gives me the teacher (or teaching) I need at that very moment. The trick is to be aware I was just handed a life lesson....and to not be afraid to grasp the lesson and run with it.
Since I always feel compelled to create art about my life, I'm working on an altered book (---one page you see here above---) in which I intend to document some of the "lessons" life hands me in 2008.
Over on her blog 37 Days, Patti Digh sent out an invite to artists to illustrate some of the essays from her blog for her forthcoming book. If you have never read her blog---get right on over there and check it out! she has some of the best thoughtful and poetic essay writing on the web, in my opinion.
I decided to try this challenge (as she termed it) and she sent me this essay titled Just Wave to illustrate. She wanted the illustrations to be ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) in size--and we had to have 37 days and the name of the essay somewhere in the illustration.
I chose to make mine a mixed media piece--with my own drawing and artwork, and lace and sewing on the papers with my sewing machine.
I created the art for this essay, Just Wave, in a "creative frenzy"---I just started selecting images from my stash of papers and old sketches, and added lace and started sewing. I sewed on more layers, cut off parts and sewed more--- the piece basically grew as I made it. I did start with an image in my mind, but only a vague image---which included hands and a house---or the shape of a house. The bird is a photocopy of a small part of another painting I made---and I'm still not sure how the bird relates to this essay, but it fit with the art, so into the piece it went. I worked on this all day without stopping at all--even to eat--until it was done, and I was totally absorbed in the creative process the whole time---"in the zone" is how I think of this state. This is one of the highest pleasures for me--finding that creative zone--completely in the moment, creating one piece of art. So for me, most of the time---art making is more about the process than the end product. I found this essay an inspiration, and so slipped into the zone easily and the piece just formed without much real effort like sometimes happens in the studio--on a very good day.
I created a computer illustration for another of her essays the next day; I created this one totally on the computer and I never quite got into "the creative zone." Upon reflecting on the 2 very different creative processes, I began to wonder if I require working with more tactile materials than a computer to find that zone.
One year--when I was a college student (so awhile ago!) instead of doing homework, I spent one semester with a big stack of magazines, a glue stick, and 3" x 5" cards ---and cut and pasted and created this intuitive TAROT DECK. I created it intuitively, and when I "read" the cards---a do this intuitively. I just intuitively picked the words from the same large pile of magazines that I cut the images from--I think I cut out a pile of phrases that appealed to me, then cut out images that appealed to me, then just started putting them together. Once I made 52 cards, I laminated them. These are now getting old and worn, and I still occasionally take them out and lay them out to see what turns up....
I went through the deck and pulled some out....totally random....
(Seems the type might be a bit small to read in these scans----so the ones that are not readable--I have added the [unreadable] words underneath the cards.)
Top left says: increased critical attention Top right: unspoken truths were beneath the mask
Top left: it's your night to howl top right: a shift in the wind
Bottom left: radical new definitions bottom right: accept risk
Top left: tell the truth top right: the circle unbroken
bottom left: to know what is possible bottom right: the power of potential
Top left: could it really have been here all along?
Bottom right: the right to dare everything
Now--why am I left with the sense that these cards--picked at random--- are all about change? hmmmm...could be personal change, could be that we humans are on the verge--the cusp---of a large shift...what do you think?
One night a few years ago I could not sleep-- I woke up in the middle of the night and went into my art studio and created this mixed media piece I now call " Button Boy."
A few days before this I had bought on old wooden puzzle back--the part the wooden puzzle pieces were meant to fit into---minus the actual puzzle pieces---at a garage sale. That become the base for "Button Boy"; it wasn't until a few weeks later I figured out just what this piece of art was about. At the time, I was working (my artist's day job) as a nanny for 9 year old triplet boys---this piece was about the triplets and the energy they brought into my life each day.
Over the years I have fairly consistently used my artmaking to unconsciously reflect my life at that moment. Whatever is consuming most of my time comes out of me in some creative way---whether in knitting, painting, drawing, mixed media, or beadwork---if I reflect on what I am creating, there is always a connection. Usually I am not aware of the connection when I am making the current piece---but afterwards I will have an aha! moment and suddenly see the correlation to my life right then.
Most of the time art I create in this mode I end up keeping because the art doesn't fit with the body of artwork I am making at the time and has too much personal significance to part with. I have used this process some--in therapy--to heal myself--but working with a therapist is not the same--if only because we were consciously using art to delve into my unconscious. Whereas, when I just go into my studio and create something--THEN discover later how what I just created is significant to my life---whatever I make is totally unconscious--much like acting out a dream. I am curious if other artists also find themselves creating "unconscious art"?
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