encountered

 

 feeling moved by the work of photographer Jane Terry.  Her most recent works explore the loss of her mother.

she hopes to show us "the depth of meaning encountered in daily living."

Lovely work and you can also see a moving film here.

blanket.

Why oh why did I decide that I MUST do blanket stitch for this work?  Oh yeah I know it just felt like it must be that stitch- it was just right and... I was sick of struggling with it whenever I teach,  prior to this little project I have never used it in a piece.

I remember when I really wanted to learn stem stitch I forced myself to do an entire piece with it. It was so painful but in the end I leanrned the sh*t out of that stich and now use it all the time.

So here is to my painfully slow and ungraceful blanket stitches.

knit then paint.

knitted canvases by Miranda Aisling.

"directly connecting the female-dominated craft of knitting with the male-dominated act of abstract oil painting to make a stronger, original piece."

brief encounters

While stitching yesterday I decided to watch the Gregory Crewdson documentary Brief Encounters (on netflix.)  As a budding photographer I was in love with Crewdson's work and still have my heart skip a beat when I see a work in person.

 The film is a great insight into him as a man and an artist and really an incite into yourself as an artist as he is humble but very open to himself. I love his work and it was oh so nice to be reminded of it

 a few quote worthy moments:

When talking about being an artist and its challenge he says "it is to will something into existence that makes a difference to the greater world."

Words "quiet alienation"

describing documentary photography "poetic truth in the world"

paraphrase:
-that every artist has one central story to tell, the challenge is finding new ways to tell it, to challenge the story... it is the story of who you are.

see more here.

more masking.

I swore I wrote a post about artist Rune Olsen a long time ago and was going to link it as my friday flashback but alas I cannot find it. I did a studio visit in grad school with Rune at what feels like 1000 years ago. He is a very intelligent, very generous and interesting artist.

A lot of you seemed to like the masking tape post last week so I figured why not link to his work too.
His work is masking tape and graphite often exploring or animal nature, sexuality and all the blurs
between.

or as his website says his work is "sociologically informed investigations."

Each series has a mini statement on his website.

exasperated.

I just spent 1.5 hours sifting through emails, researching galleries and calls to decide if their worth it and catching up with all my Internet art computer things and I am exhausted, frustrated and exasperated. A precious amount of my studio time is now lost and though I know I had to do those things... it does not feel any better now that they are done.

Why is it EVERY call needs different specs, different things. It seems like every single call takes me an hour and that is why I have no current upcoming shows because I just don't want to give up that time now that it has become so precious. I am really feeling the pressure on my time right now and am TERRIFIED that my career is going to go backwards and this sucks.

But what do we do when we feel this way?  We go back into the studio get reminded who we are and all goes on.

to get my living with my hands...

 When I was young I little thought

That wit must be so dearly bought

But now experience tells me how

If I would thrive than I must bow

And bend unto another's will

That I might learn both art and skill

To get my living with my hands

That I might be free from band

And my owne dame that I may be

And free from all such slavery.

Avoid vaine pastime fle youthful pleasure

Let moderation always be they measure

And so prosed unto the heavenly treasure.

Quoted from an unsigned sampler in The Subversive Stitch.

slow but lovely.

 some lovely work on an annoyingly slow website by artist Bernie Leahy.

Go with your patience but the the drawing style and stitches are worth a visit.
Bernie

More here.

creative community.

I wish 4 hours of stitching yielded more results, but oh it was so grand to just sit and listen to some pocasts and work. I so miss when that was my all day every day.

I have been feeling a little funky as of late- really feeling alienated from the art world especially since I have so little creative community  here. I miss my collective meetings and friends openings and such... I love the New England life but miss the NYC art. I just need to make the effort to build that here... ya know with all that extra time I have, ha.

How do you all get creative community?

well curated.

I just found the well curated blog the Jealous Curator- though a little more "designy" then I usually go for the "curator" has a great eye.

The most recent post of work Robert Landsen is a goodie. Hiw work is totally inspiring to me at this moment. His statement-LOVE:

With a taste for repetition, I am searching for a visual expression of the dialog between the finite and the infinite that will ultimately create a transitional space in which viewers can surrender to their own experience of the object.

See more of the blog here. Him here.

screw all the things...

that I should be doing. This is my studio today- just me and the stitchin'

lets talk about our mothers.

 an interesting show and project about motherhood in Britain.

artist Tracey Kerkshaw says this about her practice:

Mundane and easily overlooked moments provide rich memories, documenting ephemeral changes, and through which I aim to communicate a true and insightful sense of my relationship with my son. ‘Non-events’ of our daily life – brushing his hair, collecting fallen peas from his plate or cutting his nails – speak of a particular time, but represent the more fundamental changes that will inevitably occurs as he grows older.
I work with video, photography, audio and text to explore the impermanence of each phase of my maternal relationship, and the irreversibility of change and forward motion. I use video footage to capture moments within a physical movement, drawing attention to the intricacies and complexities of the interactions. I aim to create a sense of intimacy, echoing the intensity of the maternal gaze.

See more here.

masking tape as clay.

some pretty amazing sculptures from one of my recent students at the Eliot School, Rachel Shatil.

Almost entirely made from masking tape, yep, sculpted masking tape. Cool.
See more here.

please?

New drawings in the studio, Feeling pretty good about them. We will see how they go... more time please?
Exhibition opportunities please? Less laborious applications please?

little finds.

Some little fun finds. Mammoth and Co is a place of great taste that currently has work from Emily Barletta and my recent Future Heirlooms artist Hagar.  See it here.

A review of the recent fiber show, Repetition and Ritual: New Sculpture in Fiber, read it here.

Future heirlooms- Hagar Vardimon van Heummen.

The most recent future heirlooms- it is a goodie with the artist Hagar Vardimon van Heummen.

friday flashback-cover me in blankets

A day early since Future Heirlooms comes tomorrow but here is a flashback from last April.  Seems oh so relevant to me today since I am really going on my piles series and even with my new work have appliqued found fabrics and blankets. Something about this work is even more inspiring to me today-

I love, love, love the work of Marie Watt. I have no brain power to say much more. But her use of hard and soft and the power of utilizing the familiarity of blankets to make amazing work about ritual and daily life is profound.

She says this about her work:

My work explores human stories and rituals implicit in everyday objects. I consciously draw from indigenous design principles, oral traditions, and personal experience to shape the inner logic of the work I make. My recent work explores the history of wool blankets. As I fold and stack blankets they begin to form columns that have references to linen closets architectural braces, memorials (Trajan); sculpture (Brancusi for one), the great totem poles of the Northwest and the conifer trees with which I grew up. These blanket forms also present themselves in other mediums of my work – such as with printmaking, bronze, and cedar. In the case of my wood cuts, I appreciate the warm tactile quality of the material. There is a familiarity and intimacy with wood that again reminds me of blankets. The material offers another layer of story that is physically and metaphorically woven into the work, like with cedar, which is considered to be a sacred natural resource for indigenous people of the Northwest or the hope chests in which blankets are stored.

See more at her website and then her galleries here and here.

and see some new images of new work here.