The piece that is the featured one for this blog is made, mostly, from linen and cotton I dyed and printed at The Barn in November. As always I used an intuitive process to construct the blocks, and then kept turning the piece on the design wall as it grew to see the best layout. It’s the largest art quilt I’ve made so far 52×55. I’m calling it “Embrace” because it feels like the center of the piece evokes a kind of embrace.
For the new year I may be working a bit smaller again as there are a number of techniques I’d like to practice, and it’s best to do that on smaller rather than larger pieces of cloth.
Reflecting on my work this past year, and what I hope to see this year, I made a list of words that describe what I hope to evoke:
Feral, Wild, Untamed: Because I’m not a product of an art school, I’m mostly self taught with help from friends, books and some inspired and inspiring teachers outside of academia. I think my fearlessness and willingness to do things that may seem crazy –these are both strengths and potential weaknesses, but they are part of what makes me who I am.
Big Gestures: I’m not so good with tiny tiny things. I’m awful at making tiny stitches, with tiny pieced work involving many small pieces of cloth, with stitching or cutting a straight line. One way of thinking about this is that it’s a weakness, but I prefer to find a way to make it part of my voice.
Jazzy, Improvisational: I hope that I can continue to develop this aspect of my work, unexpected color and line combinations, surprising rhythms and textures. How could I not have this kind of music in my soul, born and bred of New Orleans.
Color: Something I continue to work on. I want to develop more and more my own signature colors, unexpected and seductive. To be known, eventually, as a kind of colorist.
Brokenness, Rips, Frays: They are beginning to be an essential part of my work. Perhaps because my familial relationships are so very broken and painful. Finding some way to render these as both painful and beautiful.
Words. I think these will always be a part of anything I do with cloth. Even if it is only for the mark, not the sense of the word, although that seems a bit like heresy.
