2008 MCC Artists Fellowships

I quickly got over my annual MCC rejection frustration, and a few weeks later, I'm happy to report that two of the artists who did get selected work with fiber.

In the Painting category, Candice Smith Corby was named a 2008 Fellow, for her work painting on handkerchiefs and other fabric.

In Drawing/Printmaking/Artist Books, Leslie Schomp was named a 2008 Finalist for her thread +/or hair embroidery on found handkerchiefs. I've seen Leslie's work on exhibit recently, and it's really wonderful.

In the past, when I applied in Painting or Printmaking, I wasn't sure if I really fit in to those categories because my painting and printing is on fabric. I now know that it doesn't matter. The lines between different art media are getting blurry and that's a good thing for the art and the artists.

You can learn more about the Fellowships, and the chosen artists on the Massachusetts Cultural Council's blog ArtSake. Congrats to all of the artists chosen this year.

Rainbow Stairs

The photo I posted on August 29, 2007, of my ex-rainbow stairs, has been used (with permission) as the photo for an article called "How to paint rainbow stairs" in (on?) Yahoo! Shine, an online magazine.

I must admit that I really miss my stairs being the colors of a rainbow. They were a rainbow for at least 15 years. Last year, for a change of pace, I repainted them two shades of orange, but I have not been happy with them. I've spent the past year trying to choose a different color scheme, but have not been able to decide. Maybe I should go back to the rainbow. No rush deciding until summer's over. When I painted the stairs in humid summer weather last year, they took over a week to completely dry. When I do decide to re-paint them, it'll be in the Fall or Winter.

2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

Above is my 26th Weekly Mixed Media piece this year, and below is the back side. I like how the front design and color came out, and I think the back has a nice bas relief to it. The off white section on the back is "Warm and Natural" cotton quilt batting, which has its own felt-like look.


I have officially made it through the first half of the year, as busy as it's been. The past few weeks, I have mainly been using past felt scraps and creating collages, which I must admit has been much more enjoyable for me than felting on big piece. Even though my overly busy June is almost over, I think I might want to continue with the collage, but maybe make small felted pieces to add to my collection, in stead of only using scraps from the past. Felting is fun, but it might be more fun if I made combinations of small pieces.


To begin making this piece, I looked through all of my scraps of felt from past projects. I didn't realize I had so many.


I chose four pieces that weren't used in the past few weeks of doing collage.


I placed all four pieces together, meeting the outer edges together. Using my sewing machine, and white thread, I zig-zagged the edges together.


This is what the whole piece looked like before I cropped it to size. It looked like a weird flat fiber lobster.

Using a 6" square template, I found the nicest placement as possible. I traced the 6" square with a pencil, and I cut the felt to size, and the scraps got added back in to the scrap collection.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

Gallery Changes in Boston

Rarely is an article about art or art galleries found on the front page of the Boston Globe, but there was one today. "Redrawing the map of Hub galleries, New economic scene brings moves, closings," by Cate McQuaid, discusses changes happening with 14 of Boston's art galleries. The economy, rent, changes in gallery owners' lives, and the internet are a few of the reasons for the changes.

Maverick Arts Magazine's "Shakeup of Boston Galleries - Leases Expires on Newbury Street and South End," by Charles Giuliano on June 16, 2008, is another article worth reading.

The Arts are very much alive in Massachusetts, as judged by the National Endowment for the Arts' New 
Artists In The Workforce Study, but public funding is low for the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Artist Fellowships, and for Public Art in Massachusetts. The gallery changes are yet another bump that artists must deal with.

12 x 12 x 12 June 2008

This is my June 12 x 12 x 12 series piece.


I was inspired by a photo my friend Adria Arch sent me, of a building project near Fenway Park in Boston. I used this same building as inspiration for my December 2007 12 x 12 x 12, when the building was at an earlier stage of construction.


Even though I was using a much bigger printed grid than I really should have for a 12" x 12" finished size, I followed the picture as best as I could, as I painted the main sections of the building. Above is the front side of the fabric...


... and this is the back side. Thought I'd show this since it's SO different.

After painting it, I was really unhappy with the result. It felt really clunky and boring.


Not knowing how to save it, I decided to stitch it anyway, because maybe something would become apparent about how to fix it. I felt a little better after stitching the grid, though I still wasn't thrilled.

I did a lot more stitching, and added more paint, before I was feeling better about it.

The grid I printed of the orange construction fence is a bit warped, so it did present a bit of a challenge when I was deciding how to crop and cut this piece to it's 12" square size.

June has been an incredibly busy month. As I was working on this piece, I had to remind myself not give up or get too frustrated, because I've busy and distracted. I kept playing with what I was working on, and it did, at some point, start to work.

If you want to know more about this series, you can read past posts about my 12 x 12 x 12 series here on my blog, or see all of the completed work on my website.

Rubberband Ball movie

I posted a short movie of my rubberband ball on youtube. It shows the front and back view pictures from the past year. Enjoy!

Purple!

Purple around my home. Outside...


The door to my garage.


A birdhouse.


Allium in bloom.


Columbine in bloom.

And inside...


Cole slaw, before being dressed.


Purple pillows and walls.

I love purple!

Rubberband Ball

Big changes with my family's rubberband ball. The front side is above, and below are the places there have been changes in the past two weeks.


Below is the back side of the ball, and below that are some recent changes on the back side.




It's just about a year since I started my bi-weekly documentation about how our rubberband ball is falling apart. I first posted pictures in July 2007. If I can figure out iMovie again, I'll make a movie to help animate the changes, and post it on youtube.

2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

This is my 25th Weekly Mixed Media piece this year. Another busy week, so another collage made of scrap pieces of felt from past weeks.


I grabbed a handful of scrap pieces of felt, that I saved from past weeks, and decided to use four pieces that had coordinating color. I placed them close to each other, so that it measured at least 7" square.

Using my sewing machine only, I attached the pieces together, using a zigzag stitch and orange sewing thread (and white bobbin thread). I did not use my needle punch machine at all this week. I have learned from other collage weeks that when I use felt from previous weeks, it's too thick to needle punch, and I tend to break many needles.


This is a close-up after sewing the orange zigzag stitch.


Before I cropped it to size, the back side looked like this. Using a template, I decided on a nice, visually balanced layout for my 6" square, and I trimmed it to size.


After cropping to 6", the back looked like this.

This piece took less than 15 minutes to create, which was good since this is another very busy June week. And, because I didn't use my needle punch machine, I didn't break any needles. :)

I created this week's piece during half-time of the Boston Celtics/LA Lakers National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals game on Tuesday night, and I prepped the pictures, and wrote the text quickly during the third quarter.

Then, I abandoned the tiny TV in my small studio, and watched the rest of the game on the bigger TV in my livingroom, where I watched the Celtics win the NBA Championship for the first time in 22 years.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

National Endowment for the Arts Artists Study

Two very interesting newspaper articles about the same thing, but each has a different focus.

After New York and California, Massachusetts has more artists than other states in the US. Read the Boston Globe's article, "Study finds Mass. draws artists," by Geoff Edgers, June 12, 2008.

Or, read the New York Times' article, about the Arts in different US states, "A 21st-Century Profile: Art for Art’s Sake, and for the U.S. Economy, Too," by Sam Roberts, June 12, 2008.

This is the National Endowment for the Arts' New 
Artists In The Workforce Study press release.

And here is the NEA's actual Artists In the Workforce study, in PDF format. It's 150 pages long, so it might be slow to load.

Graduation, and Fences

I was in Northfield MN this past weekend, attending my son's graduation from Carleton College. It was a wonderful weekend. One of the more enjoyable moments was watching my son sing with the Carleton Singing Knights, in an A Capella concert on Friday night. Here he is singing a solo of the Flight of the Conchords' song "Sello Tape".


On Saturday, at the end of graduation, the graduates walked down a very long path, that was lined with a blue snow (or construction?) fence. I've never seen this grid in blue before, and I wish I was able to acquire a few feet of it, so I could print off of it. It gave me many ideas, but it was not to be. I'll look around to see if I can find a place to buy it online. While I was waiting to take a picture of my son, as he walked by, I took a moment to take some pictures of the fence.

Another Button

This button came from the Ladies Against Women in the mid 1980's. It's a little beat up, but I still love it.

Art Button

This was a nice find!

2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

This is my 24th Weekly Mixed Media piece this year.

This is an extremely busy week for me, so I wanted to create something quickly. I decided to use scraps of felt from past weeks, and to create a felted collage with them. When ever I try to do something quickly in felt, it never works out that way, including this project.


I picked five strips of felt, that I thought would look good together, and blend well when felted.


I positioned them close to each other on top of a 10" square piece of orange pre-felted fleece. Then I proceeded to needle punch it form the top down. Many of the strips from other weeks were very very thick, and I quickly broke 2 needles. The felting needles cost a lot of money, and they are a pain in the neck to replace, so I quickly decided to stop using my needle punch machine, and to use my sewing machine to finish up, instead.


This is what the back looked like when I stopped felting.


I placed the halfway felted piece on top of an 11" square piece of cotton quilt batting, since one layer of the pre-felted orange fleece was not strong enough to hold everything together.


Then I matched the felt with colors of sewing thread, and zig-zagged (or scribbled) back and forth, over the different pieces of felt. The picture above is a detail, to explain. The bad news it, it took a very long time to do this. The good news is there's a lot of texture, and I didn't break any more needles, though my sewing machine did have a heard time going through some of the layers.

After I finished stitching, I cut the entire piece down to 6" square.


This is what the back of the piece looks like.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

Flower Power

I saw this on my walk the other day. The tree trunk reminds me of the Flower Power stickers we used to have when I was a kid in the 1970's. Besides the shape, I also like the color of the wood and the bark.

2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

Here is my 23rd Weekly Mixed Media piece this year. The front is above, and the back side is below. I always post the back sides of felt on my blog, because they are so different, and can sometimes be very interesting.


To create this piece, cut one 10" square piece of green wool felt fabric, and one 10" square piece of purple pre-felted wool fleece. Cut the purple piece of fleece in half.


Place one piece of the purple pre-felted fleece on the table. On top of that, place the green wool felt fabric, so that the purple fleece is on the right side underneath. Position two pieces of antique black lace, so it is similar to this photo.


Position the second piece of purple pre-felted fleece, on the left top of the green wool/black lace.

Needle punch the top purple fleece down, through the black laces and the green wool. Go over and over it, so that some of the black lace starts to appear through the purple fleece. Turn everything over, and needle punch the purple fleece top down, do it starts to show up on the green wool/black lace side. After it is lightly felted, turn it over, and needle punch all sides over and over and over, so that the piece is nicely felted.


Add three pieces of a nicely matching purple yarn across the both purple and green felt/black lace. Position one piece near the top of the piece, and two near the bottom. Needle punch them in place from the top down.


This is what similar to what the back will look like after you are finished needle felting everything in place.

Using a template, with a 6" square hole, position the design to your liking, and trace the 6" square. Cut to size, and using purple and then black thread, stitch straight lines from one side to the other, over any sections that could use some highlighting.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

Rubberband Ball

This is my biweekly update about my family's rubberband ball. Above is the front side, and below the back side.


There's a very subtle change in the past two weeks. A very skinny band broke. It was visible on the front side, on the bottom left side of the thick black band. Below is a detail of what it looked like on May 24th, and what it looks like now.


I do my best to post updates every two weeks or so. You can see what it looked like in the past, by clicking here. To see what the first picture I posted, in July 2007, click here. We're only a few weeks away from the one year anniversary of my documenting how it's falling apart.