i believe this is week 7

my trip to chicago interrupted week 6. my intention was to zentangle myself silly. however, not much time was devoted to drawing. i have posted my meager efforts. it is different working out of one's home environment. disciplin becomes much more important: setting up a time and a place to work.

this week i will be finishing up masks, labels, etc for my solo mask show october 2-31 at Hutchins Street Square in Lodi, California. The reception is on October 2 from 5:30 -8:30pm- with wine, music, and friends.

my theme for this week will be felting- i will work on creating a few atcs, and finishing up some hair clips, brooches, and perhaps fashion a felt mask of mira's lovely face!

i am flexible with my themes. what i work on is affected by what is going on in my life, not just a projected creative work flow. hence, since i need to work on felting projects, that is what i shall work on! i am happy as long as i am creating, experimenting, and learning.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
- Ursula Le Guin

back home

i'm home again. my visit to chicago was filled with lots of other stuff; not much time for drawing! i did some zens in the airport and on the plane.




upon my return, i also completed my 2 sewn paper masks:

i decided they needed some "hair". i believe this was an improvement. i sewed some shredded money onto the masks.

ZENS in CHICAGO

must leave soon for plane with sister Andrea to Chicago for cousin's wedding. my plan for my 52 weeks is to draw zentangles. doodle meditation. a sketchbook and a pen. easy peasy. will try to write while gone....

i did manage to complete a wonderful mask made from papier mache and bark with a small embossed metal eye. this mask assembled itself with a bit of help from me!

the bark is from a river birch tree from my friend amy's house and sycamore bark from my local park- gleaned from the ground.

clean up /finishing day

when i am in between projects, cleaning my studio clears my head. my work space becomes very chaotic which is fine when i'm in the midst of the chaos. but when i am not involved in a bunch of projects, i look at the wonderful mess and feel the urge to tidy up. clean up and create some space for new ideas. it's a matter of the physics principle of entropy:

from Wikipedia - "Entropy has often been loosely associated with the amount of order, disorder and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system . The traditional qualitative description of entropy is that it refers to changes in the status quo of the system and is a measure of "molecular disorder" and the amount of wasted energy in a dynamical energy transformation from one state or form to another.

"In Greek myth, Chaos is the original dark void from which everything else appeared. According to Hesiod's Theogony (the origin of the gods), Chaos was the nothingness out of which the first objects of existence appeared. In a similar way, the book of Genesis in the Bible refers to the earliest conditions of the Earth as "without form, and void."

Out of the disordered, dark state of chaos comes everything! That's my story and i'm stickin' to it!

sewn paper mask 2

i used the shimmery watercolors by luminarte to paint the mask. beautiful colors and beautiful glimmer. they are solid watercolors in small jars. i wanted the gold stitching to show up more prominently. i'm not sure if this was the result, perhaps a bit more visible. the colors are exciting! it's either all or no color for me!
i finished off the outside and inside with a polyurythane varnish for extra shine.

a thread of connection

i have discovered in an aha moment that my work involves creating a whole from many dissimilar parts. paper collage certainly is in this category, as is the mosaic work which i love to do (my patio, small mixed media pieces).

i love the idea of patchwork: making sense of a jumble of different materials, images colors, textures. to make order out of the chaos. that is what i do. i looked up patchwork in the thesaurus and found the word "salmagundi". a wonderful word. i reintegrate salamagundi- take the pieces and put them together to create a new "whole".

week #4 already?

week number 4 and i am thinking about is my solo mask show the first friday of october, the art center studio tour that i am participating in mid-october, leaving for chicago in 1-1/2 weeks and going to bend, oregon at the end of september. lots to do to get ready and lots of time spent going other places!

i am excited about my travels- to chicago and bend for weddings. i finished 2 felted pieces for wedding gifts. (see august 14) i have framed the one for my cousin Rachel. it looks wonderful! i need to figure out how to wrap it so i can bring it with me on the plane. the piece for my sister-in-law isn't yet framed but will be going to a wonderful local framer before i leave for chicago. i am recycling an old frame that i can use with a double matte.

i have a sewn mask made of paper from an asian poetry book, an old textbook, old sheet music, and my 1800s 2-volume dictionary. i used gold metallic thread, which doesn't show up well on the white paper. i am thinking of using my shimmery watercolors to show off the stitching. although i do love just the effect of the white and black of the text. i was so tempted to just glue the collage mask with matte medium, but i decided to adhere to my method for the week and sew the mask in sections which i then glued down onto the papier mache mask. i will be taking this week to finish this mask, and the other sewn mask, which needs something....

the 3rd papier mache mask which i started is being covered with sycamore bark. the bark was waiting for me at the park and it just called to be made into a mask! it is leading me away from my paper sewing, but also leading into this week's new material, BARK!!! i have already made several of my sewn atcs with river birch bark which is very layered and papery. it works wonderfully well with the paper. the sycamore bark is too thick to be sewn through, though i may be able to wrap it and stitch on the paper base, in addition to using heavy gel medium.

i am going where the materials and projects are taking me, in an unexpected direction, which i love! this is what 52 weeks is about! so, finish up all three masks: painting, embellishing, and glueing and sewing bark.

a good week

i completed 3 papier mache masks: my face, my mom's and one from my daughter as a child. papier mache is so easy: flour, water, and newspaper. i usually have these ingredients.



my mother's face is almost complete. i sewed the faced in several sections, then sewed them all together before placing on the mask. this mask came together easily. i have included a photo of my mom and sisters, a mailman to represent my father, and several related texts.

i have begun work on my face: i gathered some sycamore bark from the park which when broken into 3 pieces seemed to fit the face. i adhered them, hopefully with heavy gel medium. i haven't checked to see how that went.

more sewing atcs and 2 felted ones. i am hoping to improve my ability to capture my work in photos .

masks today!

i have 2 plaster life masks - myself and of my mom. i have covered them with aluminum foil and will get to covering them with papier mache and then sewn paper. the paper sewing is becoming fun. i have sewn multiple small sewn collaged pieces together to create the first mask. it all came together so fast! i just started sewing paper that was in my reach and the creative juices led me on!

yes, it is the end of week 3!

whoa! the last 2 weeks were spent struggling with the sewing of paper to fabric and to paper. paper to fabric is more difficult, unless of course the fabric is not too thick and is stiff. i discovered that machine sewing paper to paper can be fun and have wonderful results. i did have trouble with free form sewing on the machine.... i didn't drop my feed dogs! must try doing this today.

my project for week 4 will be the creation of a mask out of stitched paper affixed to a plaster life mask. i believe i now have a few skills to be able to accomplish this.

more machine sewn atcs

the first 2 cards were tacked onto parchment paper
with matte medium, then sewn when dry. the next atc was built from the top down: sewing 2 pieces together, then adding another piece below it, etc. this was a good way to sew together paper without having to tack or preplan design. it took shape more organically than the others.

the last atc shown here was built with 2 larger and sturdier pieces of paper - the green paper and the sheet of music. the other pieces were just sewn on top without a need to tack into place.

sewing small paper collages

i decided to scale back my sewing collage projects and worked on card size collages and atc collages. here are 2 of the atcs. the card collages on posted on my flickr.

i realized that is was so much easier to keep the small work organized for sewing by dabbing a bit of matte medium on each piece which i then attached to a piece of cooking parchment paper. this helped to give these small collages a bit of stability and so much easier to sew. today i will work on a few more small paper sewn pieces.

felting on the side

i have been felting the last month and cannot seem to stop. i ordered some wonderful felt from sara's texture crafts on etsy. the colors are amazing! i have become enamored of felt squares and circles. http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com

i am attending 2 weddings in september and decided to make the gifts - felted wall hangings. i have made them both. i haven't decided how to frame them; but will take them in to be framed next week. perhaps in a double matted glassed frame. i am hesitant about leaving the felt open to the elements (dirt/dust in particular).

the felting itself is very calming. i love forming it with my hands. fiber sculpture, sort of...
and of course, i am continuing to make brooches and hair clips from felt. i am documenting all this here so i don't forget that i was busy with other projects beside the main 52 week projects. a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

i have a very clever friend, mira, who has reminded me that if i look back on what i have done, i will be able to see the common threads which run through my work and define me as an artist. one revelation i had this morning while driving in the car, is this: i work in bold strokes and am less interested in the details, than the whole. i have been looking at some beautifully detailed and crafted needle felting with embroidery. i love the hand sewing detail, but it is just not my thing! i become too impatient! i am more of an expressionist in my work. the process is my focus and what excites me most, especially when it expresses my vision.

thursday already?

i thought i had written in the blog in the last couple days, but i guess i just thought about it! i was very frustrated with my green fabric and paper stuffed collage project. i let it sit a day and then decided i could fix it by cutting off a piece. here is the unfinished, as yet green collage and 2 cut off pieces. i made atcs from the small cut offs. i am going to try to fix the filling and iron the piece to see if i can "straighten" it out.

monday afternoon

i did figure out the poor green paper/fabric collage. i cut off the end where the fabric seemed bunched, took out some stitching and re-stitched. am getting ready to iron and finish the sides and back. yay! it seems that i do best when really having to overcome a project that has gone awry. it certainly is a good way to push myself beyond my usual stuff and creating something new and exciting. if maybe not always fantastic, the process is transformative.

i have taken the smaller piece of this piece i cut off and cut it into 2 pieces, zig-zagged the edges and will mount them onto an atc blank. cool.

saw some fabulous fabric atc cards on sanna's blog: transferred photos on fabric, then embellished, felted, bejeweled. more inspiration! thanks, sanna. (sannasartmind.blogspot.com)

monday morning....

recovering from a really bad art day. i worked on my green paste paper on fabric with quilting wall hanging. i am not an experienced quilter, nor am i a patient and meticulous person. so i just tried to blaze away on my sewing machine (i did pin everything together!). alas, i used lots of stuffing and created a sort of a puckery piece. i just kept sewing away hoping to tame the folds, but gave up when i became totally frustrated. always a good idea to step away when things go bad...

this is a potential problem with this 52 weeks project: i tend to need to step away from projects for awhile when they don't go as planned, or the plan hasn't revealed itself to me. this is a good disciplin for me. so difficult to be consistent and keep it moving. today i will return to the scene of the crime and investigate.

after the green collage fiasco, i attempted some atcs and they just weren't coming together.
i decided to avoid the studio for the rest of the day!

today is going to be another scorcher - 100 degrees or so... so, i will take zoe (my dog) to the park to play, then head to the studio to work. i did receive an exceptionally inspirational set of atcs from my friend phyllis. on one she sewing a photo fragment "Papiers" (pictured to the right.) i like the idea of embellishing with sewing paper, photos, tags, etc. perhaps i will head in this direction. thanks phyllis! you rock!

favorite tool week 2

MY SEWING MACHINE IN ITS NEW HOME.

week 2 sewing paper

sewing paper has been interesting. scrapbooking weight paper is not ideal nor fun to sew. it's better to glue! sewing with a thinner weight paper, tissue, or rice paper is so much easier and hangs better due to its suppleness. also, it's not a battle getting the needle through the paper! i do really like the look of the paper sewn to fabric and then quilted with a layer of batting. great soft sculptural look and feel.

i have also loved using just one color family together. i tend to sort my collections of stuff by color. hmmmmm... i have another paper/fabric collage started: it is being sewn by machine and then quilted.

i did not accomplish a lot of projects this week, however, i did manage to find a spot for my sewing machine in the studio and arranged my fabrics all in one location. this is also part of my year long project: to adapt my studio to my art needs.

for week three, i will finish my green collage and make a collection of atcs sewn by hand and/or machine. i also hope to do more fabric/paper monochromatic collages or projects.

purple paper sewing - week 2

this is the first of the projects for this week: sewing paper! i sewed the papers onto a rectangular piece of fabric by hand, added the batting (sp?) layer, and another fabric on the back. folded over frayed edges onto front and sewed with machine, then did a bit of machine quilting to create more texture and cohesiveness. it is approximately 6" x 12".

sewing regular scrapbooking type papers is not fun and they get creased and really show the mistakes! the paste paper and tissue paper i used was fun to sew, although i get very impatient: i want to go faster! i must remind myself to take a deep breathe and relax.

i spent several hours this morning cleaning out a corner of the studio to create a sewing area. found a spot for fabric, a sewing table (had to move my stamping and embossing stuff to the big desk). this is the second part of my 52 weeks: further organizing my studio, refining material selection (throwing stuff away!), making the space more user friendly. after all, the studio space is filled with many years (34?) of accumulated materials of all sorts. i can't use materials if i cannot find them! so i did my final machine sewing in the studio.

i have some fabric and paper cut out for a green mixed sewing piece. will start tomorrow as i must get ready to go to sacramento in an hour.

yes it is week 2!

i have decided to pursue some more paper projects and techniques: weaving and sewing.
the first project which i have started is a monocolor paper on fabric strip collage. i have several purple patterned papers, tissue paper, and some paste paper from another time. i have torn and "glue basted" in place the paper onto the fabric. i will be sewing this piece by hand. off to work!