every-single-day

Harkening back.

Today I gave a lecture about my art and approach to quilt art to the Warwick Valley Quilters Guild. The preparation for which made me take a stroll down Memory Lane. This vest was my first sewn project. I proudly wore this little thing! Imagine my little self.
I stitched each of the beads, ribbon and lace by hand, a protent of things to come, surely!

Look at my fabulous, loose and flowing stitches! I remember stitching them and thinking about Betsy Ross, sewing the flag... I liked to think about her back then! I would sometimes stick knitting needles into a dish towel and wave them around, pretending to knit. I did this just to think about good ol' Betsy. I know I was a bit confused, but hey. I had a role model.

I dyed some fabrics to sell! Sold some too! here is a sample. I will put them in my shop. Which I need to fix-up...

I don't have very much experience with guilds. I have been a member of two guilds. I tend to think of my current guild as very well to do, it is Westchester County, New York for cripes sake. I also tend to think of my guild as somewhat traditional. But upon rethinking this, there are many adventurous spirits in my guild who step out of the quilt box, and often.
The Warwick Valley Quilt Guild seemed quite traditional at first and I felt somewhat out of my league. But I need not have had that fear. The reception to my work was positive and engaged. There were many questions, and lots of great feedback. This was the largest group I have ever lectured to and they would like to have me back for a surface design workshop!
How do you like them apples?
There were even a bunch of really good cupcakes, of which I am quite fond. Give me a cupcake anyday of the week and my non-sugar resolve will melt away in seconds... Which reminds me...
It will be my birthday soon. hm...

Content

This is Monk's shadow aspect. Monk is having a difficult time. He is feeling our angst about selling the house and especially does not like when foriegn people enter the house. We have him on a Return to Joy Program. But I am asking that everyone prey for Monk and Arrow, ask your companimals to give some positive thoughts to both of my good cat friends. This is a stressful time for all of us.

So, as usually I am breaking with tradition and talking about The View before Tuesday:

I took myself for a date and read your latest, while eating dinner tonight. I am reading chapter 3 and thinking about content. I have had the good fortune to go to two years of Textile Surface Design School at F.I.T in Manhattan. I say this for two reasons, it is more of a technical/vocational program than an art program and for me, artistically at least, two years is all I needed.

I sometimes think it would have been awesome to get into a fine arts program, daydreaming that I would have learned to paint in oils, might have been given the chance to expand my knowledge of artists through out the ages and their affects on us as modern artist, I could just go on about my ideas and ideals...

But the truth is, I got a speedy course though painting in water reversible media, repeats, colorways and everything related to textiles. When I got out of school, I found a job as a vintage poster restoration artist which exposed me to drawing and painting styles, gave me the opportunity to decipher political and cultural significance in the pieces I restored and gave me everything and more of what I might have been afforded had I gotten into a fine arts program. I worked on originals, Warhol Strike-offs and fell in love with stone litho, Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha.

But, so... I was reading about "content" and I must say I wonder at the implications of your use of this word. Perhaps this word and your use of it is a bit of ignorance I need to shed light upon. Do you mean to say emotional, cultural, personal content? Placing a broader sense of the world or my experience of it into my work? Is content the spark that takes the work past the person who made it? Pops the bubble of technique and form?

When asked, 'What is my own content?' I think I would answer this as, the female form, nature, birds.

But I guess I get stuck on that word. Content.

I feel that I draw upon my experiences and insights when I get imagery out onto the cloth. That the images I create are specific to me, Melanie Testa. I do not feel as though I am giving voice or channeling the various teachers I have admired and taken workshops from. Though I can see that the techniques I have learned have coalesced into something that feels quite grounded to me.

Not for Pasta Anymore!

I have spoken about Claudine Hellmuth's book, Collage Discovery. I discovered Xerography through this book and love it. In her book she suggests using a Pasta Press to burnish the copies...

I got one for FREE!!! Wee. I joined my local Freecycle and asked for one! And got it!
I wish I knew who had turned me on to Freecycle, it was one of The View readers, I am pretty sure! Either way. This week I gave away an industrial sewing machine and a beautiful treadle sewing machine. Now I have this pasta press to go play xerography with!

So now I am off to a full day in the studio, to play!

My goal in sitting in front of my sewing machine is to use the machine more like I do a paintbrush. I feel like I am getting there.
Here is another view of this same image. Capturing color is a titchy thing given my artistic style, so I am showing a flash image, which waters down my colors and a non flash which shows the humming bird off a little better:

I have been sewing for most of the last two days. I am really happy about my progress. I have one more hour before I go to guild, so I will see you later.

Nothing... Everything... Something.

I have no appropriate title.

This is Lisa Chipetine. She is a phenominal being, she is energetic, in love with fiber and art, dynamic, filled with emotions. Her intellect is readily available. She is a really good friend and fellow artist.
She and I went to a Fiber Revolution opening last week. Where a few of our respective pieces of art are being shown. I felt really honored by the placement of Repose under the entryway signage of this fabulous musuem.

I have also been reading my copy of The View and loving it. I am going to walk to a coffee shop I am interested in and read some more this morning.
I am reading and thinking about sources of learning. When I was 27 years old I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology for Textile/Surface Design. During that time I had a teacher names Zsuzsi Dahlquist. I have not seen her since that time but I love her to this day. She gave extra credit to any student who slid into the room, arms out-stetched, proclaiming, "Ta-da!" quite loudly.
She also encouraged us to think about transparency in our artwork. I have been on a mission ever since.
In following my list of learning experiences I have to thank, my Dad, who always said, "Art is in the details". And to me this means alot of things. It means I need to pay attention, go the extra mile, place my spirit in the cloth, thread and imagery. I could go on.
David, my Man, allows me creative time. He is my original and ever present Creativity Pimp.
Rocky, a man my father used to work with, who bought an oil painting kit for me so long ago...
Bella, who taught me to use tiny bits of time to connect with my creative source.
My Mom, who encouraged me to FINISH stuff.
Brenda who directed me to my own path, told me to go make art when the going was tough.

And then of course there are the bits of time and experience that teach me, keep me learning. The resisted birds made in Release:

are showing up in my current work in progress. I have become OK with reusing imagery, I no longer think each piece needs to stand alone, separate from what came before it.
So this post is going to end abruptly. I need to disconnect from the computer...
No spell check, no nothing...

Art and Society

This is a thoroughly, in-progress showing of my next piece. I am working on incorporating all the techniques that speak to me. When I wash the cloth, it may look nothing like this. Who knows, that is the beauty of working in cloth, with dye!

I have been reading The View and loving it. It touched me so deeply, it made me cry this morning!
A few years ago a friend looked at me and said something to the effect of, "Melanie, your skills are extraordinary. Some people work all of thier lives and never accomplish a 1/3rd of what you do creatively. Artistically you are a genius."
I totally understood that my friend was working to bolster my sense of accomplishment and pride in my own work. But even then I fought this statement. I believe now, as I did then that there are small steps that each and every person can take, on a daily basis that will create and direct artistic skill and accomplishment. Genius isn't necessary to make art, just legwork and intention.
I have created a lifestyle that fully accommodates my need to make art. And it is a need! I do not function well in a world of all work and no play. Making art for me is playing and I do everything in my power to create time to play.
This is also one of the reasons why I named my blog, "a bit of creativity every-single-day"; because like Ted Orland writes on page 35, "Art is mostly a product of hard work."
I like to think of it as a means of total immersion. If every single day, I take the time to draw in my journal or bead, embroider, sew on my machine or if time doesn't permit, simply to mix the thickener needed for a full days work over the weekend, I have kept my mind in the realm of artistic play. I have at that point given myself permission to access my creative mind on a daily basis. I do not give my mind time to shut down, to turn to the television, internet or do the things that tamp my creative spirit.
Or perhaps I should say I allow for downtime, but only after I have done a little something to remind myself what my true intent in this life is; to make art.

I would like to write more, but I think this says what I need it to for right now. Besides! I need to get dressed and make art! Thank you Ted.

Big, Flower.

I made time to play! Yesterday!
My life has been very busy and filled with mundane, adult activities. Organizing the house, calling real estate agents, getting a plumber to come in and replace the boiler, and then I got a job painting a bedroom too. Money is a good thing, to make.
Art is even better; to make, that is.
I started this at retreat in April(?). Way back when. (I never posted about it because my blog was broken for that whole month. Grrrr. Still dislike that whole deal!) But the retreat was great, and I started this big flower.

Yesterday, I worked on this bit. The flash sorta recolors this whole area. It doesn't quite capture what I did. But I used layers of black tulle to emphasize the drawing of a plant.
This entire flower was a plant that I drew while at Zion Canyon, a few years back. You'll see the journal entry if you click that link.
Well! Gotta go. Hangin' with JJ today.
More play.

Theory and Practice, Intertwined

I have been reading my copy of Ted Orland's The View from the Studio Door. I, of course, love it. I like his thought processes and explanations. Even when I don't agree with him, I am happy to think through our differences in opinion.

Frida Kahlo said, "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality." and this is the quote that stepped into my thoughts when reading the introduction of Ted's book. When he says that, "theory and practice are always intertwined", I begin to think about what paths the artists I know take, how they must see the world, if perhaps for these artists the world is not what it seems to me.
Perception and thought are so enmeshed in process that perhaps Frida Kahlo truly imagined snake like tendrils of hair surrounding her as she created the piece called , Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, her cut hair looks disturbing, which was (I suppose), her reality. I wonder at the extent that she felt emotion, I am sure it was quite deeply. Frida's "skies" had major influence in her depiction of life's events.

Also I began thinking about Koko and Michael because Ted discussed that art making is specific to human activity. I agree that humans have an edge in this department, but I think the animal/human world is getting smaller and we are having an effect on those animals in our care.
Koko and Michael learned sign language and began painting under the care of The Gorilla Foundation. Check out Michaels portrait of his dog companion.
And of course there are The Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project. Please read the small blurbs about the elephants and their experiences painting, compared to the paintings themselves.

And I think the thing that really hit home for me in this chapter of The View is the question, 'Why do we make art?'
For me? Because making art is the closest I get to meditation. My mind clears and I feel communion with the power greater than myself. I feel like I can fly, speak another language, move mountains. My problems go away, I feel clean and clear and purposeful.
I am happier making art than having made art. The object at the end of the endeavor is nice, pretty, intriguing, but over. Done.
And truly one piece of art informs the next. I love remaining open to what might happen if... I layer organza on top of cotton, coloring circles of green and orange, overlapping, resisting with wax... Solving artistic problems.
It is so like being a scientist.

Sporadic, at Best.

My creatively talented friend has been at it again, JJ made these stamps for me, they are to be used in the wax pot. I began using them yesterday, am washing a sample as I type.
I/We hope to selll a few either in my store or in an etsy type store. I wonder if all of you surface design fanatics might comment on price ranges that you would snap these things up at.

As you can tell my postings have been sporadic, at best. My Man and I are getting the house ready to be sold. I was offered a job in Flagstaff, it starts on August 1. I pray that the timing of all of these things works out.
I am tired. I wake feeling tired.

But I have been reading Ted Orlands book and will be posting about what I have read so far, tomorrow morning. Perhaps I should create that post tonight, because I have alot of comments written in the margins of my copy.

I have also been being creative. Yesterday I worked on a 4x6" piece that I am loving and started a nude that is also quite interesting. As Julia Cameron lovingly reminds me, in order to function I really need to coddle and encourage the artist in me.
Making art, engaging creatively, clarifies my mind. simplifies interactions with the people I love and makes daily living purposeful. So although neither of these creative endeavors are at the stage where I would feel comfortable showing them, I am making art. My art. For me. Because I need to. Want to. Love to.