Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: quilters

Showing posts with label quilters. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2011

Lauren Strach: A Botanical Lunatic with a Plan

12:28 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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Lauren doesn't look like a lunatic. She looks like a pink cheeked soccer mom. Look out! Stand back!

She's an emerging art quilter who attacks new approaches and techniques with gleeful ferocity. And masters them with passion. Every time she visits me, I find myself flying to my machine, inspired by her intensity.

Lauren says,

"My inspiration, like so many other quilters, comes from nature.

As a life-long biologist and Master Gardener, I thought I saw nature, but it wasn’t until I embraced my artful journey that I began to really see. My inspiration is found in the whorls of snail shells, the miniature worlds of mosses and lichens, the rugged nooks and crannies of the bark of the fallen tree, and the intricate shading and nuances in the early spring wildflowers. And, the more I see, the more I see.

The act of translating that vision in line, pattern and color into textile recreations introduces the next level of AHA! It is an ever fascinating challenge to take the experience of seeing with eyes wide open, to shape it into form. From the fantastical realism of exaggerated insects, to the abstracted likeness of the quintessential flower bud, I seek to uncover the universal codes, to bring them to life with fabric and thread. Tactile, textile translations of the mysteries of nature, celebrating the wonders of life, that is where I find my inspiration.

Lauren's work has been showed at both Paducah and Houston. She was a finalist in the $100,000 Quilt Challenge. Where will she show next? It could be anywhere. If she doesn't send it in, it's likely
to fly in on it's own.

Labels: art quilters, art quilting, free motion, gardening, life as an artist, lifestyle, lunatic fringe, quilters, quilting |

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Musings: Art outside the Box:Other People's Stuff

11:37 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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As someone who's dyed fabric for over 20 years, it's almost unthinkable for me to use someone else's fabric in an art quilt. It's almost like putting on someone else's underwear or using their tooth brush. It feels very strange and wrong somehow. I'm used to the definitions I get from what I do in a dye room. I can create a whole world just in the dyeing and then embellish from there. I play with quilt fabric for my own entertainment, but usually what I do is make myself aprons. I quilt with hand-dye.

And I would have said that was written in stone if I hadn't gone back to making baby quilts. One of the ministries we do in my church is make quilts for babies and shut ins. I swore I would never do that kind of quilting again. Of course, that kind of quilting is only a little bit about blankets. It's about caring for people and learning how to give to people. It's about building community. It's a whole other art form, and absolutely vital. We forget that in our mothers' time so much of the world ran on what we called "service organizations". In a world where people are struggling to make things work with two jobs, volunteerism is almost impossible. But it covered a great deal of need, in giving to the community and in being able to have something to give. Both those states are a vital ying/yang of basic human existence. We give, we take. Hopefully we live in a balanced world where both of those things are possible.

So I found myself finishing a quilt for a lady with a brain tumor. We'd shopped specially for that quilt. Lots of Kaye Fasset, an amazing cat fabric, and some contemporary abstracts. I showed it to a friend. It was nothing but nine patches. The people I'm working with have some pretty limited skills. We tend to keep it simple.But she said"You're fabric's doing the work for you here." She was so right. With fabric that pretty, who cared? The lady loved it. She's been taking it along with her for her treatments. That quilt is busy doing it's job.

That being said, how much of our art is totally ours?Certainly when we use commercial fabric, it's easy to forget that there's a designer in a back room who it really belongs to. It's their art. But what we choose to do with it is ours.

Ever since the first calicoes and Jacobean prints came from India, we've redefined, reworked, undone, redone and embellished other people's art into our own. I don't often use other people's fabric. But I do look at photos for anatomic information about animals I draw. All art is derivative. It all comes from somewhere. Perhaps the question is, are we honest enough to fess up to saying from where? I won't use calico. But I do find I have a weakeness for brocade. And when I'm done with it, it doesn't much look like what I started with

So the next time you see an amazing piece of fabric that is the work of someone else's hands, celebrate it. Buy it. Cut into it. It's only fabric. It only bleeds in the wash.

Labels: art quilters, art quilting, books, craft, embroidery, fiber art, quilters, quilting, sewing, story telling |

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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Musings: Art out of the box. The Egg Fu Young of Design

5:37 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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Every so often someone asks me if I start with a background or with an image. It's probably cruel when I turn to them and say, "Yes!" So sorry. It's true. The chicken and the egg question is always part of the process of art.

I know when someone asks me that, they want a formula. Wouldn't that be nice? A simple clean pathway that always produces something wonderful! Do a and b, finish with c, dust it with a dash of e.d.f and pat on the head. All artists have some kind of map like that but it's always got huge territories within that are marked off with the ancient warning, "Here there be dragons." We don't know for sure that there's a dragon in there. We just know it's uncharted territory. Anything could be in there.

Now we don't have to go into uncharted territory as an artist. Not every day. But if we never go near,we're stuck strictly with what we know. That's sometimes very limited. And when you go into that uncharted area anything really could be in there. The mental quicksand of fear. The cure for internal cancer of doubt. A beauty not yet conceived. Uncharted art may be the last unexplored territory, the last frontier, with all the riches and terrors attendant.

But the nurture of any living thing is uncharted land. A child, a dog, a love, a passion, and a piece of art work are all living things with their own rhythms, needs, flows, patterns. We can extrude our own druthers upon them, but they crack off as a living thing grows like a bad veneer.

I've maintained for a long time that art has a life entire of it's own. I learned long ago that it extends past my intentions, particularly once it's in the public eye. It often goes places I will never go. It has jobs of it's own to do. And hopefully, as one wishes for one's children, it has a life that goes out, past and separate from my own.

So perhaps it's not odd that I can't say for sure that the chicken always comes first .It simply can't be proved by practice. Sometimes you just end up holding the egg end of it first. Sometimes a background insists on an image and there you are. Insist back if you like, but art will demand what it demands. Whether you're up to it or not. Start with the background and listen carefully. It will take you in, layer by layer.

Other times the images are so strong that I form them first and then shop them around one background after another looking for the right home.It's like selling real estate to an image. we drive up to a piece of fabric, walk around in it and see it 's the right neighborhood and if the schools will be good for the kids. All jokes aside, there's a place that clearly right within a piece of fabric or it won't fit in.

Hunter's Moon

Hunter's Moon was completely image driven. In fact, the owl had been made for another quilt entirely. That quilt involved all kinds of images I couldn't quite master. As an demo where I needed an embroidered appliqué to show, I pulled it out of a pile and made a background for it.

It was a fairly simple thing to pull to pieces together and strip piece them to make filtered moonlight, powered by an Angelina fiber moon.In a way, image focused quilts are simpler. You finish your image and then you simply slip it into it's home, nestled into layers of stitchery and sheers. I added bats and moths because they too hunt the night by moonlight. They're part of it.

Balcony Scene

Background based imagery takes more of a leap of faith. The background for this quilt fairly squished with the kind of marshy land that grows calla lilies and extra large frogs. The frogs weren't exactly an afterthought, but they came after the callas. The butterflies came after that as a way to move the eye through the background.It built up in layers until the butterflies soared around the edges.

If art is alive, if it is a quivering, living thing, then it makes sense that we can't make a formula that works each time. We can't really paint by numbers without somehow losing something in the process. Instead, like every living thing, it grows accordingly to it's own inner map and clock. Like egg fu young, the chicken and the egg are both there, both present. But only in their own way. I can only be present myself, and lend myself to their growth.

Labels: art quilters, art quilting, fiber art, free motion, quilters, story telling |

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Saturday, September 19, 2009

Musings: Art outside the box

10:04 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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Years ago, I had a friend tell me, "Sometimes your art is your life. Sometimes your life is your art."

I don't think I got it at the time. I had this fire in my head that made it impossible to leave the machine, the fabric, the sewing room, all of it alone.

Lately I find myself sewing in words. I'm crafting words and I can't seem to leave that alone. So my machine sits fallow much of the time. It's productive. I've self-published 4 books this year. But it's not making any quilts.

If art is a product, then I'm not doing my art. Is art only a product? Is it only a painting, a quilt, a pot, a weaving. Is it a performance? Something that only matters if we show it? What does art do, other than to be something made and show to others?

What if, instead it's a day to day process, a transformation of what we take in?

There's an old saying."Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."Perhaps art is that process of rethinking the flotsom and jetsom of our lives so that it coalesces into a more sensible whole. We take our stories, our bruises, our tears, our rages, our hopes and dreams and dress them up through the process of what we make out of them. And somehow, they change our thinking. What was good is better. What was unspeakable is at least funny. Or speakable. What is agony is something that came and went and like the fairies left both good and bad presents.

I think that part of my art gone out of my box, my sewing room, my studio might well be the quilt I'm afraid of. I have a large lizard quilt drawn on my wall. It's komodo dragons, dancing in the moonlight. Is it odd? Well, all of my romatic life is odd or non-existant, but no more than what I see on tv which doesn't even start to define odd as reality.

The actual image is them fighting, in nature. But it looks somehow like a romatic dance. This may explain why I live with cats and dogs.

Will this quilt change me if I make it? Of course. All art changes us. That is what it does. It is the philosopher's stone. It changes lead into more precious commodities.

So today I'm going to pull my art out of the art box. I'm going to make my life my art. Which means the making of my life through small actions into a place of change for good.Wash the dishes. Find the bottom of the kitchen floor. It's in there somewhere.

And go and look at the lizards and see if I'm ready to dance with them yet.

Here lizard, lizard , lizard.