Taking It to the Streets

When I am traveling I always enjoy looking at utility covers.  Something about them fascinates me and some day I'll decide what art I can make from these photos. 

A couple of years ago I took a cruise to Canada and started taking photos of what I consider to be industrial street art in Montreal. These are some of my favorites including the bits of leaves, pocked street surfaces and other residue.

  This is one of my favorites of Bell Canada.  I like the fissures coming from around the circle.

If I had been thinking I should have taken some rubbings too.  The textures are great.

I like the variations and creativity of the designers for this very functional metalwork.

These two are close but just a bit different.

Once again a variation and the wear around the cover shows the power of water and pressure.

Now this is totally different and allows for more drainage.

This diamond pattern is also interesting and I find I like the surrounding color changes as well.

The smaller cover and surrounding concrete, dab of blue paint and wet dirt conjures up the urban landscape.

The bits of banana peel, cigarette butts enclosed by the square of metal reminds us to take better care of the planet.  Some do/some don't.

Art & Health

Health, diet, weight and obesity remain in the forefront of the national conversation. Many of us including our children aren't exercising or eating healthy foods.  Added to that are stress and anxiety that can contribute to overeating.  With that in mind, following are a series of quilts that were created in 2008-2009 as part of a health education program conducted by Bay Area  Black United Fund, www.babuf.org.  With the support of a Creative Work Fund grant,  www.creativeworkfund.org,  Dolores Presley, Julia Vitero and I participated in the Critical Mass Health Conductor program.  Thereafter 15 quilts were designed and fabricated to address ways to combat African American health disparities including our own. 

Welcome aboard the BABUF (Bay Area Black United Fund) Express

 

 

 

 Dolores Presley made the first five pieces shown.  All pieces are in the 50 to 55" range.

Get Tested

 

 

 

Get Tested Detail showing a bit of 3D embellishment

Good Medicine

Life Is Water in 3 segments

 

 

Step Down to Healthy Eating

Julia made the next five pieces.

Be Healthy for Your Family

Detail showing statements from program participants

Eating Right is a Day in the Park that has a oilcloth tablecloth and real flatware along with the appliqued food plates.  See the opening image for details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stepping Stones to Good Health

Stepping Stones Detail showing felt footprints

Calm Spirit

I made the last five pieces.

Bulletins for Life

Bulletins Detail

Five A Day

Five A Day Detail

Thirsty?  Drink Water

Detail for Thirsty? Drink Water

What Would Harriet Do?

Detail for What Would Harriet Do?

In the Critical Mass Health Conductor program all participants who graduate are considered Health Conductors.  Harriet Tubman is Health Conductor #1.  I'm Health Conductor #422.

As you can see art can be a vital part of any health awareness campaign.  Many of you know about the AIDS quilts and the dynamic part they have played in AIDS education.  We Health Conductors hope these quilts can play an important part in getting our communities to take a more progressive role in changing their diets, practicing stress and relaxation techniques, exercising more and consistently and definitely drinking a lot more water.  Only we can do it.

Dolores, Julia and I send our thanks to BABUF staff, Critical Mass Health Conductor facilitators and all the participants who shared the training with us.  We extend a special thanks to Creative Work Fund for supporting us in this project. 

Sneak Preview

Well friends I haven't been getting much writing done but I have definitely been making work.  Other good things have been happening too.

I have two pieces accepted in the Once Upon a Time exhibit at the McMinn County Living Heritage Museum in Athens, TN.  The exhibit runs September 4 - October 29, 2010.  I'm also getting ready to participate in First Encounter of the Iberoamerican Textile Network that will run September 3-17, 2010 in San Jose, Costa Rica.  My work will also be shown in Limon.

See this link for more information.  http://redtextilia.org/welcome.php

Here's a preview of two new pieces that should be on my website by the end of the week.  I'm working on redesigning the site as it needs to be refreshed.

This is tentatively called Nubian Garden.  I have four new black/white and mixed color pieces ready.

To Market-To Market makes me want to go shopping for fabrics and other goodies in the homeland. Maybe I'll get a chance next year.  The South Africa Quilt Festival is next July I think.  After watching the World Cup Iam  absolutely ready to go and see the sites, meet the people, eat the food and of course try their great wines.

Check my website early next week and see what's new beyond these.



 

Exploring Indigo

Well how do you like my new design?  I had to have the Africa map template and the brown suits me too. 

However, blue is my favorite color and I have been exploring indigo dying over several months.  This past weekend I had opportunity to learn from master textile artist Ana Lisa Hedstrom who taught me and fellow students about the history and techniques of Shibori while using indigo and other natural dyes.  We stitched, folded, wrapped, clamped and compressed a variety of fabrics.

My personal goal is to improve my stitching technique so I can create new indigo dye/stitched works as a connection to Yoruba Adire Cloth pieces. 

In the meantime these are some samples from the class and a few pieces I made while working with members from two of  art groups.


This piece was stitched with upholstery thread that was pulled and tightened and dyed.  The big challenge is get the thread tight enough for the stitching to remain as white as possible.  I have to practice a bit more but I am determined.  I like these meandering lines of white through the blue.

                          
Using a running stitch on folded fabric in a circular pattern was how this piece started.  The resulting cellular and very organic pattern is very interesting.  Improving my skill at pulling and tightening the threads is going to take more practice but I really like it. 

This is my first Arashi on cotton gauze.

Cotton fabric that was pleated before wrapping created this bold pattern.  More practice, better wrapping, more interesting results.  I'll be busy this coming weekend.

 

Twisting fabric then pulling into finger size peaks and wrapping them with pearl cotton thread created this effect.  They look like flowers to me.

I machine stitched my version of a tulip on folded fabric.  You can see the variation of dye penetration. Looks sort of like an x-ray of a flower.  This technique has lots of possibilities for my figurative work.  We'll see what happens in the weeks ahead.

Friends Madlyn Jones and Cora Lewis and I made these a few months back during one of our monthly play days.  These look like 1970's tie dye.  Of course I was crocheting then instead of dyeing and quilting.  So I'm making up for lost time.  I used rubber bands to create these circles.

This is my favorite.  I can't remember exactly what I did to create this but I'm using part of an old curtain that someone gave me as part of my vintage materials stash.  I love this piece.  It has so much movement.

As part of a  monthly Wednesday surface design group we tried using natural indigo.  As you can seethe fabric was folded and dyed.  The lightness will help create some value change for any pieced works I create.

The old weathered look of the piece is very appealing and I'm sure I'll use it in some narrative work in the future.  It has holes in a few places throughout the piece.

Now of course this is an African machine stitched fabric that I hope to emulate.  I've already used this fabric in some work and will see if I can make a copy.   Overall, I have been having fun.  It is an adventure to see what happens when you unfold, clip the stitches or unwrap the pole.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for this process.  

Time Flies

So how it can it really be mid-May?  Two months with no posts...what's up with that?  Here in sunny California we are enjoying intermittent days of sunshine and rain and I'm catching up on new work and ongoing projects.  But way back in March I had a chance to visit Rhythm and Hues: Cloth and Culture of Mali at the the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco.  This great small exhibit closed on May 2nd and I hope some of you got a chance to see it.

The museum has three exhibit spaces that were filled with wonderful examples of textiles from Mali and included videos of cultural events and textile making.

I love these layers of fabric that compose the costume and the animal masks.  It is always so tempting to touch the fibers but I resisted the urge.  I just looked very closely.

This beautiful shirt is inspirational and shows what a creative mind can accomplish.

These playful puppets put us in touch with the child within.  Now if I could just learn to manipulate one and bring it to life as many performer artists has done through the ages.

I had good notes on the artists and fabricating methods but I had senior moment and lost two notebooks and a favorite tote bag so I'm sharing the beauty without the particulars.  Keep your fingers crossed that I find that bag.

These garments are  a Yorobani (the shorter garment in brown) and a Boubou.  They are made using a starch resist technique with pleating and scrunching of the fabric that is placed on the ground and then splashed with a dye solution in one or more colors.  The starch prevents or resists the dye solution from penetrating all of the cloth.

I did find that the hand painted fabric made by applying clay mud to cloth is called Bogolan Fini and is not worn much by citizens of Maili but is sold primarily to tourists.  I hope I get a chance to do just that.

These are inspirational pieces and motivate me to do more surface design work this summer when it gets warmer and I can play outside in the back where I'll have plenty of space.  I'll be sure to share when I do.

In the meantime, enjoy a bit of Mali and think of all the possibilities.  I'll be using my mudcloth fragments to continue the piecing tradition.

This is "Getting Over the Blues" which has assorted African fabrics including bits of blue mud cloth that I have been parceling out over the years.

I'll be sharing new works later this week.  In the meantime, visit  www.infinityartgallery.com to see my work being considered for their art quilt exhibit.