Exploring Borders

Pattern Play

When setting out on a new adventure, it's best to decide a mode of travel first. I suppose if you knew the destination, that would help. When I'm in the studio, I never know the destination....I just set out! I do find when setting out to explore some new ideas through the process of making art, choosing some of the formal qualities, helps me set sail, so to speak. I love the square format and as my readers know, I also love paper! I'm also intrigued by compositions that are split in half, with both sides having a kind of conversation with one another. And pattern....well, I could get lost in making tiny lines, layering drawing on drawing, delighting in the surprises that unfold.

So, I'm off on another exploration with these parameters: 11" square (suitable for a 12"x12" shadow box frame), B.F.K. Rives paper (sturdy enough to take a bit of paint, as well as ink), in compositions that are divided in half. I don't know the destination, but through these formal means, I can explore:

the way different patterns interact with one another

the way different materials play against each other

the notion of borders, as the content on one side comments on the other

the idea of juxtaposition

illuminating sameness and difference

relationship of micro and macro

an expression of an as-yet-unknown content

and more!

Because I work intuitively, I find the meaning of the work through the process of making itself. This means that I am often frustrated, as I can never seem to set out with the content of what I want to say in mind, and make anything worth sharing with the world. The flip side of this is that, through the process of observation and listening, both inside and out, as I draw....the work tells me what it is about. I never know....until I know....through the inner voice that speaks, in a language only I can hear. 

The piece above, is a kind of prototype, a maiden venture in the new 11 x 11" "vessel". I came across some of the paper my husband often uses for printing and found it suited my needs....good thing he has a nice stash of it! I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'll report in on the progress. 

Here are a couple more just started....I think this will be fun!

Today's daily drawing continues the exploration of the format!

Daily drawing, November 1, 2016

Amazingly warm here in South Dakota for November 1st...upper sixties and pushing 70. I keep hearing people say it's supposed to be a bad winter, which remains to be seen. At least we will have had the longest lasting autumn I can recall! Cheers!

Conversations: The Series

Welcome to summer....which has been bringing a surprising amount of rain to our part of the country! Seems as if it wasn't all that long ago, the topic of conversation at the bank, the grocery store and all around town was the need for rain....now it's just the opposite! Small rivers are flooding, but we are in good shape here on our section of the Missouri River, as the flows from the dams are no doubt cut back to make room for waters feeding in to the river downstream. Plenty of violent thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes in the area lately. I feel so badly for those who have lost property and livelihood in the recent round of storms.

June 1, 2014

Thought I'd share with you a bit more of the work from the exhibition that Johntimothy and I had at the University of South Dakota. Part of the idea of the show was to collaborate on some new pieces, which we pulled together only at the 11th hour....but not for lack of trying. All winter we had attempts at working on projects together that just never went anywhere....the magic wasn't there. But a week or so before the show was to go up, the latest round of screenprinted patterns that Johntimothy was creating called to me in a way that the others hadn't. Maybe it was the patterns themselves or the subdued tones that called to mind ancient wallpaper and faded memories, but suddenly I was drawing on top of these patterns and then we'd go back and forth with his printing and my drawing, adding layers, in a kind of conversation. We've worked on project numerous times before, but I have to say that these pieces are my favorites!

Conversations no.1

Conversations no.2

Conversations no.3

Conversations no.4

Conversations no.5

Conversations no.6

The image size on these mixed media works is roughly 8x8" and they lay on beautiful paper that measures about 15 x15". The circle and square format correlated with the rest of the works in the exhibition. The series is much larger than this and we are currently working on securing other exhibition opportunities for these collaborative pieces....even as we continue to create them!

Hope your summer is going well....filled with a mix of inspiration, relaxation and energizing rejuvenation!

Circles Within Circles

Our exhibition,  Beholding the Ephemeral, is over and Johntimothy and I have brought the work home and spent the weekend reorganizing the studio....for the next phase of work. We plan to continue the collaborative pieces, which are a combination of layers of patterned screenprint runs (Johntimothy) and drawing and collage (me). Now that we have them home, we'll get them photographed and I'll post some photos here. The next step is to try to find some new venues and travel the show, or at least parts of it. In the meantime, I've photographed the daily drawings from the second week of January and am sharing them here before posting them for sale in my Etsy shop, MissouriBendStudio. I'm posting here the close-up shots, so you can see the image better....remember that these are 4" circles on a 10"x10" page. The drawings are made with a combination of pencil and various inks. I don't know why they appear so dark here....the photos didn't appear that way before! They are on bright white paper!!

In case I didn't mention it in my last post, I'm having a 50% off sale over at MissouriBendMusings, the Etsy shop that was dedicated to the daily drawing practice. I don't plan to post anything new there, but rather find homes for the work that is there and phase that shop out.

January 8, 2014

January 9, 2014

January 10, 2014

January 11, 2014

January 12, 2014

January 13, 2014

January 14, 2014

The next phase of life is about to unfold, as I leave my library job in early August to go back to school to get a masters degree! I'm excited about the shift in focus with my future studies in Adult and Higher Education. I was very intrigued by the adult programming part of my job at the library and have decided to move in that direction. Who knows where it will take me....a new future awaits!

Of course, my studio practice is so much a part of me that it will always remain a solid core of my life....so we'll see how I am able to integrate everything. For those of you who have followed this blog for some time, you've seen how the frequency of posts certainly dropped off as I became more involved in my job at the library. I am hoping, even though I'll be involved in school, to have a little more control of my time and get back to giving the blog more attention along with reading the blogs of my fellow artists....I have missed the interaction with my friends across the globe!

See you soon....hope you are enjoying the spring or fall, depending on your locale! Cheers!

The Slowness of a Hand-Stitched Line

I sure wish the weather would turn spring-like...might help me get some momentum going! Cold, gray days and rain or threatening rain are a constant companion of late, it seems.

I've been working on a little piece that is taking a long time...all hand-stitched on a piece of blue handmade paper dipped in beeswax.  This is a slow process, as you might imagine, and as I make tiny stitch after tiny stitch in row after row, I recall how I used to talk about my work (it was larger then and much more involved) in terms of the very fact that it took a long time to make by hand.  That was, in part, the content. It was about the time it takes to slowly stitch, a meditation on making, impossible to create any other way.  There are many things a machine will do, that really are better done that way, but hand stitched lines are uneven, full of wavering, momentary indecision and then decision....they carry the trace of the hand, of the process, of the hours.

But now, I realize, after nearly a year of making, making, making at a much different pace, in order to add pieces to my etsy shop, I have grown impatient with making tiny stitches.  I questioned the process all the way through the first half of this little piece...wondering what it's point was...these interesecting lines in different pastel colors that I wasn't even sure would work together...so what....one more piece in the virtual shop known as MissouriBendStudio.  But at the same time, the dialogue ran the other way in my mind, as I remembered I used to thrive on this work, watching the piece build stitch by stitch, happy with the slowness, allowing my mind to wander, to discover and watch my own thoughts emerge and fall away, often coming to great insights about my own life and my place in the long, complex chain of the living, the having lived, and the yet to live. And yet, by lunchtime today, I'd made it halfway through the stitching and I realized that it was worth doing....those colors accrued on the surface and interacted in an interesting way (at least to me) and I could begin to envision the rest of it and knew I would continue to the end, trying to be patient and enjoy the process as I once did and as I would still be the first to advise anyone else.

Don't worry, Violett is happy to wait for me to finish this little piece before we continue making the river.  She knows that in order to make a six-foot long river, she is a most essential friend and accomplice....that is not something I would do by hand!  Look at the angst I go through over sewing a piece of paper 5 x 7 inches!  So....here it is, in it's unfinished state....just a pattern of vertical and horizontal parallel lines....it's about more than that, but I can't say just yet, what it might be!

Pattern Play, no. 1

Well, I finally have a few pieces finished in the new series of work in watercolor and ink.  I like the new format of the house...a shape that has appeared over and over again in my work in the past decades.  It allows me to play various patterns against each other, as well as juxtapose a simple image in the center.  Somehow, as much as I love abstraction and pure pattern, I can't seem to let go of the image...now I can have it all!  New pieces posted at my shop this morning.

Patterns of Nature, no.1

Patterns of Nature, no.1 is a sort of prototype for a new series in watercolor and ink.  I've taken the format of this one a step further and added a contrasting patterned roof and a little circle with an image in the center of the square...they'll resemble birdhouses!  I do love making pattern and this is a way to play endlessly with the combinations.  This piece is posted in my shop on Etsy.

Three Of Us At Work

I spent time in the studio this afternoon and realized after a time of struggle, then grateful realization, that there were really at least three of us at work.  I was there, watercolor and brush in hand, making marks, putting down color in a search for meaning and idea.  Clumsy marks and false starts here and there, a new sheet of paper, a different size, another format...and then I realized I was aware of the part of me that listens, also present, occupying my very chair.  The one who knew when it wasn't right, the one who drove the process forward, keeping my hand moving and by all means, keeping me out of my head, because for me, "thinking" of an idea is never the way to go.  Once I understood what it was I really wanted to see, instead of what I thought I should want to see, the part of me who lives deeper still, was aloud to speak. Once there was enough information from all the false starts, I was able to see what it is I am to make.  But I know that I couldn't have gotten there unless I had made all those attempts, because each one was a tiny step closer to the breakthrough.  I think it really takes all of our senses, in a very internal way, to make art.  I was hearing the music coming from the CD player, but it was another kind of hearing and listening that opened the door.  It was a process of keeping my hand moving, listening and seeing, a sniffing out what I was really after and finally a real taste of it, when I connected the dots and really understood the thing itself.  I understood the form the work would take and that its open-ended content is pattern.

I am very interested in pattern--decorative pattern and the patterns that abound in the natural world...the formation of sands in the desert, the structure of plants and flowers, bird wings, insects...and that's just a tiny bit of naming, as pattern governs everything, the seen and the unseen. Any investigation into pattern is enough to keep a person busy for a lifetime! I'm excited about some new work...while still keeping up with the ongoing Seasons Cycles and my daily found poetry blog...and learning to play the banjo!