Posts Tagged ‘lines’

Browsing With Pinterest

Sunday, November 4th, 2018

Lately I’ve noticed something that might have always been there, but now I’ve noticed it, it erks me a bit: when you click on an image to have a closer look, you get this message – ‘Tried this Pin? Add a photo to show how it went.’ and there’s a button to click to add your photo ‘of this pin.’  The message might just as well have said ‘Have a go at copying this and let us see how successful you were’.  Of course there are no instructions or list of materials, and all artists who display their work understand that imitation/copying does happen, and can often be regarded as the sincerest form of flattery.  But such actual encouragement to copy is a bit annoying.

Arcs in the Bungle Bungles series

 

This morning my eye was caught by a red and cream abstract work of the German multimedia artist Sati Zech on Pinterest.   There are many images of her art online, and I loved the way she repeats particular organic shapes, especially the arcs, quarter circles or approximations of, elongated arc-like shapes that I have often used myself.   I went to her website and found her to be a very gifted multimedia artist and teacher. Her own media include paper, fabric, plastic, paint and found objects – and probably anything else she sees that grabs her imagination.  There is a lot of information on her website, but the closest thing to artist statements are her master class workshop descriptions; from which it is clear her focus when teaching is the basics of design which the student can achieve using any medium and any technique –  sculpture, sewing, photography and accessing a wide range of materials.  How stimulating it would be to be in such a class.

 

Another Discovery

Saturday, October 27th, 2018

 Mirage 1, 2005.    75 x 100cm                     Oscuro, 2002.   122cm  x 100cm.

 

These two small wall quilts date from early 2002.   Looking through archived images this morning I found the one on the right, and though I remembered it, and occasionally come across it in the deepest recesses of my storage area.  For a while I couldn’t remember what on earth I called it, but eventually I did, and I now believe the illustrated catalogue to be complete.  The key word is ‘believe’, leaving some wiggle room for another discovery.

Mirage 1 was really just a sample to see how fine I could go with a wavy line approach, and gently waving lines like these have characterised my technique ever since.  It’s no great art work, but a little piece I love and usually take to any technical workshop that includes freehand piecing.  I had just been inspired by the new appearance of very finely pieced works by well known Australian artist and friend, Margery Goodall, which has since become a signature element in her textile art.  The title reflects the shimmering quality of a mirage.

Oscuro also has little artistic merit, but is another piece I needed to make.  The arcs of colour which began appearing in my work several years before seemed appropriate for those unforgettable images of rolling, falling, clouds of smoke, ash, all manner of debris, that filled our minds following New York’s Twin Towers attack in 2001.  The barely visible machine quilted pattern is of same-colour grey arcs over the entire quilt.  Oscuro is spanish for dark.

Ebb&Flow 26

Monday, September 24th, 2018

Round 2 of the 2018 SAQA Online Auction of 12″sq. quiltlets starts today at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time USA, 3am EST Australian time, 3pm Uruguay time.  The works are all donated by Studio Art Quilt members each year to support the organisation’s touring exhibition programme.  Full information on the auction and the online bidding form is all here

My donation, Ebb&Flow 26, is well down the page.  The background fabric is silver speckled black, and it’s machine quilted with silver metallic thread.

 

A couple of friends collect them and have attractively grouped several pieces together on walls in their homes – why not start your collection today?

Tracks And Marks

Wednesday, September 12th, 2018

 

 

Almost no one currently alive will ever find themselves in a landscape of any kind where they could be 100% sure no human has ever been, although on a deserted beach or a windswept landscape stretching into the distance, if you ignore the sometimes subtle tracks ahead, squint your eyes and forget your recent flight, bus, train hike, bike or boat trip that got you there, it may just be possible to imagine you are the first human to ever set foot on that landscape …

Though it took me years to actually name a group of works ‘Tracks’, I know that landscape shapes, colours and textures are all track marks left by Mother Nature on those surfaces.  Modern Man, too, has left many complicated marks – fences, pipelines, railways, roads, power lines, canals, airports and ports, marshalling yards, to say nothing of small towns and vast cities with horizontal mazes of streets, bridges and roads, and multilevel vertical mazes of human habitation –  really, the tracks of human activity are everywhere.  Though I have focused more on the patterning on artifacts and drawn images on rocks, cliffs, cave walls and open plains, the ‘tracks’ made by Man on landscapes are not limited to the ancient ones that I’ve always found so awe inspiring, intriguing as those are.

In the design of my quilt, New Directions, 2000, the multitude of lines from every direction represent the paths and tracks of human migration onto our continent in the last 60,000 years.  I have just read Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu  which details the agricultural practices of Australia’s indigenous Aboriginal people.  Until now, having grown up in Tasmania, and lived overseas for many years, I’d never heard of extensive fish traps on the great inland river systems, and the extensive areas planted with grains on the open plains, many of which were seen by the colonists but dismissed by settlers and farmers with European farming practice backgrounds.  Ignorant of the sustainable land management practices the indigenous people had practised for thousands of years, they dismissively assumed they were not civilised enough to have devised such systems.  This fascinating book has me thinking more about tracks and pathways.

The Chinese Coins Connection

Sunday, April 29th, 2018

A day or two ago I commented on facebook to Kay Korkos who showed a pic of a vibrant, colourful, bedquilt she made in the traditional Chinese Coins pattern.  I said how that particular pattern had provided ongoing inspiration for many pieces in my Ebb&Flow series which began around 2004.

But then I remembered that I had recently fished Green Island out of the cupboard, and that dates from 1996, so I’ve been inspired by chinese coins for much longer than I had thought.  I sat for a while, looking at it up on the design wall, as I hadn’t really looked at it in ages; and it sort of surprised me how much I love it.  I need to put it up somewhere – or perhaps someone else does 🙂  The irregular shaped top is internally reinforced so that the pieces stay upright flat against the wall and don’t flop forward.

Green Island 142cm x 104cm, 1996,  photographed against black

 

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