My inner fashion designer emerges…

This was a week when, even with two boys to entertain and ferry about to play dates, I was able to keep my nose to the sewing machine and finish my ball gown for the Trashionista fashion show. I’m delighted with how it turned out! I call it ‘Elegance Reclaimed’, and now my budding fashion career is in the hands of the jurors. My inner scientist can handle either outcome, since all my expectations as an artist have pretty much been fulfilled. Still, I think I really met the challenge to reclaim and repurpose materials from the trash flow. The shawl for the gown is made from dryer sheets that I painted gold and black and stitched together. To feed my emerging inner fashionista I discovered a new stitch on my sewing machine—a compact zig zag stitch to fuse the diaphanous material. Wow! Now I’m even talking like a designer—this is great! The top is built from a favorite but failing black bathing suit. I stretched and abraided the bottom beyond the point where my modesty no longer allowed me to wear it. Instead of tossing it I transformed the sturdy part into my elegant gown top. I reshaped the neckline and stitched on a piece of an old black t-shirt, and at the junctions I attached well-worn black leather belts I acquired from the Backstreet Mission here in town. The antique gold trim is from a family friend, Kathey Gibson, and in its former life it was used to decorate Christmas gifts. The swirly doo-dad is a piece of plastic I’ve saved so long I don’t even remember where it came from (but of course I knew I’d need it someday!). The skirt itself is basically a crazy quilt made from old men’s and women’s shirts that I picked up at the recycle center. It’s built from a black leather skirt, bits of black lace bra (no need to go into that here), samples from a discarded upholstery book and animal print scraps. The animal print fabric was in scraps because my son Tommie and I made a shirt where he cut pieces out of the fabric and sewed them on a fading but favored grey fuzzy shirt, and now it’s still one of his favorite winter shirts. Back to the gown—the back is held together by scraps of Velcro and the buckles from the belts keep the whole thing closed. There are also a couple of old eye-and-hook closures that were left on cards priced at 19 cents for 25. That speaks to how old those are, but they still found a purpose.

In other big family news, we went to see the Cardinal Stage Company’s ‘Sound of Music’, featuring a charming neighbor of ours as Gretl. She was great, as was her supporting cast and the production. It’s actually amazing that a town of this size supports such fabulous theater, and we’re very fortunate to have them. They’ve never let us down. My boys really enjoyed the play, but I have to admit to having been jolted a few times with some of the staging devices. When the swastika banners dropped down, and the machine-gun toting Nazis came on stage, I was a little overwhelmed. These cast sinister shadows from my family history, even though my young kids (thankfully) don’t yet appreciate why.

Anyway, I’ve got to run. The phone is ringing, and the caller ID says it from New York City, some fashion design shop. Ah, the life of the nouveau fashion diva!

Until next week…

Riverbeds and Arugula

This week I’m descending into the green riverbeds of Monroe County. Last week I was dyeing a suite of verdant yarns that have already found themselves in my weavings. I constructed the base of one piece using a sumac weave that lets the weaving grow off the loom. It creates a realistic base for the single tree that will stand in the foreground. I wrapped the tree branches, needle felted the tree trunk and attached branches onto the trunk. As I laid out the background weave I used my trusty black sharpie and drew the outline of the piece on the warp. Then I started weaving, using a set of deep teals I blended to create the predominant colors of the weaving. I documented my progress with a picture and decided it was time for a break. The boys were ready to go for a bike ride, so we loaded the bikes on the rack, filled the water bottles and headed for the old rail trail and started our adventure. We stayed in the shade canopy and traversed the Clear Creek trail, a most pleasant eight mile trip.

That evening I got back to weaving and by the next night I had the piece finished. I’m really enjoying creating my most recent pieces with tree and water themes, and I’m pleased with how they have turned out. I stretched out the weaving and this evening I’m incorporating it into a dark brown frame. To finish the piece I’ll worked on needle felting trees onto the distant shore. I’ll also expanded the river into the foreground using sparkly silvers and a lot of strong contrasting blues to achieve movement in the water and give still more depth to the piece. To finish it off I’ll added some rocks I collected from Lake Monroe last year. My secret is to scour the creek beds entering the lake for small rocks that have a small hole eroded through the rock so I can discreetly secure them to the weaving with thread. I spend hours combing the creek beds and evading the copperheads for just the right rocks, and I must say that my collection of rocks with holes is extensive. Of course when that fails I have a secret back-up plan: my drill press!

To complete the foliage I also need to crochet leaves using the materials I dyed last week. I love it when just the right color for a piece I’m working on turns up, even if it comes about by accident. If you try enough color variations on enough materials you’ll find what you need. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

The other news of the week involves my latest breakthrough soup. I get all sorts of new greens from the CSA group each Wednesday, and this week it was arugula. I think I used the green arugula (and not my green yarn) in the Tuscan white bean and arugula soup I made on Thursday, which was very tasty. One sprinkles it with grated, aged Parmesean cheese from Bloomingfoods and it tastes terrific! It’s amazing what you can find on the internet—recipes to consume just about anything. Late in the week I dropped off one of my last abstract weaving to Wonderlab for their silent auction. Of course the boys quickly disappeared into the building as I chatted. I ended up doing my default activity, which is creating ornaments for the upcoming holiday art shows. I had a striking mohair teal that I picked up at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival in Franklin, IN a few weeks ago. It’s such a strong, rich color that I had to incorporate it into a project. Later I dropped off some soup to one of my enablers, Mary at the recycle center. She gave me some organic soybeans that went into the soup, so I made sure Mary got to try it. I think that’s what recycling means. Anyway, the soup made Mary—and me—very happy.

Until next week…

Gold Fish in a Blue Ocean

The fish are swimming through my head this week. I’ve been working on a weaving project in the Creek-Love multiage classroom at Roger’s school this week. We recently completed a huge blue weaving of the ocean using recycled materials. I scoured the Recycle Center and Opportunity House for all things blue, black and weavable, and what I came up with were ties, socks, lanyards, and cords. Perfect! The kids, a little at a time, created the ocean. Then I made a compatible frame out of the recovered stretcher frames from Pygmalion’s. Of course we jazzed it up a little by gluing seashells on the face of the frame, another good class project. The kids also sketched the fish they wanted for their weaving. This meant that not only did I have to create fish out of recycled stuff, I had to meet the demanding specifications of six to eight year olds. Did I say I love a challenge?

Luckily, a school of fish appeared in my kitchen this week. I started out with soft foam from the recycle center and a pair of scissors. I’m sure this is how all the great master sculptors got their start—limestone is way overrated. Then I took thin blue Styrofoam trays—the kind that fish really come on from the store—and cut those into tails and fins that could be glued on to the fish. The whole thing turned out to be a little too soft and absorbent to paint, but the art teacher at Rogers—Jan Barnes—really helped me out. She suggested that I try using celluclay, which is finely ground paper and water. It filled in the crevices and dried to a rock-hard surface and my fish were swimming again. They’ll soon be painted and ready for release into the ocean. It’s kind of like the animal rescue missions that take in wounded animals, nurse them back to health and then release them into the wild.

If you think you’d like to see the piece when it’s done, it scheduled for display at Wonderlab from May 20 to June 30th, planned to coincide with the new water table opening. ‘Gold Fish in a Blue Ocean’ will then swim over to the John Waldron Arts Center to hang for July and August before taking up a more permanent residence in the Creek-Love classroom, the first grade home of my son Cubbie.

In other news, I dragged my scientist husband out of the lab for lunch on Friday. It was going on 80 degrees and we ate at the picnic table in the Third Street Park. It turns out we couldn’t park in our usual secret spot behind the police station and had to settle for a street spot almost a block away. Oh the horrors of the city! In any case the afternoon was the setting for an artistic epiphany (aka piffy). I’ve been trying to come up with a design for a commission piece that fuses a woman and a tree. Nothing worked for me—the face always detracts from the design. Then I was looking up at the trees as the started to bud out and realized my tree woman should be looking up! Her arms grow into the branches, her elegant neck is exposed and she reaches for the skies. It empowers her and has a feel that I really like. I’ll start that soon, but tomorrow (Sunday the 26th of April) is the Luna festival in the Showers building. I’ll be showing some of my work (and more is along the staircase leading upstairs). My friend Bonnie Gordon-Lucas will be there too, so we’ll have fun no matter what.


Until next week…

One more week of winter!

This week was a transition week. I finished writing a grant proposal to BEAD (the Bloomington Entertaining and Arts District) to expand advertising for the Fourth Street Festival into larger markets. The goal is to bring more people to Bloomington to the Festival, which translates into more hotel occupancy, restaurant business and other sales for the community. I also finished my monthly quota for holiday ornaments (10 for April). Those are handy to work on anywhere, so I'm usually poking (needle felting) while the boys are doing their Tae Kwon Do practice under the watchful eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Scott at Monroe County Martial Arts. From there I transitioned back into making a commissioned piece called Winter Birches. This has been an extraordinarily popular piece, with strong card sales and interest since it was first made three years ago. I still make similar pieces on commission, so that was the goal for this week. The unseasonably cold weather provided just the right backdrop for the transition from winter to spring. That meant I didn't feel badly about working on a snowy piece this week.

The construction of Winter Birches is always an event. First I lay out the fifty or so required yarns as a gradient of color.
The feel of the piece is a cold serenity comprising black and white, but it really has a range of purples, greens, browns and grays. I've posted a picture so you can get an idea about what this means. Construction of the birches themselves is an adventure in recycled art itself. I wrap shoelaces, cord and old packing string in a special white yarn that has brown and beige strings hanging out. There are a few secret finishing touches, but well, they're secret! It gives me an inner pride to look at it, knowing all that's inside--kind of like watching your child at play.

The last transition for the week was unexpected and less welcome. I developed a kidney infection, which I first tried to overcome by drinking lots of water. I drank so much that the city people came by to see if we had a broken line in the house. OK, I'm kidding about that one, but my skin did start to dry out from all the hand washing. The situation got worse and worse until I got to the doctor and onto antibiotics. The good news is that I'm feeling better. The bad news is that I'll miss the Fleece Fair in Greencastle this weekend. That's very sad. I'll save some money, but I'll miss out on all the cool things I didn't know that I needed.

In the yard I'm still waiting for the newly planted cherry and peach trees to pop out of the bud stage. C'mon, c'mon! The tulips that are closest to the house are opening into purple, yellow, and red displays. The antlered grounds crew neatly cuts the rest back to the ground. On the road my show at the Shower's building looks lovely. Stop in and see 'Inch by Inch and Row by Row' while you're at the Farmer's Market this month!


Until next week…