Category Archives: Art

Evolution of a commission – part 2

December 4, 2011

After choosing fabric, the next step is to sew the individual pieces together into a single large piece called the “quilt top” (for any non-quilters who might be reading this). This process is greatly facilitated by having what is known as a “design wall” in one’s studio. In my case, I have one entire wall of my studio which is given over to said design wall. The studio wall was first covered in 8×4-foot sheets of Celotex, an insulation material which is light yet sturdy, and is easy to stick pins into. The insulation boards were then covered with gray felt. I had originally wanted white, but the fabric store didn’t have a sufficiently large amount of white. Not wanting to wait, I bought gray instead, and it ended up being a great choice – it’s less harsh and has a calming, soothing effect in the room. (In fact, I liked it so much, I’ve since painted several walls in my house a nice cool gray). The felt was adhered to the boards with premixed wallpaper paste, a surprisingly easy process.

My design wall is 8 feet high, which was the outside limit of the size of piece I could make without radically altering my life. Practically, though, I needed some maneuvering room at top and bottom, so it ended up with 7.5 feet as the target size. I started with the smaller pieces, positioning them roughly about two thirds of the way up from the bottom, the area where I wanted the greatest amount of visual interest. The surface texture of the felt grabs on to cotton fabrics and lets you keep smaller sized pieces in place without using pins. (After putting lots of pieces together, though, it will eventually become too heavy to stick by itself and will require pins.) My main goal at this point was to fit the pieces together in the most efficient manner with a minimal amount of trim waste – rather like putting together a puzzle.

I use an industrial Juki to do all my quilting, but because of modifications made to my machine, it doesn’t work for the piecing process. For one thing, it only does a straight stitch, and I use a narrow zigzag to stitch my top fabrics together. Second, the Juki’s feed dogs have been removed. So I’ve kept my Bernina for piecing and some other purposes.

Working on a large piece like this was challenging, but on the upside, I got a lot more exercise than usual because it required a lot of up-and-down on a stepping stool to get to the upper reaches.

The piecing process was completed over the course of a couple of days. Here’s a little stop-action movie I made of this process.

Posted in Art | Tagged Anythink commission | 12 Comments

Evolution of a commission – part 1

December 2, 2011

Eastern Plains with Hay Rolls, Summer – ©2006 Deidre Adams

This kind of a field, with rolled hay bales, is a very common sight in eastern Colorado and Kansas. I’ve always loved these colors – pale yellow greens, straw golds, and the faded pale blue of a midday summer sky. It’s a typical scene that feeds my love of the horizon line.

As part of the process for the Anythink Library commission, I met and talked with members of the local community who live in the area near the towns of Bennett & Strasburg, about half an hour east of Denver. The interviews were part of an oral history project that the library is doing in conjunction with the artwork commission. We had some standard questions that we asked all of the participants, although the format was freeform and many of the people also contributed some personal memories and anecdotes that were quite entertaining. They were asked about how they had come to live there, what they liked and didn’t like about it, and what kinds of life lessons they had gained from living there. Some of the questions also focused on determining their impressions of the sights and sounds and smells that they experience living on the plains. In answer to the question about colors, by far the most common answer was green, golden brown, and blue (skies). That was a validation for me of the picture I had in mind of what I was thinking of doing; I was on the right track and ready to go.

As another aspect of the community involvement component, I wanted to make the quilt from fabric supplied by the local residents, so I asked them for donations. I was overwhelmed by the response – I received enough to make the entire top layer of the piece from fabrics supplied by the community. Some of these pieces have special meaning to the people who donated them, so I wanted to keep a record of each one. I kept a tiny swatch of each one in my sketchbook with the name of the person who donated it.

I also made a video to document the fabrics. I’m still not over the cringe factor of watching this with all its many faux pas, but at least it’s a good record for posterity.

Posted in Art | Tagged Anythink commission | 7 Comments

Life on the Eastern Plains commission–finished!

December 1, 2011

Horizon 18: Plainsong, mixed media textile, 90 x 90 inches

I’m happy to say that I’ve finally finished the commission for the Anythink Libraries that I wrote about here. At 90 x 90 inches, this is the largest piece I’ve ever done, and it represented considerable challenges. After originally contemplating working on it in sections, I decided for multiple reasons that it wouldn’t be feasible in this case. I had also planned on blogging about the process, but when I saw how the fabrics I was working with were so disparate and not at all coordinated, I decided it would be best to show the finished piece first so you wouldn’t all think I was completely crazy.

The finished work is scheduled to be installed on Dec. 13, with a reception following in the afternoon. Starting tomorrow, I’ll go back to the beginning and write about how it was made.

Posted in Art | 19 Comments

New York – Part 4

September 8, 2011

Images from Midtown, Uptown, and a little bit of Harlem.

Posted in Art | 1 Comment

Life on the Eastern Plains

July 23, 2011

©2011 Deidre Adams. All rights reserved.

This summer I’ll be starting on a new public art project to be installed at Anythink Bennett, a library serving residents of Bennett, Strasburg, and Watkins, a group of small towns on the eastern plains of Colorado. The project, whose theme is “Life on the Eastern Plains,” is the first in a planned series of collaborative, community-inspired artworks for the library district, under the umbrella theme of ”This is Who We Are.” This press release has full details.

“Anythink” is the name given to a “new style of library that celebrates imagination, play and interactivity.” The concept is the driving force for the Rangeview Library District, a network of seven libraries serving the residents of Adams County, Colorado. It is a “new style of library that offers memorable experiences and transformations for its customers,” and in addition to books, also offers “innovative programming, technology, and the highest level of customer service so that everyone who walks into an Anythink feels welcome.” This video illustrates the spirit of the Anythink concept and the accompanying logo.

As part of the development of the artwork, I’m talking with residents of the area about their experiences living on the eastern plains. Members of the library district staff are assisting with the interviews as well as recording them for an oral history component of the project. We’ve had one community meeting to introduce the project to the public, and two days of conducting interviews. A final day of interviews will be held this Monday.

In addition to talking to people, I’m also asking them to contribute fabric for the artwork, which will be a stitched textile piece. I’m asking them to give me pieces of fabric that have some kind of a history: perhaps a scrap of an old work shirt, or a worn dishtowel or apron – something that was a part of the daily experience on living on the plains. I want the finished piece to incorporate literal physical artifacts that have come from the community.

I’m also asking for handwritten letters and photographs that speak to the experience of life in the area. These I will scan and return to the owners. My vision is to incorporate some of the handwriting into the piece either by direct printing on fabric or perhaps with a silkscreen.

Anythink publishes a newsletter called Spark. The June 24 issue of Spark has two articles about the art project. The editor, Ken Devine, interviewed me after I was chosen for the project and wrote a great article about my work and how I was selected. Evidently, having a love of grain elevators was a pivotal factor working to my benefit. But whatever the reason, I’m very honored to be a part of this project and really excited to start working on it.

Older grain elevator in Bennett, Colorado. ©2011 Deidre Adams. All rights reserved.

Posted in Art | Tagged Anythink commission, Anythink Library, Bennett, Colorado | 2 Comments

SDA – India Flint, Part 2

June 9, 2011

Rose petals, onion skins, various leaves and flowers used for dyeing in class

Near the end of Day 2 of the Traveler’s Notebook workshop, we prepared and simmered more bundles. The difference this time was that the pot was richer in mordanting compounds – both through the accumulation of plant materials from prior dyeing as well as through the addition of odd hunks of scrap iron and other metal. We also left the bundles wrapped overnight so that the dyes could have more time to set. The first thing next morning, we opened our bundles with as much anticipation and excitement as children on Christmas morning. I was a lot happier with my results this time.

While waiting for bundles to come out of the dyepot, we continued to make more sheets collaged with fabrics, papers, and special mementos, held together with stitch. We also did a writing exercise to create a page covered with a texture made of our own handwritten marks. (More on this later.)

With all these raw materials now in progress for our finished books, the next thing to do would be to create a binding structure for the finished books. This was to be based on the Blizzard Book, a structure created by Hedi Kyle during a blizzard.

The folds of the Blizzard Book are called “mountains” (outer folds) and “valleys” (inner folds). Because we would be stitching all of our pages to folds of the Blizzard Book, we added support to the paper by hand-stitching a length of fabric to the center portion. Then we accordion-folded these large sheets of paper and prepared them for dyeing by the same processes as used before.

While waiting for the real binding structures to dry after dyeing, we practiced the Blizzard book folding technique with a dummy sheet. The process is rather paradoxical – it seems simple when you see it demonstrated, but then when you try it, you realize how complex it can be when you can’t remember what to do next. Instructions for making your own Blizzard Book can be found in the Penland Book of Handmade Books. You can also find a PDF with instructions here.

The last step of the bookmaking process was to attach the materials made during the last few days to the folds of the Blizzard Book structure. I didn’t get mine finished, but several people did, and the results were spectacular.

I had one more goal I wanted to accomplish in class. Many artists are packrats, and I’m no exception. I’ve been holding onto a large stack of Rives BFK printmaking paper in thin strips, the remnants of trimming large sheets to a specific size for intaglio prints when I was in school. When the supply list said to bring scraps of paper, I threw these in with my materials. I used the class time to dye these strips. I don’t know yet what I’ll use them for, but I do think they’re quite beautiful.

Rives BFK paper dyed with leaves, rose & iris petals, and onion skins. Peony petals acted as a resist. Drawn lines were made by painting with milk prior to dyeing.

Posted in Art | Tagged blizzard book, bookmaking, India Flint, plant dyeing | 7 Comments

SDA – India Flint, Part I

June 6, 2011

Silk fabric eco-dyed and hand-stitched by India Flint

This week I’m in Minneapolis, Minn. for the Surface Design Association Conference. This is my second time at SDA, and this time, I decided to give myself a gift: a workshop with an artist whose work I admire greatly. India Flint calls herself a “maker of marks, forest wanderer & tumbleweed, stargazer & stitcher, botanical alchemist & string twiner, working traveller, dreamer, sax player and occasional poet.” She is the author of Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles, which is a guide to coloring cloth using locally sourced plant materials.

I don’t remember now where I first heard of India, but somehow I found her blog and web site and fell in love with the extraordinary yet delicate beauty of the plant-dyed fabrics she creates. I bought her book last year, not only to find out the details of how to make these magical marks on cloth, but also because the book is just plain beautiful. It contains a wealth of information on the different plants that can be used as well as types of mordants that can be employed to improve the strength of the dye bonds produced. The most compelling thing about the process is that it doesn’t involve harmful chemicals and can be done fairly easily without the need for buying expensive equipment or materials.

India lives on her own farm in Southern Australia, but she travels the world and teaches extensively. This particular workshop is called “Enfoldments – A Traveler’s Notebook.” We’re combining the dyeing techniques with hand stitching and simple bookmaking techniques to “explore ways of recording and describing responses to place and country as a means of making sense of wherever [we] are in the world.”

India began the class with the opening of a “bundle” she had created the previous day. A bundle is a length of fabric which is rolled up together with leaves and flower petals and other assorted bits and tied tightly around a stick, then submerged into a pot of water and given a gentle simmer for a prescribed amount of time. We would be making many bundles throughout the course of the week, and the the opening of one’s bundles after dyeing to see the lovely gifts granted from nature is a greatly anticipated event.

Fabric eco-dyed by India Flint

We then went outside for a “windfall walk,” the purpose of which is to gather leaves and flower petals that have fallen to the ground. Small bits of rusted metal and odd scraps of paper are also treasures to bring back for our books. Once back to the workshop, we used our harvest to create our own first bundles.

After learning the basic process, the next step was to start making the pages of our book. To that end, we were each given a sheet of heavy drawing/wash paper and given instructions to collage fabric and paper using thread and stitch – no glue. I got rather caught up in doing the stitching – I even took my piece back to my room that night to work on it some more. I do love to stitch on fabric, but I found it to be a lot more difficult on paper. If I’m going to be doing much more of this in future, I’m going to need more protection for my needle-grabbing fingers. My thumb was very sore after a couple of hours of doing this.

The second day, we started to make the books. India showed us a simple way to make a very basic artist’s book from a single sheet of paper with folding and cutting. Then we used the same dyeing principles with our folded books to get color on the pages. Although mine turned out rather pale, some of the others were quite spectacular.

Posted in Art | Tagged India Flint, plant dyeing | 11 Comments

QN ’11

May 27, 2011

Today I’m in Ohio for the opening festivities of Quilt National. Since the exhibition opens tonight, I figure it’s now safe to post a photo of my piece. As I noted here, their rules are very strict about the work being shown anywhere, including on the web, prior to the show. I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than being kicked out of the show, so I didn’t even want to post it here too early – it seems there was a prior incident where someone was removed from the show because someone copied her photo from her own web site and posted it on their own. Anyway, being included in this exhibition is a great honor, and I would not want to take any chances.

Hope to be back here soon with some photos from the reception.

Posted in Art, Exhibitions | Tagged Quilt National 2011 | 8 Comments

If it seems too good to be true…

May 17, 2011

Someone thinks my work is so awesome, it should be included in an exhibit in Beijing? Cool!

Wait – it’s gonna cost me $950 for the publicity? Hmm, then look at this: My work will not be returned; it becomes the property of NY Arts Beijing space in China?

Now, I will be the first to admit that it’s quite possible I just fell off the turnip truck and I’m so desperate for exposure that I might still agree to all of this. However, we now have this thing called the Internet, and we can now do our homework and find out that these people have been scamming artists for a very long time. What’s amazing to me is that not enough artists must do this, and so they just keep on going, under the same names, not even bothering to make an effort to cover their tracks. A 10-second Google search reveals:

Casey Shannon knows about this

Heidi Allen knows about this

Art Bistro forum members know about this

Helen Ansell knows about this

And, my personal favorite:

The Caramel Award

Artists, please be careful; it’s a jungle out there! In the interest of helping anyone out there who might get an email like this and wonder if it’s legit, here’s the entire pitch I received yesterday:

Dear Deidre Adams,

My name is Abraham Lubelski, the publisher of NY Arts Magazine, and owner of The Broadway Gallery NYC and Beijing Arts Space in China. Recently my staff came across your works while researching for upcoming projects, and with their recommendation I would like to invite you to exhibit your works in Beijing, in May – October 31, 2011*. We will hang your work as soon as we receive it.

I am interested in your work “Composition IX” and would like to know more about it. I believe it would be an important addition to our program. By paying close attention to the intuitive works of each artist, we are hoping to construct an exhibitions of works that truly speak to the viewer. The exhibitions also offers an international publicity program for a fee (see details below). This promotion/publicity is a media driven event and offers both emerging and established artists the broadest media coverage possible.

All the best,

Abraham Lubelski
Publisher
NY Arts Magazine
473 Broadway, 7th floor, NY NY 10013 | 212-274-8993

_______________________________________________________________

Exhibition & Publicity Agreement
EXHIBITION DATE AND SPONSORS

Exhibition: Beijing Collection 2011
Location: Beijing Artists Space
Dates: May 3 – October 31, 2011*
*Your work remains hanging in the gallery for a minimum of 3 months.
We will hang your work as soon as we receive it.
Sponsor: NY Arts Magazine & Art Fairs International
Promotion & Publicity:

***The fee for the publicity program is $950.00

- “Beijing Collection 2011” will be featured among the “Artists of the Month” banner on the homepage of www.nyartsmagazine.com, www.nyartsbeijingcollection.com and www.nyartsbeijing.com, as well as within postings on these sites.
– Images of the artist’s works will be displayed on www.artfairsinternational.com, www.nyartsmagazine.com, and www.nyartsbeijing.com for the duration of the month.
– Each artist participating in the project will be represented, with an image of his or her work (which may or may not be the work on view in China) on our website, with a hyperlink going directly to the artist’s personal web site.
– A special webpage will be created exclusively for “Beijing Collection 2011” at www.globalartprojects.com, www.nyartsmagazine.com, and www.nyartsbeijing.com. This page will be online for a minimum of one year, with each participating artist’s hyperlink and image.
– Artist to be featured in the print edition, NY Arts Annual Top Websites Directory (Spring 2011 issue) within our magazine:
a) Artist Name
b) Website address
c) One image of the artist’s work (hi res 300 dpi and 4 x 6 inches)
d) Up to 70 words of text that best describes the nature of the work, and their website
– This feature will also be posted online at the NY Arts Annual Top Websites Directory.
– This feature will also be posted on the NY Arts Magazine’s Artist Directory online for one year with a direct hyperlink to the artist’s website.

CATALOG, PUBLICATION & DISTRIBUTION: ”BEIJING COLLECTION 2011″.

- Size: 8.5” X 11”
– Each artist will have one full page in the catalog. The page willinclude one image and a submitted text on their work.
– Thousands of copies printed for sale & distribution.
– The annual catalog will be a special section of NY Arts Magazine to be published in Fall 2011, and distributed in the United States, Europe, and China.
– The section/catalog, “BEIJING COLLECTION 2011” will feature its own cover inside NY Arts Magazine. As part of NY Arts Magazine, it will be distributed nationally and internationally through our distribution system(available at a variety of locations including galleries, museums and popular bookstores, such as Barnes and Noble), as well as to our subscribers.

*Deadline for submitting all data is one week after finalizing exhibition agreement.

Schedule & Payments:
***Total publicity cost is $950.00 includes the publicity program and printed catalogs

Shipping Work, & Sales:

- Each artist will show one selected work in the group exhibition, “Beijing Collection 2011.” Maximum allotted wall space will be 55” x 30” per artist.
All work must be shipped rolled and cannot be more than 5 pounds total shipping weight. We will stretch and frame work when necessary.
– Each participating artist is responsible for arranging the shipment of work to Beijing. Works are to arrive 7-10 days prior to the first day of the exhibition.
– No work will be returned. All work remains the property of NY Arts Beijing Space in China.

* NY Arts Beijing Space has the right to lend works from its permanent
collection to any museums, galleries or non-profit arts organization for
exhibition purposes only.
– On the back of each work there must be: Artist’s Name, Title of the Work, Date created, Medium, and Artist’s website address.
-*Your work remains hanging in the gallery for a minimum of 3 months. We will hang your work as soon as we receive it.

Posted in Art | 1 Comment

Fragments Series

February 28, 2011

I’m working on a new series of 12 x 12 paintings and will be posting them in short order. But in the interest of keeping things somewhat chronological, I wanted to post my 12 x 12 series from last year. So without further ado (click image to view larger):