some photos of new work

Todd’s fishing shack

here are some photos of new work, some George Bush fabric I screen printed, Todd’s fishing shack, and three of the 4 almost completed Wild Women quilts.

My George Bush Quilt

I am seeking input for my George Bush quilt. Anyone who would like to contribute a quote or a fact that I can use on this quilt, please reply. I do not know where I am going with it, but I have some ideas and would like to incorporate words with images. All help is appreciated.

Vindicated, at last…

OK, scroll back to the post that I left entitled rejection. I wrote yesterday that I was going to be included in the studio Tour of the Carpinteria Valley Arts Council. I got a letter stating that they were having a show for the month of May that would include work by the artists participating in the Studio Tour ( includes a reception)- little gallery but local and cute. The same gallery that rejected the Wild Woman #1 piece that I now am entitled to enter in the show… Perseverence… or luck. I am so excited!!!

The show will be at the former Step One Gallery now renamed 855 At the Arts Center. It is on Linden ave in Carpinteria. It opens on May 2 with an artist reception on May 9 from 5:00-7:00.

Coming out of a creative dry spell

Work and Family has kept me from doing my art. Here is a picture of the latest family member, Beatrix, born on April 10. I will also include one of Atticus, the 21/2 year old that we  spent the a week and a half wrangling.

I am working on a picture of Todd’s fishing house in South Carolina.

I am also starting to clean up my studio because I will be participating in the Carpinteria Valley Arts Council’s Open Studio Tour on May 10. My neighbor, Marty will share the time and space with me, so I think it will be really fun. Marty does Acrylics and oil painting. It was her idea.

The next show that the Fibervision group will be in is the Fabulous Fiberfest in Santa Monica in August. Our Fibervision meeting yesterday was at Andi Pereja’s house in Arroyo Grande. after the meeting we went to the 7 sisters quilt show at the Madonna Conference Center in San Luis Obispo.  There were some great quilts there but there were some ho hum pieces as well.

 I studied their layout to figure out what works and does not work in quilt show layout, because I will be doing the site design for the Coastal Quilters show in October. It was a good show, but I did not get that hit of Wow! from any of the quilts I saw. I did think that some of the quilts were a little too close together, so it was hard to enjoy one with out looking at the other. They hung some spectacular quilts from the ceiling, but if you did not look up, you would miss them .  Not to be critical. It was a good show and there were a lot of great quilts, just not to my taste.

 

 

another piece that is in progress… forever?

This is a card I found in a bookshop in Victoria BC.

 

This is the image I made to use in a design similar to this card. I started it two or three years ago, and just can’t seem to finish it. It is based on a photo of my best friend Martha, and somehow the shadow and light did not work.  It’s no wonder that this piece  does not work. I have never had a class in shading or light source, I just know that it is important to get it right and maybe that is why I just can’t finish it. However, I just can’t cut it up either. I think there is something to learn from this piece, so it still hangs on my wall in my studio.

Wild Woman # 2 in progress

Here’s #2 in the Wild Women series. I have finished the composition and am working on the threadpainting and the details. I am happy with how it is turning out. I especially like the highlights on the arm. When I walked into the studio this afternoon and looked at what I had done last week, I was disappointed in the arms because they looked so flat. I tried that little light piece and it was not enough. When I repeated the thin line in orangey fabric, it worked just fine. I will get the same thread that I do the face with and highlight it a little more with thread.

 It does not take that long to do  these, what takes a long time is the getting around to doing them. Hence the 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. I hope to have them done before September.

Last night my husband was watching a very scary video, and when he watches something I do not want to see I usually come out and sew. But just hearing the scary music from the video and the screams and all, I was too scared to walk across the driveway ane be here all by myself. What a baby… It was written by Dean Koonz, who writes psychological horror. I can deal with good scary, my favorite movie being Arachnaphobia, but if it is too close to reality, I get nightmares. Anyway, enough said.

I have entered Wild Women #1 (me) in a small show here in Santa Barbara at the Architectural Review Board’s gallery. That starts in March and runs for a month.

rejection, again

I This is my latest quilt. It is called Wild Women #1 and is the first in a series of quilts of myself and 3 friends after painting our faces and posing for the camera.

I know they say that you need to have a thick skin when entering your work in shows, but I think my work is great, and this quilt has been rejected from the last two shows I entered. WAAAAAH!!! One was a museum where my own group was showing and the other was a gallery.  I can understand the gallery as my work is bound and not framed, and there is possibly some resistance to quilting as “art”, but I still feel let down.  This morning I went to see the show that I was just rejected from and there was work in the show that I considered marginal as compared to mine. I guess it is true that  judges and curators are just people with their own taste and they choose work according to their own bias and from their own background. I just feel a little low. I am going to start entering the same quilt in as many shows as I can. Maybe someone will like it…

Fiber Art Portraits and my studio

Some photos of my studio and some work in progress.

Ranell

Quilting in 10 minute intervals a week apart…

Because of the holidays, and because of the general rush and push to get things done, be with family, cook, decorate, undecorate and collapse from exhaustion, I have not written about my quilting, nor have I done anything major. I did get to my studio last week and finished the quilting on my global quilt. I have not chosen a name for it yet, but vollyball keeps popping into my consciousness…Global Volleyball, International Beach Vlooeyball, world volleyball, the ball is in your court, I still go back to the Global warming theme, because I like the image of the world being warmed because it is wrapped in a quilt. I don’t know.

I did a little guerella quilting today. I got home from work at about 6:00 and instead of going into the house, I went straight into the studio and started working on one of my Wild Women pieces. I have a flower to do, and got it almost done in the 45 minutes I had before my husband came home. I may try to do this more often.

I cleaned and organized my studio last week-end. Leroy is famous for Road Kill… finding things on the side of the road that people have left out for free. This time he scored! It was a corner unit with 2 book shelves. He had already brought the shelves home and took me down after dark to the street on which the corner unit was sitting. We examined it with flashlights, measured it, and ascertained that it would not fit in any room of our house. We sadly had to leave it there. Leroy was bummed. He just did not want to give it up, because it was such a classy piece of furniture. Back at home, he started loading the shelves into his car to return them to the street when I said, “Hey, maybe I can use them in my studio”. Voila. Two fabulous shelves now sit where boxes of unsorted junk once resided. I got rid of another road kill bookshelf that had served its purpose without style, and am happy. I can now walk around in my little office, and am working hard at keeping the surfaces clean and clear so that I can drop in and work at the studio or use the computer with out having to dig thru a bunch of admittedly neat stuff to find a flat space on which to work.

 It is late, and I am tired, but want to be real tired so that I can sleep through Leroy’s snores.

Good Night

I will download photos next post.

Ranell

continuing work in progress- Method to my madness

Hi. To continue, Here’s a photo of the Escher print I was thinking about.

First, after deciding that the distorted photo on the center wouldn’t work, I wanted to get a picture of a hand holding something that would reflect. I did not have a mirror finish globe, but I did have a fish eye mirror, which unfortunately was not round. Anyway,  here’s what happened with that idea:  

 

Here is the quilt in progress. I just did some thread painting today and quilted it somewhat. I still need to quilt the background more.

this photo was taken without the quilting: