Virginia A. Spiegel

milkweed 3 by Virginia A. Spiegel
Sold (But check Karen’s blog for more upcoming choices)

My friend, Karen Stiehl Osborn, is raising funds to help with the uber-expensive vet bills of an animal rescue.  I happily made and donated eight special ATCs (small artworks the size of baseball trading cards).  milkweed 3 is now up on Karen’s blog (just scroll down an entry or two).  You can expect to see more artwork available on her blog in the near future.

More information from Karen if you would like to help by buying or donating artwork:

Hands, Hearts & Paws is an all-breed animal rescue in Omaha, NE. Often they accept the dogs that no other rescue will take, usually because of expensive medical needs. Recently they had a surgical bill of $1000 for a dog that had a prong collar embedded in his neck and a chunk of wood puncturing his trachea. Now they have a dog that has tested positive for heartworms and a dog that needs surgery for a luxating patella. Both of those dogs’ treatments will run hundreds of dollars each. I volunteer with this rescue, because I truly believe that they put the needs of the dogs ahead of all politics and financial concerns.

I am asking for your help to raise funds for these medical bills. I will be selling Artist Trading Cards for $20 each, until I run out of cards to sell. The rescue has several events scheduled for the coming months, and I will be selling the artwork at these events, plus selling them online through my blog and Facebook.

If you are an artist, please consider donating an ATC to the cause. If you are a patron, please consider purchasing a small artwork to support the rescue and enhance your own art collection.

I love milkweed as a subject for artwork because of its architectural shape in leaves, blooms, pods, and seeds.  milkweed 3 is watercolor paper mounted to cardstock and includes watercolor, ink, acrylic paint, and a print from a hand-cut lino block.

In the studio and stitching away this week.  That sounds like no big deal.  But as I shared in my July art newsletter, I had six big artworks ready to be stitched in June and they proved unstitchable.  And I mean unstitchable.  I tried everything and the layers, the felt backing, whatever! just made it impossible to sew more than an inch without the thread breaking.  So I let them sit, went to the Boundary Waters, and decided (with reluctance and with considerable pain) to just chuck them and start again.

But when I went to my studio, I had a cone of poly/cotton thread on the holder from fixing a piece of camping equipment.  I took down from the design wall the piece I had been torturing with failed stitching attempts and gave it a whirl.  All good to go now.  So I’m a happy (and amazed!) camper now and have three pieces stitched and the fourth one (above) under the needle.

This is what the back looks like; I’m really just securing things at this point as I think about where to take them once this first stitching is done.

This is what the side table looks like when I’m working.  I can’t say any of these threads are the dominant colors of the six pieces, but I like to have a lot of thread out while I’m working.  Neatness optional.

Offline

This is the second artwork that I am shipping this week to the Northfield Arts Guild for their exhibit WWW.  This exhibit asks artists to consider the impact of the web on their lives. You can read more about the exhibit with notes from participating artists here.

As I noted in this previous post, I was already considering this very topic in terms of my own life and the direction of my work in early 2011.

This artwork sprang directly from my worry that sometimes I was living my real life in the spaces in between the life I had created online with my website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.,etc. accounts. How I could/can I balance my personal and professional lives when, as an artist, they are so inextricably intertwined?

I’m endeavoring in 2011 to make my real life more than just the space between all the online words.

Offline, detail.
Materials:  Mystery fabric from a textile garage sale, thread, ink.
Techniques:  Stitched, lettered.
Photos by Deidre Adams

A very unusual aspect of working on this artwork was how much this mystery fabric felt like human skin.  It was quite disconcerting to letter on it; I won’t be starting a career as a tattoo artist any time soon.

Harder Than You Think
44″ x 29″
Photos by Deidre Adams

As soon as I read the prospectus, I knew I needed to enter this exhibit. The call for the WWW exhibit at the Northfield Arts Guild stated:

The web has profoundly changed not only how we communicate, but how we process time and experience.  In the WWW exhibit, fiber and textile artists will explore how communications technology has influenced contemporary life.

I have been thinking since January about how to balance being part of a lively online artistic community with the time needed to think about and actually create art. So the two artwork accepted for WWW are all about the process of seeking that balance – an ongoing conversation with myself that finds expression in these artworks.

Harder Than You Think, detail

I started with white cotton cloth and built up, with layers and layers of screen printing, stylized columns of computer screens framing and  forming a community of sorts.  Once I had the screen structure complete, I added ink, Lithocoal, and colored pencil. It is stitched with rayon thread.  It is definitely one of those artworks that needs high res photos or personal viewing to appreciate all the detail.

I will feature the second accepted artwork, Offline, closer to the exhibit opening on July 8.

Boundary Waters 51
Photo by Deidre Adams

Sandra Sider has announced the artists to be included in The Studio Quilt, no. 6:  State of the Art and I’m thrilled that Boundary Waters 51 will be featured in this upcoming book.

Sider is currently serving as president of Studio Art Quilt Associates and is a well-known artist, critic, and curator.  The book will be available on Amazon.com