Virginia A. Spiegel

October:  Field and Forest

The Surface Design Association Conference begins today and continues through May 31, 2009 in Kansas City, MO. The Members’ Show Surface Matters is at the Belger Arts Center. More information here.

Materials include white cotton fabric, acrylic textile paint, oil paint sticks, pigment ink, rayon thread, cotton embroidery thread, vintage polyester scarf, Lutradur, and velvet fabric.

I am generally impatient to begin and finish an artwork, but I was working on this piece while I had several other big artworks in progress.  So I added a layer a day and let it evolve organically.  You can read more about the creation of this artwork here.

It’s interesting that I unconsciously return over time to the same themes drawn from my love of the Midwestern landscape.  Here is January Fields from way back in 2003:

And this is Four O’Clock from 2004.

I was studying the work of Helen Frankenthaler at the time and wrote, “I am inspired by Frankenthaler’s work and words to capture that feeling in the sky and fields in Nebraska late in the afternoon in March when the sun is slanting down, the wind is blowing like crazy (as usual!) and we are teetering on the edge between the death of Winter and the birth of Spring.”

A Sense of Place II, curated by Peg Keeney, is an invitational exhibit for artists working in a series with landscape as their inspiration.  Three artworks are required and they must be vertical in orientation.  That’s always a tough one for me as I love the horizontal, due to, I believe, the Midwestern horizon line.

I knew I needed to choose as inspiration something that in itself was vertical in nature.  Of course, inspiration would come from the Boundary Waters and the three artworks would be Boundary Waters 45 – 47.

I chose for inspiration a photo of the cliffs in the Boundary Waters with Fall color beginning to show (photo above) and laid it next to my sewing machine on hand-dyed cheesecloth and silk in greens and oranges.

I then pulled from my seemingly endless storehouse of scraps and pieces this palette of green, blue-green, orange and brown.

This is one of the three works in progress.  I cropped it to not show the background, so the VERY irregular edges do not show.  I’m going for organic and the pieces are not flat, not square, and pretty darn exuberant.  I’ll be sharing more after I finish them up.

A new group to promote the fiber arts, Fiber Art Alliance, now has its website up.  I am happy to be an invited member of this group that includes ten artists. 

Our first exhibit, Natural Lines, will have three pieces by each artist created this year.  The first part of the exhibit is up here.

Of course, I am continuing in the Boundary Waters series for this exhibit.  

Boundary Waters 42

Materials include white cotton fabric, acrylic paint, artist’s photos inkjet printed on silk organza, ink, colored pencil, graphite, foil, embroidery floss, rayon thread. 

Boundary Waters 42 – Detail

This is the pink/orange work (I actually have the two additional works for the exhibit done) that I spoke of earlier.  I am still following the thread of thought that the power of the Boundary Waters includes the ability to make us, as tiny humans, think about the brevity of our own lives versus the eternalness (I do hope) of Nature.  We glimpse just a moment of what is an ever-changing landscape built up and worn down over eons of time.

October: Field and Forest (In Progress)

I’m working on the above art quilt for the members’ show, Surface Matters, for the Surface Design Association conference.  Under the influence of the organization’s focus and my recent peace artwork, it’s all about layers of surface design.  The theme of the conference where the members’ show opens is Off the Grid. Well, that’s a theme I can work with on both literal and metaphorical levels.

I started with a basic quilt (sort of a crazy-pieced top, batting, backing) with the theme of forest and fields in October in the Midwest.  We have a certain glow going then with the tawny empty fields and the brave sun.

I used a variety of my hand-painted fabric in an orange/peach palette with creamy beige highlights and a little green.  Some parts of the pieced top were made of a vintage polyester scarf with dark-colored swirls fused with Mistyfuse to a painted fabric.  

I added machine stitching in green thread in a jig-jagging hedgerow-kind of pattern.  Then I added “forest” with hand-stitching with Laura Wasilowski’s Artfabrik’s hand-dyed cotton variegated thread and some tiny sun stitches in variegated rayon thread (only for the totally stitch obsessed- very slippery stuff for hand-stitching).  

Onward from there to oil paint sticks (Shiva), adding some irridescent gold, copper and turquoise highlights.  I let that dry and pressed it well. Then I hit the top ridges of the piece with a dark pigment ink stamp pad. Then I added some strips cut from my big Boundary Waters 32 that include painted fabric, Lutradur and velvet. Then light washes were added of several colors of Golden liquid acrylic paints in the gold, copper, and yellow families.

October:  Field and Forest (detail)   

To top it all off, I added a tilted machine-stitched grid of variegated rayon composed of squares and rectangles.  I still need to square it up to 18×18″ (required size) and, believe it or not, I’m thinking of a 1/4″ binding.  I haven’t done a binding for a long time, but this seems like an artwork that would benefit from a strong edge. I also marked this artwork as “In Progress” because, to be honest, I haven’t decided which edge is the top yet.

The Surface Design Conference is May 28 – May 31, 2009 in Kansas City, MO.  More information here.

Jane Davila and Elin Waterston’s new book,  Art Quilts at Play, will be released in January 2009. But you can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting Jane Davila. 

Visit Jane’s blog to read all about this new book which follows their very successful Art Quilt Workbook.  Jane states, Once we’ve shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. 

That’s where I and other artists come in.  I completed a trade for 6×6″ art quilts with the theme of blackbirds for the book.  I was so happy to have a nature theme with which to work. Here is one of the artworks I traded:

blackbird 2

There will be a release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21, 2009.