Book As Art – Beyond The Limits
Book arts have advanced the book as a vital contemporary art form and inspired diverse artists and learners with creative and interpretive experiences. If you are inspired in any way by the physical presence of the book, as a vehicle for transmitting information, as a personal object or as a multiplicity of ideas, you will no doubt be moved by the visual power of word and image presented.
Exhibition dates: September 30 to October 14, 2011. Opening reception Friday, September 30, 7 pm.
The Gunslinger from “Stories in Black and White”
Arc Gallery
4801 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL
The Meticulous
The Meticulous celebrates artists whose work is defined by laborious process; art where the working procedure is meticulous, requiring countless hours of unsung commitment. The act of art-making blurs the line between obsession and introspection, and the artists are connected by a collective investment to their work. Exhibition runs from January 7th – January 18th.
Desotorow Gallery
2427 De Soto Avenue
Savannah, GA 31401
37856 stitches, 100 colors
I can’t remember exactly when I started this…but it is finally complete. Submitting it to an exhibition tomorrow.
Fell
It’s been a busy semester with lots of adjustments in terms of time management. But, wow, did I get a lot done!
The street scene is *still* in progress. I’m so close to finishing it, yet other project ideas have pushed it to the back of the hopper. I would like to finish it within the next week or so to find a show for it.
I’ve started a massive project involving the Y2K image. I may be crazy for attempting what I’ve got planned. But if I can finish it, it will be superb.
I’ve also been arranging trades with my artist friends for the little tiles that make up the piece that was shown at ArtPrize. Next to the full image is an example of how they look individually framed. I like them that way so much better than all together.
The piece with text is something that a friend mentioned offhand that I said I could make. I usually don’t go in for the ironic needlepoint text pieces, but I actually like the way this pattern has turned out – it’s both sweet and funny, with the tiniest wisp of vulgarity. The background is based on a (much more genteel) pattern designed by Katherine Martin Tripp who offers many free patterns on her website.
Below that is something I started (finished?) based on a postage stamp. Lately I’ve been drawn to internet ephemera as source images – an endless supply of really great images. I’m still on the fence as to whether it needs a background or not. If not, the work is finished. If I go with the background, I’m looking at probably another 8 to 10 hours of work (on a tiny 3″ square needlepoint). Below the two girls are two other stamps that I’d like to do next. All three of these are to be submitted to an upcoming exhibition in Brooklyn.
ArtPrize
My work entitled 20216 stitches, 50 threads in 28 pieces has been accepted into ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I will be exhibiting at the Riverview Center (678 Front Ave.) between September 22 – October 10, 2010.
10584 stitches, 58 colors
I finished this a couple of months ago, but just got around to scanning.
Details:
method
I’m still working on this large street scene; I’m hoping to have it finished in a couple of months. This is a Photobooth picture that leaves much to be desired in terms of detail. One thing that’s evident from this picture is that I’m trying different methods to finish this one.
Usually, I work by color. I find all the stitches with a particular thread throughout the pattern and I complete one color before moving on to another. That’s how I started this one, but it is simply too large (9 in x 12 in) to reasonably count accurately.
So, I switched tactics. I thought that I could stitch the traffic cone in its entirety. My pattern is comprised of four pages, and parts of the cone are on all four pages, meaning I was shuffling around a lot. I branched out from the cone to the entire last (and smallest) page – what corresponds to the lower right corner – and tried to complete that page completely. I got pretty close. Then I also completed all of the black on the right, just to have it out of the way.
My most recent tactic is evident in the mid-right bottom of the fabric. Complete a 10 x 10 stitch block in its entirety before moving on. I did two in about an hour (minus one color that I didn’t find at the store the last time I went). Though this method isn’t necessarily my favorite way to work, I think it’s the most safe for a project of this size. It will keep me from any further skipping of columns, which I’ve already done in one spot.
It also makes it look like significant progress is being made whereas the middle part, where I was still going through color-by-color, just looks like a haphazard mess.
I made this pattern a while ago, so I don’t remember why I wanted it to be so large. After this, though, no more large needlepoint. I’d like to standardize around 5 x 7 or 6 x 9. Those are reasonable sizes that can be completed in 3 months or so.
9184 stitches, 30 colors
Just finished the topographical map for the Tohono Chul Park postcard exhibition.
Details:
I’m happy with the way it turned out. As usual, the .jpg doesn’t do it justice.
This will be sent off to Tucson without an envelope, so I hope the postal service is kind to it.
Fiber Artspace
My needlepoint 21168 Stitches 69 Colors will be in an upcoming show, Foto-Fiber-Fabulous, at Fiber Artspace in San Antonio from 3-26 of September.
Fiber Artspace
1414 S. Alamo St. #103
San Antonio, TX 78210
210-633-6959
updates and further projects
Here is the thunderbird project with 19 colors completed. I can’t wait until this one is done.
I decided, however, not to enter this into the “Wish You Were Here” show like I had planned. I’m increasingly reluctant to send it through the mail, just as I knew I would be. Also, I found another exhibition that I’d like to enter with the same deadline as the postcard show, and I don’t have time to finish both this and the one I’d like to enter:
This is a project I started in the late spring. It’s much larger than I usually work: 8 in. x 12 in. on 14 count fabric in 100 colors. I’m not sure why I made this pattern so large – it’s too big to fit on the bed of our scanner, so documentation will continue to be less than ideal. As shown, this is 9 colors finished.
I still want to enter the postcard show, though, because I think it’s a great idea. So I found some topographic maps of the Grand Canyon (more on that later!) and made a new pattern (more on that later too!) that will be much more quickly completed. This is the image on which the needlepoint will be based (click here to see the uncropped full map):
At 4 in. x 6 in. on 14 count fabric, it loses most detail and becomes rather abstract – if that map isn’t abstract enough. It only has 30 threads, so I think I can probably finish it up in a week. I don’t think I’ll have any heartbreak at mailing this one and I can’t wait to see how this experiment turns out. I’ve recently fallen in love with the look of topographic/contour maps.
The Politics of Cross-Stitch
From about 1916 to 1918, Sophie Taeuber and Hans Arp collaborated on a set of closely related works—cross-stitch embroideries, collages, and sketches. Radically abstract, these vertical-horizontal compositions epitomize Zurich Dadaism’s attempt to transform society by undermining bourgeois conventions—except they were not made public. An examination of the differences between Taeuber’s and Arp’s public and private identities reveals why they kept their most “advanced” work to themselves. It was only in private that they could develop a model of equal relations between a man and a woman that eliminated the hierarchical divisions between the arts and their gendered makers.
Bibiana Obler. “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch.” The Art Bulletin 91 no. 2 (June 2009): 207
Thunder Restaur
Here is a much better image of my current project, for the “Wish You Were Here” fiber postcard exhibition. On the left is the source photo.
So far, i’ve used 9 threads out of the 91 colors on the pattern sheet. The entire top above the bird is going to be Snow White, DMC B5200.
