Homage to a Genius

It's no surprise that Frank Lloyd Wright is an artist that I am continuously drawn to, but I have had a temporary separation from him lately and felt a yearning to reconnect. I was pulled back by a lovely book entitled Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. This book chronicles the tale of what is considered Wright's midlife controversy, but what I would consider his most content period of his life. The book enlivened within me that earning to create more architecturally, as I did in my college days. I still share Wright's values of creating artwork that is both eye pleasing and one of/built for nature.

This dress above is a design that I created in college in 2008. It is a direct response to my passion of Wright's "prairie homes" such as his William E. Martin house in Oak Park, Illinois from 1903. This house really speaks to me. I wanted to convey the struggle that I envisioned Wright experiencing while designing. The viewer feels the contemplation and frustration of deciding whether the house, or my dress in this instance, should be structured upwards (vertically) or reaching outwards (horizontally). This is one of his few three-story houses and in response my skirt has three separate, yet cohesive panels that culminate into what represents my homage to Frank Lloyd Wright.

My ultimate desire for this skirt was to play up natural light and the play of various translucent panels with varying textures. This skirt I made from knitted webs of alpaca wool that were handstitched onto silk organza which I then felted and shrunk. The puckered pockets that were created with this effect were textures to represent light play that is similar to stained glass. The tones are muted and neutral so as to be calming to the viewer. I wanted to invite the viewer to look closer and be pulled in a round-about path, circling to the right only to discover the burst of yellow and intense explosion bursting from the hip. Now, after looking back on this piece, I am excited to move forward with architectural designs once more and incorporate them into my hand-weavings instead of wearable art. Oh Frank, how I have missed you!

Inspiration!

Rain, Breathe, Roots all hand-woven with bamboo and veggie dyed soy, 16x18

Winter has come, leaving all of the trees bare and the earth hardened and wet with snow. This is my favorite time of year and I can't help but look around at the inspiration that fills each of my senses. Above is a image from my show back in August; Sustain: Nature Provides. I am posting it simply because today when I looked outside, I thought of how lucky I am to be seeing Nature in its purity and how protective I am to keep it that way. Every part of our past, present, and future stems and depends upon it. Today...give a tree a hug! Maybe you should give someone you love a hug as well so you don't look like a complete looney.

Nuno Felted Scarves

Nuno felted wool and in-laid bamboo yarn onto cheesecloth

Nuno felted wool onto silk

I know that these pictures need to be re-shot as they are taken on one of my chairs in my studio!! But...I just wanted to get something up to show off the different effects one can achieve with nuno felting. Eventually, I will get images of an actual workshop I instructed up to show the process. Nuno felting is wet felting into an open weave fabric. When you nuno felt, you are the ultimate decision maker in how much or how little wool you wish to felt onto your scarf, or material. I, myself being a minimalist, prefer to use little wool. Another reason why I choose to use fewer amounts of wool is that it allows for more shrinkage, puckering, and gives the natural materials more room to do what they naturally want to do.

When nuno-felting, you basically want to layer wool onto your fabric and then follow your typical wet-felting process to achieve the ultimate shrinkage. The idea is that you wool will felt into the fabric, thus creating the puckered effect. A really good nuno-felted scarf will be visible from the backside of the scarf, where you will notice some wool coming through the fabric.

The two scarves above show a different techniques that I like to incorporate. The top one shows how you can inbed other materials (I used some red bamboo yarn), by layering them in between your layers of wool on the fabric. I layered white wool so that it would not distract from the concentrated blotches of red. For the second scarf, I layered the wool in a criss cross, hatching pattern so than once wet-felted, you will notice shrunken pockets.

Just be warned...this not something for those who want exact outcomes. Wool, when it shrinks, will take on its own life and the outcomes are always slightly different.

These two scarves in particular, are currently for sale at LUX Center for the Arts, in Lincoln for anyone who is looking for a great christmas gift!

Friday Poem!

Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, she steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad image
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see now more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, she claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one might sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gather to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Mission District Murals

Balmy Alley, San Francisco, November 2010

I have always been in love with murals, and the culture that does mural painting the best is the Mexican culture. While I was last in San Francisco, I made sure to set aside a day to explore the Mission District Murals. There is something so powerful about viewing large public works of art that have meaning and value. You see the pain, joy, struggle and triumph of the people who paint the murals. You can't help but feel inspired.

In 1971, local muralists began creating beautiful, expressive paintings anywhere they could find the space, i.e. fences and garages of Balmy & Clarion Alleys. Many of the murals have political themes revolving around Mexican culture and adapting to American life. I should note that murals have been a part of Mexican culture since the early twentieth century. Famous muralist, Diego Rivera, began a mura movement in San Francisco after he completed his first commissioned mural outside of Mexico in 1930. Today there are an estimated 600 murals throughout the city with many located in the Mission Distrcit, home to many of San Francisco's Hispanics.

Friday-Poem

My November Guest
By Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Gifts from the Heart

And here is some of my latest work....smaller scale, lower priced and wearable. This was my first attempt at a batch of felted brooches and I must admit I am pleased with how they turned out. I made these for the upcoming winter exhibition, Gifts from the Heart, at LUX Center for the Arts. This is an invited exhibition that I am pleased to partake in.

I began with some sterling silver discs that I shaped into domes for the base (in order to hold the felted piece). Next I soldered pin backs pieces and shaped the pin to curve around the domed base. Be aware that when soldering onto the dome shapes...place the pin backs at an angle so they connect completely. I found working with silver to be a bittersweet relationship ...both for better and for worse. I found that yes, silver melts fairly
quickly and then there is no coming back. Although the destructive appeal to the melted silver parts makes me want to experiment further. For these I stuck with making pretty, non-melted brooches - I figured these would be appealing to the mass. The silver creates a beautiful frame for the felted centerpiece.

Although the silver is clean, I have only ever worked with copper before this point, and I would really love to see more of it. I just need to find copper bin back pieces. The larger brooch has a copper dome base that looks beautiful against that mixed cranberry color. The copper has a more subtle appeal, which I always enjoy.

Anyways, the felted pieces have a touch of embroidery with small french knots. These are all made with felted wool - which I haven't been working with lately. The thread is bamboo and next I am planning on felting a few with soy. I don't want to to venture out too far away from my plant fiber phase, but I wanted to start out easy - with a fiber I knew I would have no troubles with.

These can be found for sale at the upcoming Gifts from the Heart wintershow at LUX Center for the Arts or on my etsy shop. Be on the lookout for my other artwork for this show as well as some earrings that are underwary!