Pomegranates and Pistachios - a Visual Feast?

Here are 2 little bits from my Playing With Paint class (Quilt U, Lyric Kinard). The assignment was printing with fruits & vegetables, so I dutifully made a nice vegetable soup and carefully saved various stumps & interesting little pieces and set them aside to dry. Next day, they're nowhere to be found - my dear sainted husband had foolishly considered them compost, and off they went to enrich my garden. Hmmmm, there's a song in there somewhere - no, wait, it's already been done, perhaps by Pete Seeger...And I know, I know, how much complaining can you do when the man is tidying up the kitchen, eh?

Anyway, not being in the mood to embark on any further cooking when I was in printing mode (what, again with the dinner? I don't think so!), I was left with a dried out old pomegranate and some pistachio shells to print with. The base fabric is some previously hand-dyed cotton that was loitering around in the vicinity of my desk. I used at least 2 closely-related colors to print with, one of them a "shimmer", but you can't see that in these pictures. The purple "smudges" in the green piece are very fine prints of a shell I found in the Bahamas - they show up very well in person; I guess this is a crappy low-res scan. Also better in the flesh: the repeated but barely visible print suggesting wild grasses that I mad a long time ago by glueing some leftover slivers of fun foam on a piece of box cardboard.

And then, because everything looks better with a little sparkle, I whisked a little "shimmering pearl" and/or some very diluted metallic gold hither and yon over the whole thing.

I have to admit to loving the little pistachio shell prints - so clean, so shapely, so available, so free of any preparation other than eating them! I predict that they will be making future appreances in my work. And I learned something useful about pomegranates, too: even when they appear to be all dried up past edibility, the seeds inside remain juicy and fully, edibly, tasty. Handy to know, huh?

More Playing With Paint

Or "Evolution of a Colonoscopy"... after I ironed out this piece of scrunched & painted silk , I noticed that it looked like, well, something best not seen outside of a gastroenterologist's office. So I tarted it up with Shiva Paintstick rubbings over a couple of my hand-carved rubber stamps and a little piece if plastic needlepoint mesh that was lying around. Because it is silk, it has a nice flow and drape. Still don't know if I like it, but it's growing on me.

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk on creativity

Here's a link to one of the most amazing talks I've ever heard:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Unlike many artists, I am amazingly bad at talking about The Creative Process. What is creativity? Where does it come from? "Where do you get your ideas?" - now there's a conversation-stopper, at least when it's addressed to me! Why do some people "have it" while others "aren't creative"? (heinously not so, in my understanding of the way things work, but a surprisingly ubiquitous view).

And why am I so mute when someone tries to engage me in conversation on the subject? ME! A normally bright, funny, opinionated, articulate person, and certainly not loathe to blather on about almost anything. Whether or not I know anything about the subject at hand! Yet when it comes to the topic of how/why I do what I now spend my days doing, about all I can manage is a self-disparaging "Oh, I just make stuff. Small art quilts. Surface design. You know, fabric..." Well, nobody's too sure what that means...must be code for "Beware - Flaky Artist on the scene; better get your crystals out and align your chakras!"

I could go all mystical: "I don't really know - things just happen. I just like to play." (Kinda true, but incomplete, inadequate, insufficient.) Or I could go cerebral, launch into long theories and "process" talk, most of which leads directly and in short order to the kind of pompous, self-congratulatory mental masturbation that drives me right straight crazy. Or there's always the time-honored Tortured Soul route - that's an archetype that our society has a definite place for. (And how come, by the way, we have no tradition of the Cheerful Artist? The Gleeful Soul, who creates for the sheer joy of being in the Universe?...Ooops, I see that leads right back to The Flake!)

Mystical Flake, Fatuous Narcissistic Ass, Tortured Artist: surely the creative life deserves more! Gilbert comes closer to expressing my own experience and understanding of creativity and the artist than any I've come across so far. I'm not going to recap what she says here; just, please, if you're interested in the subject at all, take the 19 minutes and watch this video!

And then let's talk!

"Playing with Paint" class

While not particularly lovely pieces of fabric, these are the first 2 in the class I'm taking through Quilt University, taught by Lyric Kinard. Couldn't figure out how to send them to the class gallery, so I'll just put them here. (I'm inordinately proud of having figured out, for the first time all by myself, how to get the pix out of the camera and into the computer. Maybe tomorrow I'll progress further!) The first cloth is done by drawing the tree-ish lines on white fabric with plain ol' Crayola crayons (I broke a whole bunch of them in the process; good excuse to go buy a new box, since I find broken crayons very disturbing!), then washing over the whole mess with fabric paints. I used various mixtures of blues, and you can't see it but there's a little pearly sparkle going on. I was too impatient to wait for it to air-dry properly, so I zapped it with the heat gun for a while, then ironed it between clean newsprint (all right - it was kinda dirty newsprint), and voila: the fabric dried, the wax came out into the newsprint, and the color stayed in.

Second piece: just swashing color around on damp cotton, then scrunched up a bit to dry. But again I was too impatient, so I ironed this one dry rather than waiting. I know if I'd just let it sit there till tomorrow, there would be more contour-type lines, but oh well...

It struck me as I looked at these two side-by-side that they reminded me of November (or December, or January, or _____)in the Bahamas and the same winter months here at home in upstate NY. Guess which is which!

OK, I'll play: 25 Random Things About Me

1) Some days I spend hours just communing with my little cat. Some days, she's the most "human" contact I have.

2) I love to handle fresh produce - fruits, vegetables, berries, roots: Bring them to me!

3) I consider myself to be shy, although invariably anyone who knows me bursts into hilarious laughter if I say that. Maybe my social friendliness & interest in you lets me avoid revealing anything much about myself - ever think about that?

4) I am deeply ashamed of how badly I sucked as a step-parent. It still baffles me, how that could have happened, but there it is. (But girls, if you should happen across this, I love you all, and value your presence in my life very much! It's all better now. And it was always about my issues, never about you.)

5) I had no idea when my first husband & I started out together those many years ago what wonderful strong, smart, kind, creative, interesting people we would create. Who knew? I stand forever humbled in the face of those 3 miracles! Start with little babies, and end up with fine, full people - who could believe it?

6) I will read and take an interest in almost anything. Except for a few things that are dead to me - techno, vampires and elves and unicorns, mathematics.

7) I read the Tarot cards sometimes. I dream of creating my own deck one day, but that's a lotta cards, and I have lots of other stuff to work on. And I also am good at interpreting dreams (It's a Pisces thing...)

8) Speaking of dreams - I LOVE my dreams! Such a fabulous source of entertainment, and occasionally wisdom and insight as well, arriving all unbidden and FREE to boot - how could you beat that?! I love my daughters' dreams, too.

9) I have an almost supernatural sense of smell. I can tell by the way the bathroom smells which kid has last used the toilet. I have detected dangerous hemorrhages in patients just by smelling blood as I whisked down the hall past their rooms; I've diagnosed liver disease in newborns by smell alone. And on the lovelier side, I hoard essential oils and yummy-smelling soaps and bath & cleaning products voraciously. I believe in and use aromatherapy.

10) But why, given all the all-natural all-organic cleaning and washing products I use, does my house always smell of burnt coffee when I walk in the door? This bugs me, every time.

11) Some days I think I am just lazy, rather than disabled and in pain.

12) But most days, I just WISH #11 were the case. Maybe both things are true...

13) It turns out that I have not been a good friend to most of my friends, even those I love dearly. I am not good at "reaching out"; I don't call or write, even though I often think of them; I am much better at listening than I am at offering up my own troubles. I often can't even show up at gatherings, due to my physical limitations, and I don't share about myself very well. It feels like the chronic pain issues have built a wall around me; I don't like to be seen when I'm not at my best, and I sure as hell don't want to moan or whine. Oy, such angst!

14) Some days I watch Court TV (now called In Session) all day. Well, listen to it, while I do other stuff.

15) I would like to break into this blog-world thing, but whenever I try I feel like I have nothing to say. Or more precisely, why would random people be interested in what I might have to say? Love to write, will write about almost anything, but go mute when faced with a blank computer screen. Maybe I need an assignment, like in school.

16) I am one of the only people I know who has a simple, uncomplicated, and loving relationship with my family-of-origin. Happy childhood, even happier adulthood. No unfinished business with my parents & sibs - I just love them and appreciate them. It's all good!

17) I may be the only person in America who does not feel over-stressed, overloaded, torn in too many directions. Been there, done that, didn't like it. In one of those good-things-disguised-as-a-bad-thing twists life brings, the injury that took me down also allowed me to step off the crazy merry-go-round.

18) I meditate. Quite a lot. I love it!

19) These are my favorite things in this life (besides my family & friends, of course): music, color, singing, the beauty and awesomeness of nature, the ocean, the mountains, the sky. Trees. Flowers. Well, and the babies, of course.

20) I don't know how the creative process works, or where it comes from. I don't even know where my own best work comes from.

21) Apparently I am a pacifist. I can't seem to find any war I can get behind, so I must be. "C'mon people, smile on your brother, everybody get together and try to love one another right now". Or at least - People: let's use our brains and our words to solve these problems!

22) My secret talent? I am a Sex Goddess. (Don't laugh! Saying "eeewwwww" may be appropriate.)

23) Goals? The word gives me hives - I don't like to be told what to do, even by myself! But I am working towards developing more productive work habits (it's hard when your "work" is equally your "play"), and towards building practices that will lead me towards better health. And world peace... (picture little winking emoticon here - I don't know how to make them).

24) Not only do I love my kids, Liddy, Molly, and Matthew, beyond measure, I admire them tremendously, each for different reasons: their humor, their passion, their willingness to engage with life as it is, their tender-heartedness, their creativity, their brightness of spirit as well as of intellect. But that's probably no secret!

25) I am so empathetic that it's often painful. Too much of other-peoples' energies rushing in on me. It's why I hate crowds.

Now, is there something further I'm supposed to do with this thing? Is there a game I don't know about going around? Clue me in!

1969 - Again!

I know I posted this in an earlier blog entry (Saturday, October 6, 2007, if you want the full five-part harmony song-and-dance), but I just popped it up here because it was relevant to a current and amusing discussion on the Complex Cloth group. Made Back in the Day - ah, the heady smell of melted crayola crayons, paraffin wax, and Schaeffer Permanent Black ink for fountain pen...! My first so-called batik - and the only one from that era of Rit dye and paraffin wax that is still around, as far as I know (the tye-dyed Carter's Spanky-Pants that my mom and I cooked up are long since gone to their reward!).

Fun Stuff!

I'll stop posting these here quite soon, I promise - there are dozens of them, though, and all still sitting around waiting for me to decide what to do: add more layers & techniques? cut them up & combine them with their cousins, or with unrelated co-inhabitants of the fabric shelves? or embroider and quilt and embellish them and call it "art"? or keep them as they are as records of my processes, or...? Anyway, for now they feel like something between a heap of riches and a flock of worries on my shoulder.