Catching Up

I had the sinking feeling that I hadn't been doing something and then realized I hadn't posted to my blog in ages.............life seems to be so full of issues and crazy that this is the last thing I get to do while I think it's one of the most important. 

"Rainbow Ram" (above)...a quick decision to work this piece up turned out to be a good decision...very pleased with this finished piece and I changed my process a bit, which became challenging but also rewarding in the end.  I treated the beige portion like reverse applique, cutting out sections and backing it with black before fusing it down to the blue background.  The blacking lines you see all over the surface are black stitched lines and in person, they are far more prominent than in this photo.  The horn area is where I spent a load of time to achieve the curved effect and placement of the colors..............I actually created this piece as a black/white drawing and colored it in before cutting the fabric...I don't usually do that, but the horn area needed it because of the curve effect.  Instead of stitching the beige black lines through the beige and blue, I stitched the beige separately and then fused the result to the blue background and then stitched additionally.  It gave me the freedom to manipulate the smaller beige pieces so I could get all those lines just perfect.  But it did cause problems, easily solved when I started stitching the entire surface design as a whole.

This is the piece I finished over the weekend.  Destination Roseville.....Blue Line Gallery is putting on a juried exhibit later this summer, "Map It Up" with the requirement that a map be used somewhere in the piece you create.  I scanned a map into my PC and printed it off into four large section only 100% cotton...pieced the map together.  Then I printed off the people images black/white, colorized then with colored pencils, fused them to the background map, stitched each of the images and then randomly stitched all over the surface design to flatted and give some texture to the overall piece...stretched to stretcher bars 26"w x 16"h and it's complete....The feet of the center woman/green dress are just above the maps indication for Roseville..where Blue Line Gallery lives and where the railroad was and is a big part of this community. 

In the past I have been pressed to create new work for the gallery I'm housed in, but I have changed my attitude about that issue (I don't like that pressure) and because I have such a huge inventory of work...I'm now creating and working on work that I want to create..work for myself, work for exhibits, work that I just have to create no matter what...and if they don't sell, they don't sell..eventually they will find a home.

BIG NEWS:  My pieces, Yosemite, Valley Floor was accepted into the KVIE Art Auction as a donation to help raise funds for our public tv station....besides being a big deal for me, it's a big deal for fiber artists, because fiber has not been a medium they have welcomed in the past.  Knowing that I selected a specific piece of work that I felt represented fine art and fiber art combined and my selection proved to be right on target.  I hope now that this piece will bring some good funding for KVIE in the future. 

On to the next piece.................................L