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| Upheaval #3
©carol larson 2010
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I am back in the studio again…working! I am currently stitching work which was in process when the commission came in, so it will be nice to see it to completion. Fabrics are up on the wall ‘fermenting’ for the next piece and smaller projects for the gallery shelves are waiting patiently nearby to be sewn.
I cannot tolerate a blank design wall. At times it is difficult enough for an artist to have instant inspiration so an empty white wall staring back does not help at all. So everytime I take work down to stitch it, I slap some new fabric up there. It doesn’t really matter if I plan to use that exact piece or not; it just matters that something beautiful is staring back at me. And occasionally there is a bonus from the fabrics curing on the wall.
For example last year I was so dazzled by the random pinning of several brown and ochre fabrics. I looked at it over and over and felt I could not improve on it design-wise. So I photographed the random selection and designed the work which became Upheaval #3
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| Tahoe Dusk
©carol larson 2011
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Last week I decided to sew together a bunch of leftover dark blue strips with the intention of making a small piece for SAQA‘s new trunk show exhibit This Is A Quilt. As is often the case I had no idea where I was going with it. I design spontaneously so I often end up with something far different than I had envisioned. I kept piecing these scraps until I had a big enough piece to fill the requirement. The finished size is 9.5″ square. Then I decided to add some fused scraps and pretty soon I was adding more and more as it reminded me of the glorious sunsets we saw on Lake Tahoe in July 2009. Had my husband seen it in process he would have told me it looks nothing like the sunsets, where is the horizon, where is the ground and so on? To which my answer to all those logical questions is…it’s abstract!
and sew on…
It's nice to know you have one of those, too. My husband is an incredibly supportive person, but being a forester & forest fighter, he tends to want everything to be "elementally correct" or as close to real as possible. He is my IHC (In House Critic) and I love him and value his opinion, but sometimes he just doesn't get it. Glad to know maybe I'm not alone!