I have been preoccupied with life for the past month. I continue to work on #12 in the collaborative series, with 13, 14 and 15 fermenting in my cranium. And we continue to work on dog training. Mops is coming along so well, aside from the times when she chews up something important. I work diligently […]
patterns
stories of migration…
A week ago today my daughter & I were winging our way to Washington DC for a long weekend & the opening of Stories of Migration: Contemporary Artists Interpret Diaspora at the George Washington University Museum & Textile Museum. I am honored to have my work Defining Moments 7: Fleeing the City chosen for this prestigious venue […]
field trip
Today hubs and I took a field trip to see Earth Stories at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. The stars aligned with a dry forecast, moderate weekend traffic as opposed to heavier weekday traffic and best of all no Super Bowl festivities! We returned through San Francisco on a gorgeous clear, sunny winter’s day. It was […]
how long did that take you?
There are two very predictable comments made to any person who works with cloth and thread: My grandmother was a quilter and how long did that take you to make that? Today as I finished stitching #10 in the collaborative series Defining Moments I was reminded of the latter. I was reminded when the stitching of the […]
on old dawgs and new rugs…
Last week we bade farewell to our aged pooch. Millie came to live with us 13 years ago when it was estimated she was about a year old, maybe two. She was a rescue which I believe affected her personality to being one of the sweetest and most grateful creatures ever. We started with her […]
Artists Culture
Some time ago one of my fellow artists at the Arts Guild of Sonoma, an “ad man” in a previous life, mentioned ‘casting a wider net’ in our business marketing. As an example he sent a link to Artist Culture an ezine with over 400,000 circulation. I looked at the current month’s issue and decided to send in an […]
quick trip to Cincinnati…
Last weekend I made a quick trip to Cincinnati for an art opening. My work Currents #13 was juried into Art Comes Alive 2015 sponsored by Art Design Consultants of Cincinnati. There was one direct flight from the Bay Area to Cincinnati so I jumped on it, flew all night and arrived none the worse for […]
art on the iPad
For the past month I have been engrossed in an online course titled iPad for Artists taught by my colleague Susie Monday. Since I use my iPad for mostly email, social media, reading and games I decided I might like to really learn other things to do with it. I downloaded a bunch of apps for drawing, […]
this and that…
Last week I traveled with a friend for a mixed media art class in Santa Fe, NM. Anyone who knows me well knows I am a total NM junkie. It takes little to convince me to go to NM, and this my 14th trip was no exception. This time I spent no time in galleries, the cooking […]
where i have been…
Holy Smokes…what happened to March?! I can’t believe it has been over a month since I have blogged. To come up to speed, I continue on with the collaborative series, as I am now designing #7 of the twenty five. I am so enjoying this experience and the ever changing challenges of construction, technique, materials, […]
Fiberarts for a Cause
I am both honored and excited to be an invited artist for FiberArts for a Cause, a one-day online fundraiser benefitting the American Cancer Society on February 4, 2015. You can read all the details here. Virginia Spiegel has raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars for the ACS through various FiberArts for a Cause over the […]
unexpected nirvana…
I just returned from a fabulous five-day art retreat on the shores of Lake Tahoe. What could have been a disastrous turn of events actually turned into nirvana for me. The classroom I was assigned to was midway up on billy goat mountain. I traversed it slowly with cane and friend in tow four times […]
new work…defining moments
I have made several online references lately about a large new series. This is a collaborative project that requires I design 25 large pieces in three years time. We are now in August of the first year! My husband keeps reminding me that the clock is ticking and what pressure I have put on myself, but I […]
the zen of the doodle…
My friend Franki Kohler is a whirling dervish of art techniques. She is always strengthening her creative muscle by learning, playing & dabbling with various art supplies and medium. She recently posted about making art books out of junk mail and mentioned taking an online class from Silly U. I could not find Silly U as […]
moving art…
The kitchen reno is 100% finished and 200% awesome! For the past nine weeks we have been living in relative chaos with art taken down and moved into carpenter’s dust-free environments. Although there is still some reno going on elsewhere in the house I am in the process of moving and rehanging art, partially to avoid completely unpacking […]
where i’ve been…
Where have I been you might ask? Good question! We have been in kitchen chaos for over a month now as we update our mid-century ‘heart of the house.’ It is difficult, anyone will tell you that. I think it is most likely the chaos and unpredictability of many factors that create the stress. Yet […]
eating the elephant…one bite at a time
I am on the precipice of starting a new body of work which is a three year collaboration with another artist. I have been doing my R & D work on this for months and now am ready to get to work. Just as when I decided to do the Tall Girl Series, the idea […]
getting caught up…
The past month has been a whirlwind! I finished, sold and installed the two Vineyard pieces with a new collector. And I designed two other small pieces including Keeping Up Appearances #6 which is a donation to the annual Arts Guild of Sonoma REPO fundraiser. The requirement is all artwork must be made of 75% recycled […]
a good problem to have…
It seems like forever ago that I started these two vineyard pieces for an exhibit. On Super Bowl Sunday I finally finished! The challenge I perceived to be the creation of two identical pieces of a vineyard, one in spring and the other in fall. Instead I had all sorts of design challenges not the least […]
getting up to speed…
Our houseguest of 2.5 weeks left yesterday. It was both a joy and exhausting! As I try to relax and regroup I find myself instead catching up on my work… the photography, the documentation, the submissions etc. I can rest tomorrow! One piece I recently finished cannot be publicly shown yet so there is a […]
lesson revisited…
I love it when old lessons reappear…sort of a cosmic hopscotch. You think you’ve learned it and yet here you are repeating it. My current repeat lesson is I choose to not create work for exhibit based on someone else’s specifications. In other words I want to design what I want to design. If my […]
two monkeys down…
It’s now the end of August and I am still hard at work on my two large pieces for the Earth Stories exhibit. I had a trip cancel this week so have taken this as a great opportunity to fill my unscheduled days with studio time. Today I was so successful to that end that […]
what happened to july?
Here I sit on the last day of July wondering what happened to the month? I was flat on my back for ten days of it after tweaking in a side motion of either lifting out or putting in a sewing machine on the floor of the passenger seat in my car. It was one […]
a taste of santa fe…
A few years ago I celebrated my 60th birthday in Santa Fe, NM and declared then that it was my last trip to the Land of Enchantment. Truth be told it was my 13th trip and I felt I had been there/done that. That is until SAQA announced their annual conference would be held in […]
more studio time…
Last month I retreated to the studio in an effort to just chill out. How surprising is it that this is the place where I most am likely to relax?! I finished Stone Path but could not decide whether to place on my website as ‘abstract’ or ‘pictorial’ as it really is an abstract pictorial. […]
lake mac donald…at last!
I’ve finished this piece on Lake MacDonald which I started in an abstract landscape class with Patty Hawkins in March. Normally I finish work quickly but not so in this case although I can say I really enjoyed taking my time with it. I created a lot of texture in the mountains, ripped out the […]
we be furoshiki…
Last year I was approached by Deb Cashatt and Kris Sasaki, the Pixeladies about discharging cloth (removing color) as samples for their new book on Furoshiki. Up to that point I had never heard of Furoshiki but I am always game to learn something new and to see my work in print. So I WTS […]
what i learned in texas…
We’ve returned from what will likely be our ‘big’ trip for the year. I am between knee replacements strong enough to wander yet preparing psychologically for round two this summer. Then..Katie bar the door I will be ready to fully roam once more. Last week we participated in a Road Scholar program in Austin and […]
beat the clock…
So here I am just 9 days out from surgery and playing a rapid-fire game of beat the clock. I finished updating the PowerPoint, and drafted patterns for two shirts which pared down my to-do list considerably. Everything on the list has been what I figured I could not do well for several months. I […]
mood indigo…
I often pile fabrics to audition for future work. While I design spontaneously I like to let the cloth ‘ferment’ for awhile before I dig in. Sometimes I will have 3-4 different combinations stacked on any flat surface in my studio. A trip to Japan in 2002 yielded a giant suitcase full of vintage kimono […]
