Category: Art

Dream Tree Embroidery

Posted in Art, Fabric Art2 Comments
Dream Tree Embroidery

When I first started doing “art” embroidery, I was told that leaving the finished work in the hoop made it look too crafty/homey.  It would never be considered “real art.”  Now much more craft is considered real art, whatever that means.  I never stopped using the hoops as frames, and in fact, use embroidery hoops as embellishments for some of my cloth sculptures.

Anyway, I finished this embroidery today and secured it with a whip stitch around the hoop.  It’s called Dream Tree.  I like using basic plant shapes and making up  my own details.  I love the impressionist nature of cotton floss.

Dream Tree Embroidery
Dream Tree

It’s 6 inches around. I scanned it instead of photographing it because the beading didn’t show up well on the photograph.  I gotta stop working in monotones — but I love doing it.  I hope your dream tree is slightly off balance and has deep happy roots.

A Somewhat Secret Place: Disability and Art by Catherine Jennifer Helen Miller — Kickstarter

Posted in Art, Catherine J.H. Miller, disability art, kickstarter, Portland Art Show, Somewhat Secret PlaceLeave a comment

I’m very excited about this exhibit — and Catherine Miller has curated a piece of mine for the exhibit!  This exhibit will take place in July in Portland and it’s going to be a wonderful experience watching it grow.  Catherine J.H. Miller is a vibrant and dynamic curator with some very innovative ideas of how to present art.

Please take a look at the video on this Kickstarter campaign and consider becoming a patron of the arts!

I’ll keep you posted on my piece as it develops.  I may also be telling a story and doing an artist talk with the exhibit.  Yay!

 

 

 

A Somewhat Secret Place: Disability and Art by Catherine Jennifer Helen Miller — Kickstarter.

From a Quiet Place: The Paper Sculptures of Kyoko Okubo « Escape Into Life

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Thanks to the Daily Art Muse blog for providing me with this wonderful link to the work Kyoko Okubo.  It’s also a gateway to the website for the Folk Art Society, as well as the blog Art Found Out by Scott Rothstein, who wrote this article.  A nice little chain of art and inspiration!

 

 

From a Quiet Place: The Paper Sculptures of Kyoko Okubo « Escape Into Life.

Art Doll / Wallhanging

Posted in Art, Art Doll, cloth dollTagged , , Leave a comment

I finished my new fabric art piece today — a sort of combination doll, quilt and wallhanging.   I often see a figure in the pattern of a fabric — in this case a kind of blurred birch bark print — I don’t really know why.  I also often “see” patterns of color when I look at people.  When I was younger, I had epilepsy and used to think I had second sight and could see people’s auras.  Now I just think I have a visual blip that’s kind of cool.  You should see the characters in my dreams.

I’ve made a series of pieces where figures emerge out of the fabric.   They are very hard to photograph, but I hope you can see this one well enough.  This one is called “Not Out of the Woods Yet.”

We’re often in situations where we’ve struggled to recreate or recover some aspect of ourselves.  We struggle with our health.  We struggle with our relationships.  This piece speaks to that urge to move forward, even when we are still intimately tied to our situations.  When I first envisioned this piece, I thought I would embellish it with lots of floral embroidery and beading — vines, leaves, and lots of representation of the forest.  Instead, as I created it, I settled for more subtle stitches with perle cotton embroidery thread.  I used painted fabric for the few leaves, embellished with gold gel ink.

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I love the way the fabric flutes around the figure.  I originally mounted it on a piece of foam board but it looked too flat for me.  I think leaving it to hang “naturally” makes it more inviting to the touch, too.  What do you think?

This unique work is for sale in Etsy shop for $200.  Click here for a link:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/70371373/3-d-art-quilt-cloth-doll