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.
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
joy murray art~stories~life 