Tufted puffin and Piero's Duke of Urbino

Tufted Puffin: Ink, tempera, acrylic, and colored pencil on recycled cotton  3"x3"  


           

Duke of Urbino-Piero della Francesca,1472.  47x33cm. Oil on panel.

Puffins 3"x3"

Ink and colored pencil on paper.

Hands: Assyrian Stone Relief and Hand of Fatima doorknocker

More of the pictures my friend sent me from London... these from the British Museum.  The top two photos are details from Assyrian stone relief (below)  from the throne room of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud in northern Iraq.   The lacy cryptography across the hand in the second photo is particularly haunting.  Read more:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/s/stone_throne_room_relief.aspx

This bronze doorknocker is a Hand of Fatima (19th c?), that I bought years ago in the Muslim Quarter of Cordoba.  It's meant to protect against evil spirits entering the house. I keep a strand of  freshwater pearls wrapped around it, a necklace that was a favorite of mine in college. I like the combination of bronze and pearls.

Note the flower detail on the wrist of both the doorknocker and the Egyptian stone relief-- decorative motifs that persist throughout cultures and history.

I love that my friend sent me these photos of hands, and that I could answer with a complimentary image from my own random collection of objects.  Our mutual attraction to similar objects, images, and ideas is a strong point of connection in our friendship.

Analogies: London silver and sculptor Tony Cragg

On a recent trip to London, a friend of mine took the photo above of a shop window full of silver.  It made me think of  a Tony Cragg bottle sculpture that I saw last year in an exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Together they make a great study in objects and materials: each is a group of objects of varying size and shape all made of the same material.  The materials themselves tell us a lot about the reflective and refractive qualities of light.

The silver is practically psychedelic in its optical distortion.  The shapes of the individual pieces dissolve into streaky lines and curves that are multiplied exponentially by reflections. It's hard to see where one piece ends and the next begins.  By contrast, each piece of glassware is easily distinguishable from the others; shapes and edges are clearly defined by the soft glow of light emitted from the frosted surface of the glass.  The overall impression is one of autonomy of the individual forms as well as unity of the whole.

I asked my friend, before she left for her trip, to take pics of random things that sparked her interest.  I thought it would be fun to do a series of posts which paired her observations with my responses to the images.  This is the first in a series of posts inspired by her photos.

Sewing at sunset

Sample quilt

This is a quilt I made years ago with upholstery samples.  At the time I was working with architects and interior designers, and there always seemed to be a cache fabric samples leftover from various projects. Over time I collected enough to make a couple of quilts. 

I love to think of each of the fabrics separately, as well as how they work together within the overall composition.  The red piece with green and gold stripes (below) is linen velvet from France.  There is also a swatch of mohair velvet, the classic upholstery used for concert hall seating. It's wonderful to have personal associations with things we use, in this case to climb in under a blanket and imagine being wrapped in beautiful music.

The Singer that Purrs

This is the 1950 Singer sewing machine that my mom received as a college graduation gift from my grandparents. She kept it in perfect condition with all of the instruction booklets and attachments intact. The diagrams and instructions for maintenance are crystal clear, insuring that a woman could service the machine completely on her own. No phone calls, call-waiting, or waiting around for a technician. You can see what's wrong with it and fix it yourself.  Amazing.












Please note in the Description that "it's especially designed for operation by electricity". I've cleaned and oiled  it according to the instruction booklet and now it's ready to sew. My sister says it purrs.

Three Dresses: 1900, 1950's, 1970's

Three dresses from different time periods, all sewn by someone in my family. I think the oldest dress was worn by my great grandmother, the second by my mother or aunts and probably sewn by my grandmother, the green one sewn by my mother and perhaps worn by one of my sisters? I'll have to ask around about that.  

A friend commented that all three dresses are relevant to today's fashion, which is not only inclusive of different eras, cultural and ethnic influences, but puts them all together, creating a the-more-the-mix-the-merrier sensibility.  An interesting comment on nostalgia and fashion is a recent article Kurt Anderson wrote for Vanity Fair in which he asserts that our current need to recycle the past is a way to cope with the speed of technological change in the present and that "popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new." 

I would agree with that but don't necessarily think our desire to keep bits and pieces of the past around like a favorite blanket or dish of comfort food is a bad thing.  I do feel lost and completely overwhelmed by the vastness and complexity of today's technological landscape, and therefore remain firmly attached to my flip phone (no texting), cd's, and boom box. As long as I can talk with my friends and listen to music, I'm happy. A digital camera and this blog are my biggest concessions to technology.

With respect to fashion, I think there's something wonderful about accessing the spirit of different eras through the use of expressive elements such as color, pattern, cut, and details, as a way of connecting, not just with the past, but with who we are and how we live as humans. Hopefully that desire for grounding and continuity through the things we make, use, and wear is something that won't change, even with the release of the fastest, newest i-Phone... or the one after that, and the one after that.....

In my studio

Little vignettes of objects in my studio keep memories of places and friends part of my everyday life.  A card of a New Orleans oak tree and the view of the ancient oak tree just outside my window connect my childhood  in New Orleans with my present surroundings in Texas. In the lower photo is a note card from a good friend who, coincidentally has a preference for the same Crane's Florentine stationery that I also love, a favorite birthday card with a parrot that commemorates my fiftieth b-day  which I celebrated this past year with long-time friends, and a Bertoia-esque doll's chair-- a holiday gift from a friend who was in architecture school with me.

Pear Pomegranate Pie -- thank you NYT

The results of a pear pie with pomegranate molasses courtesy of  this recipe:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/dining/153crex.html
For the crust, I followed the instructions in the video that accompanies the recipe.  It was the most successful result I've ever had with pastry and was extremely tasty, but between prep time, refrigeration in between mixing and rolling out the crust, and caramelizing the fruit prior to baking, it was very labor intensive. I've decided that pies are perhaps best left to once-a-year special occasions.  

In progress

Moving along on the pillows-- the various shapes, forms, textures, and patterns lend themselves to a cut-and-paste collage process, except I don't have to paste anything because the fabrics usually stick to themselves.  Very handy. 

Being from a family that saved everything (which is ironic since I am easily overwhelmed by too much stuff), I always have plenty of materials to work with in the form of several generations of old linens and fabric remnants. For example, the grey fabric pieces (not the felt) are from my sister's black-and-white/geometric-patterned cotton sewing phase that happened sometime in the 80's.  The white with green windowpane fabric is from a 1950/60's cotton cup towel.

Between the graphics, color, and representational elements, I'm beginning to realize how hard it is to create a complex,  yet balanced composition.  I probably need to give myself a break from them and come back with a fresh eye in a couple of days.

I do like the abstracted flower shapes, which are based on camellias in the print by Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige. 

Mock-up for pillows

Works in progress. These are some pillows I'm making for my sister from burlap, silk, and felt made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. They are variations on the smaller compositions shown in Urban Blocks and Flowers and More Flowers


To accommodate the change to a larger scale, I've added blocks of color, as shown in the upper photo. Maybe I will go back and add in some of the flower details. I want them to retain a strong, graphic blockiness and not become too cute. Some of the orange silk is leftover from the hat I made for my friend.

Audubon Birds of America: Partial views

Line and color

.....I've been obsessively drawing birds in squares, filling page after page of my sketchbook with them, a kind of aesthetic meditation. At the same time I've been making small color studies. I'd like the birds and the color to come together, but I don't know yet how-- what technique or media. I'll just have to wait and see.