Edge-strip pillow complete. The lines of flickering colors and textures makes me think of music-- an Anni Albers textile design for an acoustical theater curtain I saw years ago at the Corcoran comes to mind. Couldn't find a picture of the exact textile but below are some examples of her work.
I've been thinking about my creative process and how it seems to parallel the somewhat scattered nature of the textiles I'm making. This past week I took lots of photos so that I could review, see, really see how ideas evolve and progress-- not judging, just observing.
I found an image of the painting in the photo above-- artist unattributed?--while looking through my card collection, loved the colors, and pulled together a palette of materials based on the painting.
...the black fabric is cut from old wrap skirt.
Ball gowns and Brutalism
Shifting to softer colors, I pinned together this collage using 1960's woven beige curtain fabric, a scrap from a floral linen pillow sham, pieces of the 1920-30's tea-dyed bedspread, one of my mom's old shirts, and watery green taffeta-- a scrap from one of her formal party dresses -1950's?
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That's my mom on the right with my two aunts in party dresses. So far it's all feminine and sweet, but while I was moving the overlapping blocky shapes of fabric around, I thought about Brutalist architecture and Paul Rudolph 's concrete Art and Architecture building at Yale ,shown below in the original 1960's rendering.
Ball gowns and Brutalism? really? When architecture, art, and design collide with family history, it can be kind of disorienting, even overwhelming. Observing how they coalesce, however, makes the process interesting, surprising, and sometimes even kind of funny--it did make me laugh when I realized that delicate floral prints and monumental concrete megaliths had come together in a single work.
Paul Rudolph would not approve, I think...
...but then the students did try to burn his building down....
Returning to color-- I was looking through a Milton Avery book, and came across this painting which prompted an exploration of fabric layers and shapes using a piece of crinkled polyester chiffon given to me by friend. Although polyester falls outside of my usual palette of natural-fiber fabrics, I think it has possibilities...
It's interesting how relatively flat, dark and light shapes can imply dimension; I find myself once again thinking of architecture, planes, shade, shadow and surface...
-- ideas illustrated by yet another image of Rudolph's Yale Art and Architecture building, in this beautiful photo by Chris Mottalini.
...taking a break from the conceptual and turning to more practical matters...
.... my dad (right) and his friend Melvin un-hardwired my mom's old Singer from the cabinet so I can take it in for a long overdue professional tune-up.
...noting which wires go where. I hope I'm up to doing electrical projects (or the equivalent) when I'm 86.
As I was scrounging around in the yet-to-be-gone-through stash of fabrics, I came across this pillow that matches my grandmother's curtain fabric (and a shadow that matches the cat.)
Tears in the cover reveal mattress ticking used as the pillow slipcover. Like the idea.
I considered framing the velvety "bricks" with the curtain fabric, and while I like the idea of walls and gardens, don't like so much this combination....kind of surreal and maybe a little creepy?
Staying with the "brick" idea, I made this block, using my the old tea-dyed bedspread and an open-weave cotton.
Outside while I'm taking pictures, shadows fall across it and I wonder about that as an idea for applique.
Meanwhile, Tillycat chases a passing lizard up a tree, kind of like my mind chasing passing ideas.
Back inside I use some of the blocks I've made to mock-up a flag -- think about freedom, autonomy, ships, sailing, and the World Book Encyclopedia pictures of flags I stared at as a child.
which brings me around to minimalist use of line and color
and Brice Marden's paintings of the 1970's.
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