Sharon's Birthday Food Book

For Sharon's birthday, I made her a fabric book of food quotes. It's not really quite a book since it's only four pages, but I made the binding large enough that either she or I could insert another signature of pages if we wanted to. The first page is a collage of magazine images mounted onto Tyvek that had been painted with acrylics. I then sewed that onto fabric. The second page is a magazine image that was transferred onto Tyvek with acrylic paints and then sewn onto fabric. The third image is a collage of red and blue/green magazine pieces in the background. Superimposed on top is a transparency sewn onto the paper and then the whole thing is sewn onto fabric. The fourth image is a stained glass window that I made on Photoshop with two stamps. I then printed the image onto a transparency and colored the back side with ink. I sewed it onto the paper background and then sewed a border. Constructing the whole thing with fabric was a challenge, but I think it worked.

Lambent jitters

This is a wall-hanging I made for my sister-in-law to make up for forgetting to make her a birthday card last year. It was inspired by a vision I saw briefly of reflected street lights out a bus window one night when we were visiting her in Colorado. I knew that it would be abstract as I was planning it, but I didn't realize how far it would go from what I saw. Her birthday isn't until next month, but I think I can count on her not seeing this blog entry. Hope she likes it.

Guitar quilt

I was working on this wallhanging off and on for about three years. I was inspired by Juan Gris' cubist paintings. I didn't want to copy his painting, but when I tried to do my own cubist composition I was daunted. I would take out fabric and play around with it for awhile and then put it away in despair. It ended up more closely following his composition than I would have preferred, but I did have fun trying to use the fabric and stitching to make it more "mine." But the best part is that it is finally done and I can move on to something else.

Cabinet card polka

This a cabinet card that I altered this summer at Sharon's house. I know that cabinet cards are really in, but I'm having a hard time being inspired to mess with them. Too many times artists make them look silly and undignified and I have no interest in doing that, especially when I'm working with photos of my relatives. But I kind of liked this one. I'd like to think that my Grandma O'Reada liked the Beer Barrel Polka.

Serenity collage

Okay, so I won't proclaim anymore that I'm done with making mono- or dichromatic soulcollages. As much as I adore wild multi-colored art, I seem to have it in me to pump out these limited color collages. This one was inspired by the serene beauty of the model. All models are beautiful (duh), but too often their faces are vacuous, overly seductive, or very full of "attitude." This one seemed to exemplify the quote. Surely not me. Serenity is certainly not one of my defining characteristics, especially amid the storm.

Small Barn

Finally a new post! I made this small postcard quilt this summer at Sharon's house. It's 9"x6", actually a little larger than a typical postcard. Even though it's entitled Small Barn, the barn was actually so huge that I had a hard time squeezing it into such a small space. The pieces are on fusible web and then appliqued on by machine. I was hoping to get myself psyched to return to work on my larger wallhanging. By George, I think it might have worked!

Patterns Collage

I finally made a multi-colored collage. I was inspired by the large piece of paper in the bottom right. I produced it using the technique of citrasolve on a colored photo from the National Geographic. I love techniques that are totally unpredictable in what you end up with. I did a dozen or so pages; a few were stunning, some were interesting, and some were blah. The problem will be how to use them. This collage emerged when the colors reminded me of African prints.