New work

Still using black fabric. This time I wanted to merge my older, compact, solidly filled up, stitch-upon-stitch style with the new, black fabric, more texture oriented, looser collage style. No 3D stars or stitched-over objects in this one but I did collage in a few small pieces of fabric and it is stretched onto a frame. As usual a variety of embroidery techniques are used, but I took some of them further than I usually do: the pointillism, most of which is made with metallic thread, is a mix of colored dots - some areas with a total multi-color mix, and others made up of different hues yet still keeping a single tone. There are a few small sections where the pointillism is on plain, un-colored fabric. The three-dimensionally rendered parts are rendered, I hope, with more realism than I have yet achieved. I make much use of the smokey monofilament thread which is becoming one of my favorite flosses. I'm finding that French knots are a good solution to fill in areas when I have a loss of ideas.

This took longer than expected and I had to leave out some images that I wanted, otherwise I would be working on it indefinitely.

Fiberart International 2013 - CORRECTION

My previous post was incorrect. I do NOT have any works from Fiberart International currently at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.
Instead, my two works will be shown as follows:

January 19th - April 24, 2014 Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

July 11th - October 26th, 2014 American Textile History Museum, Lowell, Mass.

I may try to make it to one of the openings and will post if I do.

"Threads" Exhibit

I have been included in a new Fiber Art group exhibition entitled "Threads" at Tubac Center of the Arts in Tubac, Arizona.

On display will be this work, this one and this one, as well as current work from other contemporary artists working in fiber.

The exhibit runs from October 18th to November 17th, 2013 with an opening reception on the 18th from 5:00  - 7:00 P.M.
As usual I will not be able to make the opening but I do hope someone out there will!

New Work - "Mask / face / head"

I was working on the piece in the last post and decided there needed to be some kind of mask / face / head somewhere. I started creating one on a separate, smaller hoop and about a month later I was finished and ready to add it. However the face / head that I ended up with was just too big. So, I decided to use it as the 'center point' of an entirely different work. I stitched it to some larger fabric pieces but it looked a bit naked all by itself, so I added some collage elements around it. I started with a few small scraps of black fabric and eventually added pieces of velvet, lace, trimmings, and other odds and ends including stitched over shapes, not unlike the star shapes I have been doing in previous work. My inspiration was African and Indian clothing and fabric I have seen adorned with various different items. I wanted to keep everything black on black as I have been doing, and of course a photograph does not capture this well.

The face / mask / head was made with metallic floss - both 'pointillized' and also stitched over with smoky monofilament floss, and white cotton floss. 

New Work

The latest in the black fabric or 'star' series (I guess I could call them that as the star shapes inhabit 3 works so far). I cut the stars out of matte board and stitch through and on top of them, the idea being like gluing an object onto a canvas and painting over it for textural effect, in this case black on black (which is continually difficult to photograph).

In a previous post I talked about hand making multi-colored floss which I use a lot of here.

I also seem to have gotten temporarily possessed with pointillism.

I am expanding the use of collage and I think it will increase.

The human type figure took on a life of its own. It looks like an alien to me (unintentional). The face made from monofilament thread hovering above the figure looks to me like it is being 'beamed' from the alien straight into my brain (also unintentional). I nick-named this piece "The Alien Within".

'Hello World' Art Exhibit

I will have this work shown in a group exhibit at 'The Service Station at Riverside' gallery , 3160 Riverside Drive, Los Feliz, CA. The show is called 'Hello World' and is the first exhibit for this new gallery and will showcase fiber art as well as graffiti.

The show will run from April 20th to May 18th. There will be an opening on the 20th from 2PM to 10PM and will feature many live activities including music provided by a DJ.

The curator, Luna George has created a Blog featuring the artists:

http://helloworldartexhibit.blogspot.com/


You can also learn more about the show and gallery at this Facebook page:


http://www.facebook.com/events/172887319533935/?ref=ts&fref=ts


I hope anyone in the area will go to this event, it sounds like a lot of fun. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend, but please try to go or at least invite your L.A. friends! Thanks!

Making multicolored floss

 I love multicolored floss (sometimes called painters floss), but I could never find any that had the extreme color variation that I really wanted. What I really wanted was to have a single piece of thread that gave a different color for every single stitch. Eventually I realized I just had to make my own.

I bought some white cotton floss and a set of fabric colors and started to experiment.




 I found the best method was to simply paint the colors right on the floss with a thin brush. I also found that it really helped to hold the floss taut and in place. I used tape for this.


I painted one side then flipped it over and did the other side and also filled in any little remaining blank spaces that needed it. This took several days since drying time for each color was needed.

                                                                                                                                                                              

After it was done I un-taped it all, put it in a 

small pouch and tossed it in a dryer for about 

20 minutes or so to set the colors.

I was happy with the result. I get a different color for almost every stitch, and as a bonus many of the stitches have multiple colors in them - some with different colors on each end or sometimes split horizontally down the middle.

I used this 'homemade painters floss' with this piece and this one.

Hopefully this is just the beginning.....

New work

Still continuing to work on black fabric. The center image was taken from an old anatomy diagram, but I changed parts of it to resemble an African mask and I did some more improvisational changing. In the end it turned out looking like some kind of 'un-dead' monster or something.
I used multi-colored metallic thread with transparent monofilament thread layered on top in an attempt to create the look and feel of skin tissue. I also used some cotton multicolored thread that I hand-dyed. I will post about that sometime soon.

The line images surrounding the 'head' I made by laying down a bright red/pink/orangey thread and then stitching over it completely with black (though bits of slight fuzz from the laid thread is visible). This technique is similar to 'couching' but I covered the entire laid thread….. I think it's called a 'trailing stitch', I'm not sure. The black thread on top of black fabric makes an interesting texture.

I stitched the black fabric to black velvet and stretched the velvet onto stretcher bars.

Of course, the monofilament thread over the multicolor metallic as well as the black on black make a fun photography challenge. Seems I'm always making things that are hard to photograph, why stop now?

New work

After taking a considerable amount of time on the last one, I decided to do a series of smaller pieces. Then I decided to specifically do a series of head/face/mask related images. I had seen a beautiful and strong tattoo on the back of someone and I wanted to reproduce my memory of it. I'm sure the tattoo that I saw looks very different from this however.
I experimented with the background by stitching 'smokey' monofilament thread over multicolored metallic thread. Of course the effect isn't shown very faithfully in this flash-photograph reproduction.

New

This is the largest piece I have yet completed in embroidery, 6 1/2" x 6 1/2". Actually I think there is another one with the same size, but not as dense. This one is completely filled solid with stitches.
It started out with the central figure based on an image from an old 50's French cheesecake magazine. Then I had a flash of late 60's comic book sci-fi influence. Then a PBS show about chickens happened. Then all hell broke loose, literally. The human figure plummeting through the demonized depths on the left side is myself.

What I have been trying to avoid is too much use of a black outline on things to define them, to pull them out of the background. I want to make everything look 'painterly'. Adding a black outline looks too 'cartoonish'. I have nothing against cartoon imagery but I just want things to look more painterly. But I couldn't avoid using black outlines in this one.

This piece took too long. I think my stitching may be slowing. Maybe I have reached 'stitching Nirvana' and I no longer am aware or care of the passing time. Nah. Next one is going to be smaller.

Stitching in the Park

This is basically what I do on weekends in the warmer months - take my current hoop, needle and threads and venture out. This is Prospect Park Brooklyn.

New embroidery

I decided to make a plan and do small embroideries (2.5 x 3.5 inches), one a month for this entire year. This took me about a month and a half. Oh well. I'll try some more.
This photo is thoroughly inadequate.

New Hoop video blogging still going

Video Explanation - Final

Continuing from here and here about this.
Just wanted to show more super-close-ups. The color is much better in this one!

Video Explanation (continued)

Continuation from this video describing this work.

Video - even closer close-ups

I was able to get even closer.

Current Hoop - still even more continuing video - close-ups

Finally got a super macro lens for some nice extreme close-up shots.

The Unfinished

I started doing embroidery as a result of using stitches to compliment my collages. But the thread took over so fiercely that I abandoned a few of them in favor of full-on fabric embroidery. I kept some of them close though, small ones that I had mounted onto card stock, in the same bag as my metallic and invisible thread, spare poly bags and other odds and ends. I thought I would go back to them and eventually stitch them to completion. At first I was doing this, but soon my hoop work dominated my mind and they became pretty much forgotten. I'm always fumbling through this bag to retrieve one thing or another, brushing past the collages like they were forgotten people.


Recently I fished them all out and placed them in front of me. I remember distinctly stitching gold onto one while I was watching the Summer Olympics. That was two years ago. And they are still in my bag? What for? Maybe it's time to finally finish them. After I finish the current hoop I'm on of course. Maybe.........

Work in progress / Serendipity

I never pull a stitch out. I try to work with it or cover it over. In this case some black lines got a little out of control and I wanted to get rid of them completely, like they weren't there at all. Instead of searching for a suitable thread color which would resemble the red fabric I was working on, I decided to pull strands from the very fabric itself, pulling it apart, un-weaving it. The strands were not very strong, but with careful stitching I managed to cover over my error, the result looking like a scar. After a while I realized I had added a kind of subtle texture to the fabric, which I liked, so I began to do it deliberately. Now I am covering much of this piece with this 'new, discovered-by-accident' technique. It's creating a nice, 'background' effect.

Pink Lizard with Egg

"The Lizard Egg which spawns the Polliwog which becomes the Pink Lizard that has been split into sections for educational purposes".

The lizard egg was taken directly from an illustration in the "Cabinet of Natural Curiosities" book, minus a lot of detail. I tried to get in as much detail as I could
though, it's so dense with stitches it's probably bulletproof.
The lizard is of my own design (if you want to call it a design). I have a small bag of leftover bits of thread. From that bag I took all that was pinkish and that became the skin. I wanted the lizard to look like something from a science book, with cross sections to display it's inner body parts. But the body sections came out crooked instead of lined up evenly, so it kind of loses the 'science book display' feel. Obviously my mind wandered from idea to execution. That probably reflects my life.
The egg and lizard were excised from the larger hoop and implanted onto a white shirt fabric. I did a 'loop stitch' thing all around the edges to make it look more 'finished'. Is there an actual name for that 'technique'? If there is feel free to let me know what its called.