'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 Group Show

This piece is part of a new group show called "Stitch Fetish" at the Hive Gallery and Studios in Los Angeles, CA. The show is curated by Ellen Schinderman.
The opening is Saturday Feb. 2nd, 8 - 11:30 PM. It will run until Feb 23rd.
On Feb 14th the gallery will participate in the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk.

I will not be able to make any of these events but anyone in LA should check out the show, it should be fun!

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?

More new direction

I decided to keep with the general ideas of what I did in the last piece - black fabric, some three dimensional elements, more experimenting with the surface.

Featured in Surface Design Association Journal

The Summer 2012 edition of the Surface Design Association Journal has a story about Embroiderers in New York City. It was written by Joetta Maue who is also an artist that works in fiber as well as being a curator . She has included me in the article along with artists Rebecca Ringquist, Elissa D'Arrigo and Emily Barletta.

Thanks Joetta!

Full article above (click on each page for larger, readable view).

Exhibiting in Group Show - Pushing the Limits 2012

This work and this work will be included in "Pushing the Limits 2012" a Juried Biennial Fiber exhibition at Artspace in Richmond, Virginia.

The opening will be on July 27th from 7:00-10:00 PM and the exhibit will continue until September 23rd.

I will not make the opening but I hope anyone near Richmond will check it out!

Exhibiting in Group Show

I will have this piece showing in a group fiber show called "Home is Where the Needle Marks" at Pop tART Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. There will be two venues for this exhibit, my work will be at (Sub) Urban Art, 101 West 5th Street.

It is a themed exhibit focusing on the concept of home and is curated by Ellen Schinderman.

Opening reception (which I will not attend) is June 9th from 7-11 PM. I'm sure it'll be fun! The show will run until July 9th.

New direction

I decided to go 'back' to the type of collages I was doing that made me bump head-first into embroidery, except in this case on a larger scale. I made this specifically for an upcoming show (a first). I also wanted to concentrate on the flat surface more, like a painting. This one is stretched on a frame. There is still the concentration of stitches in the center like my previous embroidery work but there are also stitches floating alone, in space, and most of the fabric is left to be itself.

I experimented further with texture by adding stars that pop about 1/4" or so from the surface, as well as making suture-like stitches as if the fabric were like skin, and finally, taking clippings from old doilies and covering them completely with a million little stitches of smoky monofilament thread.

Black on black is a hard thing to capture in a photograph, just another hurdle in my eternal struggle with getting accurate photos of my work.

/>

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.