To stay fresh in textile arts, I like to spend time reading about and doing pastel drawings and paintings. This week I have been going through the painting blog of Nancy Reyner who has a wonderful idea for shaking your creativity loose.

“Turn Up the Volume on the Inner Voice
I discovered an easy and surprisingly beneficial painting warm-up exercise. This 20 minute exercise, performed daily for one month (or even less) will do wonders for increasing your creativity, getting rid of artistic blocks, and finding new styles or shifting your work. I came up with this after reading ‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg, a popular book for writers to increase their writing and creative abilities. Natalie suggested that writers should ‘clear their head’ by filling notebooks, and write in a stream of consciousness fashion, by writing without thinking, very directly, and not editing. I decided to transform this freestyle writing exercise to something that would work for painters. This is how it works: First get a pile of inexpensive painting surfaces that don’t feel precious to you. I gessoed some scraps of canvas that I had lying around. Gessoed sheets of paper, or cardboard work well too. Just don’t get too small in size. My scraps were actually around 16′ x 20′. The night before you start set everything up for painting so that you can just jump right in without any preparations. Pick a time, preferably first thing in the morning, and stick to a schedule for a length of time. Pick what works for you,perhaps trying one week to see how it goes, but you need at least 5 days in a row to make a good assessment. Make a commitment to acting out your very first thought. Now here is the key. Your first thought is the inner voice. Your second thought is the ‘parent’. We are so accustomed to paying attention to the second voice that the first is sometimes faint and barely there. This exercise will strengthen that first voice, sometimes called the ‘inner child’. I like using the phrase ‘first voice’ better or I feel like I am in therapy.”

Go to her blog and read the full entry. You may recognize yourself in her tale of shaking free. Reyner also has a new book, Acrylic Revolution, which I’ve ordered and am eagerly awaiting the postman’s delivery!

Meggiecat is back! This was one of my favorite blogs for years - then she vanished. I guess that we all need a breather. But Meggiecat is back with wonderful articles, tips and all kinds of visual treasures. Do yourself a favor and drop by - but do plan to stay and browse through her archive of links that extends back until 2004.
Spoonflower On-demand fabric printing is one of Meggiecat’s recent finds. This is the brainchild of a fellow Chapel Hill-ian (whom I have yet to meet!), formerly of Lulu on-demand book printing. When Spoonflower is up and running, we can all have our own fabric made to order:

“Meggiecat wrote the other day to ask the most obvious question about printing fabric on Spoonflower, which is “what do we need to do to prepare designs?”

Image Size:
You can take an image of any size (240 dpi or greater) and repeat it to create a pattern. Alternately, you could create the pattern repeat on your own computer and then upload a large file equal in size to the amount of fabric you wish to order. For example, the fabric we will be using is 44″ wide (112 cm), so if you wanted to order a yard you could create an image that is 44″ x 36″ (or close to that). We have not yet determined if we will need to impose a size limit for files.

Fabric Size:
Once Spoonflower goes live you will be able to order a swatch (8″x8″), a fat quarter (18″x22″) or any multiple of a linear yard. During portions of the beta period we may limit these options temporarily. We will always recommend that you order a swatch of your design before ordering a larger quantity. That will give you a chance to examine the colors firsthand to make sure they printed as intended.”

I love the patterns from the Arts and Crafts/ Art Nouveau era. Chronicle books has recently released a 19th century pattern book, Plants and Their Application to Ornament A Nineteenth-Century Design Primer By Eugène Grasset Introduction by David P. Becker. What makes this book special is that a plant is beautifully drawn on one book plate. Then the next book plate has that same plant interpreted as a design motif, with several variations. In an interview, David Becker explains the concept of the pattern book:

“This type of book is really a ‘pattern book,’ (sometimes called ‘model book’ or ‘ornament book’) the illustrations of which are used by other artisans and/or designers as ideas for works in various media. They are related, but perhaps slightly different, than books of anatomy or expression expressly meant for artists to use in their paintings, tapestries, or sculpture….

What is the history of the ‘pattern book’? DB - Pattern books actually began in the medieval period, even before printing was invented, when artisans themselves would sketch out their repertory of designs in small sketchbooks to show potential customers the range of objects they could produce. Eventually artists began inventing design motifs and reproducing them in prints, from which other artisans could produce objects. This is a huge category, including furniture, jewelry, silverware, fans, clothes, architectural motifs (interior and exterior), landscaped gardens, and so on. This specific type of book did change somewhat after the Industrial Revolution, when the more corporate ’sales catalogue’ came more into use, displaying ready-made products—but it didn’t disappear.

What would be our modern equivalent to this type of book? DB - I think the ‘pattern book’ still survives, if not exactly in a book form. For instance, catalogues from Home Depot or other do-it-yourself stores present hundreds of different doors or kitchen counters for the individual consumer to pick from and assemble, in any variety of paint colors. Finally, the Internet is, I believe, a logical continuation of the pattern book…”

Chronicle obtained the book from the Boston Museum of Art. While I would dearly love to have the book to hold and read in bed, I am cheap. I discovered that the BMA has which has decent resolution, large size (800 x 800 pixels) individual plates from the book available online. I can’t read it in bed before I put out the light, but it is free, which is always good.

Fiberarts magazine has a new editor, Marci McDade. She has a broad background, though not necessarily in journalism:

“McDade has never demonstrated a shortage of creative passion. Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, she was a member of the first graduating class of that city’s Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts. She studied visual art, theater, music, and dance in the school’s seven-year program, and was recruited by Columbia College, where she earned all but one credit of a B.A. in film and video in 1994. (She came back and completed the single missing credit in 2001 to officially earn the degree.)” Columbia College, Chicago

McDade seems to have used some of that creativity in an exploration of embroidery as a drawing medium. One outgrowth of that was the “white boy” series a set of portraits of men that she “had crushes on.”

Beyond her own work, McDade has caught attention with shows she has curated. She describes a recent show, Girl on Guy as

“a love letter to men, the ones I’ve known, the ones I never will. It’s a love letter to Chicago, my home for the past twenty years. It’s a love letter to all of the artists who have inspired me during that time to think harder, look more closely, be a better person. Above all this show is my loud and gushing heartfelt declaration in the belief that loving men and being a feminist is not a contradiction.” Girl on Guy catalog (pdf)

Could be some interesting articles ahead!

Balsa Foam, a new material for aspiring stone carvers with limited space or strength for whacking away with a hammer and chisel. I came across this material on the Flicker space of icklebird ( a pseudonym for a girl named Su in Las Vegas - which is a pseudonym for…)

From what I can tell, Su is a middle school art teacher - what I would have given to have an art teacher like her! From my middle school art experience, I remember a hot attic room and drawing brown paper bags and bleached cows skulls - for months. She has some wonderful school projects at Flickr!

I love the expressions and the detail on these sculptures! Trying to find out more on this material, Balsa Foam, Dick Blick glowingly describes it: “Balsa Foam is an amazing plastic foam that carves like butter and paints like wood. It’s ideal for sculpting and model making because it can be carved, chiseled, sawed, textured, or embossed with sharp-edged detail.”

A more detailed technical report on the stuff tells us: “With the 7 lb. density, a fondue skewer makes an effective stylus. Any kind of hand saw will cut easily through Balsa-Foam I and II. You can also use a steel ruler to make push-cuts. A series of push cuts will enable you to cut out complex interior shapes. Just be careful to keep the ruler at a 90 degree angle…..Since Balsa-Foam has no “memory” or rebound, it will hold an impression. This means that you can create many different types of surface detail by simply pressing the appropriate object into the surface. Surface texture can be enhanced using a tool to make impressions. The rounded end of a thin paint brush handle, for example quickly dents the foam for a brown stone surface effect. If you need a specially shaped rectangular, triangular or odd-shaped hole, consider carving the positive counterpart for a piece of wood. This technique, which is unique to Balsa-Foam, can save a lot of time on repeating detail. Balsa-Foam III is too hard to impress easily, but the right metal tools can make effective small impressions.”

Sounds like a trip to my local art supply store is in my near future!

We always new that textiles were electric! Turns out that they are more powerful than we ever guessed, or at least that they might be:

“Georgia Tech researchers have taken an important step toward creating fabrics that could generate power from the wearer’s walking, breathing, and heartbeats. The researchers, led by materials-science professor Zhong Lin Wang, have made a flexible fiber coated with zinc oxide nanowires that can convert mechanical energy into electricity. The fibers, the researchers say, should be able to harvest any kind of vibration or motion for electric current…

By the researchers’ calculations, a square meter of fabric made from the fibers could put out as much as 80 milliwatts–enough to power portable electronics. The development could make shirts and shoes that power iPods and medical implants, curtains that generate power when they flap in the wind, and tents that power portable electronics devices.” MIT Technology Review

Pretty amazing. Then again, will we need an electrical engineering background to hookup our dress?

Creating an engaging composition provides the basic framework of any visual work. Melanie Bilenker creates jewelry, each piece a moment frozen in time, caught at odd angles, reminiscent of ukiyo-e prints. The odd thing is that these miniature ‘paintings’ are made of gold, sterling silver, ebony, resin, pigment and hair.

“The Victorians kept lockets of hair and miniature portraits painted with ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love. In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants. I do not reproduce events, but quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.” artist’s statement

“By setting individual strands into epoxy resin, she creates life-like vignettes of routine moments, like hands cutting an apple or a woman drawing a bath. Despite their small scale, each maintains the depth and scope of a full-size painting, which is why she makes only about a dozen each year and they cost a pretty penny.”
Daily Candy

How to tell a good friend? One who is kind enough to make a body-double dress form for you (or your daughter). Last week, Nancy came over and made one for my daughter, the fahionista.

In the past year, Nancy has made several for her daughter, experimenting with different materials and techniques. Nancy’s first form was made from all duct tape. That sank into a gooey mess as soon as it was removed from the live model. Her second form used the paper tape technique, but wasn’t the tape wasn’t wrapped tight enough (that attempt was done in the South in July). The third form used paper tape and turned out just right. This is what she repeated for us.

The directions for the just-right drees form are online at Sew News in an article, Sewing Stunt Double by Connie Amaden-Crawford. Materials are pretty straight forward and very well illustrated. Be sure to follow the author’s recommendation on the type of tape!

Materials

• Lawn-and-garden trash bag to fit over the body (not tight or too loose, and long enough to reach 3″ above the knees)
• Duct tape (about 3 yards)
• 3 to 5 rolls of 2″x 60 yard self-adhesive paper packing tape––not the shiny type (See Sources at the end of this article.)
• Permanent marker
• Heavy cardboard scraps
• Basic sheath-dress pattern with shoulder princess seam
• 5 to 6 pounds of polyester fiberfill
• Stand (See Dress-Form Stand.)

For the stand, we used a stripped down pole lamp and a curved wooden hanger. The remaining steps are to cover the form with some soft muslin, stuff it and use it!

A quick word of caution, the article states that the entire procedure takes an hour. Even with one person tearing strips of tape and the second applying it, the entire procedure took well over 4 hours!