Lark Books seeks excellent images to publish in a juried collection of quilts for 500 Quilts, the latest in their 500 Series to be published in Spring 2010.   The announcement reads:

Both art quilts and traditional quilts are welcome in fabric and other media. Diverse designs, materials, and techniques are desired, from traditional to cutting edge. We accept high-quality transparencies, slides, and digital images. There is no entry fee. Important note: Lark Books will only publish photos of entries containing text and images that are free of copyright, or for which the artist (or approved institution) holds copyright.

Artists will receive full acknowledgment within the book, one complimentary copy, and discounts on the purchase of additional books. Artists retain copyright of their work.
Entries must be postmarked by October 24, 2008.

Guidelines and entry forms are now available on Lark’s website:
<http://www.larkbooks.com/submissions/artist-submissions>

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!

Maggie Taylor creates photo dreamscapes using her scanner and digital manipulation. An article on the Adobe web site reveals highlights her technique, as well as the extent of her visual manipulations. Images may contain as many as 60 layers. Grass, leaves and hair are hand painted into the digital image.

“Taylor’s personal style was developed while earning her master’s degree in photography at the University of Florida in the mid-1980’s. Earlier in her career, Taylor physically laid out her compositions and captured the collage on an old 4-by-5 inch camera. She went digital in 1996 and now lays the objects one at a time on a flatbed scanner, leaving the scanner lid up to prevent damage and to achieve a solid, dark background. Taking anywhere from a few weeks to six months, Taylor constructs her pieces by layering the scanned images, as many as forty per piece, to create a unique digital image. Using Photoshop, she delves into her own mind and brings disparate images and objects together to create fantasies of her own creation.” (from an article at Griffin Museum)

Taylor has managed to successfully straddle the line between fine and commercial art. She estimates that 10% of her work is commercial in intent and includes a line of book and cd covers.

A book of Taylor’s work and her techniques has just been released as part of the Adobe Photoshop Master Class series, Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams.

I love comic book art and I love the Pacific Northwest (at least I do in the summertime). I have just stumbled onto the perfect combination of the two: “The Frank Book” by Jim Woodring. Woodring has color, humor and a peculiar grace. Best of all, his tales are wordless narratives.

In this quote, Woodring talks about the power of image and the necessity of empty space. It seems that this could be as applicable to the traditional quilt square as it is to the comic book.

“The power of the comic art, he says, lies in the human ability to instantly recognize images. A human face, he argues, can be more effective the further it is from a photographic replication. By stripping literal detail and making an image more iconic, the artist can direct the reader’s focus.
The gutter of space between comic panels is a magical place, he says, because that’s where the reader invests imagination and supplies transition to the next scene. The difference between one panel might be a shattering jump in time, space, even subject, but the reader usually finds an explanation.”

Woodring has created a fantasy world that combines elements of Loony Tunes with classical realism – all with a slight twist. His furniture appears ready to dance and his walls are poised to speak. The color is wonderfully overwhelming. Unnamed creatures sport yellow and purple spots arranged over psychedelicly intricate linework. Most compelling is the way his art overflows with singular vision and full force conviction.

There’s a new magazine, espopus, that breaks the mold for what a magazine could and should be. “Esopus is a twice-yearly arts magazine featuring fresh, unmediated perspectives on the contemporary cultural landscape from artists, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, photographers, architects, designers, musicians, and other creative professionals. It includes long-form artists’ projects, critical writing, fiction, interviews, and, in each issue, a CD of specially commissioned music.”

The New York Times has an article describing the vision behind Esopus It’s this vision that makes the magazine worth contemplation. One man decided to create a magazine that did not fit neatly into the established boundaries of what a magazine could be. “I’m really frustrated with the level of mediation that seems to shroud all artistic activity,” he said, dipping a French fry into some mayo. “Popular music now ends up contextualized by car and sneaker commercials. The mixing and melding of advertising in magazines is pretty disturbing as well. I wanted to create some unfiltered space.” (NYTimes) The current issue includes a popup house sculpture, several posters and a CD, along with articles ranging from fairy tales to artworks created with photochromatic ink.

The name? “The Esopus Foundation takes its name and example from the Esopus Creek, located in New York’s Catskill mountains. It begins as a small stream and meanders north, then southeast, then northeast until it empties into the Hudson River. In the 19th century it was a powerful force that carved canyons along its course, but in the 1930’s its current was intersected by the construction of the Ashokan Reservoir, which stores much of New York City’s water supply. The part of the stream that runs below this filtering system is often brackish and slow-moving; but but above the reservoir, the Esopus is still vibrant: a pure dynamic space in which diverse elements flow and meld together.”

From what I could tell, there is no fiber art in this journal. What there is though is a profound lesson in pushing the boundaries and making the impossible happen, if you have the vision.

Apologizing for the relative silence lately in Layers of Meaning: for about a month now, I have been frantically working on a manuscript for an online course. The course covers everything from UNIX to databases. I have found it almost impossible to switch my brain off one track and onto the other. But!! I am done – back to art and fiber and the stuff that makes life fun!

One of the bright spots of this busy period has been the arrival of my preview copy of Selvedge magazine. Selvedge is a gorgeous new journal from England that focuses on the art of textiles. There are no “how-to” articles – or even why to articles. The articles instead tend to be fairly cerebral and are reviews of art and or arts theory.

It’s hard to find much online besides Selvedge’s one page home page. The best part of this page is “To receive your FREE SAMPLE issue of selvedge, please click here” Fooling around in Google led me to a back door for Selvedge. The Selvedge philosophy seems a bit thin, but I did identify with their target audience: “Artists of International Stature and Innovative Newcomers” The sample articles online, unfortunately, are just brief summaries. I cannot guess what the “stockists” are (vendors?). That page looks like a lovely travel brochure.

A page for authors aspiring to be published in Selvedge possibly reveals the most about the future of Selvedge: “Selvedge is an independent, 100-page full colour magazine published six times a year. The magazine is image led and has an uncompromising design.
(more…)

Jenny Balfour-Paul has written two books on indigo blue, dying and the dyer’s history. Unlike, mauve, indigo is an ancient and natural dye. A book review by The British-Yemeni Society describes the traditional method of getting blue-jean blue:
“The natural indigo dye vat was, in fact, somewhat obnoxious, containing as it did a fermentation of indigo plants tempered by alkaline additions such as urine, camel dung, dogs’ turds and dates, coated with scum and set as often as not in a dark, airless room where the dyer sat and stirred for days on end.” (ick!)

In spite of this, Balfour-Paul fell in love with indigo and it’s possibilities. Bluenote website presents a photo documentary of her explorations in indigo. There are also some fascinating photos of the dying process: “When the fabric strips are lifted from the vat of greeny-brown liquid, they change colour to blue as they come in contact with the air.” In the photo, you can see the chemical reaction creeping up the strips of fabric. “Indigo is insoluble, it’s the oxygen that causes the chemical reaction that turns the items blue as you pull them out of the liquid.”

She also discusses woad, the older English blue dye, which was supplanted by indigo. “Woad was grown widely in Europe in the Middle Ages until the arrival of tropical indigo in the 17th century – woad merchants were wealthy men as woad was needed not only for the familiar blue, but also for green, purple and black in combination with other natural dyes.”

Uses for indigo? In an interview Balfour-Paul answers the most unusual use that she’s come across for indigo: “Probably for dyeing the hair, eyebrows and beard in China and the Middle East – hence the legend of Bluebeard”. As far as fiber art, Isabella Whitworth’s web site features indigo dyeing and shibori inspired by a lecture on indigo given by Jenny Balfour-Paul at the Crafts Council in London.

The future for indigo blue looks good with new research supporting the natural indigo process: “SPINDIGO aims to enable growers to supply natural indigo with a purity greater than 90% to a significant proportion of the European market. Three species of indigo producing crops are currently being grown in Finland, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain to demonstrate their potential as commercial crops throughout Europe. Each crop is being assessed for its suitability to the different climatic conditions met across Europe.”