Getting more studio time in my day

I had an enlightening conversation a few weeks ago with one of my artist friends. Both of us, well into retirement, are finding it harder to make time for our art than we did when we were working. How could that be? As we talked about it, we realized that the demands of our teaching jobs were so great that we needed to be very purposeful about carving out time for our art, which was not connected to our jobs. That kind of planning for set-aside time seemed unnecessary when the huge expanse of former work-time opened up in retirement. But it hasn’t worked out that way. What has been keeping me out of the studio? I know that it’s key to get to my studio in the morning (the best time of the day for me), but I also like to be at the computer first thing, to set up my schedule for the day and get to rid of any e-mails that need a quick response. But once at my computer, it's very hard to avoid following one link or another, reading the NYTimes, etc., and the first thing I know it's noon. . .  I recently figured out a few things that are helping me get more studio time into my day:

1) I have switched that initial computer time to before I go downstairs for breakfast. Because I'm eager to get down to the kitchen to have my daily latte and something to eat, this has been very effective at keeping me to the truly essential stuff that I need to get out of the way.  Then when I go back upstairs, I go directly into the studio. I've been staying there for as much as four hours, with a break for lunch. Then in mid-afternoon, I go back to the computer in my office, to look at accumulated e-mail and to do assorted desk tasks. I like how this is working out so far. Sometimes appointments or other responsibilities take up some of the allotted studio time, but whenever I get even just a couple of hours a day in the studio, it’s a good day!

2) As I started with this new routine, I realized that there was some computer work that is central to my art, e.g. note-taking/planning for my art work and also writing blog posts. I've always done this work at the desk-top computer in my office, but amidst the lists of other tasks, which usually need to be done by a certain time. Even when I do start on a blog post, I'm sitting in the midst of my desk environment, and it's easy to get distracted by other stuff that "needs" to get done. In the middle of studio time on one of the early days of my new schedule, I needed to do some writing, but dreaded going into the office to use the computer. Brainstorm! I could bring upstairs to the studio the laptop that has lived on the first floor, where I rarely use it. So here I am now, writing a blog post on my laptop, which now lives on the cutting table in my studio. I am surprised--and pleased--by how different it feels—that I’m doing creative work rather than "required" tasks. It’s a small change (just changing the location of a computer), but it is having a big impact.

3) I’ve started setting an alarm to wake up in the morning, for 7-1/2 hours of sleep from when I turn out the light, which is an ample amount of sleep for me. One of the joys of retirement has been not having to set an alarm every weekday morning. But if I sleep an extra hour or more in the morning, that’s time lost from my most productive time of the day. So as part of re-claiming morning time for my art, I’m setting the alarm. This too is working well.

Claiming time for my art has a new urgency for me. Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve slowly realized that I’m in a different stage of life than I was in the earlier years of my retirement. From the deaths and illnesses among friends, family, and acquaintances, I’ve become more aware that my own time is limited too. Perhaps another ten good, productive years? Yes, it could be more or less than that, but it feels very different from the 20+ years I could expect when I retired thirteen years ago. Not that I thought of it that way in 2012—instead I just felt an enormous sense of an open future with many possibilities ahead. But now I’m conscious of having entered a new stage of life--old age. Before now, my image of old age was of people who looked really old (always relative of course) and who were significantly limited physically, not a description I fit into. But now I understand old age as a stage of life unrelated to physical characteristics. For me, it’s the stage in which it makes sense to keep in mind the preciousness of whatever time I have left, and to use that time well. Understanding this has led me to the opposite of anxiety about steadily diminishing time--to a commitment to let go of things that are not so important to me (or that can be turned over to others) and to focus on the things that give me contentment and fulfillment: being with family and friends, making art, contributing to the lives of others. 

As I write about this, I remember these words from Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Yes. 

16 months later, continuing with "Persistence"

My last blog post was written in July 2024. When I wrote that post, I had decided to work somewhat improvisationally on “Persistence,” rather than making a specific plan for placement of the lines of stitching, and I was pleased with the first section as I worked on it. Work was slow, but I continued for a while. By January 2025, I had stitched part of one set of alignments, including a circular arc that represented a configuration of stones found at one end of the alignment, probably lining out an area of gathering. 

In January, as part of an online course with Claire Benn, I started meeting with a critique group; we talked once a week, discussing our work in progress. After showing photos of “Persistence,” I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with the composition as it was developing. I followed a suggestion that I test out a different configuration by trying out paper shapes on the fabric, rather than sketching lines, and that led me to a new composition. I’ll still have three sets of alignments, as there are at Carnac, but I won’t try to replicate in any way the kind of winding layout of the three, but have changed them to three parallel sets, and I’ve also left out the semicircular lines of stones.

I realized that I didn’t need to replicate the actual shapes or spatial arrangements of the three major sets of alignments at Carnac, that it would be better to free up the composition in order to express the central themes that interested me (mainly persistence, but also variation, collaboration).  This has happened to me in almost every major art piece I’ve made—starting out with a presentation that stays close to the explicit/literal level of content, but then moving further to abstraction/expression. In the course of making the change on this piece, I came across a relevant quotation that I’d put on the bulletin board in my studio but forgotten about:

"Each stage, each track you set off on, requires a great deal of attention. You must learn to recognize which ideas are the most interesting ones: follow the lines that are most expressive, or the trails that are unexpected or intriguing. Learn to focus on the most promising areas and leave out details that are too distracting or conventional, because these may detract from what is interesting. If you set off without a clear goal in mind, you must also gradually learn to recognize your goal as you work and to develop it. Every motif, every source of inspiration can become an inexhaustible field of discovery, as well as a means of enriching your artistic vocabulary and your imagination."

Francois Tellier-Loumagne, The Art of Embroidery

I clipped out the stitches I had already done and started again. I outlined with a white running stitch the three areas to be filled with the small stitches of the alignments and started on one of them. I have been stitching off and on since then, sometimes every morning for a half-hour or so (about all I can do in a sitting), but also with stretches away from it. 

Sometime this summer, as the work took shape, I realized that even though I had finalized (and was satisfied with) the plan for the work, and had made significant progress on the stitching of it, I wasn’t sure that the work, when completed, would be that interesting to look at, that it might not work as a large visual piece. But I kept working on it nonetheless, because in the making, I had started thinking of it as a kind of performance piece, but performance art for one person—for me—rather than for a wider audience, a performance that would eventually take about two years. When I mentioned this to my critique group, one member suggested that I make a video of me working on the piece, as a way of sharing my experience of making the work. So I’ve made a video that shows me stitching on the work, talking about how the stitches and the process of stitching are, for me, a kind of homage to the work those people, six thousand years ago, who placed one large stone after another, in line after line. This video is an unedited trial version. Distracting things to ignore: the colorful pattern you see is the carpet beneath my feet; the white rectangle is a piece of paper on which I’d written some notes. I will likely do a revised version, to have available when I eventually exhibit the work. In the meantime, here's the video, about 15 minutes long:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JPDgrpsQgVipP-sOag2cEGog2KFqp-MM/view. If that link doesn't work, you can also see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1JRD_DnUJE

And just one more photo of the stitching, as I think the close-up image I tried to give in the video didn’t show well enough the variation of the silk-wrapped linen yarn from Habu Textiles.  

Coming back to "Persistence"

It's been almost a year since my friend Sheryl came to Galesburg to help me color a large piece of linen with earth pigments, for one of the pieces about menhirs (neolithic standing stones) that I've been thinking about since a trip to Brittany in 2019. I've spent a lot of time reading, thinking, sketching, and doing trial stitching. My placeholder for a plan for the stitching was decided on back in August of last year, and appears at the end of this post. The idea for the plan was based on the actual alignments of stones at Carnac, thousands of stones laid out in parallel arrays, ten to thirteen lines of stones in each long array. I've kept close at hand the plan of the alignments below, where the tan expanses represent the lay-out of the lines of stones:

But as I worked yesterday morning on another version last year's sketch, I decided to abandon it, and to just go to the fabric and start stitching, letting go of any notion of re-creating the layout of the alignments. Instead of following a plan, I will let myself go wherever I find the stitches taking me. I'll also have the marks in the fabric to follow or respond to, if I wish. This is because I've decided to stitch on the "back" side of the cloth Sheryl and I colored, rather than on the solid, brownish-black side that was my original intent. Sheryl had told me that many people end up using the back instead of the front, because of the beautiful, unplanned markings that show through on the back. After doing stitch trials on both the front and the back (on the right and left in the photo below), I've decided to switch, and stitch on the back side. The stitching will not be in as high a contrast to the fabric as I envisioned, but that's OK. The variations on the back, and stitching done in response to marking, is much more in keeping with the nature of the relationship of the neolithic stones to the terrain in which they were "planted," with lines of stones following variations in the terrain. 

And here's stitching done yesterday and today on the full piece of cloth, about two hours spent in total.

Here's the full piece of cloth, draped on my dining room table, which is where I'll work on the stitching.

The next photo shows the fabric in the 12" hoop I'm using. The white cloth with a circle cut in it is a way to prevent the hoop from leaving a mark on the cloth. I'm also using a steam iron after each session of stitching, to iron out the indentation left by the hoop.

And here's a close-up of the stitching, which gives a good view of the actual coloration of the cloth, and also of the texture of the thread I'm using. It's a silk-wrapped linen-paper thread from Habu Textiles. I love the variation in thickness of the thread, the stiffness of it (which leads to some variation in how the thread lays) and the occasional wispiness of the very thin silk thread that sometimes separates from the linen "paper" thread.

So, I have begun. The piece will take a very long time, which is intentional. It is one way to honor the persistence of the communities who placed one stone after another, over many years, six thousand years ago. [Added 8-10-25: Here's a link to a video that gives an aerial overview of the alignments in Brittany.

Following up on "Found Shapes"

Since my workshop with Susan Moss, I've done some further work with the "found shapes" that I happened upon. Here's a reminder of what they looked like in my small sketchbook:

I tried enlarging a couple of shapes and doing a version of them with fabric; the shapes below are each about 6" high.  I made two shapes with hand-dyed fabric, using appliqué. The first one looked clunky. The second one was better, but still didn't move me. Finally I tried a drawing made by couching down some silk-wrapped linen thread that I like. Still no interest in going further.

I decided the found shapes should just stay what they were originally, swatches of gouache outlined with a pen (my favorite for this was a Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen, hard tip). One friend who wrote me about my last post, said that she could see me using these on the cards that I make. Yes, a good use for them, thank you Mary Beth! So I started by putting six on a card, just because that's how many swatches I had put on a page in my sketchbook.

But these seemed too crowded to me, so I cut them all out individually and put just two on a card, and I like this better. I also tried out some colored paper that I had on hand, for the card, and I like that too. So here are eight cards, ready to go:

And then, as I looked again at the squared shapes, I got an idea for a new direction for one of my menhirs  projects, the one that focuses on a grouping of a few stones. Here's a rough sketch that I did back in October; the shapes were based on my photographs of a section of a line of neolithic standing stones at Carnac.

I don't need to stay so close to the original shapes, but I haven't had a sense of another direction to take. On the other hand, I've come to understand better the nature of my attraction to these stones, as I have read and thought about them over the last year or two. I now think of this project with the name "My Beloved Dead," a kind of memorial for my mother, my father, and my son. I recently did another drawing, influenced by looking at the "found shapes" from my sketchbook; I moved the shapes in closer relationship to each other, together forming an overall shape.

This is now going in a more fruitful direction. The new relationship between the shapes connects up with a mental image that came to me in the wake of Jeremy's death--that of Jeremy being comforted by my parents, who had both died in the previous year. And writing this, I realize that I'm working with a theme close to that of "Shelter," a quilt made in 2010.

In the meantime, I have also gone back to "Persistence," my other menhirs project, a hand-stitching project that focuses on the phenomenon of the thousands of stones that make up the alignments of Carnac. Once I get this project to the point where I can begin the actual stitching, not much thought will be needed, and I can turn back to concentrated work on "My Beloved Dead." I will work first on drawings, perhaps with charcoal, which I enjoyed using in the April workshop. I may try watercolor. I may also try painting fabric. I expect that this will eventually turn more abstract and gestural, but it will take a long while to get there. I'm in no hurry. The final piece will likely be about 45" x 60," to fit a space I have in my studio.

I am very glad to once again be engaged with these larger art projects, which have their origin in a 2019 trip to Brittany, where I was entranced by the menhirs. I recently found this 15-minute video that shows multiple aerial videos of the alignments, which give a very good sense of the nature and scope of these monuments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoQYMA3_kB8

The April sketchbook workshop definitely spurred me to get back into my own work!

 

A Sketchbook Workshop with Susan Moss

Last week I took a three-day workshop with Susan Moss on "The Creative Sketchbook." I've long been intrigued and also intimidated by the idea of a sketchbook practice. I've tried several times to work in sketchbooks, but have never been managed to persist. I knew Susan's work through her embroidered drawings, which I find deeply moving. When I saw she was offering a sketchbook workshop, I decided to give it a try and see what might happen. I was confident that the work itself over the three days would be interesting, fun, and challenging, and if it ended there, that was OK with me. But I am taking home with me more than the sketchbook and ideas for continued practice. I also found a renewed energy to put art-making central in my daily life, an idea for a new project, and an interest in trying out some new materials. Here are some images and descriptions of what we did.

Susan provided a small Moleskin Japanese album sketchbook (accordion style, each page 3.5 x 5.5") for each participant. She also provided a huge array of paints, brushes, pencils, pens, charcoal, papers, etc. for us to work with; this was part of her encouragement to us to experiment--to try out new materials, marks, and methods. Experimentation was so much easier with the huge variety of materials that she made available to us. She also encouraged us to start out by painting color "swatches" on a number of pages in the sketchbook, using a wide brush and gouache paint. The swatches eliminate the dread of a totally clean page and the fear of what to put on it--just start by making some short brushstrokes on the page! And the swatches also give you a structure to work within/outside of, or not--it's also fine to ignore them while working over them. You can see an array of swatches across the sketchbook in this photo:

Susan provided a booklet of handouts that included prompts for drawings, prompts for reflective writing, and reflections on drawing and art in general by a variety of artists. She emphasized the importance of reflecting on what we were doing, and on our own histories of our relationship to art making. I probably spent about a third of the time writing, and two-thirds drawing. 

And now some examples of the sketchbook pages. In the photo below, the four swatches on the left hand page were drawn on in response to the prompt: "Make a series of small, simple marks, filling/exploding some painted swatches." The column of three swatches on the right were done to this prompt: "Using your non-dominant hand, make some lines vertically or horizontally on painted swatches." 

There had been earlier prompts to draw horizontal and vertical lines across swatches, varying pressure, density, spacing, and weight. With no hand specified, I of course I did those with my dominant (right) hand. I much prefer these lines done with my left hand! So much more intriguing, without the guidance of the purposeful right hand. (You can click on any image to enlarge it.)

Another set of prompts encouraged us to explore "the humble, magic pencil," varying the marks, and to also try smudging. I tried out ten of the many kinds of pencils Susan provided. My favorites were the Mitsubishi Uni 9B and the General Charcoal pencil. I also like the last line, where I drew with the blending stump that I had used to smudge the charcoal. 

The prompt for this next sequence of three pages was to make a gesture with just a simple movement of your hand (I used a quick E-type shape), and then vary it in size/density. It was illuminating to see how much more interesting the drawing was in the densest version, on the right. I also liked the varying quality of the line I got using a reed pen, a drawing tool I knew nothing about before this workshop; it's now on my Dick Blick shopping list. (One of the many nice things about living in Galesburg, Illinois is that it's the home of Dick Blick Art Supplies, and one of their stores is just 10 minutes from my house.)

The prompt for the middle panel below was to "draw your grocery list." I especially like the drawing of boy choy, one of my favorite vegetables.  The column on the right was trying out a white gel pen along with black ink.

Here's another favorite--using the technique of a blind contour drawing (keeping your eye on the object being drawn, not looking down at the paper at all while you're drawing).  The first drawing I did is on the right (on top of blue swatches). The prompt was to do a blind contour drawing of some objects close at hand on my table. This is a pair of scissors, resting on a glue stick, with a bull-dog clamp below it. I love how you can make a reasonable guess at what the objects are, but the quality of line is much more free and loose than you could do if moving the eye back and forth between the object and the drawing. The other drawings to the left are the same objects and method, but done with my non-dominant hand. No verisimilitude left here, but some very interesting lines that, again, I couldn't have drawn if I was trying.

Another way to produce interesting lines and groups of lines by a combination of intent and chance: The prompt here was to make large gestures with black paint, ink, charcoal, etc. on a large piece of paper (18" x 24"), and then to have another person add something to what you did. I was the one who drew first on this piece of paper, including the strong vertical line and other brush strokes, the jagged marks done with a fat stick of charcoal at the bottom, and the smudges at left and right. The wiggly lines and the thinner pencil marks were made by another person in the class. Then the sheet was folded into a booklet, so that you see just one section at a time.

Here's the sequence of 8 pages that resulted from these unplanned crops. Susan encouraged us to look for a "story" in the sequence that unfolds.

I've saved for last my favorite pages, which I've enlarged for better viewing. I had run out of steam towards the end of one day with doing the prompts provided by Susan and was just looking at a spread of lovely gray swatches in my open sketchbook. I picked up a marker and began outlining the swatches and the shapes within them, as formed by the changes in value as the paint dried on the page. I love so many of the shapes that emerged from this simple drawing gesture. And once again, I'm stunned by what can happen by mixing a lot of chance with a little bit of intention. That is, I was the person who made the gray swatches, purposely making some with two strokes, some with one, varying the pressure a bit, and not trying to even out the color across the swatch. So, a value variation as they dried was expected, but the shapes those took were entirely out of my control, and I wasn't thinking about it in any case. But then, looking later, my attention was caught by the variation, and I began tracing the lines, a pleasant activity, which then brought shapes forming before my eyes. These are shapes I could not have drawn on purpose. But it's also possible that now, having formed these shapes by accident, I can use them as inspiration to draw other shapes with intent/purpose--in the same family, perhaps, but different. I am eager to explore this further.

And here are a few other pages where I continued outlining found shapes. I had to hold myself back from doing nothing else for the remaining time we had!

So, many thanks to Susan Moss for a fantastic workshop, and also to my fellow students for their inspiring work. Susan gave us a scaffolding for our work (the format of the sketchbook, the prompts) that provided multiple starting points, while she also designed the workshop so that students were free to follow their own ideas, inclinations, and styles. She insisted that we look in the work for what pleased us, and not to worry about anyone else. Even while she talked individually with each student over the course of the workshop, she did not go around the classroom systematically to give comments on individual work, and the writing exercises we did were explicitly for our own eyes only. At first this disturbed me, because I often work out my own thoughts in conversation with someone else looking at my work. But I came to see the importance of this tactic. It made me listen carefully to my own thoughts and feelings about the work and to proceed from there. 

Two small half-square triangle quilts

In my last post, I mentioned that I had embarked on a stretch of doing simple sewing, and I showed a number of samples of quilt patterns I was considering.  Thanks to those of you who wrote back with your favorites!  I decided to make Katie Pedersen's "Cross the Border" quilt. (Katie's blog, Sew Katie Did, is one I've been following for a long time, and I highly recommend it.) I followed her design closely, using a hand-dyed fabric for the background and a variety of prints, about half of them from my scrap bins and the rest clipped from yardage on hand. It's satisfying to make a quilt without having to buy any new fabric. 

"Cross the Border" pattern by Katie Pedersen, Sew Katie Did blog; my version is about 35" x 45."

A regular zig-zag is a standard quilting pattern, but I love Katie's energetic version of it, with the variation in the beginnings and ends of the lines--brilliant!  I also followed Katie's lead in using a wide variety of prints, in both color and pattern. With this many different small pieces (over 150 different fabrics), you can get away with more variety than if you're using a smaller number of different fabrics. For example, I wouldn't think of making a quilt with just the four fabrics below, but they look just fine as one of many (in the top line of the quilt).

One of the pleasures of making a scrap quilt like this is looking through one's stash of fabrics, and coming across fabric from past quilts. The green check below is from the first quilt I ever made, with Katie Ortner.

I've made several zig-zag quilts before as baby gifts, but I've always taken the easy way out and used rectangles for the units. (If you click on the photo to enlarge, and look at the solid pale green fabric, you can see how the rectangles are laid out.) 

After making Katie Pedersen's version, I don't think I'll ever go back to rectangles. Half-square triangles take more time, but I loved mixing up the fabrics in each zig-zag.

Given how much I enjoyed working with the HST (half-square triangle) blocks, and while the fabric was pulled, I decided to do a sampler quilt, showcasing a variety of patterns you can make with this simple combination of two right-angle triangles. I kept in a zig zag (upper left in photo below), but then did eight other traditional blocks. This top is about 40x40".

And my HST playtime continues. I'm now working on a more free-form design, using a palette of colors and pale neutrals chosen by a friend of mine. I'll post more once I've got something to show.

Working on easy things for a while

For some months, I've been spending a significant amount of my time and mental energy in helping out several people among my friends and family who could use a bit of help for one reason or another. I've done a small amount of thinking/sketching/trial stitching for my projects on standing stones during this period, but haven't been able to put in the time or mental concentration that are needed to move the projects forward. I've decided to just let them stay quietly in the background for a while, and to stop feeling frustrated about not getting to them. They will still be there whenever I feel ready to pick them up again, and I've decided that's fine. I've lined up some small, easy projects that I can do with time in the studio. These will give me a chance to spend quiet time on my own, and will give me the pleasure of working with colors and shapes and of seeing something finished fairly quickly. Eventually this will likely get a bit boring, but for right now, it's working well. 

I've finished up the 4-patch posie quilt shown in this post, piecing a back and then sending it off to Trace Creek Quilting for them to stitch a simple overall pattern on the quilt. I usually quilt my own quilts, but sometimes turn over to a longarmer larger quilts that are going out as gifts (as opposed to art quilts, made for myself, all of which I quilt on my home machine). I was very happy with the process of working with Trace Creek, and with the results. I thought I'd miss the in-person interaction with the person doing the quilting, but it actually worked well to take my time deciding on a few possible quilting designs from their website, and then phoning to get advice from the owner. When I sent in my quilt, I enclosed a sample of the color thread I wanted used, and they came up with a very good match. The cost was reasonable, even taking into account the cost of shipping both ways.

I've recently made several lined tote bags, adapting this "Whitney Sews" pattern. I enlarged the dimensions a bit, and used quilting cotton with medium-weight fusible interfacing. (You can click on the photo below to enlarge.) Drop me a note if you'd like to know how I changed the pattern.

 

I started by making just one for a gift that's coming up, but I liked it so much that I made a few more to have on hand. I made the bag once before a while ago, with just a light-weight fusible, to use as a knitting bag, and I have enjoyed using it, but I think this version with a heavier fusible will be even more usable, as it is stiff enough to stand up on its on, while still flexible enough to be folded up and packed away, if desired.

I also plan to start working on a simple quilt, with straightforward, repetitive piecing, which is what I feel like right now. Here are some possibilities I've lined up. I know the quilt called "Lilla" doesn't quite fit the description, but it's still in the running. I'd be curious to know which of these you find the most appealing.