3 trees

About a year ago, walking in the woods of rural Illinois, I made the drawing on the right above.  I was struck by the relationship between the three trees.  I also think of the drawing as "The Three of Us."  I don't think of it as each tree representing a specific one of us--we're somehow interchangeable in my ruminations on it.

I thought for a long while of translating the drawing into a large quilt.  I imagined swaths of dark fabric against a white background.  I made several thermofax screens from photos I'd taken of bark (first row of prints below), and I also scraped thickened dye on fabric to get other textures (second row):

I talked with Bill Kerr about these ideas last spring.  He asked, "Does it need to be so literally like trees?"  Right, no need for bark texture--more abstract is better.  "The line drawing is very nice as it is."  Yes, agreed, I really like the line drawing.

So, I started thinking about doing a line drawing with thread.  While in New York this fall, I bought several interesting threads/yarns made by Habu, the gray and black ones being combinations of silk, linen, and paper.  I spent some time trying out various stitches with these threads, working on old linen napkins, of which I have a large supply from my mother and aunt.

After deciding on a simple couched stitch, I made a 9x12" version.  Then I decided to go smaller, to the size of the original drawing, about 4x6.  Better.  Not everything has to be large.  Seems odd to end up with something so small, after thinking about it for more than a year, but I think it's O.K.

I decided to mount it on a stretched canvas, rather than quilting it.  I've been wanting to try this method of display for a while, and this project gave me the opportunity.  I worked from a tutorial by Lyric Kinnard, though I stapled the fabric rather than fusing it.

 I still notice groupings of three in trees.  Maybe there will be more drawings. . .

Drawing and Looking

Each spring, I look forward to the blossoming of my neighbor's redbud tree, whose pink cloud of flowers I can gaze out upon from my kitchen and study windows.  Today I wanted to spend a little time drawing, so I thought I'd check out the redbud flowers, to see what they looked like close up.  To my great surprise--after 23 years of looking out at this tree--I found that the flowers are not just pink, but have a base of a deep rose color, with pink petals.

Often the particular shape of the component part of a flower has come as a surprise to me, when looked at close up, but not before the color.  I am grateful to my relatively new practice of drawing (begun in 2012 and described here) for making me slow down and look carefully.  There is so much to see. . .

It also interests me that in isolating one flower-filled twig of the tree, there is no hint of the cumulative effect of the blossoms on the whole tree.

A walk around the block

We've had lovely fall weather here in western Illinois, much appreciated after a blazing-hot summer.  On a beautiful day recently, David and I were spending the day inside at our desks; we both had things that needed to get done--no time for the longer walk that we sometimes take together.  So I suggested we just take a walk around the block, which we did, and then another several blocks beyond that.  I picked up these ash leaves along the way--glowing variations of gold.  I drew with a marker and colored in with Derwent Inktense water-color pencils.  I do love the fall. . . (You can click on the photo to enlarge.)

Beginning to draw

I have started drawing this summer, and am enjoying going out and finding bits of nature to draw.  The different grasses above are from the meadow at my brother's house in Vermont. (Double-click on the image to see more detail.)  I was inspired by an exercise called "Find a Child":

"If you have a child of two or three, or can borrow one, let her give you beginning lessons in looking. It takes just a few minutes. Ask the child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child's eyes won't leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery." From Learning by Heart by Jan Steward and Corita Kent (NY: Allworth Press, 2008; first published 1992), p. 14.  I recommend this book highly!  For more on Corita Kent (Sister Corita), look here.

Even without a child at hand, the core of the instruction in the exercise is clear:  slow down, look closely.  I spent a good bit of time at my brother's drawing.  I tried both pencil and Pigma pens, and found I liked the pens best.  I will be taking a workshop in the fall where I'll be doing printing on fabric, so I am wanting to build up a body of images that I might want to use.

 

When I came back home, I turned to my own garden:

Some dried coreopsis and baptisia leaves:

Then I added colored pencil (a dried lily bud and lamb's ear):

It interests me that the drawing can be effective (in the sense of giving a feel of the actual subject) even without me being able to be in control or precise:

Then I went out and bought some Derwent Inktense pencils--you use them like colored pencils, but can then go over them with a watercolor brush to get something like watercolor (here rudbeckia triloba):

In addition to these nature drawings, I also played with some line patterns as possibilities for printing on fabric:



  

All three of the above consist of an element repeated horizontally and then vertically.  This is obvious for the lines in the middle drawing.  The top one is a row of curved humps. The bottom is a series of the Hebrew letter "tet."

Shelter, a class, some writing, a workshop

While I work on constructing the black tier of shelter, I'm also doing some hand-sewing on the other tiers, doing final stitching and taking out basting. I've enjoyed looking at these pieces up close again as I sew.
And here's the black in progress. It's coming along quite well.

Progress is a little slowed by the start of a new term of teaching, with some other things on my plate as well. I'm taking a drawing class at the college, one that focuses on the legacy of minimalist, abstract drawing (like Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Sol Lewitt) rather than representational, figural drawing. I love these artists, and I think this kind of drawing will help my development in quilting. We'll see.

I'm also working on a presentation I'll be giving at the college in late April, "From Study to Studio," describing/explaining my turn from scholarship to art. I've talked about this to an audience of quilters before, but not to my colleagues at the college.

In June I'll be attending a workshop by Terry Jarrard-Dimond, "What If? Building Pathways to Creative Work." This is being offered at a new workshop venue in Ann Arbor, Michigan, modeled on the structure of workshops at Nancy Crow's Barn, but one day shorter (so a little less expensive), and with a greater variety of types of workshops: http://www.buddingartideas.com/workshops.html. There are a number of fiber arts workshops (including a Susan Shie workshop in October on “Diary Quilt Paintings" that I wish I could go to). There are also watercolor, pastel, oil, encaustic, and other things being taught. Anyway, you might take a look--they've asked participants to spread the word, to help them fill this inaugural set of workshops.