Local Continuing Education Opportunities

This is Floris Flam, the gallery blog editor for January. The following material was written by Betty Ford, one of our gallery's art quilters, and discusses a workshop she took on fabric painting.

We've discussed how our gallery members travel to attend workshops to improve their technical and design skills and to master new techniques.  Sometimes we have the opportunity to learn without leaving town.  The Washington area is rich in learning opportunities for fiber artists such as the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.

Recently, gallery member Betty Ford learned new fabric painting techniques from gallery member Julie Booth at a series of classes sponsored by the Art League.  It consisted of seven weekly classes at which Julie presented various techniques where the students had time to experiment and learn by doing and to produce a large number of exciting samples. Here is the report of a happy student.

"The class began with our creating painted background fabrics using Pebeo SetaColor — fabrics on which we could layer other surface design techniques. These backgrounds were created in a number of ways, some resulting in pieces that were quite plain:

while others were more complex:

On these and other backgrounds we stamped, using stamps we carved ourselves or made by other processes. Stamps also included natural materials such as leaves.

"Julie, recipient of the Potomac Fiber Arts Guild’s 2011 Margaret M. Conant grant, has spent the year studying and experimenting with “kitchen” resists. She shared a number of these techniques with us . Below is my fabric made using a flour paste resist on a pale blue background that I painted in the class.

"This fabric was made by using rubber bands as resists then adding paint to the bunched up fabric. To me this piece has a very gardenlike appearance so I will probably make it into a whole-cloth quilt.

"Our entire class agreed that making gelatin plate monoprints was exciting and produced some of the most useful pieces. This is a completed small quilt using one of these prints.

"Of course, for a quilter, seeing this work in a finished piece is the major satisfaction for all the fun of painting fabric. The little quilt below was made by the “wipe-up” technique — dribbling paint on mylar then doing as the name suggests.

Betty concludes, "Excellent class!" I think that, seeing Betty's photos of both her fabrics and her finished work, you'll agree.

Who we are

It is a pretty well known fact that artists aren't making much money for the hours we put into our work.  We have to love what we do or we'd go back to what we did before because it no doubt was more lucrative than making art.  The following is a list of what some of our members did before they started making art.  Come see us in Studio 18 in the Torpedo Factory Art Center and see if you can relate the former (and sometimes current) jobs with the Art.

Zita Simitus--Chief Psychologist of the Army

Joanne Bast--taught zoology, biology, botany, human anatomy and physiology at              the college level.

Carol Bodin--computer systems designer

Mickey Kunkle--mortgage loan officer

Jeanne Bohlen--physics major who ended up in a number of libraries--public,  for              profit business, non profit organizations.

Lynda Prioleau--still working as a meeting and conference planner

Cindy Grisdela--financial journalist

Eileeen Doughty--cartographer supervising a number of people some of whom were           deaf so she had to learn sign language

Claudia Levy--reporter and editor at Washington Post

Betty Ladd--computer programmer (now office manager at architecture firm)

Ruth Blau--technical writer/editor

Merle Thompson--professor of English Literature

Clara Graves--freelance graphic designer

Roz Houseknecht--swim instructor both then and part-time now

Kay Collins--art teacher, business owner, sex education counselor, and lots more--             very varied jobs

Fran Spaeder--30+ years at the CIA in information technology

Larry Novak--systems engineer and software project manager--scientific and                           engineering applications

Anne Sanderoff-Walker--registered x-ray technologist and used CT scans when                    they were fairly new

Diane Mularz--currently employed as software systems engineer

Debra Lee--managed programs to integrate technology with business systems

Conferences and why we go to them

As artists we spend a lot of time alone in our studios.  We all love what we do but the reality is that much of our time is spent by ourselves.  As humans we also like to spend time with like minded individuals and groups.  This is where conferences come into the picture.  Equate going to a conference to being in the best play group in the world where you get candy all the time and no one takes your crayons.  You get to talk all day about what interests you the most and no one is bored by your conversations.  Then there is the aspect that all of your new found friends are full of ideas and want to hear your ideas.   What could be more fun than that.  You come home full of new ideas and way more plans than any sane person could carry out in a reasonable time.  But some of those ideas become reality and that's the best part of all.

Here are two pictures that Floris Flam took when she attended the Quilt/Surface design symposium.  The first is the design that Floris chose when the teacher said that each person should choose a neutral three or four letter word and the second is what happened to the letters "CITY" when they were modified by the hand and mind of the artist.

 

Many of the chosen fabrics were hand dyed by Floris and some of them were done by a technique using oatmeal as a resist.  More about that later.

New Gallery Show: Opposites Attract

Monday April 11 a new show was installed in the Potomac Fiberarts Gallery in the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA. The theme is Opposites Attract--or do they?

Not all new work must be theme related, but theme related items are eligible for awards.

Annabel Ebersole and Carol Holmes, member jurors for April stated:

Opposites attract! What a wonderful bounty of creative responses to this theme. It was difficult to choose among the many gorgeous black and white pieces, as well as pieces that highlighted circles and squares, lines and curves, soft and hard, smooth and textured, shiny and matte.

We selected Dorothy Miller’s Thai silk purse in black and white which also highlighted floral and linear and curved vs. angular. Zita Simutis’ felted and stitched piece with squares and circles of heishi beads with offset layout of the stitching pattern added visual interest. Joanne Bast’s two felted rocks with their wooly texture contrasted by brick stitch beadwork of a lizard and turtle exemplified the theme.

Dorothy Miller's purse, available for $65: Dorothy states I had pieces of silk left over from a formal blouse I designed and made ( could send a picture of the blouse). The pieces seemed to cry for use in the black and white theme. I played with the fabric pieces until I drew a design I liked. The beads on the zipper are from an old necklace a friend gave me. This theme gave me chance to recycle.

Zita Simutis's felted wall piece "Standout" , $165:

Zita's thought process:

This is the process I used to create “Standout”. Hand felted some
white wool. Dyed it with a light color. Dyed it again using Japanese
resist techniques with a darker color. Dyed it one more time and was
surprised about what actually happened to the felt with the layers of
dye. I always am. Colors changed, patterns changed with each dye bath.
Thought, turned it around. Pinned the felt piece on the wall. Looked
at it once in a while for over a year. Thought again about what I
wanted to do with the piece. Cut it up into little pieces to make
pins? Turn it into wall art? Wall art, definitely. Combine it with
other pieces? That is what I did. Several hand dyed felt pieces were
sewn together with tiny stitches. And then I embroidered, added some
beads – why not do one in a different color, and it was done. Magical
fiber art processes, thinking, and many tiny decisions over time
turned it into a little work of art called “Standout”. I loved making
it and I am honored that the jurors liked it too. Thanks to the
incredible Chad Alice Hagen for the inspiration.

Joanne Bast's beadwork animals ($135 for the turtle and $250 for the lizard) are organic forms constructed out of hard glass bead elements seated on softly felted rocks. I am fascinated by the ability to actually draw with brick stitched beadwork. Making the living elements out of hard inorganic glass and the nonliving base out of soft organic wool provided an interesting reversal.

Many of our fiberartist members interpreted opposites attract as black and white.

Floris Flam quilted a black, white and red wall hanging titled "BlackHole" which hangs next to Anna Yakubouskaya's dyed a silk panel/scarf called "Night Butterflies".

Black and white scarves by JanetBarnard, Roz Hopuseknecht and Jannet Stollnitz hand below.

Details of "Black Hole" and "Night Butterfly":

Black and white purses are also in abundance.

Merle Thompson's tote bag.

A black and white summer hat by Bev Baker:

Fossil Series, wire work in fiber techniques by Marla Rudnick.A Black and white jacket by Merle Thompson:

Beadwork necklace in black and white by Elida De Sousa Moore, peyote stitched with glass and resin beads:

Cindy Grisdela pillow:

Ann Liddle's hand made paper wall sculpture "Phases of the Moon" hangs above "Time Travel", a wall quilt by Cindy Grisdela.

Eileen Doughty stitched paper necklace contrasts squares and circles.

Jewelry items be Joanne Bast, Emma Bednar, Eileen Doughty, Barbara Rushworth and Roz Houseknecht contrast hard and soft, black and white, square and round, night and day, line and pattern.

Opposites Attract sure provided an interesting array of fiber items in addition to a vast array of additional artistic fiber pieces to tempt the eye and wallet. Joanne

Surface Stitchery/Embroidery #2

Continuing on with a discussion of how line in embroidery can serve to embellish textiles, Cindy Griselda has hand stitched multiple lines in running stitch that parallel, cross and conflict with the fabric pieces in her wall quilt.

Joanne Bast has used multiple parallel hand couched running stitches in the wales of corduroy to entirely form the design of trees in "Porch, Pines and Potted Plant" on a piece of plain fabric.

Straight rows of parallel stitching done on the sewing machine provide additional interest in a Cindy Grisdela pillow.

In the fabric pictures "Lavender in Provence" and "Maryland from Above", Betty Ford has machined repeating areas of straight stitching following the hand dyed fabric shapes to enhance her landscapes.
Fran Spader's wall quilt has several areas of repeating lines, some straight and some in circles following the shapes of the fabric inlays.

Floris Flam's fabric collage also uses machined straight stitching. But here, the rows cross fabric blocks tying them together into a larger visual piece.

Stitching need not be in straight or even curved rows. The eyeglass cases by Elida de Sousa Moore below show machine stitching in an organic all over manner. Sewing machines also have built in pattern stitches that may be used as lines of embroidery as in the barrette by Joanne Bast.

Juror’s Recognition #2

Another piece that received Jurors' Recognition this month is Floris Flam’s art quilt, Through a Japanese Window.

Here’s what Floris says about her inspiration and process:

“ I started Through a Japanese Window in a workshop with Roberta Horton where the focus was on the improvisational use of large pieces of ethnic fabric. I brought mostly Japanese fabrics to the class, though I added some coordinating prints and solids from my stash. I came away from the workshop with several large pieces of fabric pinned together, but it took some time to decide how to fill in the rest. I wanted to stay with the asymmetric balance one often finds in Japanese art and kept trying ideas on my design wall until I was happy with the result.

“The wall hanging is machine-pieced and the butterfly and circular shapes machine appliqued. One example of problem-solving that pleased me is that the motifs in the lower left weren't strong enough for the design on their own, so I appliqued them to purple circles, which I appliqued to the quilt. Similarly, the flat piping above the right side of the bottom border lent a needed linear element and visual weight to that section of the quilt, helping to balance the bowl of flowers and the butterfly at the upper left. I machine quilted using traditional Japanese sashiko patterns in several of the large areas and free motion quilted following the lines of the print in other areas.”

In another few days I’ll post about the third piece that won Juror’s Recognition this month.

Beyond Cotton: Using Unusual Materials in Art Quilts

The general wisdom is that quilts need to be made from 100% cotton fabrics. While this may be good advice for a bed quilt that will need to be washed frequently, quilts for the wall can incorporate a wide range of fabrics and other materials.

One of our Gallery members, Lynda Prioleau, has used unusual items in her quilts to make her point. One example is Are We There Yet? This piece is her tribute to some of the travel that she has taken over the years. It's composed of a worn out inner sole, photo transfers of subway tickets, maps and tokens. Also included are upholstery fabrics, old ties and hand-dyed fabrics.


Lynda incorporated her love of unusual materials in her Shack series. This grouping reflects her love of old, dilapidated buildings. They were created with a photo transfer to fabric of a shack that used to sit where the Gaylord National Hotel is now. She climbed a fence to take the shot and the next day the shack was flattened. These quilts incorporate roofing tiles as well as more common materials such as upholstery fabrics, old ties, hand-dyed fabrics, and buttons. Here is Shack 1:


Another Gallery member, Eileen Doughty, used painted organza woven into hardware cloth in Element. This detail shows her use of these materials:


In Meteor Shower, Eileen used curtain lining material with colored pencil for the umbrellas. Each umbrella is from a country's flag that has a star in the design. She used Angelina, a very fine reflective fiber, to create the sparkle of the meteors.

Another material that can be used on quilts for special effect is painted fusible web (Wonder Under is a common product). In Zen Garden, I used this for the rock at the far left and for the wispy area at the lower right.


This has just scratched the surface of the materials one can find used in art quilts today, but I hope it gives you an idea of the range of possibilities.

This week marks the end of the holiday show at the Gallery. Next Monday, we will jury our new show, Hot Tropics: Warmth in Winter's Freeze. I'll be back with photos after that. In the meantime, stay warm.