Living This Creative Life

I have two favorite quotes. The first one is by Emile Zola, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I would tell you that I came to live out loud". I don't know who the second one is by, but it goes like this, "If you're not living on the edge then you might as well jump". Both of these sentiments sum up my personal philosophy of this experience we call life on earth. Enjoy!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Art Every Day, Monday, April 22, 2013

Good Morning,
I feel like it's time to start that countdown to the opening of my new gallery, so here we go;10 days till we open!
Here is today's new piece and it's a weird one.  I wanted to play with neutrals and with stamped fabric.  So, I grabbed the background fabric which had a bit of a lot of neutrals from white to tan to light and dark grey.  I set it on top of black batting and quilted the top grey, middle grey and bottom tan very heavily.  I didn't stitch in the white or the top tan at all so they pop forward a bit.  
Then I topped the stitched background with the stamped fabric pieces and quilted them lightly along the edges and in the black lines between the stamped "blocks". I've tried it in every direction and this seems to be the best, though I don't think it's really quite balanced.  I think the shapes and lines are interesting and I really like the addition of the round swirly bits of trim.
Anyway, it's done and now I'm off to finish painting furniture at the gallery and get it cleaned up so that I can start putting things away and move in the rest of our stuff!  Onward, with great effort and excitement!
Till tomorrow,
Heather

1 comment:

me said...

Yay, ten days!!!

When you mention orientation, I always look at it all ways, and I agree that this is best. You know that I also enjoy looking at it small as thumbnail on my desktop as well as as close to life size as I can, while I read your narrative about it.

What's really interesting about this one is that close up everything is visible, but as you move a little further away, the middle shape kind of blends into the background more and the piece looks much different.

From that view, this looks like a landscape of sorts: the top gray and unquilted tan are sky, the dark grey is sea, and the white and quilted tan are beach. The shape could be a boat or something else off in the distance and it's reflected in the water and on the wet sand.

The stamped fabric along the side serves as a frame, perhaps part of a window frame made of natural fibers, and even though I know logically they sit on the same layer as the focal point blocks, that strip looks much closer to me than they do, I think because the background really puts the focal point in perspective.

The quilting in the background is perfect, following the patterns that are naturally occurring on the fabric and really give the organic, natural feel to it.

This could feel moody because of the palette, but it doesn't to me. It just feels like maybe it's the end of the day, when the colors leave the sky and the water gets dark and things just become shapes.

It's funny, I expected to not like this very much when I read that you said it was a weird one, and I glanced at it and thought, hmmm, what do I say about THAT?
But then I looked :)