Art Every Day, Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece.  In real life it's much more straight yellow and green.  The batting is green too.  Not sure why it photographed so blue and the yellow so, yellow orange.  Anyway, I wanted to manipulate white again and play with stitch motifs in contrasting color.   

I laid a piece of yellow dyed, mid-weight canvas down first and tucked the white down underneath it.  I topped the white with the five green squares then added the green (not blue) cotton lace which I topped with more white, some ripped yellow linen and a long strip of green velvet.

The squares are top stitched as is the green strip, small white rectangle and lace, each in a matching color.  I did the decorative leaf motif in bright green and quilted the white background with yellow thread, which you can barely see, in straghtish lines about 1/8" apart. 

The heavy stitching managed to push the white back and keep it behind the yellow where it physically is.  The big piece of yellow seems to sit on the same mid-ground as the green squares which is surprising to me, but it's probably doing that because of the heavyish green quilting.  

I like the piece, it's very spring like in it's coloration which pleases me.  

I've been playing with some very unusual compositions lately and coming up with some strange stuff.  This ones a bit off.  It's not really unbalanced, but it's got a strange balance.  I tried positioning it every which way and it looks best like this.

Well, I'm off at o'dark thirty tomorrow morning, flying to Cleveland to teach at the NQA show.  I've stitched up a bunch of daily pieces so I can keep up with this little project!

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Monday, June 24, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece.  It began with the vintage hand dyed turquoise hankie and some various neutral cottons and a medium gray batting.  I layered it all up so that I could feature the hankie on the bottom and right and the brown fabric with it's weird, stitched paisley on the upper left. 

 It is all very heavily quilted. and I love the quilting in the turquoise border the most. It gives it so much depth.  The background behind the brown rectangle is quite weird because it varies between dark and light and therefore it recedes in some areas and tries to come forward in others.  The stitched paisley doesn't show as well as I had hoped.  I now wish I had used a heavier thread for it. 

 I also wish that I had not tucked in the small bit of hankie lace just under the bottom right corner of the brown rectangle.  I think it's a bit much. I love this brown/turquoise color combo it's lively yet calm.

Till tomorrow,

Heather 

 

Art Every Day, Saturday, June 22, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece.  I began it with the center most fabric that I created yesterday with thickened dyes.  I grabbed a couple of cottons in slightly mottled red violet and blue  to go with it along with some turquoise canvas and deep blue Mexican jute.  I layered it all up on top of some dull blue green boiled wool and stitched.  

The center is quilted in a dull blue green with just a few intersecting straight lines stitched at different angles.  The blue cotton is quilted in alternating straight lines and the red violet has a decorative feather in it.  

My favorite part is the coiled fabric circle in the turquoise square.  I like the piece, but mainly because I like the dye painted fabric.  However, it does have some balance issues which I would work to fix if it weren't a daily piece. 

There will always be another one tomorrow and I look forward to using this fabric again.

Till then,

Heather

Art Every Day, Friday June 21/Saturday, June 22,

Good Morning,
I actually made this yesterday and ran out of time before my private student arrived then as soon as I was done with her I had to set up and host our 3rd Friday event at the gallery.  Then, I told myself I would just take it home at the end of the evening (9:30) and get it uploaded then.  Well, I forgot both it and my camera at the gallery and was not going back for it.  So here it is now!

I began by laying yellow green and blue strips of hand dyed fabric down on a violet batting.  Both fabrics have jacquard circles on them.  Then I ripped squares in solid white, orange, watermelon, blue violet and a scrap of hand painted.  I layered those every-which-way on top of the strips of fabric and stitched it all down using a light, bright very yellow, yellow green. I used wiggle, horizontal lines in the blue background and stitched around the circles and stippled in the green background.  Both the blue violet and white squares got a stitched fan-like treatment and the warm colored squares were just top stitched.  I top stitched around the painted square and outlined the swirl.

My goal here was to see how the piece would react to just one color of thread, one that contrasted with all of the colors and how using colors that were somewhat disparate from each other would look in such a simple construct. I really like the whole thing.  It's got great depth and the circles in the green background just pop and help you see the small polka dots in the center painted square. The white acts as a great mid ground, strongly pushing the squares on top of it forward.

Till later today,
Heather

 

Art Every Day, Thursday, June 20, 2013

Good Morning,

It's been a long time since I've been able to begin an entry with that salutation.  It feels really good to be doing this earlier in the day! 

Here it today's newest piece.  It is an exploration in texture and embellishment.  I began by layering two fabrics on to red painted batting.  One fabric is a mostly yellow torn canvas and the other, larger one is a watermelon colored silk noil.  I toppend the yellow with some cheesecloth, silk organza and silk fibers and stitched them all down with far apart, wiggly vertical lines.  Then I quilted the watermelon colored background with swirls of various sizes.

Next, I cut the squares out of orange and yellow orange and set them in place.  I grabbed a bunch of fibers and ribbons and cut them into small segments and tucked them under the bottom edges of the squares.  Then I ironed the squares down and stitched them with a square swirl.  Next I grabbed some more fibers and twirled them up together and loosely tacked them down on the upper yellow canvas section.  

The last thing I did was add the circular dyed bone beads; one in each square and lots of them tucked into the fibers above.  I sort of like the piece.  It's a bit busy.  I like how the watermelon color sits in the background allowing the squares and fibers to come forward in the lower section and how the yellow upper section comes even more forward and pushes all of its fiber even more forward than that.  It's got great depth and loads of interest.

Well I'm off to chat up our Artist Talk for tomorrow night,

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece.  It was my goal to see if I could coax the black, yellow green and white fabrics in the negative space to look like an integrated background while using some remnants of hand painted fabrics as focal points and adding highlights of strips in blue and red thus repeating all of the colors in the painted pieces.

I'm rather please with the piece and surprised by a few things too.  Look how much wider the painted square looks than the long painted strip.  Yet, I cut the square right off the top of the strip.  This is because of their backgrounds.  The white is expanding the square whereas the black is shrinking the strip. I'm also surprised by how bright and bossy the blue/red horizontal strips became after I quilted all of the horizontal stripes in the background.  What pleases me most is how integrated the background became after I quilted in using one color of thread, bright blue, on all three colors of fabric.  The white is trying like mad to come forward and it does look a little closer than the green and black, but it's still sitting behind everything else.

I WIN! I can control color, even bold white, with quilting.... and you can too.

Till tomorrow,

Heather 

 

Art Every Day, Tuesday, June 18, 2013,

Good Afternoon, 

Here is today's new piece and no, I wasn't craving pepperoni pizza while I was making it.  In fact I didn't notice it's resemblance to said pizza until I photographed it and now it's all I can see.

My intent was to use some more hand painted fabrics and to add to it a lot of texture and build on the movement the painted fabric contained by adding the couched, rolled strips.  

I do like the movement and the over and under undulation of the blue violet strips and I like the yummy frayed edges of the yellow linen.  I'm also digging the split complement of the blue violet with yellow and orange.  

The downside, other than it's pizza-ness, is that I really did some fun quilting in the negative space which you really can't see and I'm shocked at how much the white is coming forward in the painted pieces.  If I did such a thing, I would go back and quilt it heavily to make it recede more.  But that is not what these exercises are about.  They are about exploring the possibilities and seeing what happens.

Till tomorrows exploration,

Heather 

 

Art Every Day, Monday, June 17, 2013

Good Afternoon,

 After spending way too much time this morning on the computer..... I finally got up and did today's piece.  It's my day off from the studio so I let myself slack off this morning looking at artist's sites, recipe sites, facebook, yada, yada, yada.

One of the nice things about doing these small pieces each day is that I can test out ideas and theories without a huge investment like I did with this piece.  There are a lot of ideas that I flout about as I teach and talk about art quilting and one of them is the idea of "over quilting", meaning quilting in such a way as to overwhelm both the quilt and the viewer. So, I thought I'd give it a try with this piece.   

I tried to over quilt it as much as I could stand.  The piece is very simple with no piecing for the quilting to easily overwhelm, but there is high contrast and an intricate piece of vintage crochet. I love how despite the quilting it's really easy to see the layering.  The largest, darkest piece of cotton on the right hand side was laid down first on top of gray batting.  Then the smaller rectangle of Mexican Jute went down on the left hand side.  Next the doily bit was placed and its raw edge was covered with the strip of canvas which was finally topped with the long strip of watermelon colored cotton.

Everything but the red was quilted in light gray and the red was top stitched in a matching thread.  I chose  to do the largest density of quilting in the large neutral area because it was reading farthest back (this is the opposite of what I would usually do). Then I placed the smallest or closest density in the neutral on the left hand side.  It was sitting in the mid ground and surprisingly still is.  The long feather in the canvas section has a density that is between the densities in the other two sections.  It's more decorative but there are areas where it does not contrast with the fabric and therefore you loose some of the design.  It is sitting in the mid ground behind the red strip. The piece of crochet is only top stitched around the edge and once through the vertical middle.  It is coming forward along with the red strip. 

I love the ghostly look of the darkest fabric with it's bits of light gray shining through and how it is receding despite the fact that it isn't as heavily quilted as the other gray areas.  But it's dark and it is under everything else.  

All in all, it was a great experiment.  I only wish that I had tried to find another doily arc or reduced the number down to one.  The two are somewhat boob like.

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Sunday, June 16, 2013

Good Evening,
Well after a near fatality with my computer, here is today's new piece.  I made it much earlier today then spent the afternoon rinsing 30 or so yards of fabric.  Then, I took a nasty fall in some soapy water that was on the floor in the rinse out area of the studio and everything kinda took a nose dive after that.  But, I really like this piece.
I began with some green dye painted batting.   I topped it with this somewhat weird, highly decorative piece of hand dye that is mostly shades of blue/blue green but has these weird golden areas.  It is highly mottled and I've never really known quite what to do with it.  So, I ripped a large piece and covered most of the batting with it.  I topped it with a rectangle of light blue linen that had some nice, long, wispy, frayed edges.  I stitched the linen down with matching thread and close together straight lines then I stitched around all of the dark blue and gold sections then heavily stippled everywhere else around the blue and gold.  Then I went up above the light blue rectangle and stitched sections of lines alternating between vertical and horizontal.  This change in stitch style really changed the look of the fabric.
Next, I stitched a bit of rickrack that had been dyed browny gold down the top edge of the light blue linen. I then ripped some strips of cotton voile that had been dyed a truer, brighter blue and rolled up one end of each strip and tacked it down beginning at the rickrack and stitching down past the edge of the linen.  I rough cut the loose ends at various angles and lengths and let them curl around at will.  I then rolled up several ripped strips of the voile and stitched them down the center of the rickrack.  I finished it all off with small green, dyed bone beads.
I love the messiness, the texture, the strange colors/mottling, the loose strands and the beads. They all work together to provide great visual and tactile interest.  For such a small piece, it packs a wallop!
Till tomorrow,
Heather

Art Every Day, Saturday June 15, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece and again I had loads of fun.  I'm so enjoying machine quilting these days and this piece is yet another response to that.  I began by laying an extra piece of batting on top of some green painted batting then placed on the six large pieces of fabric then I topped those with the two long strips of hand painted fabric left over from another project.  

I decided to quilt each one with a linear type of motif and tried to have the lines moving in a different direction on each one.  I  top stitched along the edge of the painted rectangles so that they would really pop off the surface.  The extra layer of batting made any unquilted area between quilting lines really pouf up too. I  love the sense of depth this has too but surprisingly the depth seems to be coming from actual layering position rather than color, quilting density, color scale or value. 

Well that's about it for this piece,

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Friday, June 14, 2013,

My friend Ellen is here looking at this piece as I write.  She said it looks like I quilted it this way just because I can. Well, she's right.  I love, love, love to machine quilt and I love seeing what happens to a surface when I quilt it.

With this piece I started with a piece of black linen set on dark gray batting.  I topped the linen with a strip of hand painted fabric that has a yellow green background, black horizontal brush strokes, blue wavy lines and polka dots and hot pink swirls.  I tucked a piece of dull yellow green silk noil under the painted piece and quilted them both, the multi colored piece with dark pink thread and the silk with blue thread.  Then I started stitching vertical rows of colorful yet simple designs. I didn't want anything too ornate so that the painted piece didn't get overwhelmed and so that the color could shine just as much as the quilting does. 

I think it's a fun, energetic little piece and I really enjoyed doing it. I love the ripped edge of the black against the gray batting and the large amount of black linen that remains visible yet sits nicely in the background. Mostly, I love using my hand painted fabrics in conjunction with delightfully simple machine quilting.  A bonus; it only took just over 40 minutes to make!

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Thursday, June 13, 2013,

Ah, falling in love is such a splendid thing, and I love this little piece.  What absolute joy to be able to stitch a design then rub color over it and get this!

 

This is what it looked like before I rubbed it down with a Shiva paintstik.  I began by layering a piece of painted gray batting with a smaller piece of batting then topped that with black linen. I used a dark gray thread to stitch with and made sure to add some nice detail to the insides of the feathers along with the high contrast of long lines alternating with circles.  It was nice just quilted, but it really woke up when I rubbed the entire surface with the long side of a brown iridescent paintstik. 
I love the gilded look it has as well as the instant depth achieved.  I'm definitely going to make a much larger one of these!  I'm not sure what I've ever done that is more artistically enjoyable than quilting first then adding color after.  Such pleasure!

Till tomorrow,
Heather

 

Art Every Day, Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Good Afternoon,

Here is today's new piece and as with yesterday's piece, I was trying something that is new to me.  I've been doing a quilt & color technique for quite some time now, but I usually use ink to color with.  Then a few days ago, I did some trapunto quilting on one of my daily pieces and I colored the trapunto design, a fancy feather, using Shiva Paintstiks.  So I decided to mix the two ideas together with today's piece with nearly horrendous results.

I began with white fabric on gray/black batting.  I stitched the designs using white thread.  Then I chose a dark violet, dark blue violet, lighter pink, and mid toned magenta along with a lighter yellow green and a mid tone green and used those colors to color everything in with sponge daubers.  It was uglier, than ugly.  The colors were too bold, and bossy and every one of them was vying for attention.  

Not to be outdone by some bossy colors, I grabbed a dark bronze paintstik, loaded up a dauber and went over everything with the bronze and  saved the day.  I had forgotten one of my own "tricks" that I always tell my students when painting anything fabric, "If it doesn't look good, add another layer or more of paint".  Now, I think it is beautimus!

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Good Afternoon, 

Here is today's new piece.  Each time we decide to try something new, something that is different from what we know to be true, we risk things not working out how we think they might.  I perused several modern art books this morning while drinking my morning coffee and I came across several things that I really liked and thought I would try to incorporate into some of my daily pieces.

First, I really liked this colorway of brown negative space with black, white and red on top.  Then, I liked the play of squares and rectangles off of stark lines and finally, I wanted to explore Paul Klee's use of thin dark lines superimposed on top of shape.

So, I did some layering and ironing down of shapes and lines and made my first misstep; I stitched down all of the shapes with black thread rather than switching out thread colors for the individual fabric colors.  If I had done that, then the contrasting thread on the colored shapes wouldn't be competing with the contrasting black line that is stitched on top. Now, I like the the swirl and straight line stitch out that I laid down on top of every thing, except for how it gets confused with the other outlines, however, I wish I had done it with a heavier line. And the final misstep, I wish that I had centered the brown background rectangle instead of off setting it. That way, I could have used the tiny black stipple in the gray/black batting all the way around the piece to add some unity.

All in all, I like the really abstract look and I will play more with the lines on top of shapes idea, but I'll pay better attention next time.

Till then,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Monday, June 10, 2013

Hello all, before getting started, I just want to send out a really big thank you to Christa Irell.  Not only are you the only visitor who comments regularly, you also teach me new things about my work every time you do.  As an artists it is fabulous to have a live audience who is willing to give feedback so openly.  Thank you again and again!

Now, on to today's work.  I began with blue fabric on blue batting which I quilted with a wonky basket weave in matching thread.  Then I cut some circle out of some delicious cotton velveteen scraps left over from re-covering my dining room chairs earlier today (it's my day off from the studio!).  I dribbled some red orange rattail between, over and under the circles and fringed the ends then couched them down and top stitched the circles down.  

I'm quite pleased with the depth provided by the movement of the rattial with its over and under positioning.  I also love the painterly dye job on the circle fabric as it adds depth too.  It was so fun to do and I like it too.  Plus, it's an analogous complement, one of my favorite color combos.

Till tomorrow,

Heather

Art Every Day, Sunday, June 9, 2013,

Good Afternoon, here is today's new piece.  If you're looking for yesterday's work, I honestly forgot about it until about 10 last night and I was too damned worn out to do anything at that point.  So, today's will have to suffice.

Today is my 6th anniversary with my hubby, Tom.  He gave me a card this morning with this fun metal heart in it.  He said that iron is what you give on your sixth and that he figured I'd find a way to use it in my art and I did.  

I began with a piece of dark orange hand dye (one of my favorite colors) which I laid on top of some blue batting (his favorite color).  I quilted it with a wavy crosshatch that is about 1/4" to 1/2" apart.  Then, I stamped it using  6 different heart stamps and various blues. I then attached the iron heart with some hand dyed blue embroidery floss and couched some variegated orange rattail along the edge where the fabric meets the batting using some blue green thread. 

Though I'm not a big lover of heart motifs I'm quite pleased with how this turned out.  It's not cutsey like so many heart based things are.  The high contrast of the direct complements adds a sense of drama and the layers of stamped motifs in various values/scales of blue add a lovely depth.  The sheen of the metal heart is echoed with the sheen of the rattail and stitching the heart down with cotton helps the hard shiny metal not look out of place.  All in all, it's a nice piece.

Till tomorrow,

Heather  

 

Art Every Day, Friday,  June 7, 2013

Good Afternoon,

It's been a few days since I've really enjoyed my daily piece from beginning to end.  Today I definitely have! 

I began by stitching the large, fancy feather on a piece of violet/blue hand dye with two layers of poly batting beneath it.  I just stitched the out line of the feather then cut away all of the excess batting, trapunto style.  Then I laid the feather stitched violet fabric on top of a piece of yellow green fabric which in turn went down on top of violet batting.  

I then restitched the outside of the feather then added the circles in the middle of it and the interior petals.  Next I switched to a violet thread and stitched all around the feather with a stratitish line that emanated from the feather and ended at the edge of the violet fabric. I switched back to the blue green thread that I had stitched the feather with and stitched the circles in the yellow green area.  I think it's so fun how that yellow green has risen above the violet and looks closer to the viewer even though it is physically underneath it.  Ah, color.... it so often has it's way with us mere humans. 

Once all of the quilting was done, I swept over the raised surface of the stitched feather with a sponge brush and some iridescent blue green Shiva paintstik to highlight it.  Then, because it kinda has an eastern Indian look to it, I added the small dots using silver Tsukineko ink and a fine, fine brush.

I really love it.  It's both pretty and interesting for such a small piece.

We'll I'm off to get goodies for tonight's First Friday celebration here at the gallery,

Till tomorrow,

Heather

Art Every Day, Thursday, June 6, 2013

Hello all, here is today's new piece. I wish this was a better photo, but it's hard to get the white to really look white.  I really liked it with the squares stitched down with the yellow thread, but I don't like it now that the background is so heavily quilted.  It flattened the white down into the black fabric beneath and grayed it out.  I like the areas in the white that have the circles stitched because it has larger open areas. It is also evident that my needle was too big for my thread and usually those holes can be steamed out of cotton batting, but I used the crappy felt with this one (I need to go get some black batting!) and the holes did not fill up after steaming.

I do like the design overall design though and will likely tackle it again with better batting, heavier thread and two layers of white fabric so that I don't go to gray in the background.

Tomorrow is another creative day,

Till then,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Good Evening,

Here is today's piece.  I guess you can tell that I'm on a machine quilting bender.  I really enjoyed the hair that I did on my woman a few days ago so today I decided to do a tree using the same "herky jerky" stitch out.  I began with a piece of hand dye that had a folded resist on it that didn't turn out to well; the negative space was just too light so, it ended up in my pile of fabrics (yes, I usually only get the  'junky' fabrics to work with).  The fabric looked like it was just perfect for a hazy summer morning picture.  

I set the fabric on top of some green dye painted batting and selected several green and yellow green threads plus some brown for the tree trunk and horizon line and a blue green variegated for the sky.  I stitched the trunk and limbs first then did the horizon line.  I added the 'leaves' next by doing the herky jerky.  I layered on three different green threads before I was done.  I used the lightest green to add in the bush on the left and the grasses around the tree trunk. The lawn was done with a tone of yellow. 

I really like the overall hazy yet crisp feel of the piece.

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Good Evening,

Today's piece is a nice reminder for me that sometimes things end up not being anything like you thought they might.  Now those of you who know me well, know that I do very little pre-planning, but this one sort of takes the cake.

I thought that I would stitch a scant white grid on a piece of black linen using erratic spacing and crooked lines then I planned to top it with some long thin triangles of fabric that would interact with each other and use up some of the small bits of last weeks hand painted fabrics.  But, bad product got the best of me.  I was out of black batting, but had some cheap black felt so I thought I'd use it.  As I began stitching the white grid, I started to get some puckering in the areas with no stitching - the cheap ass felt was stretching as I man-handled it.  So, plan B, I thought instead of adding some appliques, I'd stitch some big swirls in and around the center of the piece where the puckering was bad.  Well, of course, that just made it worse.  

Well, I can't handle a puckery piece of work, so I stitched more grid on top using the three colors of thread from the swirls.  So now, the swirls are physically sitting between the white grid on the bottom and the colored grid on the top. It's almost like there stuck in a Madras plaid.

It was fun and I've learned my lesson about cheap product,

Till tomorrow,

Heather 

 

Art Every Day, Monday, June 3, 2013

Good Evening,

Here is today's new piece.  It began with a long rectangle of off white canvas.  I added the three designs using a stencil and light modeling paste.  Once dry, I painted the whole thing this bright yellow orange then sprayed it with some truer green.  Once that was dry, I painted the raised designs with a slightly metallic red violet.  I really love how the green splotches on the raised design show through the red violet paint as blue violet.  

I laid the canvas rectangle down on some hand dyed red violet and some black batting.  I then stitched around the raised designs and stitched long, wavy, close together lines in the yellow green background all using yellow green thread.  The red violet background was quilted with a finger print design using a slightly darker red violet thread.  

I really like how the two stitching motifs are playing off of each other and how bold the contrasts are.  It was a fun piece to do.

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Sunday, June 2, 2013

Good Evening,

Here is today's new piece.  It is a combination of a hand drawn eye from my class last week along with hand painted fabrics and hand dyed fabrics.  It's a weird collage but I like it.  The painted bits are all from one fabric that I painted.  They look so different when cut apart.  I like how the blue green background sits quietly by while everything else struggles to find it's place.  Both the white and the yellow want to win and the other painted pieces are sitting in various layers of the  mid ground.  

The quilting is all simple; top stitching along the edges of the shapes, stippling in the background, outlining in the eye and herky jerkey on the eyebrow.  I now wish that I had put something sheer over the whole thing and ripped it away to clearly reveal just the eye.  Maybe next time.

Till tomorrow,

Heather

 

Art Every Day, Saturday, June 1, 2013

Good Evening,

Here is today's new piece.  It began with another of the faces that I drew in the face painting class that I took yesterday with Robin Sruoginis.  This face is very simple with almost no detail, just getting a feel for the "bones" of a face.

To make this piece I simply layered her on top of a blue cotton voile which is set on top of violet painted batting.  I tore a bunch of strips of cotton and silk fabrics in the analogous run from yellow orange to violet and stitched them down with the strips hanging down in her face.  The I turned the strips up and over to look like they were being swept by the wind.  I'm quite pleased with the effect.  

The quilting in the face is simple, I just stitched along the major lines of the lips, nose, chin, ear and neck.  Then I added her eyebrows and finished with some light blue in her irises.  The white background is stitched in wavy, vertical lines that are about 1/8" apart and the blue background is stitched with a small stipple.  Again, I like this piece.  I LOVE learning new skills and plan to draw a lot more.

Till tomorrow,

Heather