Mola

Mola; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

My mom bought this mola in Arizona for me early this year. Isn't it gorgeous? I'd like to hang it as it is, without framing it, but first I need to add a hanging device that won't stress the textile. In 2001 I was in a four-person show called Red at the Textile Museum of Canada. Margaret Ballantyne, the conservator, generously taught me how to attach hanging devices that evenly distribute the tension and therefore don't stress textiles. Needless to say, I redid all my hanging devices for the show. She also showed me how to properly roll my textiles. The proper hanging device involves sewing a "female" strip of Velcro onto a muslin strip, and then hand-sewing the muslin strip-Velcro combo to the textile. To hang the textile, simply staple the "male" Velcro strip to the wall and press the male and female strips together. If you don't want to put staples in your wall, you can glue or staple the "male" Velcro strip to a thin piece of wood, drill holes on either end of the wood, and hang it level with two nails.

Mola detail; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

Back to the mola, don't the faces look like monkey kings? I wonder about the story behind this textile and who made it.

Mola detail; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

Mola detail; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

The above image reminds me of a Matryoshka doll.

Studio Series: Folded Patterns II

Smocked polka dot dress; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

In this post I wrote about seeing my young friend's smocked polka dot dress and being inspired by the distorted dots. I now have a picture of the dress to show you. Below is a pattern that I created from a scan of one of my folded drawings that I then put into repeat in Photoshop. I've digitally printed this pattern onto fabric, cut it into tag shapes, and then added my signature obsessive stitching.

Black & White folded pattern I © Karen Thiessen, 2012

Jamesville Ceramics & Paints

Old-fashioned hardware stores are a dying breed as mega-stores muscle them out of business. Jamesville Ceramics and Paints is the real deal and meets the needs of downtown Hamilton where mega-stores fear to tread (thank goodness!). The service is friendly and the store has soul. It's a place where you want to take your time looking at all the cool gizmos. I especially like the red and yellow stripes that mark a grade change from one part of the store to another. Whether you want to can a batch of tomatoes or caulk your old windows, you can find what you need at Jamesville Ceramics and Paints.

Quotes: Stephen King

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." – Stephen King

Week 37: Adobe Illustrator

Dotted Bulls-eye © Karen Thiessen, 2012

I practice Adobe Illustrator five days a week when I am not on vacation. This amounts to over 110 hours during 166 days this year so far. I have practiced yoga every day this year and this amounts to just over 100 hours during the 286 days in 2012 (as of today). From these statistics, it's obvious that Adobe Illustrator is claiming more of my time for 2012. On the other hand, I've practiced yoga for 17 years, and daily since Lent 2011 – that's 594 days in a row. Clearly AI has won the battle, but yoga has won the war.

My fascination with the dotted line is providing the right balance (a.k.a. diversion) to my current goal to get through the chapters on using text in Adobe Illustrator. This pattern has an Aboriginal Australian pattern feel to it.

Fibreworks 2012: Tammy Sutherland

Tammy Sutherland How to Lift, 2010; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

Fibreworks 2012 is a mix of intimate, engaging textiles and truly bizarre artwork. Tammy Sutherland's How to Lift fits the former category. Before I extoll the virtues of Tammy's work, I must come clean: Tammy is an old friend from our days at NSCAD. Nonetheless, my appreciation of her work is genuine, otherwise I wouldn't write about it here.

How to Lift is small: 38 cm wide by 29 cm high (15" X 11.4") and it is the smallest stand-alone piece in the show. Small is beautiful. The scale, intimate subject matter, irregular shape, and thoughtful details invite you to come close and take time with it and the quirky imagery forces you to come up with your own narrative of what it is about. Furthermore, that the piece is bound on three sides and not on the fourth, indicates to me that maybe this is the first piece of a series. Tammy's artist statement indicates that it is part of a series, but does not say where it resides.

Tammy Sutherland How to Lift, detail; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

The x's are a nice touch, as are the small details that you only notice once you've looked at it long enough, like the tiny red stitches that attach the head of the cartoon creature to the body of the textile.

Tammy Sutherland How to Lift, detail; Photo credit: Karen Thiessen, 2012

Tammy is now back in her home province of Manitoba where she juggles a studio practice, two young children, and work at the Manitoba Crafts Council. I hope to see more of her work make its way to Ontario.

For those who need to know more, here's the didactic text from the exhibition:

Tammy Sutherland, Winnipeg, MB
How to lift, 2010 
Hand-dyed and printed cotton, embroidery thread, appliqué, screen printing, hand and machine pieced

Artist Statement:

My art is an act of salvage. I reclaim "waste" materials through repetitive, contemplative and sometimes mind-numbing work. I work with the simplest of processes: hand sewing, open screen-printing, and improvisational dyeing and cutting.

This series of small quilted pieces features embroidered line drawn images inspired by first aid textbooks and newspaper clippings. Otherworldly appliquéd creatures and embellishments emerge from the artist's colourful scrap pile to accompany the unknowing human figures on their journey through an imagined "post-historic" landscape. The past may be closed to them, but an opening ahead beckons them into an infinite and borderless space.

These small tableaus may point towards vulnerability, loss, compassion and a messy kind of beauty.

* Photographs taken with permission from Mary Misner, Director of Cambridge Galleries

Supercrawl 2012: Papier Maché Necklace

A giant blobby necklace made of papier machéd balloons is probably not what you would expect to see on my blog. Neither the necklace nor the presentation are exceptional. The moment I saw the necklace I was reminded of a papier maché igloo that I made in Kindergarten and it brought back a flood of good memories. Unlike the above necklace, some of whose beads look soft and sunken, my igloo was sturdy. With another classmate, I covered a balloon with strips of paste covered newspaper, followed up with a layer of white paper towel. I can still remember the feel of the warm paste as I squeegeed the excess from the torn paper strip with my index and middle fingers before layering it onto the balloon. Once the papier machéd balloon was firm and dry, our teacher cut it in half, and cut a small half circle for the igloo door. Then I was free to draw pencil lines on my igloo to represent the snow bricks. Shortly after I made the igloo, my mom made a purple plaid dress coat with a matching hat for me. My ever practical mom appropriated my igloo to become the hat form. When I outgrew the hat and coat, they, along with my igloo, were given to another young girl. I still think about that igloo.

Reflecting on childhood crafts and my anxiety about an upcoming solo show, I was reminded of this Sheryl Crow quote:

"I called [Bob Dylan]. ... I said, "I am totally wigged out and I don't know what I am supposed to be doing, and I've got a lot of pressure to incorporate what's going on." He said, "Go back to your roots. Take out the albums that you loved and play those songs. Get your band together and rehearse those songs, and then you will start writing." And that's what I did." – Sheryl Crow, Rolling Stone, October 31, 2002.

Maybe it's time that I went back to my roots and played with papier maché once again.