Viewpoints 9: June 2016

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

These Days

by Misik Kim

After I finished our work for the special exhibition, many fabrics were left.

While working, I went on a journey into the past.

To my beautiful day….

I used these fabrics for my work of Alicia’s challenge.

There were many kind of letters.

Some of them were not used, some of them were changed too much now.

It is interesting for me

I enjoyed cutting and connecting,

I think that I live in many memories now.

Materials : Digital printed fabrics, commercial cotton.

Size : 40 (H) X 32( W)

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Women's Roles in Sapa, Vietnam

Visiting another country on holiday and seeing the many roles of the women of the Sapa region, Vietnam inspired my quilt design. Here the women are multi-skilled in farming, domestic duties and the production of their traditional clothing which their adorn with embroidery, patchwork or indigo batik. The women grow, process and weave hemp into lengths for clothing. They use natural indigo to dye the hemp cloth.

The Museum in Sapa had many story boards of the village production processes. It was fascinating reading.

Old textiles are recycled into bags, wall hangings, jackets etc sold at the market by the women who often have started their day in the fields before walking long distances to sell items.

These are some of the recycled embroidered pieces made into neck pieces, based on those worn by women of the Black Hmong ethnic groups.

Back baskets carry everything needed for daily life and this was a common morning procession. We spent 9 days in the area and I bought a few small embroidered items, cut from clothing to use in my work so when the challenge was announced I was still in Sapa and thought about my designs for a quilt. I also had a piece of batik fabric I had made a few years ago. This fabric piece had the family roles of women written on it- wife, mother, sister, aunt, daughter, grandmother and was a perfect inclusion. The women of Sapa work very hard in all their roles.

Women's Roles in Sapa, Vietnam

18"W x 40.5"L [46cm w x 102.5cm]

Women in Sapa, Vietnam work very hard in their family roles and those of farm worker and textile producer and seller. The batik text in the central section lists familial roles while the three short woven hemp, indigo dyed with embroidery strips, showcase their needle skills. I have reversed the strip under the batik to show the hidden side of the piece, just as we don't see all the women do in a day's work. The necklaces are stitched and hand painted over the batik section.

Detail

Materials: cotton, hemp, embroidery thread, wax, dye, paint, batting, thread.

Techniques: batik text hand drawn, hand painted, hand couched, hand woven fabric, machine pieced, machine quilted.

The Magic of Shakespeare

I am a great fan of Shakespeare. I particularly love some of his more magical plays, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I saw recently again, twice - once at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and once on the BBC - an extraordinary version dreamed onto the TV screen by the team that made Dr Who - so you can imagine the fabulous effects they used to work magic on the viewers!

This quilt is called "The Play's the Thing" and uses Shakespeare's titles to work a design with text on a dark background. It is made with a fused appliqué technique, and it is 40" by 33". Measurements are the wrong way round - but it could be hanged the other way, as the titles are both vertical and horizontal.

Greek Isle: Le Journey

This past several months the news has been full of extraordinary, very disturbing images of failed attempts by masses of individuals and families trying to flee war and poverty, no matter the perils. The image I can't erase is a beachside on a Greek isle, mounded high with piles of color-filled clothing, sprinkled with life-vests. Detritus washed ashore from failed attempts to cross out of North Africa to hoped-for security in Europe.

With this imagery in mind I searched my stash of text. I like text, especially foreign text. Text that doesn't necessarily mean anything to me, it just looks interesting. Because of this, I collect text...so far the collection is fairly limited to English, French, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It was from this collection that I found a piece...a vintage, rough linen sack with cursive French.

Jumping off the fabric was 'le journey' and I knew where I was going.

Combining African fabrics with this linen, I built an island based on the traditional log cabin quilt block to underscore mankind's most basic and longed for right: HOME.

detail

Greek Isle: Le Journey 40"x42"

Dream Tree

by Lin Hsin-Chen

Every time I complete an international exhibition project, I create a work to celebrate the time I spend. This is the one that I created for Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition 2016. I would like to thank all my friends for making our dreams come true. The dream now becomes a common recollection. A lifetime memory can be dignified, romantic, resplendent, surprised, unexpected, frustrated and hard-won. We must learn to accept all of them and keep them in mind constantly. It is the start of happiness.

When I was a kid, I used to have a variety of abstract ideas. At that age, I had no idea about taking actions and making dreams come true, and I didn’t know that failures are opportunities for self-learning. Dreams are like flowers. What a beautiful picture it is to hang them on a tree and grow with them. Dreams can be real or surreal. Without great determination, it is never easy to make dreams come true. Flowers bloom, big or small, present or past, and I hope one day there will be a tree full of flowers. And there comes another distant and big dream.

Thinking is the theme I chose for myself at the beginning of the third cycle of Viewpoints 9. The reason is that rather than indulge in fantasy and end up with nothing, I want to take actions and keep records of not only stunning works and exhibitions, but also words. I enjoy combining text and flowers in this challenge, and let them bloom together on the tree. Such a good thing! Thank you, Alicia, for the topic.

Materials: hand-dyed fabrics, commercial cottons, silk, hand-dyed threads

Techniques: hand stitched, hand pieced, hand appliquéd

Size: 100 x 100 (cm)

I would like to show you an unexpected beauty of this work. I was absolutely fascinated by it. It made me postpone batting and quilting process. But I do enjoy such delaying. Hope you will also like it. Here it is! I put it on a window after I completed piecing. The backlit photo gives me lots of ideas of quilting design, which means, I have not quilted the work yet. I look forward to sharing photos once it is quilted.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Words cannot express...

How do you depict Joy?

I love words: their shape, their meaning, their sound. So much contained in so little, but somehow, never enough. I cannot imagine this generation will not learn the beauty of cursive writing and how creating the flow and shapes of words is artistic and calming.

As a writer, this challenge thrilled me. I often use words in my quilts and I’m continually seeking the best methods and tools to represent them either explicitly or implicitly in my art. My husband would say I’ve wasted lots of money chasing the perfect way, but I’d say I’ve learned a lot!

The words in the background of this quilt were written with white Liquitex paint via a small bottle and 9mm tip. The technique was loosely inspired by an article in Quilting Arts Magazine June/July 2015 issue by Sue Bleiweiss. The actual words tell my story as a high school swimmer and the joy of the water and the discipline of training.

Water is my theme for this cycle and I had this picture of a dear friend’s daughter from a Christmas card years ago. I was captivated by the total joy in her daughter’s face and asked if I could represent it in a quilt one day. Alicia’s challenge was the perfect opportunity to combine the inspiration of words with the raw emotion of this beautiful child.

“Joy” measures 29” W X 40” H. It is whole cloth painted using Liquitex soft body acrylic paints and Derwent Inktense pencils. It is quilted with cotton and polyester threads.

Original Photo

Back

Writing Detail

Sketchbook

For the Text Challenge, my goal was to create a composition that resembles a page torn out of my sketchbook. Normally I do most of my pre-quilt "sketching" on paper, in my head and on the computer.

But this time, a piece of white fabric was my paper and I used it to plan my next quilt. Whatever I would have done on paper or in my head, I worked it out on this fabric.

Using a ruler I first mapped out a rectangle in Fibonacci's golden ratio, then added a spiral with red marker.

From there I sketched out my design (in this case a Monarch caterpillar in the beginning stages of forming a cocoon) first in pencil then later with sharpie marker. I mapped out the color schemes and labelled it here as I would do on a paper pattern. Then I went about choosing the fabrics.

All the while, I made notes to myself about what this image means to me personally - how the caterpillar in a cocoon reminds me of the creative "hibernation" I've been in lately. Maybe the state of being dormant can be used as an opportunity to transition into something fresh and new.

So this piece is really a physical object representing my thought process.

This isn't technically a quilt by standard definition. Although I may add stabilizer to the back, I didn't want to quilt it with 3 layers. To me, finishing it as a quilt would make it too precious, too substantial and planned out. I really wanted to keep it looking like a thin sheet of paper; something I can add notes to anytime, or rest my coffee mug on, or cross things out and add new ideas etc. Like the caterpillar, it's not a beautiful thing yet. But it has all the potential.

technical details:

Finished size 35"W x 42"H

materials used: graphite and colored pencils, sharpie marker, hand dyed and commercial cotton fabric

Sketchbook

For the Text Challenge, my goal was to create a composition that resembles a page torn out of my sketchbook. Normally I do most of my pre-quilt "sketching" on paper, in my head and on the computer.

But this time, a piece of white fabric was my paper and I used it to plan my next quilt. Whatever I would have done on paper or in my head, I worked it out on this fabric.

Using a ruler I first mapped out a rectangle in Fibonacci's golden ratio, then added a spiral with red marker.

So this piece is really a physical object representing my thought process.

technical details:

Finished size 35"W x 42"H

materials used: graphite and colored pencils, sharpie marker, hand dyed and commercial cotton fabric

Pulse

A month ago today, at 2:06 am, Eddie Justice texted his mother from a bathroom inside Pulse, an Orlando, FL nightclub. "Mommy I love you" he started. Back and forth, they shared the terror of the event as it unfolded. "I'm going to die". By the end of the night, he and 48 other members of the LGBTQ community and their allies had been killed. Among them, young men, young women, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

A year ago at this time, I was sewing hearts for the victims of the Charleston, SC shooting.

I'm sick of making hearts...not that I don't want to comfort the hurt and hurting. Not that the act of sewing is not a soothing catharsis for me. But this cycle of violence must end. In the month that has passed since the horrific Pulse shooting, hundreds of innocent lives have been taken from Baghdad to Baton Rouge. Many more have been shattered and changed forever. My heart breaks. I don't have answers, but I am looking.

Quilt details: Machine pieced, machine quilted commercial cotton prints.

Pulse, detail

Friendship

I was not enamored of the challenge to use text in my work, I particularly dislike spelling out the meaning too specifically, preferring to let viewers draw their own inferences.
However, I changed my mind during our recent trip to Taiwan- the warmth and hospitality shown to Martha and I by Hsin-Chen, her staff and family and our talented, appreciative and fun students made memories to treasure forever.

The beauty and incredible variety of the Chinese writing we saw everywhere was inspiring too, do I resolved to use it in a way to honor our host country and its people.

We spent a good deal of time on foot exploring-
the lush vegetation made the environment very different from my home in the desert.

I spent a fun day alone, making rubbings of the exotic leaves I found in my wanderings.

Then I asked Miss Lee, our translator, to write out "friendship through art" for me in Chinese.

I digitally extracted the text, and combined it on top of a photo of a wall of the old building above-

the text is repeated a dozen times, in varying sizes to become a graffiti like background element.

After the fabric came back from the printer, I spread out the colorful leaf rubbings from Tainan. and began to cut out additional branches for them...

you can see parts of the text peeping through the vibrant, healing leaves growing over the crumbling wall.

Friendship, 40x33"dedicated to all the wonderful people who made TAQS '16 happen!

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Text on Fabric

Letters, words, phrases, paragraphs – in short, text on fabric - are very appealing elements of design. The letters can be clear or garbled; they can be read easily or not at all. Their meaning can be part of the quilt’s idea, or just a background part of the design.

Reflection 4 by Jette Clover

Letters and words could be applied with many different methods and tools: embroidery, fused appliqué, pens, paint, computer printing, screen-printing, thermofax, ironing paper transfers, and many more.

Walk in Orville by Susan Shie - detail

I challenge you to incorporate an element of text into your next quilt. It doesn’t matter what size the text section is, neither it should be necessarily readable - as long as it is sufficiently visible to be understood as a clear component of the design of the work.

Alicia Merrett - Mayfair 1761 - detail

Text printed on other materials - paper or whatever - can also be incorporated, as long as the finished piece has some fabric on it. We will continue with the size of 40” high, and whichever width you prefer - in this case, even long narrow strips will be acceptable!

Thursday, June 23, 2016

No words...

This has been a really tough challenge for me. I've thought about it since it was proposed and have gone through several vastly different ideas. I admit, I find text a challenge to insert into my work without feeling it is contrived. As Hsin-Chen has pointed out, there are those that are adept at adding text and making it part of the artistry....just not me. So, I've been exploring different ways to approach the challenge and collected some random thoughts to share.

One interesting idea was exploring punctuation. As our language uses more and more emojis to non-verbally express our thoughts and feelings, we are using less and less of our historical punctuation, or at least using it correctly less often. It was like opening Pandora's box reading about the misuse of punctuation. The unnecessary use of quotation marks - as in, he calls himself an "artist", or the over use of other punctuation marks!!! Which, you ask??? I'm guilty of these. If you are concerned about them, you can participate in National Punctuation Day on September 24th each year, celebrating and promoting the proper use of punctuation.

I read a bit about punctuation marks that never really took off or have fallen from use such the Interrobang:

Somewhat self-explanatory - - it asks a question in an excited manor, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question or asks a rhetorical question. Wikipedia's example is: You're pregnant‽

How about the Percontation point or Irony mark:

It was first introduced in the 16th century (!) and became known as the rhetorical question mark, later falling from use in the 17th century. At that time, it was suggested the symbol be called an Irony mark and used to indicate that a sentence could be understood at a different level, such as sarcasm or irony. Seems useful enough...

Or these more recent additions, the Exclamation comma or Question Comma:

"Now you can be excited or inquisitive without having to end the sentence"

One of the really interesting things I read about - and never really considered - was the way that social media and the internet has repurposed some punctuation. In particular, the at sign, "@", can be traced back to the 16th century. Historically used as an accounting symbol or commercial unit abbreviation - 12 units @ $2.00 each, it became a critical part of email addresses in 1971. Also, the number sign (or pound sign), "#", which since the 1800's has had a variety of uses from mathematics to music. In 2007 it was immortalized by Chris Messina when he suggested on Twitter that it be used to identify groups - an thus, the hashtag was born.

#Viewpoints9, #Challenge8, #ideasIamnotusing

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Charm of Text

by Lin Hsin-Chen

It is interesting to incorporate text into quilts. There are several works like that at Taiwan International Quilt Exhibition 2016. Artists include letters, words and even totems in their works with many different techniques. Those quilts with text are appealing to viewers. Text also helps to communicate and tell stories, just like the artists are having dialogues with viewers at the venue. Amazing! The power of art is boundless. The 481 quilts from 21 countries exhibited in Taiwan show viewers a variety of innovative techniques and materials, and they are playing the role of art quilt promoters. I am very pleased to share my observations with you. I will send the TIQE 2016 catalogue to V9 members soon! You can read more about the following quilts in the book! Happy creating!