Blog 14th - Say Yes

Now this is my idea of enough beading!

I have had this YES up on my wall for a while, and now it is time to pass it on. I have listed it for sale at http://robinsunne.etsy.com There are glass, stone, plastic, metal: all manner of little beadlings, about 1/2" of colorful beadifiers.

I learned YES at The Bread and Puppet Circus with my Haystack Mountain School of Crafts class from the summer of 1982. I still have the original small paper poster that first said YES to me. My YES is that I believe myself. That tiny piece of paper told my to hang in there with my dreams.

What is your YES? Let's have a Commenters Drawing: all of the commenters to this post, between now and the end of the month will be put into a hat and I will get one of my children to draw a name and you will win ... well, I will make up some wonderful little goody box of treats. Something will definately have beads on it!

O.K., so what or how is your YES? To whom did you say YES? Let us know...

R

blog 13th - Doodle applique

Good Morning ... or ... um, whenever it is for you,

Enclosed are two pictures of a piece that I took on the road with me yesterday. It is a homework assignment from my Creative Chick Doodling class, and involves one of my all time favorite passtimes: applique. Here is the first picture, of the overall:

Here is a close-up of the stitching.

Susan uses floss and a bigger needle and I have found that less rhythmic, (I have to pull so hard and my hand strength must not be what hers is), so I use a single thread and a size 12 needle - very tiny, but it glides through all of those fabric layers. I am calling this stitch a "cross-hatched-herringbone".

Let me see if I can make you a tutorial ... Here!

Once again my camera and I have not figured out how close I can get, but let me walk you through.

1. Come up at A, (I came up at the outside edge of the top fabric ). Go down at B, up at C, (1/8" or so inside the edge).

2. Go down at D, up at E, (outside edge).

3. Go down at F, up at G, (inside the edge).

4. Keep repeating 2. and 3. overlapping all of your cross-stitches. This is not a neat stitch, with the angles of the crosses all parallel. No, this is one of those dreaming stitches: your size 12 glides, you meditate, and Goddess takes care of all the angles.

It is doing a great job with all of those fraying edges too.

See ya tomorrow.

R

Blog 12th

Hmmm, my time is not enterely my own. This blog-a-day thing isn't quite happening. I am working on October Bird, but in the past few days have only gotten so much done. Anyway, here is so far:

Most of what I have done is just followed the green lines in the drawing with green beads - an activity that I find extremly satisfying, (or just easy and mindless). But I have also been figuring out some other embellishments:I have some area beading and some stacks that follow one of the blue lines. After the beads comes the trash. I have some silver papers picked out ...

See you tomorrow.

Blog 9th

So here I am in this November Blog-A-Day thing and I am not writing every day. 'Course I didn't find out about it until the third and so there goes that. I thought that it would be good practice for me in this my new Let's Be An Artist On The Web job though. Just to get used to working on the various pieces that I have going and inciting a sence of accountability.

Today's news is a bit mimimalist as I have been, as I said, working on two altered books for our library's Out Of Bounds art show next week. I will submit the books today. I hesitate to show pictures on the internet too soon for fear of "ruining the surprise". Or maybe it would be good advertising for the exhibition which is Friday through Sunday at the Rockport Opera House, here in Maine. Maybe I should go ask the Librarians.


Those done, I get to go back to October Bird. I have gotten her pink self about as embellished as I like. Here:

See those "feather" stitches on her wings? Get it? ... I really love the feeling of thread and beads on fabric. Lovely little Braille-like bumps telling intimate stories.

I have been thinking and talking about our physical beauty. Some people think that our beauty shouldn't be so important. But I keep thinking that often what someone looks like is our first knowledge of a person. Unless we know them in writing - like here on a blog, or an author in her book, or we hear someone on the radio. But as long as sight is one of our active senses, looks are what usually draw us first with the people in our lives. The other senses are more intimate - though maybe sound on the radio, or in a speech in a crowded place is less so - normal talking voices need proximity, touch needs, one hopes, permission, which implies a relationship. Smell requires a moment and nearness, and certainly taste implies relationship, even if you are only sucking the venom out of a snake bite and in the relationship of healer.

So touch is intimate, (I love to sew), and sight is our first knowledge of another. Why wouldn't our looks be important? We lowly humans who have lost much of our awarenesses of psychic skills. All I'm saying is: why fight that? Why shouldn't we train ourselves to use our beauty for whichever good causes we stand for? Dress up, look fabulous, and go speak about Peace, or Kindness to Mother Earth, or Voting. Not that dating isn't important too, but as long as people are being drawn in by the visual - well, why not use the audience to say something important?

Oh, all right. Enough. I am off to sew the sky.

Blog 8th - doodling and rubberstamping

Weeell, I don't want to show you just yet what I have really been working on: those final days before the show and all: OUT OF BOUNDS at http://www.rockport.lib.me.us/ our local library, is an art show of altered books! What a hoot! You go into the library expecting to borrow books and on the way out there is a box of old books that they are giving awayfor us to cut up and paint and otherwise artistically mangle! The really cool part is that after the show during the weekend of the 16th, the library will keep certain books, (we'll be juried), to remain in circulation! You'll be able to go to the library and borrow art. Now how wonderful is that?

Next weekend I will show you my two altered books. For now I will show you a rubber stamp that I made:

It is 4" x 4" square. There it is all inked up. Below on paper:And below here it is printed on cloth. Cloth that I printed in Susan Sorrell's class on fabric painting.See the background shapes? They are paper clips laid over sun dyed fabric. I think that beading this one will be great.

Gotta go, more tomorrow.

She recognised you...

I heard this yesterday in a radio talk by Father Greg Boyle: "The woman was crying because she recognised you as the shape of God's heart." He runs a business in L.A. that hires ex-gang members. The 'you' in that quote was a man who, an ex-gang member, now works in the office hosting tours of the facility in Los Angeles, and who was just returning from a dinner at the White House. I sometimes feel like an ex-gang member myself. Different gang. We, the priveleged, slay with different weapons. Long story. I watched a boy play in the tidal mud and sunshine, looking, probably, for crabs in the shape of God's heart, and wondered what that felt like.

I worshipped the yearning in that woman's son in L.A. that made him charm the visitors, and I worshipped the yearning for krill in that little boy on the beach, and I wondered.

I worked on the heart of Heartroot yesterday.

Above the whole, below the root ...

and here the heart.I used golden iris beads, and pink translucent, and deep red, and gold, and gold translucent ... I sew the beads in, deep and full, wishing that I could recognise the shape of God's heart at my fingertips.

Blog 5th - dyed, beaded Timtex

Yipes! We had a power outage yesterday! I can now passionately add to my gratitudes list: I am grateful for bright, electric light to sew by. I am grateful for running water. I am grateful for sunshine on my diningroom table when I don't have electric lights. I am grateful that the Y had power. And, of course, I am grateful for all of those nice Central Maine Power people who fixed the broken transformer on our street at 9 o'clock at night!

Back to art:

Here is the heartroot!

And a side view to get a better sence of the depth and crustiness of the thing.

And a tiny beading tutorial.

Position One , on the far left there, is a stack: string two pony beads, (size 8), and then a seed bead, (size 11), pull the beads all the way down the thread until they rest against the fabric and go back through the two pony beads - NOT the seed bead - and down into the fabric. (One may stack up as many beads as one likes.)

Position Two, is what I have been calling a jump: string 6 seed beads and go back into the fabric a short distance away. The closer that you go back into the fabric , then the taller the "jump" will be.

Position Three, is a pony bead on its side - just a bit more height than a seed bead. I was trying to go from a low profile near the brick colored seed bead edge to a higher mound in the center of each root finger, the pony was a good first stage.

Position Four is that single seed bead which I also used as a filler.

Position Five is another stack: this is a stack of 6 seed beads and behind the front line of techniques is a stack in progress showing how you come back through all of the beads except one.

Sigh. Beads sure do make me happy. Oh! Y'know, I just remembered: on my 40th birthday, (which was a toughie for me, 50 was easier, just like Judy told me - that it is one or the other that gets you, but not both - anyway, on that birthday I only asked for beads. The giver's choice. It was great! I received beads that I might not have bought for myself but that have been terrific additions to many a project.

Remind me to tell you about Rudy and the chispas. Might explain my bead happiness.

R

blog 3rd - heartroot

I just found out about NaBloPoMo: National Blog Post Month, check it out at http://nablopomo.ning.com/

Now I have to write once a day - I thought that it would be good practice. Here is what I am working on today:

I dyed some Timtex - really stiff interfacing - and tried so hard to embroider it with floss, but gave that up for a line of beads. The Timtex is so stiff though that I was having trouble holding on to it as I navigated all of the twists of the line ...

so I cut the center out and now the beading goes a bit more easily. And I have an idea about sewing it all back together.

Here is the heart and the root. Not crusty enough yet. More, much more is needed.

But the Out of Bounds Altered Book Project is due in less than a week, and I am behind in my class, and I haven't finished October Bird yet, and here it is November... Yeah, I will have plenty to write about as long as I get my little fingers nimbling along here.

Wait 'til you see what I am going to do to the root.

silk painting with gel glue

I received, (Thank you Linda!), a silk painting kit for my birthday last year - do you ever do this?: I wanted to make the drawing that I did sooo special that I ended up not opening the box for over a year! Well, finally I did, and I was zooming along with the gutta-resist and ran out. I had just been doing those gel glue resists that Susan Sorrell taught us in her website class on fabric painting, so I pulled out the gel glue and kept on. Here is the result:

Here: let me show you another view:

See how the paint pools on the silk? I never really understood why so many folks like silk for a painting canvas ... now I get it.

The gel glue pattern in the blue space there was just scribbles. Gel glue is pale blue glue that one can get in one's local big box store, or many places where Elmer sells their other, regular white glue. I don't quite know why but it dries into a lovely resist and then will contain very watery fabric paint from section to section in a painting. The paint pools and dries in that lovely light/dark way.

Now, I was drawing the glue on in a pretty fast stroke, and had the nozzle open pretty wide, so I wonder, if either of those things were changed, if the "problems" of this painting could be minimized or even eradicated. Above you can see where there are thin threads of glue that dripped as I went from one place to another. See on the polka dots on the pink?

And see here:

These are her eyes, but the gel glue tends to spread out as it sits on the cloth, before it dries, and so here her eyes ended up having very little detail. Bummer. The glue is a bit thick and it takes some hand strength to draw an entire picture in gel, I was probably just excited, and wanted to get going. I will try another one using a much smaller opening to use less glue so that it won't spread around so much.

And as for drying: In Susan Sorrell's fabric painting class there was always lots to dry and then heat set. I blew out a brand new iron in my speed to get results. (Paint all over the bottom!!!)And then I remembered that my clothes dryer has this removable shelf that braces against the front and back of the dryer so that it doesn't spin, but does get all of the heat and moisture removing properties of the dryer. I snapped it in place yesterday, set in a couple of pieces that needed both drying and setting, this face piece amongst them. I think that I set it for 40 minutes or so on the highest heat setting, and voila! It worked perfectly!

Gel glue can be a bit of a pain to get out - washing, scrubbing and all - but I let the silk painting soak overnight in, initially, hot water, and this morning the glue was all gone. There also was NO color in the water, so the heat set worked. Yay. So I rinsed it, and ironed it, and feel much more confident now about going on to do more pieces without gumming up that new iron I'm gonna have to get.

Oooh! Ooooh! the gel glue, if I can get it to write thinly enough would be an awesome way to make a Robinsunne's Multiplication Clock on fabric!!! OH YEAH!!! Make it big enough to be a quilt! Sleep with your multiplication answers!!!

Website Updates

Good Day!

I have been working madly on a new page for my website: Robinsunne's Multiplication Clock. Here it is all completed. Directions - full, complete, free directions - are at my website http://robinsunne.com

One day I was teaching and - this sounds a little woo-woo, but its true - there, in my mind's eye was the RMC as a fairly whole picture. It seemed a natural for folks who wanted to practice their multiplication tables. One would draw out twelve circles for each of the twelve times tables and write in the numbers corresponding, 1. to their place around the circle of the clock, and 2. to their place out from the center of the clock.

So a student who already mostly knows their multiplications gets a chance to do a little geometry, and measurement, and gross motor movement, (it is 18" x 24"), and best of all: coloring. I am learning that repetition is the deep secret to learning a thing, and if the repetition can be spiced up with some other neural pathways then the learning goes all that much better.

I also have a philosophy about how art makes everything whole and complete, but more on that later.

My plan, now that I took some time to do a nice one to show off on the website, now that I know what goes into making the edges even, the numbers correct, and the sheer bliss of laying color down onto paper, is to get all of the high school and college students making a RMC. O.K., adults too. It is more delight than even I knew! It is also more challenging the more one knows. Getting those numbers all beautifully written, choosing colors, making perfect circles. And now I want to make one in fabric - like a quilt. I want to see someone do one in paint too. Or wood. Or, or, or ...

So, go to the flickr group site to post photos of how yours turned out: http://www.flickr.com/groups/robinsunnesmultiplicationclock/

And my web pages also got some new photos here and there in the last few days. And there are now links to subscribe to my newsletter which will always contain at least one new art project to do with yourself, or share with your family and friends.

Busy week at SunneSpot Central ...

phew!

R

New stitchings.

So this week, while still reeling, (in a nice way), from Susan Sorrell's class on fabric painting, I started drawing pictures on fabric, (not exACTly what we did in class, but related), and I started in with the permanent markers again. Here is the unembellished sky from my upcoming piece: "October Bird". Cool texture just with the drawing, I thought.
And next we have a getting-there, almost-embellished, view of her eye. O.K. Now we're in heaven. Well, almost. Not quite crusty enough for my liking. Yet.
Now, I am SO attracted to Susan Sorrell's stitching, and there are some other folks who have this heavy-stitching-technique-over-hand-painted-fabric thing going. I really like it. I, however, am not enamored over the practice of dragging those thick full needles through all that tightly woven fabric. I don't know how Susan does it. I kept resorting to pliers. (I can't possibly be doing it the way she does...)
So: as I continue, I will be working with my dear old size 12's. See that feather stitch gracing that hot pink line in the corner? Miles of eensy stitches in thread is more like it for me. Oh, yeah.
Now I have to go and finish with all that pink so that I can start on the blue.. and silver.. and trash!
R

Web addresses

Hmmm ... those cute little link buttons weren't working for me. drat!
Oh! but also my computer just hiccuped...
Here are the addresses

robinsunne.com
robinsunne.etsy.com
there.
And speaking of Columbus Day, check out the book 1421. A great read. The Chinese made the maps, that the Portugese had, that Chris used in 1492. -The Chinese maps were made 70 years before CC sailed-. Amazing. Now if we only knew what Alexander had in his library.
R

I have a website!!

Well, I have finally taken the plunge! And I just feel so brave to sit for hours at the computer and figure this all out. Take a peek!: robinsunne.com There are lots of links back to here, and a few to my also brand new etsy store! (What a learning curve this weekend!)
Whew!
Anyway, here are some pics from the website:
This is a quilted vessel that I talk about on the .com and have for sale at etsy.
Here is another quilted vessel. Y'know years ago, I was making a little art quilt and I put my quilting stitches so closely together that they made it all stiff. Boo Hoo says I ... until I realised that THIS could help me into my beloved, tactile third dimension. Yay.
This line of hearts is from Prayers II, an exquisite embellished applique that I did about a year ago. I adore the set and would love to put them out ... I will have to work on my in-house photography set up. Prayers I and II are each about 4' tall. I'm not quite sure how to get any clarity with the distance I'll need to get the whole piece in.
So, besides all that, this heartline - one small part of P. II - is my webpage header. I like how it turned out very much.
I had a little painting flurry two years ago, and made lots of Madonnas, and a few goddesses. This lovely is at my etsy
Oh! And Nannee gets to breathe some fresh air too. My first book. Self-published. She's at my etsy too. (Am I using those link buttons too much? I could be dangerous with all this computer info. - Oh Dear God In Heaven ... this stuff is so much fun ... D'y'spose God and Goddess send each other emails? yhwh @ yahoo .com???)
I'll stop.
Do go take a peek: robinsunne.com

fabric painting with permanent markers

Check this out:
So this is the latest in my pilgrimages into the land of fabric painting.
I was thinking about words again, after I wrote with gel glue a week or so ago, and this time I used different colors of permanent markers. I have a letter from my great, great, great, great uncle to his sister-in-law, (my g-g-g grandmother, Phebe), and when he ran out of space on the page, he just turned the paper 90 degrees and kept on writing. Well, it isn't all THAT legible, but I loved the design his wonderful thin writing made.
Here I wrote three different sentences in three different colors, and in three different directions. And I think that I like it.
Once I sew it into a doll costume and get it all embroidered or beaded, I think that the words will become a deep secret and all that will be left will be the color and the design.

The dolls are coming.
Love,
Robinsunne

I've been fabric painting...

So this is gel glue. I was told that it can be used as a resist. Thank you Susan!


I tried drawing little patterns that I am used to.





































Here, on that bottom row, I held the glue bottle way up high above the fabric and let it wiggle back and forth in those fascinating lines that honey and gel glue make when gravity or air or something has its silly way with goop.




Sometimes when I sew fabric layers together and my intent is to make a rather stiff quilt, I have used this pattern ... I think that I saw it once called stippling...?


Anyway, these spirals and floweries are all one continuous line. You can imagine how helpful that might be when free machine sewing.
















And then,
Because the drawing possibilities of the glue were working out so well,
I tried writing!
Which worked.


Mostly.


The "e" here and there would fill in.



One has to use one's very best cursive writing...









And then I painted!





This fabric is one of those white on white patterns - it looks a little gravelly beneath the blue.





But oh my! It turned out quite nicely.

Check out how the words did...



Hmmm... now where shall they go?

Stay tuned.
I have a plan.

Re: The Guantanamo Portrait Show

Adil's picture doesn't show up all that well on the computer. If you'd like to see the real thing it will be at the Lincoln Street Center, Rockland, Maine at the end of the month. Write to me if you want the specifics.

Amnesty Portrait is done!!

Oh! My!





I feel grateful, as I often do when I finish a piece, but even more so this time as this piece was a big challenge intellectually and in technique, as well as the usual juggling of time, and space, and inclination to get everything done.





All summer the plan for this portrait eluded my conscious thought, and I worried a bit. I also have this habit of coming through under extensive pressure of fiercely immanent deadlines, so I wasn't too, too worried ... still, committing to have a piece of artwork and having no idea what would be in the space above my nameplate on the wall was a bit intimidating.





Well, I started doing research on my ... my guy, my sitter, my Guantanamo detainee, Adil Abdul Hakim, and I learned that, short version: he is a Chinese Muslim, was escaping persecution in China by going to Afghanistan in 2001, when all hell broke loose in New York, and was captured by the United States as he was trying to get out to Pakistan, and brought to Guantanamo. For four years. And then released because the U.S. decided that he and his companions were not actually terrorists after all. (Not like there was a trial or anything.) Anyway, having been persecuted in China, for being a Muslim essentially, he and the other men have now moved to Albania and are trying to make a new home there.





It was the story of his being kicked out, and wrongfully judged, and moving to a new land, a new culture, a new language that finally made me realize why I had picked this man's profile way back in the spring.





Long story, but suffice to say: I can relate.





I sew. I don't know how I decided to paint this portrait ... I had this little fluttering idea about collage and handpainted backgrounds in artist's journals that I had been seeing in art books here and there.





I jumped.





A grid. One of those images that either makes my breath catch or my heart pound. I'd use a grid. An image of a house/home. Images of where Adil had been on his journey. Some of the desert colored ochre that had so fascinated me, and I'd used in the art quilts that I had done about this war back in 2003. XinJiang Province in China is full of desert land. Words. It was clear to me that moving around like that has some desperate questions with panic-y, frantic ears hardly able to hear the answers. The words of the answers came, just as they always do when I remember to pray the questions: quietly, softly, surely. I typed them all out. I half traced, half drew Adil's portrait. I got out my acrylic gel medium and practiced what I had read about in books, techniques that again, either made my breath stop or my heart pound, and I started to paint ... collage ... glue.





And, I believe, it worked.
Hmmm.. the words didn't come through. Starting at the upper left and circling clockwise:

"Where do you go when they kick you out?
Say your prayers so that they have meaning for you.
What if someone gave your spirit a bad name?
We are the God of our understanding.
What if the only home available is in a different language?
Find beauty.
What do you so when you are released?
Have compassion for yourself.
Who are you?"

So. Have a good day.

Amnesty International Portraits Show

Well, it is time to get to work.

Two years ago I participated in our local Amnesty International group's Portrait Show, and this month they are hosting another show. I'm in. The show is about detainees at Guantanamo. My person is Adil Abdul Hakim, who is a Chinese Muslim now living in Albania after four years in Guantanamo. It is a long, fascinating story that Human Rights Watches all over the world have been taking care to note. The thing is the Chinese government is also apparently likely to put him in jail, and so he, and some other Muslim Chinese men with China/Guantanamo histories have moved to Albania.

The thing that strikes me is this man's move from homelessness to home - something that resonates a chord in me.

And so:

(For some reason I am painting this time...)

Here goes:

The piece will be 24" x 24". In this photo I had just painted the canvas. This computer isn't showing the color quite correctly... the blues are soft, the whites are warm. I am enjoying them immensely. I added all the colors at once in preparation for the next step.

In this photo I am in the process of pouncing the wet paint with a rolled and twisted pad of paper towel. The colors blends and mixed perfectly. I was delighted.

Here I am painting the repetitive shapes with primer. They will lay on top of the painting in a grid. You'll see that there is a bit of texture and wrinkle to the "house".

This is the ripped tissue paper squares that I am painting into the surface.Can you see it? All this white on white...I set it all out to dry and in my next post I will show you the houses with some color and collage.

photographs! ... ?

Here are the iris from the other morning, I hope:

Yay! It worked! All I needed was high speed.

O.K. then, Here are the pictures of my foam board projects:

This first one is of the carving itself. As I said the other day, I only had a rather old exacto knife with me that day and this carving was my result.

But then I took it home and spray painted it. Spraypaint melts foamboard. Eew, environmentally speaking, but kind-of interesting as an effect.

Well, that's about all the blog excitement that I can stand for one day: learning how to upload pictures. See ya.

carved heart

Well, I carved as best as I could, but what with one thing and another, today was not the day to quiz the hardware folk, so I used a rather dull exacto and was somewhat pleased. See here:

Iris Morning: Project Day

Oooh! And what a gorgeous day it is too! Midsummer days at their best... clear and sunny and full of ... full of ... everything for us. I have been stunned by the beauty of our iris this last week. This precise blue-purple against the early green of summer keeps catching my breath. And we have so many, many of them. Yay. O. Yay

So: today's project: I have seen foam insulation board carved and painted into shapes and plaques, and I have tried to mimic the look but so far have managed to make a miserable mess of airborne blue bits which take me ages to clean up. So we will make a pilgrimage to the hardware store and see what ideas that they might have. I have been pondering the question of "What are my symbols?", and got to thinking that this medium might be a good one to work on some answers.

Breakfast done we will go draw some iris and then query the gentle foam board proprietor folk and then come home to make a mess, uh, I mean art.

I worked this morning on my beaded ribbon for the book. This is the angels one. I had an idea yesterday for the book. Less words, more art. I think that that might work.