Large and messy

Manos, first sketches from my notebooks.

Making art isn't all fun. It can be tedious, heartbreaking, fraught with failure. But, I mostly have fun. Or try to. And I mostly succeed. For me, there is no money involved. No pressure to please anyone but myself and my friends. 

Color Wheel of Lies words.

And I love having big, ongoing projects going with huge themes. Like "stitched words" and "colors." It's hard to describe how exciting it is to have a large, messy, growing art project inside of me. 

Gorging on color, but not sugar.

How good it feels to be open to experiences of color, for example, in whatever situation I find myself.  I stumble across a drawing Newton made of a color wheel and it thrills me. That it is in his handwriting and that he has spelled blue as bleu... this makes it even more delicious. And it will be stitched into my Color Wheel of Lies project.

Color Wheel, Newton.

Or I'm at the SAFF fiber festival with friends last month in Asheville and I see this beautiful yarn called "Nightfall." It starts out in an inky black and drains into wild, beautiful cherry. And I think, look at how beautifully wool absorbs dye. And I marvel at the marbling and variegation of a single skein.

Richly dyed yarn at SAFF.

So now, something new. Hands have captured my imagination. And blackwork embroidery. And suddenly I see hands everywhere. They are elegant parts of the human body. And I start collecting the hands of the people in my life in a big, black sketchbook.

Elegant hand.

And I'm inspired and moved about the wonderful variety of fingers and thumbs and palms. They are breathtaking.

My hand. I imagine the doodles in blackwork embroidery.

And for no good reason, here is this other wonderful, messy project inside of me. And I find inspiration for my Manos everywhere. And again, it makes my life feel full, fun and magical.

What else? Luchadora masks are rocking my world!
Me pretending to be a Luchadora.

WIPs: More maps, hips and colors

I know, I know. I'm stitching crazy slow these days.

Map of Carthage, NC, town square. Satin, chain, long & short,
wrapped back and regular back stitch.

My main two projects are the Suga Belt and the Color Wheel of Lies. And I'm gleefully stitching away at both.

Suga Belt is getting crazier and crazier!

I was distracted by a week of knitting. I'll admit it! But I'm back to stitching on these. And, damn, if I don't have 10,000 other art pieces brewing inside me, just begging to get out.

Latest words.

I'm happy with it all. Even if I finish only a few pieces a year. When I see the quantity of work other  people produce, I'm sometimes overwhelmed and a bit chafened by their amazing production. And here I am, stitching away, getting distracted by sketching and dreaming.

These are yummy to me.

Oh well.

New projects: Manos. And something involving vinyl and a drill. And lots of holiday gifts.

Sitting in bed, stitching. Happy.

I want to go to the corporate salt mines today like I want to turn my my new drill to my temple. But alas... It's not so bad.

Vote, dawgs!

This election season...

...get out there and vote!

It's hot!

More Sugar and a Map (to Find Me)

I love layers.

Woven spider wheel hydrogen, carbon & oxygen. Glucose.

In life and in making art, it's all about adding layers and peeling them away.

Whipped back stitch. Sucrose.

My Suga Belt keeps asking for more layers... chemicals and molecules and maps.  Ideas for new layers, like membranes or tiers, keep coming to me.

Adding a map of a town square to Suga Belt.

Now a map.

Whipped back stitch. Fructose.

Next a key?

Glucose from above.

I think. I can't see too far ahead of me in my life or in my art. But that's an exciting place to be.

International Art Project Born from a News Report

I've written about my sources of inspiration for art projects for other blogs and publications. On my own blog, I call these sources "Stitchsperation."

Hanne Bang's studio. Photo by Bang.

Here is a wonderful example of a perhaps insufficiently recognized well of inspiration: the news media.

Recently, I participated in an art project that rose from a news story, all of the players half a world away from me and from each other.

Danish artist Hanne Bang's amazing In A War, Someone Has To Die installation art piece was inspired by a television interview she heard of an out-of-work, professional African soldier, who uttered the line, "in a war, someone has to die."

(Read more about the evolution of the project here.)

Contributions by Katherine and me.

The exhibition opened last night in Copenhagen at Den Frie at KE12 Autumn Art. (Hang says, "KE12 is one of the most important juried exhibitions for contemporary art in Denmark.") It included my work and that of my friend Katherine, among 240-plus other contributors from around the world.  

So hear is my recommendation: Sit down with your local newspaper and sketchbook and play. There are layers and layers of ideas and stories and images to be found in the ink, on the gray paper.

Go.

Little Ennui People for the Phat Quarter Toys Swap

My brother Joe and I played with Fisher Price Little People far beyond the recommended age. We did so sneakily. And they weren't our Little People. They belonged to the bratty little daughter of our babysitter.

Little Ennui Girl.

As we played, we forgot for a little while how much we hated going to this babysitter's house, on a dirt road, far from home, far from our parents. The kids on that dirt road did not like us and we didn't understand why.

The whole, happy family.

Joe and I were passionate, intense kids. We suffered from ennui before we knew what that meant. And we were nerdy smart, so we knew that word at a young age.

Mid-stitch, happiness and ennui.

Picture two dark-haired, strangely pale kids with giant brown saucers for eyes, bent over these simple, brightly-colored, wooden peg people, plotting our escape to the circus, the amusement park, home... that was Joe and me.

Little People of our vintage.

So of course, I couldn't make accurate, smiling, dopey Mid-Century Little People for the Mr X Stitch Phat Quarter toys-themed swap. I made them look like Joe and me.

Little Ennui Cowboy.

And then, because I am on a Kanji kick, I included some Japanese characters for Little People, happiness, joy and laughter. Because that is what childhood is supposed to be about and that's what toys are intended to inspire, right?

She looks particularly tortured to me!

I'm happy that these little freaks now live with Leslie, a.k.a. lockedinthepark, in New York. (Check out Leslie's blog, crafts, feminism and more.) I feel she can appreciate their ennui.

Sparkle, sparkle.

My brother and I are now passionate, intense adults. I wish we could see each other more. It's not too late, Joe. We can still escape if you're up for it. Let's fill our pockets with an army of Little People and run away... are you in?

Big Yes! Clowns by Sailor Mouth

After being playfully chastised by Mr X Stitch for never having actually tried cross stitch (despite writing for his blog), I've been casting about for ideas for my first attempt into this new stitch territory.

Clowns by Sailor Mouth

And then I found the wild work of artist Sailor Mouth (a.k.a. Marshall Thompson). Sham-wow! His work is cool, creepy and wonderful. 

These clowns are freaky. If there is anyone who doesn't already find clowns scary, after seeing these insane images, they will learn clown-related fear!

Detail of a Clown, by Sailor Mouth.

I appreciate the menace he brought into the simple designs. And his use of primary colors. And the the way the red-striped, diamond-shaped frames play off the mad circus motif. 

Love this wild frame.

Check out more of Sailor Mouth's stitching and other artwork in his flickr stream. At times, the almost cartoon-like images strike me as the sleekest sticker art captured in stitch. Big yes, Sailor Mouth.

Now, time for me to try to cross stitch business!

"Big Yes!" is a blog feature where I share, with the artist’s permission, a piece of textile art that has opened my eyes to the possibility of what we can create.  When faced with things that are truly beautiful or moving or that fill me with awe, I try to say yes. More than that, Big Yes.

Layering on the sugar, taking my sweet time

Rushing to finish my Phat Quarter TOYS Swap, but I'm taking a little break this Friday afternoon to work on my Suga Belt.

Circles of glucose on the thigh. I'm thinking of woven
spider wheel stitch for those.

Layering on different things. Right now it's sugar molecules (sucrose, glucose and fructose) but I also want to stitch some compass points and map grids.

Sucrose on Sulky Solvy, stitching in back stitch.

Maybe I'm too much of a process artist. I love taking my time making. In no rush to finish. Just keep layering, creating and adding. That makes me happy.

Layering different molecules, planning.

Palimpsest. I like that word.

Before I cut up the piece from the main cloth and layered it
onto the black fabric.

Must stitch it.

The Night has 1000 Eyes in Hardscrabble, Wondrous Durham

The Durham Bull, looking like something
from Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain.

Yes, I've been stitching. Been sketching. Been working with thread and fabric and fiber.  But I've also been looking around me. Marveling at the broken loveliness of my life and of Durham.

Tobacco Town

For many years, before I ever picked up a needle and pierced a piece of cotton, I wrote. And I read wildly and widely. In my old life I had bookcases so full there were books behind the books. Layers of books. And I made photos... rolls of black and white, home developed, hung in strips from my shower. And I listened to Coltrane. And he told me that the Night has a Thousand Eyes.

Beauty in dirty brick.

Things don't work out the way one plans or hopes. (This is not a brilliant observation, I realize.) But when things have fallen apart, a creative person, an artist like me, finds new way of piecing the jumble back together. You look at what is in your immediate world and you go from there. 

Suga Belt, a piece inspired by an experience in another broken
NC town, Carthage.

So, my hyper-immediate world is my body and face, thus the self-portraits.

Durham is insanely green. Eno River State Park, twilight.

And my immediate surroundings are Durham, North Carolina, which Andy called "hardscrabble and wondrous" in an email one time. This description is so perfect for Durham... it has become a lens for me. 

Yet another photo of my aging self.

And maybe it describes me at my best.

Whirligigs, Treks and Art

Whirligigs, Vollis Simpson, photo by Alpesh Patel.

The last few weeks have been full of North Carolina traveling adventures. And some stitching. And a crack on the head that has slowed me down a tiny bit.

WIP: Suga Belt, 2012

Suga Belt remains in my hoop. I'm going to experiment with some fabric layering after I finish the stitching. I'm excited and nervous about that!

And the stitching of color words for my Color Wheel of Lies project is still going. I bring the little pieces with me everywhere I go.

Writing by giddie99

Stitching Dandelion on the beach. Writing by Becky Porter Stancill.

But what has really captured my attention these days is the gorgeous surroundings of my adopted state North Carolina.

Went to Oak Island one weekend.

From the Oak Island boardwalk.

Dawn, Oak Island.

And to Asheville and the Smokey Mountains the next.

Balsam Nature Trail, Mount Mitchell.

Clouds gathering at Mount Mitchell, highest peak east of the Mississippi.

And then hunted for whirligigs, created by North Carolina outsider artist Vollis Simpson in Johnston County, NC.

Lacuna, NC, whirligig by Vollis Simpson.

Horses in the sky. This whimsy inspires my TOYS swap piece for the Phat Quarter Swap.

So many gorgeous scenes to inspire my own art. I imagine stitched faces in the sand, washed ashore on drift wood or among the ferns and firs of boreal mountain trails.  And spirograph-like stitched wheels in the sky.

Ah, North Carolina, you are a beauty!