Night Rider's Lament

There is an old Cowboy song made popular by Jerry Jeff Walker called Night Rider's Lament.  Lots of singers have a version out.  Nanci Griffin has an excellent version. This song sums up what it is to be an Artist in my mind.  A repeating theme goes something like this, "Why do you ride for your money?  Why do you rope for short pay?    You ain't getting nowhere and you are loosing your share.  Ah....You must have gone crazy out there."  Every word in this song represents my life long dedication to making things.  Again, Why?  You can't think about how much money you can make or whether you will be famous, well known,  etc.  You have these creative ideas in your head.  They float around and gain momentum.  Art is made when you put these ideas into motion.  You have to be fearless in your belief that this is the most important thing that you can do during your short visit to this planet.  The poetry of what you have to say becomes a fluid motion with a concrete end.  Practical problem solving is not what motivates art work.  It is the craftsmanship that must take over after the ideas have been hatched.  Problem solving has nothing to do with creativity... painting by numbers, connecting the dots.  Jump off the ledge.  There cannot be borders in art.  Move from one medium to the next........You have my permission to create...no borders.  Work from the neck up,and call the shots on your own terms.  Turn the music up loud, take the phone off the hook, close your studio door..................


AND get out there......see the hawk on the wing, the northern lights, meteor light shows at 2 am, yellow Paint Brush, Red Columbines, and drink some Bourbon by the fire after a good day of work.

Q

This was my last trip, Monday, to Indian Peaks Wilderness on the wild St. Vrain River with my riding partner, Reyna, and good horses Squish and Myrna.  August in the Colorado High Country cannot be surpassed.  I almost fell off my horse as the creative ideas flowed in one end and out the other....Ha.  Get up in the morning and make something.

Fire Season #1

Tonight is the opening of the Muse show in Durango at the Art Center.  I am very sad that I am missing it.  A friend of mine is on the board at the Museum and she said that the show is having a great response with the public.  There are so many wonderful pieces from the members of Front Range Creative Quilters.   My piece Fire Season #1 was inspired by a comment from a Quick Mart employee in Frisco, Colorado.  He said that it was very amusing that tourist in the area were coming in to buy gas and asking what variety the beautiful red fur trees were.  Of course they were the trees that were dying from the pine beetle disease.  The Veridian Green trees of the old forrest were such a contrast to the dying ones in their Rusty Red coloration.  The contrast of dark and light against the blue sky floated around in my brain for days.  The stark contrast with the lingering Winter snow brought out colors to their maximum contrast and texture.  Then the whole composition came to me in a flash.  It was late spring and the Aspen Green was so startling.  The colors are changing and will not go back to what I have grown up with for a very long time.  I may not see it return in my lifetime.  What I am embracing in this piece is "change".  You can't stop it:  you just have to move with it.

This is a detail of the stitching.

Writer's Block

I am finished with a major project.  Security Blanket #4 completed.  I photographed, entered and sent off my first International Show application......absolutely no hopes of getting in.......but I need to start getting my work out there.  Security Blanket 2, 3, 4 was sent off to Visions Art Museum.  So this morning I woke up with nothing to do.  What's next?  My life long philosophy of "just get up in the morning and make something" pulled me through.  I started a new series of hot pads. Yes hot pads, just to work with new color, shape,  texture and patterns.  My mind is now active and alert.  Once again I shortened my down time away from the studio.  On the subject of "writer's block",  Ernest Hemingway was in paris in the 20's  His philosophy was that he never stopped writing.  When a chapter, book, etc., was finished, he kept working, even if it was 2 am.  He would jump to the next idea, chapter, book, magazine article and write...even if it was only a leading sentence.  As an artist I have tried to follow his advice.  Before you leave the studio at night write a sentence down or pick fabric for the next day.   It has served me well.  As a ceramic artist, the hardest thing was getting back to work after the kiln was stacked, pots fired, orders shipped and the studio empty. I would keep the next idea going with a sketch or write down my ideas.  Sometimes this worked and sometimes not.  But mostly it did work.

When you have something tragic or emotional happen in your life I have found that this does not work.  In January of this year my horse of 20 years slipped on the ice and could not get  up.  I called the vet and had her put down.  I was immobile for 2-3 months. This is the first time I have  been able to talk about it.  Such a sad, sad day.......Creative block hits at the most inconvenient times.  The thing that got me back to work were several unfinished fiber pieces.  Don't turn your nose up at functional hot pads, coffee mugs, pie plates, baby quilts, place matts, etc. They can be the catalyst that pull you up again.  So leave some of those UFO's hanging around your studio........

Security Blanket #3

I have so many ideas coming at me from all directions.  I am working on Security Blanket #3 today.  Each one has its own color scheme and contrasts of texture, color, shape.  I am working so fast that I am forgetting to ask "Why?"  Ha.  I find that when I am working like this, everything falls behind.  I see the piece in my mind when I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning.  It, the piece that I am currently working on, is taking on its own story and driving me crazy.  Older pieces sometimes make their voices heard too.  "Why did you use pink?  You hate pink.....etc."  I like writing this blog because it calms me down.  Writing your thoughts down in a journal form helps make ideas tangible.  I encourage all of you out there to organize your ideas and projects on "paper".   You never know what is going to come out.  Thoughts that are only casually formed, start to take on a new direction and become much better that if you didn't write them down.  I find that blogging leads to more creative thinking, taking me farther  to formulate my ideas  in words.  In general, I am not a very verbal person.  I am visual as in seeing everything at one time surrounded by environment, colors, shapes...it drives me crazy.

John Roloff

The most amazing thing happened at our studio a couple of weeks ago.  John Roloff turned up from California and started a clay sculpture in my husband, Steve Briggs's, clay studio. (My old studio too.)  John is making a ship of clay in geological time that will be installed at the Denver Art Museum in their current exhibit:  Overthrown:  Clay Without Limits.  The show opens June 10, 2011 in the Hamilton Building.  John's work is a large-scale installation that will take up a whole room.  Steve and John went out to local clay pits and dug a great amount of clay in the various geological formations that run along the front range of Denver.

Here is what the form looked like that he filled with clay:

John and Steve worked for three very long days until it was finished.  It has been drying in our studio for  a week or more and the two days ago a crew of movers from the museum came to pick it up in a very large white truck. 

John will take the mold off at the installation in the Museum and add some other things to make it complete.  I can not wait until the opening when I can see what he has done.  As I said, it is all very exciting.  His show is part of a larger show that will take over the whole DAM called MARVELOUS MUD:  Clay Around the World.  

Jane LaFazio

I am loving blogging! There is such a sharing world out there. Especially in the Fiber Arts world. Each new blog that I discover adds to my overall being as an artist. There is such a community of mostly women, who are generously sharing ideas and techniques.......I love it! Mostly I love the blogs that ask "Why?"

This morning I discovered the Blogs of Jane Lafazio. Fantastic. And she is in San Diego which is a city that I frequent! Ha....Go Jane.

This last week I attended, for one night only, the national SAQA convention in Denver at the Brown Palace.....it was very interesting. The expense was way beyond my means, so I had an invitation to the cocktail hour only. There was a trunk show that was fantastic. However, there were no names on any of the work. Why? Damn it, Why? I had a great deal of fun there. Many of the attendees I knew through Front Range Contemporary Quilters, a Denver area group. I'm getting too old to be a starving artist. Another highlight was the arrival of Vice President Biden in a gargantuan Limo. We passed so many cops on the way in and out of the Brown Palace...It was very interesting.

Revisiting "Green Art"

Security Blanket #2

Now that I think about it my Security Blanket series is using the tag ends in the composition. The tag ends normally would have been thrown out by most sewers and quilters. This is probably the best example of "repurposing" items for Art. Ha.....the difference is that I did not start with the premiss of making Green Art. I didn't even see it until recently when a friend pointed it out...So look in your trash bin and see what is in there that you can use. I am stopping at banana peels tho. Most of the fabric in this series is from a Garage Sale. I am resisting the title of green or repurpose or recycle. Again, Why?

More on the why of things........

When I start a new fiber piece I generally have a pretty good idea how it will turn out, what it will look like, before I start. In other words the finished product. First I assemble the colors and thread that I'll need. I cut the shapes and place them on my "wall". Then I start asking myself why this shape, or why this color, or why this texture. And above all...is this an original idea. Who are my influences. If there is a strong influence, I ask myself if I am directly plagiarizing or taking the idea to another level. If in my questioning I discover an unconscious copying then I will scratch the whole project. Next the process of elimination takes place. I almost always use too many of everything. This may take several days or a week. I'll go away, come back, and then go away again. Or I will work on another piece. The idea of the piece never leaves me. I think about it all the time....when I am in the barn feeding horses, the grocery store, at a friend's house, walking with my dog, etc. This is the stage when intuition plays the biggest part. I probably should not be allowed to cross the road by myself. I am very spacey and preoccupied.

After the questioning of why I am doing this piece comes the "how to do it". The cutting, fusing, quilting, etc. then goes very fast. Sometimes the end result will not be like anything that I started with. This is the fun phase where creativity takes over and the Art Gods move into my head. Nothing can be predicted from this point on. I never stop asking why this or that. I play with an idea until it works.

Always remember that the word plagiarize means taking someone else's work and making it your own. And without credit to the original.

"Why" comes back again.....

I belong to several art quilt groups and they are always asking how to do this and how to do that. I ask, "Why do you do that and for what reason and to what end?" It is too easy to take a number of classes that teach how to do various techniques and then adapt them to your work. Soon your fiber art/quilts will look just like the teacher. It is a dead end that I try to avoid. I have had several teachers that have such strong wills that it has been hard for me to shake their attitudes after I leave their presence. This sometimes leaves me with a creative block. After some time has passed the advice from the better teachers comes back to me and I start the process of asking "Why?" again. I try to take the best of their advice and throw the rest away. I have an inter voice that I try to listen to at all times. The title of my blog is The Art of Why. I just need to remind myself to always ask questions and try to find a logical answer. Sometimes logic escapes me and creative juices take over. After a piece of art work is underway and the craziness of it has passed I can then ask why. These were just some things that I was thinking about this morning.

Golden Quilt Museum "Frontiers" Exhibit

Well...the opening of the quilt show at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum came off well. I made it through the evening without spilling wine, forgetting someone's name or falling down. I did loose my purse with $100.00 cash in it for around 2 hours. It was still on the table in the middle of the room where I had left it. The quilt is called Security Blanket #1. There was quite a discussion about the process of "tag ends" or "security blankets" that I used. Mostly long time quilters recognized what I had used and said "Oh, yes, I know what those are." Afterwards we went out to dinner in Golden with friends and had a wild time. At the end of the evening I presented all with fiber art Fortune Cookies with real groaner pithy mottos. I am really grateful to my friends who came out on a Friday night to support me. For they were thinking "Quilt Show", but gee this is going to be boring. They were surprised and amazed at the talent of the women that displayed their work in this show. So, I guess I am not a virgin any longer. Look out quilting world, here I come..........

Security Blankets

I haven't posted for a while. I'm working on a series of fiber pieces that I call Security Blankets. I have saved all the tag ends of my sewing table. The texture is so wonderful and deeply rich. The project has produced 2 so far and I am working on the 3rd piece. I know that almost no one is reading this blog, which makes it even better. I am thinking of it as a journal instead. I have a few blogs that I read on a regular basis and the advise from these people is to just write every day. Forget content, forget the world, just get your ideas down.

Tonight I am making my first entry into exhibiting in the Fiber Arts world. I have been accepted into a show called Frontiers at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I feel so absolutely humble. The other quilt artists are so good and have been around for years and years. So...I am jumping into the fire.

I have found that the community of women making up the bulk of the Fiber Art World is a pretty awesome group. I have had such encouragement and positive feedback that it has allowed me to move forward with a swift learning curve.