and the cold tightened it's fist,7'x5',paint,felt,red sand,rope,yarn,wool,glue,oil stick,white fabric, on canvas,Final Project-Susan Harmon

The making of ,and the cold tightened it's fist,details below,the red pieces are felt and the larger red areas are red wool and red sand,the blue areas were painting on a torn shirt

This piece is my personal response to the feelings I had about the book,between the shades of gray,about a Lithuanian young girl who draws pictures on anything she can to leave clues to her father about her where abouts. She has been sent to Siberia where the cold and life in the work camp are impossible to endure but she does.This is meant to be  a beautiful piece to represent the beauty she finds in such ugliness and the colors are symbolic of the pain and anger and blood she endures and the blue is simply about the extreme depression and cold she lives through.I listened to a scared Native American chant whist making this piece which evoked extreme emotion in me.Yet this chant and the story were beautiful.I hope this helps some of you to understand the piece better.Feedback is always welcome.

and the cold tightened it's fist-The Essay-Susan Harmon

APR

24

THE ESSAY ABOUT MY PROCESS 

THE ESSAY ABOUT MY PROCESS

QUOTE FROM JACKSON POLLOCK

"My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West... When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. “

My work embraces this attitude and method of painting especially in this art that I created.

MY PROCESS in creating art is always the same; whether I am making a clay piece or a painting or a photograph. I always begin by writing words on my studio walls,LARGE AND LARGER and then  small and smaller. The words continue spilling out from the book or books which are informing the art.  I am beginning to  to prepare my subconscious for making art. In the making of this piece, I kept thinking about the text book; the content, the guilds, the progress in crafts education, the individual artists/mentors/instructors. But that did not get me the end outcome that I hoped for, which as always,for me,is a work of art which is emotive. So I turned off the lights in my studio,I sat on the floor and crossed my legs and closed my eyes to clear my mind and start again. I asked myself the same questions we were asked in class, about each chapter:What surprised me? What Impressed me? What did I take away? This was too broad as there is just too much material in this book...so I decided to say to myself,What is the most important thing about this book to me?

I kept seeing in my head and hearing(what I assumed)would sound like  the chanting of Hosten Klah (Pages 109-110)."He wove sand painting rugs only for the chants that he was qualified to sing,including Night way,Shooting way and Mountain way."..."So here is the emotion,the passion which is the catalyst I had been searching fr to make me want to make this art.... to me these emotional, haunting and meaningful chants stimulated me to make this art..."His family looms for weaving ordinary rugs were not large enough to suit Klah,who had one built that would hold a rug twelve feet square."I also work very very large so now I am relating big time,I have emotion I have large size...now color,all my work focuses on intense color..."Other colors were derived from Mexican indigo and cochineal dyes."and there I have color....The making of this piece began effortless once I had listened to the chants and decided what I would paint.And then all of a sudden it changed... I had been thinking of the picture I was making for awhile and knew it had to grow and then I feverishly cut some canvas,tore up a blouse,glued this first piece onto the canvas and it grew and I glued and added red sand and rope and cut tiny precious pieces of felt and threw paint and let it drip.and blotted it and wiped it out and then added more color....and there it is..Quite honestly this was the 4th try the others just were not getting the subtleties and emotion I wanted.and it may not be done but I like the texture when close up and all the subtleties and i like the power of it from down the street as I drove up to my open garage to view the piece.Feedback welcomed,I am still adding a line here and there....I will try to post some details as this is 7'long and 5 ' tall.

.I was told this looks like a wound and the stitches which sew up a wound,how apropos.This is sand art,fabric ,rope and paint,size 7'x5'.

Oh...I have been also reading a book called between shades of gray about a young 15 year old girl during the Lithuanian Genocide by Stalin in 1940 and her life in a Siberian concentration camp so the words for the title of this art is taken from the book....

The quote below from the book I read for class just will not leave my mind so I put it here.

."What is white?
It is the colour of mourning,because it folds all colours within it.
Mourning is also endless refraction,breaking you up into bits,fragments".
Edmund De Waal

Gail Dentler - Final Project

         

  

"Afloat on the Llano River"

12"x 12" mini quilt

hand painted fabric

machine pieced, hand applique and embroidery

machine quilted

Detail of embroidery and machine quilting

Detail of painted fabric and quilting

          Crafts, to me,  involve movement of thought through an object to narrate a story.  As a child I grew up in a family that likes to stretch the truth, tell stories and loved watching movies.  As a visual learner it has always appealed to me, movement through a story.   Annie Currier’s pottery and Wharton Escher's staircase in Makers were my inspiration because they were able “to use a complex congregation of planes that you can follow with your eye and not end up where you thought you would be." (Makers, p406).  Their imagery and work creates movement and expresses the story of wandering and being okay with it in your process...as if they were leaving me bread crumbs to follow this advice to help me move forward in my work or to take a step in a new direction not knowing where it will lead.

          "Floating on the Llano River" was created for an exhibit with Studio Art Quilters, Texas Region.  A traveling trunk show on memories of Texas.  It is 12"x12" mini-quilt.  In the exhibit it will be hung with other fellow, central Texas region,  art quilter’s work on our memories of Texas.   

            My process began with inspiration from time spent in fellowship with friends and my favorite memory of kayaking down the Llano River.  I began with writing down favorite moments,  lessons learned and realizing the movement flowing through my inspiration.  I created drawing studies of movement in water,  meadows and dialogues of people, listening for rhythms to try and capture joy.    I tried to use an organic process in creating not necessarily drawing my quilt on paper but just started playing and sewing with fabric to see where it would lead me.  This approach is very new to me, I’m a confessed planner, so I took it in 30 min increments at first but by the end of the week I realized I was forgetting time, even my dogs 3:00 pm feeding.  As I took these new steps I felt a great appreciation for this organic movement letting go of fear and enjoying the new steps ahead of me.  Each step brought balance, revitalization and growth to trust the step forward. 

             I used a quilting technique of Foundation piecing to creating patterns of color to express joy and  gratefulness for having “like minded friends”.  I used acrylic paint and dye on Robert Kaufman’s, Radiance, natural, cotton fabric, painting boats floating in the water to express a journey ahead.  I appliqued flowers to represent the fruit of my work that blooms as I teach art,  exhibit or finish my classes with Tech

           I used embroidery to represent the ways we care for each other in friendships.  Embroidery is the process of embellishment with a needle.  This handwork creates movement and embellishes and nurtures the design.  Machine quilting is the finishing touch to the quilt.  Ending by sewing a pattern or mimicking a shape to bring repetition to the work.  Moving fabric under a quilting machine creates the last movement to finish the quilt.   I stitched a repetition of lines in the water, stitching to create flowing water around the boats and in the horizon.  I also mimicked the pattern of the cone flowers around the applique work.  Applique is used as figurative drawing with fabric or imagining designs with fabric. 

            Movement is a tool I use to help research rhythms, patterns, and connect  emotion in my drawings and studies.  It allows me to dissect and understand a story to interpret and narrate its vision.  I have to have movement through my artwork, created with line, repetition or pattern.  A congregation of these creates my visual movement nurturing the viewer to feel, see, and think. 

              Quilts always surface memories, good or bad.  The word, once spoken, creates thought about the viewer’s memory or attitude about technique.  It is my goal to use art quilts for narrating stories as my form of art making.   My thought is to create a dialogue through the artwork that encourages them in this life. 

               Complex planes and spiral staircases create a sense of adventure that inspired me to create, Afloat on the Llano River.

Justin Clumpner- Final Project

This project began with me wanting to take the portraits I normally paint and transform them into three-dimensional objects.  I have been making portraits influenced by the religious icons that have surrounded me my entire life.  Instead of representing the moral narratives of Biblical stories, I like to represent symbolic narratives of contemporary atrocities and imagery from our consumer-based culture.  I have heard many people from many walks of life refer to America as a “Christian Nation,” but I cannot find any saints who embody the American ideals of our contemporary criminal justice, immigration or foreign policy.  With my portraits, I attempt to create more accurate saints for our “Christian Nation.”

To make these Icons in sculpture, I began by using a two-part liquid plastic and some face molds I had saved from a teacher demonstration I did years ago to make a couple of three dimensional faces.  I then used wood and newspaper to build an armature.  From there, I poured material over the armature.  For the smaller of the two, I used a two-part, expanding polyurethane foam; for the larger, I used plaster.  Looking back, I prefer the ease of use and cost of the plaster, but the durability and light weight of the expandable foam is a real asset.  

I have been experimenting in my paintings with mostly realistic portraits surrounded by a geometric form somewhere between hair and a veil, loosely painted with thick applications of acrylic with a palette knife, while using painters tape to hold a crisp edge.  I used the pouring as a way to emulate the texture of the palette knife painting.  I wanted the structure to be both textured and chaotic.  For this, I looked to Ken Price and his sanded acrylic finishes.  After researching how Price treated the surfaces of his ceramics, I poured layer after layer of acrylic paint over the surface.  

In the pouring, I experimented with different applications and viscosities.  One of the more fun techniques was to pour a more viscous paint mixture over the form, and then add dollops of thicker paint and watch them almost sail down the more viscous paint leaving thin streaks of color as they went.  I used heavy body acrylics to fill unwanted divots and create variety in the surface color when the objects were sanded smooth.  Lastly, I applied heavy coatings of acrylic glaze finish to make the sculpture shine, almost like glass.  On the smaller of the two, I then went back in and sanded away the gloss and shaded the face with highly saturated colors which I then coated with white, so that the under painting barely showed through.  I wanted the face to be almost mannequin-like while at the same time having a little bit of natural coloring, with a matte finish to contrast the highly glossy finish of the rest of the head.  

I am rather pleased with the results of these experiments, and I think I will attempt a few more. I would like to sculpt a more stylized version of a face to match the style of my paintings.  I would also like to bring in the concept of collage by building the armature of the structure with random junk and hardware as a very common object assemblage; I would then pour the material and allow parts of the assemblage to remain exposed or protrude from the plaster.  I could even see purposely building the armature to direct the plaster pouring in certain directions, purposely leaving other areas exposed.  I could imagine an entire line of these portrait busts as some sort of line of junk Saints of our consumer culture.

Process pictures can be found on my Instagram account here(and I've added some below).

Sculpture 1- Height ~20" 

Sculpture 2- Height ~36" 

Below is a finish comparison between my sculpture and Ken Price.

Here are process shots.

April 30, Book Review

For those of you not familiar with my teaching style I love sharing books. I don't believe I can predict when or how you will learn. Most definitely I do not know when or if you will apply what we have read so there are no tests. This is graduate school, I believe you are hungry for new information/ways of thinking/approaches to making. After finishing "Makers" and watching Craft in America I wanted to offer a wide range of others books to finish out the semester. Some are lengthy like "The White Road" and "Scape the Willow Till It Sings" others are simply catalogs from shows filled with beautiful images. I accept both forms of books as valid. There is no higher ranking if you were drawn to book vs a catalog, the joy is in what you decided as an individual.

So for the book review share the basic information: title, author (s), date of publication, publisher.
Then tell us about the book. Finally let us all know if the book had an impact on your work or your way of looking at works of art. If you hated the book, tell us that. Mainly convince me you read the book and thought about it for more than a minute.

I read this article and just wanted to share.  Mix Magazine 42, Colour Hive (April, 2016)

Heres a website going into more depth as well.  I know this included an embroidery company as well.

https://www.notjustalabel.com/editorial/paraffection-labour-love

I just thought this idea neat and a way to look on Chanel differently - respecting and valuing craft for fashion.  After reading this book - I thought it another way to restore, and keep craft around!

Gail

April 23, Review of Craft in America

I hope that all of you keep this book on your "go to" art shelf.  And I hope that you have each learned or expanded on your knowledge/appreciation of crafts. For me the questions you raised, the conversations you shared follow me into my studio and sketchbook.

As for this weeks assignment: watch one segment of Craft in America...or more if you can. They are all beautiful so follow your curiosity. For the class give us the name of the program you watched, a brief summary of what it covered (subject and artists) and then tell us what you thought.You may use the same three questions or you can just talk to us...would you watch it again, would you share with a class, would you share with family? Did it change the way you think of your studio?

If you did watch more than one, how do you compare them?

April 16, Chapters 10 and 11

This is a double reading but it is filled with great work. It is as if every field just exploded. Answer your normal three questions for each chapter (that would be 6 answers) and for the extra question pick one artist from either chapter that you would want to have a meal with...share why and a few of the issues/art making topics you would want to discuss.

We are almost at the end of the semester. Remember you have a DVD to review and a book to review along with a work of art...seems like alot but a side from one or two of the books they one night reads and the DVDs are delightful.

Enjoy.

My Art with a Message,she remembered the sun

she remembered the sun,12'x5',mixed on canvas,informed by the book....... between shades of gray by Ruta Sepetys,about Stalin's ethnic cleansing of Lithuania.Not finished..message implied I hope..This is the first showing of it,so makes me anxious..oh well here goes

April 9, Chapter 9

An observation as you begin this chapter...Judy Chicago's Dinner Party is mentioned  and the volunteers are acknowledged (remember this is a huge installation that used hundreds of volunteers and relied upon donations from hundreds of people ( mostly women) to finance the project). It should be noted that experts were used for the thread work ( the banners) the clay plates and the tiles. They were not paid but they were not untrained or without experience as is implied in the opening of this chapter. In later years many of the volunteers are left off the credits but in the beginning at the early showings it was NOT the Judy Chicago Show.

If you are interested the book Object USA is still available online ( under $20 on Amazon). This is a great book that expands on this chapter.

For me this chapter is like a mirror on the questions/confusion of the present time within studio/craft classes. It seems like everything is changing, and answers are not always easily found. In many ways this chapter reminds me of current  programs and the challenge and possibilities  technology offers.

For the extra question If you have a spiritual side to your work, and are willing to share, would you please give us an insight into your relationship. If you do not have a spiritual side to your work do you have a humorous side or a side that has a message to it. Again, share a little about this aspect of your work. You only need to talk about one of the three aspects above: spiritual or humorous or a message.

HUMANKIND-AN ART SHOW

From the grace and beauty of the human figure to the personal detail of a portrait, Humankind aims to capture the human experience through the physical form. Humankind will explore not only depictions of the human body through traditional portrayals but also art that represents the human condition and the essentials of existence: emotions, mortality, struggles and triumphs among the myriad of experiences all of humankind encounters.

I thought this was an interesting idea for a show and since we have been discussing this,I thought it may be interesting.