Don’t look now! Actual art produced!

I love that I am able to support my art by selling things…but most of the things that I sell are of the “Everyday Art” variety – the scarves, bags, journals and soon pocketin boards (I hope!). It definitely took me awhile to not feel bad that I wasn’t selling more actual art, but as I’ve continued along this path, I’ve found that the “Everyday Art” is very useful – not only in the monetary sense, but it allows me to work with and through color palettes and motifs in a way i wasn’t doing when solely making art.

Be that as it may, I really needed to get some art made for the Mini Multi Meida Show my local Art Association sponsors every year. I am one of the very few textile artists in my area, and love to expand the horizons of the folk working in the more “traditional” art media. This show receives entries from not only the local artists but from folk near and far. The “mini” aspect of the show is that idems must be 14.5″ or less in every dimension. This stipulation was what got me to make my “Home is Where the Art Is” series last year.  I love this series, and part of me can’t believe that I haven’t been working more in 3 dimensions…it’s so sad!

So with a deadline over my head and a week of Spring Break, I thought I’d really get going and continue the Home…series. But, it was not to be. The horrible news about faculty cuts at my university consumed and depressed me, completely derailing my ability to think about new houses. I was about ready to throw in the towel on entering this show when I got a call from Julie, my friend and awesome customer on Friday. I talked with her for a bit about why I was feeling so glum and how stuck I was…and she blurts out…”Why don’t you make a tree?”

AHA! That is what I needed! Thank you Julie! Not only did I make a tree, I went on to make 2 more pieces, each one different, but all using the same color scheme and revolving around the idea of home. So for today, I’d like to show you my tree!

The pictures are way less than ideal – I ended up finishing the third piece 45 minutes before they end of the take in for this show, so I had to snap a few shots and hope for the best. I’d love to play around with the shadows that can be cast from the branches – I’ll just have to make more trees!

I’ve got a little skeleton of Peltex (the stuff baseball cap brims are made of) with fused fabric cut a bit larger so that when I fuse the fabric together the white edges of the peltex don’t show. I could have zigzagged the edges, but I wanted to try this first – for some reason I really don’t like the strong line of a close zigzag stitch very much. Anyway, I cut a slot in the bottom half of one tree and the top half of the other and slotted them together. The tree is held onto the base with some small glue dots, and a fused leaf at the top holds it closed.

I’m exhausted – I had a successful show today, but I was up very early! Here’s some more pix, I hope the pix I took of the other 2 pieces came out!

Thanks Kim	Thanks Amy