Once I started seeing this small vertical quilt as a landscape, the chartreuse bar (midsection) needed interrupting. I used floral patterning from a rayon shirt.
The design came together after I went down to the cellar to get something and came up almost two hours later without it.
This is the front of our basement fridge. It was probably something in there that I needed?
This WIP is right next to the fridge. An old strip of houses lies atop a beige brocade with swirly floral shapes and above one of Deb’s amazing splatter cloths.
I’ve been baking up a storm for today but thankfully not hosting. Turkey dinner with all the fixings is one of my least favorite meals to serve company!
I placed a Ukrainian soldier next to a close up of Lady Liberty in one of my collages this week. It’s one of those times that if I could identify the photographer or publication, I would make an attribution. My storage methods (top left), pretty much make that impossible.
It occurs to me that though glued down this one is not done yet.
I hope one and all of you have a happy thanksgiving!
One of my big blessings is that I will be dining with like-minded family. In other words, there will be no bracing myself for the fox sound bites and no prepping snappy, informative but somehow non-offensive rejoinders. Phew!
Ever since Ken retired we hardly know what day it is. That’s why we announce on Friday evenings, “IT’S THE WEEKEND!” For a while, I made a point of cooking up a nice hot breakfast on Saturday mornings but not so much anymore.
Still weekends feel different, they do. No appointments or classes or zoom calls (for me). He has a cocktail in the evening. Less roaring and beeping construction sounds. Fewer kids at the playground next door.
Soon we’ll be treated to the “Cape Effect.” Love it. The Cape Effect is when our town becomes noticeably quieter because so many vacate to their second homes.
As for us, we’ll be heading to LA soon. Just in time for their “June gloom.” I’m gonna load my kindle up with books this time so I’ll always have a novel in my pocket.
My brother won’t be up for attending a protest, but since one of the No Kings gatherings will take place in nearby Pasadena, I may pop down the hill for a bit.
PS Two digital collages above from this week’s Paris Collage Club visual prompt. Combines my photo of Ken with Finn, a former PCC prompt (the tree), and photo of a quilt.
Two more:
It was a shocker to find a figure framed in that slave cabin window (above). Revealed by the quirks of the filter. As many times as I looked at that photo of mine, I’d never discerned the person inside. Photo below.
Here’s the exposure slid to the brightest setting.
The last time I saw Alvin Ailey was in 2013. It’s a little hard to believe sometimes how time passes. The show, no surprise, was spectacular and moving. It was good to get out.
Stitching to a terrible Netflix Series, Ransom Canyon. Hallmark movie without the Christmas, I say, including the signature near-miss handsome lead. This hero looks like a mash up of Timothy Olyphant and Matt Damon and all I can see is how he’s not Olyphant. Then there’s Ugly Brooke Shields. If you watch, you’ll know who I mean. Lots of preposterous story lines.
Walked over to Chinatown before the performance last night and got a little turned around getting back to the Wang Center which isn’t the Wang Center anymore but hey. It was a lot of steps, steps on uneven, wet, and unpredictable sidewalks. I’m tired today.
I listened to Cory Booker for a short while before my doctor’s appointment and then for a good long while later, stitching in the afternoon sun. I’m noticing how much better I feel. I’m noticing how much it matters for people in power to speak up.
Got quite a few “finishers” in the works. Antidotes to despair I suppose. Medicine against feeling powerless. One stitch at a time.
Trimming, binding, signing, and adding dowel sleeves. It always takes longer than I think.
Here are examples (below) from four recent series of digital collages. Almost all incorporate paper collage or photos of my own. If I weren’t feeling tongue-tied by national events I might have something to say about them but they can speak for themselves I guess.
Because my creative time has been hampered of late, I am sharing some double exposures created recently in my phone using the Diana photo app. This process is satisfying to me — part collage, part Tarot reading. You never know what’s gonna show up. And, even though the actual process of combining the images is facile (performed with thumbs!), there can be an element of artistry to it, depending on the images. Often, they are of quilts and paper collages — photos of work, in other words, where time and thought and effort were expended.
The first one, above, combines a slave quarter photo from Charleston with a close up of a stitched silk pennant I made as part of Mo Crow’s Love is the Answer collaborative project. This is from years back for those of you who were around then.
While stitching on the gown silk provided by Mo, I was at a point in my novel research when I was thinking a lot about our history of slavery (posted about here), so this particular random pairing produced by my app made sense.
This next random pairing could be an illustration for my book (The Weight of Cloth). Swamp photo taken at a preserve west of Charleston. The profile was a Paris Collage Collective prompt and the image a double exposure using a paper collage.
Spoiler alert: the picture could represent Cane Creek, a maroon community established by runaway slaves and others where three of my enslaved characters head at the end of the book.
Women’s March Boston 2017, plus screen grab of dickhead, plus photos of a quilt and neighborhood trees. He looks appropriately malevolent. Not human.
These I share just because I’m enamored with the collage I made using that mirror photo. Or enamored again. The last one includes a gel print I made of a Vanity Fair photo of Benedict Cumberbatch.
A few notes about my hip replacement last week:
Saltines are a blessing.
The orthopedic surgeon is a rock star, the anesthesiologist plays percussion, the nurses and OTs/PTs sing back up and then there’s a huge crew of roadies. It’s amazing how many people were required to replace my joint. I’m grateful.
Least favorite moment: being woken by an alarm triggered by empty saline bag and not being able to find my call button. It went on and on. I called “Hello?” over and over and no one came and still it went on and on. I finally used my phone to call downstairs and they paged a nurse.
I didn’t love throwing up after I got home either. A few times.
Progress: discernible with increased mobility and decreased pain.
Favorite moment today: reading in the sun outside and having to take off my sweater it was so warm!
Finn is a little confused, especially by the walker but also by being banned from the couch, but look how sweetly he stays by!
