The days were at first calm and pleasant and the beaches offered very little in the way of shells and other visual delights to scavenge. After a tremendous storm of wind and rain, however, the ocean churned and churned for two days and on my last sunrise walk I found a visual and metaphorical playground to propel my return to the studio.
I am officially on vacation this week, from making at least, but of course I have many things in the works…on the mind! I am very excited to get back in the Asheville Schools this April for a week long residency at Vance Elementary School in West Asheville. I have received a TAPAS grant (Teaching Artists Present in Asheville Schools) to work with three classes of 5th graders. The 65 kids will all have an opportunity to learn to felt by making a sheet of partial felt from which they will cut shapes of branches, buds, leaves and flowers of the NC State Flower, the Dogwood, Cornus, florida. I was working out the colors and amounts of wool, how far we will felt the sheets before cutting and the sizes of the shapes before I left town on Monday. The classes will organize the components into a composition illustrating the seasonal gradation of growth which will be backed by silk fabric and wool fiber in a gradation of color related to how high the sun is in the sky. The piece will be stretched on a canvas and exhibited in the school. I love the idea of working with seasonal changes as the kids can relate to the physical changes of the environment and how those changes can effect their energy and emotions. A special thanks to Ginger Huebner, founding director of Roots +Wings School of Art and Design, for helping to bring this residency into fruition and of course for funding by the Asheville City Schools Foundation and LEAF in Schools and Streets.
I have just completed uploading the most recent photography of the work I had created this past winter. This neck piece is one of my favorites from the new series. It incorporates a stainless steel wire form skinned with very thin felt and threaded onto an undulating cord. The cord has been free-motion machine embroidered to compress the remaining air from the felt creating an embossed surface and a stiffer felt. I have found that by allowing my stitching to be guided by the random incorporation of novelty thread on the felt’s surface, a visual and energetic balance is created with the controlled parallel lines of stitched thread. Please have a look at the new images in the Bracelet and Necklace galleries.
