style busters, or not

Much consideration has been given in the art quilt world about whether or not one has a discernible style. It is said that it is good to have one, in one's art in general.

So it seemed that a revisiting of older work would be a worthy task.  And revisiting the work with the elements of art and design as a looking-glass seemed a also to be a logical move.

So what about this piece? What a hubbub of wild activity! This was definitely made during my Kaffe Fasset infatuation period. And since I started it in a Rose Hughes class, beading and couching reigned supreme.

Let's apply a checklist of the elements of art on to this piece created by the untutored me (except for small forays into the world of the autodidact): line, shape, form, space, color, texture. We'll start today, and continue later with the elements of design.

Couched yarn and ribbon form most of the prominent lines  in this Rose Huges method of construction -- the student's design is made on freezer paper, which is ironed on to fabric. Those pieces are butted together, leaving a gap that is then covered by the couched yarn/ribbon.

The variety of these couched materials made for a variety of thickness of line. Good. That's desirable. The You Tube chap would be happy that these lines are not just vertical or horizontal.

The central shapes formed by the lines are circular and...hmm...how to describe those in-between-the circles shapes? Let's say - curvilinear.

Next, forms. That's three dimensional. No forms here. Except the Modigliani button-face -- she's three dimensional.

Okay, here we go with those in-between-the-circles areas. Those are space -- the area between and around objects! Aha! Those areas are negative space, one of my fav-o-rite playing fields.

There seems to be a goodly amount of negative space around my principal element, the circle. Well, good for me for having acceptable negative space before I even knew what it was.

Now, for what I really learned when making this piece: color.  I wanted the circles to come forward, and the negative space to recede.  So, ta da! Guess what? Warm colors come forward and cool colors recede!

Lookee -- what comes forward and what recedes?

The circles seem front-and-center to me. Hooray, that's just what I wanted. This was the first time I learned this warm/cool principle, and had I not known that, I think the piece would have been a failure -- just a series of shapes with nowhere for the eye to go.

The last element, texture, was defined by the requirements of the class -- use beads and yarn and ribbon -- this automatically produced a wild variety of textures. The curly-swirly  pieces in the lower part of this last picture were created by winding yarn over pipe cleaners.

Okay, tomorrow, design principles. Guaranteed you'll be sick of this piece by Thursday...