How I Made My Fav-o-rite Piece/Art Quilt Portfolio Selection!

                                                     "Reflection"                                                              

The powers that be selected my piece "Reflection" to be included in Martha Sielman's Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits.  As part of a series that gives some background information on the art in the book, artists have been asked to write on their blogs about it, and this is my contribution.

The work started with a pencil and paper sketch. I love the gestural nature of drawing, particularly the early stages when sketchy lines are drawn to establish the angles in the figure. I do not like to remove those lines, as I think they impart a feeling of energy to the work. Here is my drawing:

I scanned my drawing and initially printed the digital file on cotton sateen that had been treated with a substance that would accept archival inks from an inkjet printer. I then tried my hand at painting the image with watercolors. As you can see, this was a colossal failure!

I then went back to the computer and digitally painted the image of my scanned drawing. I wanted to retain the sketch as much as I could, so I only used subtle transparent shading on the image.

I then printed that image, again on specially treated cotton sateen, and commenced stitching. My goal was to emphasize the sketch lines. I used long arcs in the red background to contrast with the staccato nature of the sketchy lines.

Of course, by that time, I was in love with this image, and so I wanted to use her in other media. I work also in kilnformed (fused) glass, and here is her image as it is transformed into glass. I am working on  yet another version of this now that will use larger portions of the drawing:

I also made a piece for an exhibit that called for artists to create an imaginary record/CD album cover for any song. I chose Carly Simon's song "Anticipation," as I figured it was similar to my working title "Reflection." So...if you are old enough to remember, that song was used in a huge Heinz ketchup commercial campaign to sell...ketchup...so I referenced that campaign on my stitched album cover. Of course, I thought the red background was a perfect reference to that fabulous condiment! Here it is before stitching:

So, that is probably more information than the readers wanted or expected! Look at page 55 in Martha's book to see my piece up-close-and-personal.