stitched paint strokes

Usually I stitch with a plan in mind. Meaning that I have seen in my minds eye what I want to achieve and I am stitching towards that vision. But sometimes.... just for the fun of it I want to stitch with no plan. Just meandering and enjoying the process, the colors and the texture that is being created.

For inspiration I'll pull out a picture and use my stitches to interpret that picture. I don't mean exactly, just the feeling of it. Like a moody autumnal landscape for example. I'll concentrate on the color, the direction of the vegetation.... This exercise is lots of fun to do with painting by famous artists. I'll open up a big heavy art book or print an image from the internet and try to capture the feeling of it with my stitches.

So where am I leading with all this? Well... I am trying to entice you to take a vacation with me. Yes. a vacation. In Ticino, that's in Switzerland. In August. I know it seems so far way, August and Switzerland. But August will be here in a blink of an eye and Switzerland is just a hop, skip and a jump away!

a detail of a Klimt

my stitchy interpretation

Picasso is fun to play with

fun to choose the fabrics and the stitches

Rothko's serenity is interpreted well in silk

simple is best

that's the hotel!

and that's the scenery!

So? Come stitch some paint strokes with me and enjoy the end of summer in Ticino!

gratitude

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US. I have many people to be grateful for this year... but here I thank all the readers of this blog! Thank you for clicking, scrolling, reading and commenting! I appreciate that you take the time out of your busy day to stop by... I appreciate the thoughtful and kind comments and suggestions that you leave here!

Thank you!! and happy Thanksgiving to all!

leap day

How can I resist making sure that there is a blog post here on leap day? I can't!

So a little overview of what's been brewing lately:

steadily stitching away on my extra large project

mending my favorite jeans boro style

embroidering a chinchilla for a friend

paint therapy happened (an old collage got thoroughly reworked many times) (just for the fun of it) 

I got the fieriest little doily in the mail from Amy Meissner

I rediscovered the lichen rock in my back yard... in the sunshine...

All these pictures are from my Instagram feed. Take a peek! Happy leap year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing a wonderful day of gratitude to everyone celebrating in the US. I am thankful to all of you who stop by this little blog to take a peek at my madness and give me encouragement. THANK YOU!

always grateful for autumnal treasures..

saturday snapshot

...or several... This spring I indulged in something slightly different from my usual oeuvre.

In our Russian scouting tradition we have a wonderful little quirk that everyone loves. During the second summer in the older kids camp, they receive their forest name. It could be anything from an animal to a force of nature. Everyone awaits in anticipation and speculates what name they will wind up with. It's a tradition to embroider the name on your neckerchief, or stitch a patch on. I indulged my daughter and her friends and stitched a few names for them.

an arctic fox

a cherry blossom

a lyre bird

a waterfall

a white rose

The hole you see in each one is made with a hot stick from the campfire. It's burned into the neckerchief as they get their name. And looks like I'll have a few more to embroider in the near future...

magic monday

I haven't been in my studio since I finished Spruce Street. Life got in the way. But I haven't stopped thinking about what I want to do once I got to the studio.... Here are a few things that caught my eye during the thinking stage.

beautiful bouquet

sunset lighting up newly minted leaves

a fabulous chandelier

And today I did get into the studio. For just a little bit....

a start of something new.....

Now full steam ahead! There is much to be accomplished....

almost

I have one more major step to go before I finish the Spruce Street home portrait. And since I have not been very good with updates, I thought that I'd share a few close ups now before the final reveal.

so happy to have played with vintage hand dyed linen in the flower garden

tree printed in a book transforms into tree in portrait

I do so love birches!

some stitched rocks on the chimney

more azaleas from vintage hankie

I think I will be ready for the final reveal by the end of this week. If you'd like to be first to see it, sign up for my newsletter as that's where it will be seen first. Thanks for following the home portrait updates!

instafun

I know that some of my blog readers don't belong to social media sites, so I thought I'd share somethings I've been posting on Instagram here. Instagram is an app and a social media platform on the smart phone that lets you apply filters to photographs and post them for your followers to see.

I think of it as rather fun and post not only my artwork related photos, but also nature stuff and general life stuff that comes my way. Here's just a few of photos I posted in last two weeks.

I made a flower out of fallen leaves and propped it up on a log.

A weekend later I was impressed that it was still on the log and dried beautifully.

Fun with mirrors and filters while watching a ballet class.

Sheep in a meadow and a watercolor app? How can I resist?

I've been stitching tiny pieces while in a waiting room and shared.

And this is the view on the worktable in my studio this morning as seen on Instagram and Facebook.

Hope you enjoyed my little social media tour. Instafun!

serene

That was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind when I first saw the installation. This summer I got lost in the hallways of the Vermont Law School. I was looking for an art exhibit and got a double treat when I stumbled on the sticks. Yes sticks. But such perfectly arranged sticks. Or reeds. Because first I saw these reeds in the Cornell Library... I wanted to walk through them..

Phragmites by Elizabeth Billings

Phragmites detail

Then as I was wandering the hallways I found the sticks. They were whittled. Perfectly. I thought about the methodical, meditative way the artist must have sat there and whittled for days... I wished I was whittling along with her...

Unfortunately there is no name for this installation. It goes down a very long hallway...

There was no signs anywhere in the hallway or the library to tell me who this artist was. Fortunately once school started a quick phone call solved the mystery for me. Now I'll be on the look out for more serene art by Elizabeth Billings. Hopefully there will be signs. But I may not need them.

aaaahhh......

Summers are tough. Tough for me to spend any real time in my studio that is. But I do get to spend lots of time in nature, so that compensates.

Here are few views that I enjoyed recently and inhaled deeply.....

Hope your summer is going well!

mundane

I'm in the process of getting everything ready for my Create workshops in New Jersey. But I couldn't help playing a bit too. I have heard from a few people that they think my plastic bag collection is rather brightly colored and is unusual. Well... I have to tell you that I am not a big shopper and I do use cloth bags for supermarket purchases most of the time.  I guess because the plastic is an art material to me, I have a more discerning eye for it. I pay attention to bags of different shades.

So I decided to play a bit with more mundane colors. Tans, grays, greens, whites and browns. Most common colors for supermarket shopping bags. Just to show everyone that even those drab colors can be used to create a vibrant piece of art.

A few of you might remember these mushrooms that I posted on Instagram a while back:

 

here they are printed out to size of my canvas and the abstracted tracing

my quick abstracted sketch

supermarket bags from my stash

then I got really involved in cutting and gluing and didn't take pictures

done with glue!

here it is with a bit of thread painting

See? Just your basic supermarket shopping bags. So go collect some and join me on Wednesday, July 9th in Somerset NJ for the Mystique of Plastique: Reuse, Recycle and Create workshop! By then this little piece will be wrapped around a stretched canvas and looking very presentable!