Passions and Matting

Creativity is one of the cardinal aspects of my life.  I am a creative person and am so wrapped up h it and am so tuned in to my own creativity that it is hard for me to follow other people's rules of art, needlework and, yes, behavior.  I don't think of myself as willfully eccentric or willfully disobedient to my group's rules.  It's just that I must work the edges, test the boundaries, and find my own way.  There is really no other way for me to work.

It disturbs me to hear people tell me that they are not creative.  This, of course, is not true.  One of the definitions of a human is its creativity.  This latest encounter was with a framer who has been cutting mats for me for several years.  His name is Rey.  He is not an artist, he has told me, and therefore not creative.  As I have said before in this blog, creativity exists in every form of human endeavor.  (But my long lecture on this topic would have been out of place at the framing desk.) 

What was interesting about this trip to the framer was the security guard who was standing behind the framing desk keeping an eye on customers up and down the aisles of the big craft store.  His name plate said Honsecker on it.  As I was waiting for Rey to finish with another customer, I was going through the mat samples trying to find just the right color for my newest project.  I do my own framing, but I get mats cut to order.  Mr. Honsecker after a few minutes of my shuffling from blue to green to violet mats, started to be interested in what I was doing and giving his opinion.  The truth is that I had already settled on a dark blue mat, but I was entertained by his comments.  He liked the dark green mat, so I got out some other greens and shuffled them around.  After another ten minutes (the other customer was dithering something terrible) , Mr. Honsecker said that if  couldn't decide I should just go with a white mat and a black frame.  I guess I looked at him strangely because,all of a sudden he needed to walk the aisles.    I guess that white mats and black frames are really what sell the most.  A safe choice.  Not a choice I would make unless it were absolutely the best choice for my piece.  I appreciated Mr. Honeysecker's help and comments.  I liked his green choice, it did highlight certain areas of the work.  I just liked my choice more.  The other customer's business was finally concluded--white mats and black frames for her two pieces--and Rey came over and then we had the conversation about non-creativity.  Rey is creative in handling people, a skill I am sadly lacking.  By the way, the piece I had matted was the  "Barrett" sample in my previous blog entry.  This happened last week.

And then this week I get an email from a good friend of mine who sent on greetings from a mutual acquaintance who is a needlework judge.  The greeting "Hi!   Hope to see a Bobbie Pilling entry from you just not framed in purple."  Yes, my 2014 entry has a purple mat and frame.  White and black is a much safer choice for judged events even if it does nothing for the overall look of the work.  Traditionally judges like to see black and white even if it dulls down the piece.  They are trained that way.  Well, I guess I just won't win the Bobbie Pilling Award again if it means a black and white frame and mat.  I do what I do with passion and with all of my being.  My pieces talk to me and tell me what they want.  They shine out with purple, blue, turquoise, and pink mats.  I must remain what I am and what I feel.

Gerania 

Mxied media with paint, embroidery, colored varnish, geranium leaves and blossoms.  !4" X 14".  A purple canvas mat.

 Castlerig

Mixed media with copper sheeting, alcohol stain, embroidery, and paint.

13" X 16".  A painted silk mat in rust color to enhance the copper. 

Castlerig is an ancient stone circle in the Lake District

 of England. I have been there three times and each time an offering of flowers has been left at the base of the largest standing stone.  This image is how the stone circle affects me

and how it makes me feel and is not a true representation

of that lovely circle with its spectacular views.

Flowers and Standing Stones

The term mixed media has changed for me over the course of three decades. In the late 70s I barely knew the words, but the early 80's mixed media to me meant that I used two of the counted works in the same piece. Astounding to me who was quite a purist and, of course, quite wrong. I knew that samplers were not mixed media.

When we moved back to Colorado from living in England for two years, I immediately joined both Colorado Chapter and Foothills Chapter of EGA. At the first meeting of Foothills I had a marvelous awakening. We did marbling on fabric. It wasn't the first time I had worked on a painted ground. In the late 70s Lynn Payette came to the Creative Needlework Chapter in southern New Jersey to teach us dyeing with Kennebunkport dyes--a real eye-opener to a neophyte stitcher. It was the marbling that tore off the cover of my mind. It was essentially from that point that I started doing mixed media.

Mixed media is doing any two or more art media together. For instance when I print out one of my photographs and then stitch over it, that is mixed media. Or when I paint a background and then stitch over it, that is mixed media. Embroidery isn't universally considered an art unfortunately. So in the New Mexico State Fair, I have enter mixed media pieces in the professional category of fine arts in order to compete. A pure embroidery, no matter how artful or transcendent, would be eligible.

In Castlerig, one of my most recent sojourns into mixed media, I have mottled the backgound fabric with acrylic paint. Then I cut out copper strips from a thin sheet and I stained the copper with alcohol-based ink. After layering on netting, I couched the copper down. Then I went in with several different threads and started doing French knots, dozens and dozens of French knots.

Castlerig, by the way, was inspired by the stone circle of Castlerig on the edge of the Lake District in England. The last time I was there someone had left an offering of flowers at the base of the biggest upright stone. This is my homage to the flowers and the stone.

Castlerig

14" X 20"

mixed media

detail from Castlerig

the couching and French knots.

Mixed Media, Mixed Bag

When I stumbled over embroidery as an art medium over thirty years ago, I was a dabbler. A neophyte dabbler. In one instant of clarity I could see myself doing embroidery for the rest of my life. For twenty years after that I studied pure embroidery. I studied the great classic techniques of blackwork, Hardanger, canvas work, needle lace, whitework, and others. To my good fortune I was very good at it. But then a lot of people were very good at it. And then, just doing the embroidery over and over again wasn't quite as satisfying, so I started looking for something beyond.

The things beyond were painted backgrounds, painted threads, dyeing in odd colors. And then layering came into my life. Layered fabrics, cut away fabrics. Embroidery on top of cut away, layered fabrics.

In the mid-90s I started doing mixed media Hardanger. The Hardanger itself I changed from symmetric, formal, and white to curvilinear, asymmetric, and glorious. My first mixed media body of work was done in Hardanger.

Coleus, Non-Traditional Hardanger

And then I met heat and destruction at an Embroiderers' Guild of America national seminar taught by Jean Littlejohn. Heat and destruction were perfect things to do battle with the old ideas about embroidery. No longer was the stitch sacred. No longer was the fabric sacred. The first body of my work to come out of heat and destruction was called Burnt Offerings. I did about twenty major and minor works within it.

The Paths Are Overgrown, From the Burnt Offerings Series

I moved to Albuquerque in 2001 and there joined other like-minded mixed media embroiderers and was inspired to work on another body called Star Fields which also had about twenty pieces in it. In Star Fields, I started adding beads to the mix.

Mizpah, From the Starfields Series

What I was after in all of this was quality of surface. Texture and contrast. Subtle color gradations.

And now I am working in my current body called the Holyoke Series, still heat and destruction, still embroidery and fiber, but with lighter, less cosmic motifs.

Palimpsest with Ribbons, from the Holyoke Series