Friday, January 20, 2023

Quilting as Conceptual Art: Inspired by Sol Le Witt

 Sol Le Witt, Minimalist and the Father of Conceptual Art


Sol Lewitt is considered the father of Conceptual art.  He believed that the artist did not have to be present for the art to occur.  He left instructions (some more detailed than others) that explained how the design was supposed to be depicted by "technicians".  He usually referenced architectural points such as corners, edges, openings, etc.  It sounded a lot like quilting instructions, especially written instructions, classroom instructions or the word-of-mouth instructions for traditional quilting patterns, the designers of which are lost to the vagaries of time.  I got a little testy that he was included in many museums.  So rather than get myself in a dither I decided to study him.  So far I have completed two interpretations of his work. One is a representation of part of a large wall painting.  In Tribute to Sol Le Witt I used Kona Sheen because I thought the fabric looked like paint.

Tribute to Sol Le Witt


Red Lines, Four Squares, Mirrored, is an original interpretation of his ideas. He used a language of lines, vertical, horizontal, slant left, slant right and wavy. which I believe is very similar to our quilted lines. He also frequently used cubes, cubic representations and squares in his work (similar to many quilt designs). Several of his photography books are formatted in 3 x 3 or 4 x 4 square patterns very similar to traditional quilt square patterns.  I chose to orient my squares vertically.  The lines are quilted using size 8 cotton thread.


Red Lines Four Squares Mirrored

In the tradition of Conceptual Art, below are the instructions for this Piece.  Please feel free to interpret Le Witt on your own.

A Fiber Tribute to Sol Lewitt and Conceptual Art

 In 2019 I saw an exhibit at the MASS MoCa that was a retrospective tribute to Sol Lewitt, minimalist and father of Conceptual Art.  At the time I was taken with how much LeWitt’s Conceptual Art is like quilting.  Instructions include size, color, pattern and line, much like our quilting patterns and  Lewitt’s emphasis on line is echoed in the quilted line.  I decided to interpret some of his work in fabric.  I chose Kona Sheen as a medium because of it’s visual similarity to glossy paint and regular Kona cotton for it’s similarity to matte paint.  Below are instructions for a grouping of shapes and lines and ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTIONS.

Red Lines, Four Squares, Mirrored

 Supplies:

Kona Sheen, red (or fabric of your choice)

Kona cotton, Red (or fabric of your choice)

Batting I used a low loft

Backing (cut to match final size or your piece or pieces)

Thread to match (I used size 8 cotton crochet thread)

Scissors

Needles

ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTIONS

9” x 9” canvases or stretcher frames

Picture wire and eye screws

Pliers

Staple Gun and staples

Notes:

My instructions call for needle turn applique and big stitch quilting, you may choose to substitute raw edge machine applique and machine or free motion quilting in your tribute.

Also you may choose to use binding as a more traditional quilted finish instead of the pillowcase turn.   The Alternative Suggestions use stretcher frames and staple the individual pieces to the wood.

Directions:

Cut four 9.25”x9.25” pieces of the red Kona cotton. Cut 2 9.25”x9.25” pieces of Kona sheen.

Layer the Kona Sheen with both right sides facing up.  Using an erasable pen or a fine pencil draw a wavy line down the middle of the fabric. Cut on the wavy line.

Lay each piece of the Kona Sheen over square of the Kona Cotton matching the edges, needle turn applique the wavy center edge. Trim the excess Kona from the back.

Sew the four squares together.  You may choose to use a different layout than my four vertical squares.

Place the appliqued piece over the backing and the batting.  Sew around the edges leaving an opening to turn the piece.  Trim the corners and turn the piece and turn. Slip stitch the opening.

Using the matching thread quilt each of the squares in one of Lewitt’s 4-line patterns, vertical, horizontal, diagonal left to right and diagonal right to left.

My design is as follows but you may choose to put the lines in a different order:

1.       In the first, sew straight vertical lines approximately ¼ inches apart in the center of the square for the width you choose (I did 11 lines)

2.       In the second, sew straight diagonal lines starting from the upper right to lower left, approximately ¼ inches apart for the width you choose (I did 11 lines).

3.       In the third,  sew diagonal lines starting from lower right to upper left, approximately ¼ inches apart for the width you choose (I did 11 lines).

4.       In the forth, sew horizontal lines, approximately ¼ inches apart in the center of the square for the width you choose (I did 11 lines).

ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENT

As an alternative construction, add edges to the squares, staple the squares to 9-inch stretcher frames, add eye hooks and a hanging wire.

Hang the 4 pieces together in a square or linear formation.






Thursday, January 3, 2019

Smoke and Mirrors



Smoke and Mirrors

This is “Smoke and Mirrors aka Keep Your Eyes on the Border”.  It is 17" wide and 34" long.



Smoke and Mirrors is an old term that was usually applied to magic shows and the magician’s ability to distract your eyes, sometimes with smoke or mirrors.  I have long felt that most of politics is a case of smoke and mirrors. I have also felt that the current president, #45 has chosen the most inflammatory and divisive way to deal with immigration.  So, in the spirit of #craftivism I created this wall hanging. 

The base is a piece of my father’s overcoat, the “eyes” are other pieces of wool with shisha mirror embroidery for the pupils.  The large rent at the top, below the question mark bead, represents whatever you think is the biggest problem in the United States (or perhaps the world) today; loss of a middle class, the opioid epidemic, gun control, global warming, or even immigration.  The smaller wounds are whatever you rate as lesser problems (the fact that we are the richest country in the world and still have children who go hungry or perhaps our third world birth survival rate).  Each of us sees the problems of our country and the world differently.


The smoke is raveled organza and obscures some of the eyes and wounds.  The raveled edges represent the unraveling of our society and there is even a secret beaded coded call for help sewn in.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Extreme Crochet


Extreme Crochet



My hands, wrists and forearms are sore, from crocheting.  My arms are sore from lifting 10 to 20 pounds of nylon rope to move it around.  Why was I flinging clothesline around on my floor?  I was crocheting lace on gigantic proportions.  A pie shaped wedge 12 feet long and six feet wide, hexagon motifs three feet across, how did I get myself into this? 

                                           
me lying down (for scale) next to the dome 
              

I was in New Jersey, looking at one of my sister’s knitting magazines when I saw a picture that had to be crochet. Sure enough, it was a crocheted square folded to resemble a Dutch lace cap and it was hanging over a canal in Amsterdam.  I was so intrigued with the article that I looked up the firm responsible for the cap. Choi and Shine are an architectural firm in Massachusetts, they did the lace cap (Lace) and another exhibit called Sea Urchins (Singapore).  The artist Jin Choi learned crochet and experimented with different media to find one that worked for large installations, finally settling on white nylon rope.  She scaled up designs to large proportions and had volunteers crochet sections.  The sections are attached to a very fine steel mesh and then hoisted in the air on steel cables.  A little message on their web site said to contact them if you were interested in participating a project. 

Soooo, I sent off an email saying I was interested in their next project and then I received a message saying that they were behind due to a few crocheters not being able to participate, was I interested?  Even though the rope and I would arrive in Texas after the due date, I was interested in participating.  When I got back to Texas I started crocheting like a madwoman.  Putting as much as I could aside I just crocheted and crocheted and crocheted.  I was able to finish the “pie shaped wedge” which is supposed to be a part of a dome of a mosque.  I got partway through a panel of repeating motifs but was unable to finish it before it had to be shipped back.  I was disappointed that I could not finish (although if I counted all of the times I ripped out a motif, I probably crocheted the whole section) but proud of myself for even trying. 

This project is called The Flying Mosque, it will be assembled in Brookline Massachusetts and then shipped to Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates for the Sharjah Islamic Arts Festival Dec 13, 2017 to January 23, 2018.  Here is a link to an article about the Flying Mosque; http://flyingmosque.org/



Here are some links to the projects Lace and Sea Urchins so you can get some idea of the scale of their projects.  

Lace was the project in Amsterdam, here is a link to an article about it; http://choishine.com/TheLaceMaking.html .

Sea Urchins was created for an exhibit in Singapore, here is a link to that one; http://choishine.com/UrchinsFabrication.html

I was really excited to be a part of this international, collaborative project, art is universal.

Monday, June 5, 2017

2016 My Year in Garbage

Well, I finally got the whole trash quilt put together.  What started out as an exercise became a comment on 2016.  My husband's hip replacement, my Mom's death, the awful election process all ended up on the quilt.  It was displayed at the Rio Grande Valley Quilt Guild Quilt Show on South Padre Island, TX and at the Fiber Arts Unlimited exhibit at the Upper Valley Art League (UVAL) in Mission Texas.  It was also a topic of discussion at the UVAL pot luck dinner.  All in all it was well received.  Not everyone "got it" but I did have the chance to do some explaining at each of these venues. The grey square on the bottom has an "I Voted" sticker in the center and free motion quilting on the grey around it symbolizing the grey morass in which this election got stuck .  In the bottom right square are "vintage pop tops" that my sister and I found while cleaning my mom's garage.  They did not belong to my brothers so we figured they belonged to my dad, he has been gone for 25 years so they are definitely vintage.   They were crocheted with bits of left over crochet thread. It symbolizes the mountain of garbage that is our garbage disposal site in Texas plus it makes a nice jingling sound for the last month of the year.



Front View of Trash Quilt



The back is almost as colorful as the front,  I used a lot of old bubble wrap (18 years old) as both batting and backing.  the squares list what was used for each square as sometimes it is not obvious. My thanks to all who graciously contributed their curated trash.  I wanted this to be a thought provoking idea, getting people to think about the amount of stuff we throw away.  It is in the spirit of Cfarftivism, using crafts in an activist way.  If you would like to learn more about this growing movement pleas hop on over to the The Craftivist Collective.


Back view










Sunday, June 26, 2016

Garbage Quilt Part 2

The previous post talked about how I started my "Garbage Quilt",  here I have a few more squares to show you.  My trip to New Jersey is a very busy collage, but then the trip was full also, and it reflects the conflicting priorities of a husband who was in Texas waiting for his hip surgery and. a mother who was turning 94 in New Jersey. The flowers are coffee filters (yes I brought NJ garbage back to Texas with me) as Mom loves her coffee.


NJ collage


For the bottle cap square, I ,  drilled holes in the bottle caps and tied them to the square with leftover yarn, I save leftover bit of yarn for projects like this.  It is not a traditional tied pattern but the caps are staying on!  Each cap is from a recycled bottle or jar.




Bottle Caps


My other use for leftover yarn (bits to small to make much of anything) is to crochet edgings on coffee cup holders.  Paper coffee cups get dirty, but the holders usually do not.  I started this in 2013 after I retired and we were in California.  The Santa Cruz area has a lot of great coffee shops and my friend Robin and I would "taste test" the coffee.  We were working in my friend Robin's art studio when I started playing around with them.  Originally I was going to make funky bracelets and then I got the idea of recycling them.  I wanted to learn how to use the app Instagram so I made a site for the coffee holders.  If you take a picture of one in use you can post it at Instagram or Facebook "Pick Me Use Me" (#PickMeUseMe).  I had a great time leaving these around Santa Cruz and giving them away.  Here in South Texas there is not quite the coffee shop culture and I got away from it, however I decided it would make a great square and I got back into it again and found some nice coffee shops too.  At the International Knit in Public Day  I even got another lady to make one to practice her crochet (here in Texas we are equal opportunity yarnists, knit, crochet, looms, our LYS The Lambs Loom encourages all skills).


Coffee Holders for Pick Me Use Me


The plan is to have the recycled holders in the cup on the square.  My sewing machine stopped working so I had to hand sew this, more, non-traditional material experience. The brown square is the paper we use here in Texas when you get Bar-B-Q, paper, not plates! so I went with a funky marker look to explain it.


I have "bound" them with duct tape (the industrial kind not the cute stuff) and I am planning to attach them together with twist ties and use larger twist ties as the hanging "sleeve".  You know, the little wire things that are sometimes on bread or you can use them in the produce department to close you plastic bags.  Friends are saving twist ties for me.  Plastic in the produce aisle is another story, I am working on string bags for the grocery store, but that will have to be another post.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

My Year in Garbage

I have joined a wonderful group of ladies in an Art Quilt group, Fiber Arts Unlimited.  We agree on challenges and one of our challenges was a Trash Quilt, a 12 inch square with at least 25% made from trash.  I overcompensated and made the whole thing from trash.  Now I am not talking banana peels here - I am not using "organic" trash, rather the stuff that piles up like packing, boxes, snack bags, etc.  I had so much fun I decided to make one square every month, next January I will have Art Quilt to submit to the Quilt show (I hope).




Traditional Applique


So far I have made several squares.  Some I used traditional quilting techniques like applique and piecing, one is tied.


Traditional Piecing


I like stories so I find myself exploring themes, my trip to New Jersey to see my mom, claims and announcements from manufacturers, bottle caps that represent recycled bottles.  I am learning about working with non-traditional material with each square.


New Jersey Collage


A lot of this started because on our last trip to NJ with the motor home we brought back artwork that had been in my mom's basement for the whole time we were on the road, 14 years.  They were wrapped in bubble wrap (yes some of it is 14 years old) which became my batting of choice, except where I used dryer lint (the NJ square).   I once swore I would not use dryer lint for crafts but "never say never" because my moms dryer filter puts out lovely big sheets about 3 inches wide, how could I resist that?


Seriously, it is leading me to explore my own practices, I recycle a lot more and I am much more aware of the packaging of what I buy and how I store things.  It also makes me want to do some more "awareness quilts". 


This is my form of "Craftivism".  For those of you not familiar with the term, it is a way for those of us who are not prone to protesting to be socially responsible and champion a cause using our crafts.  Here is a link to The Craftivist Collective ,a movement started by Sarah Corbett in England, as her own approach to "Gentle Protest".  I find it ironic that here in the Rio Grand Valley, Texas, our only "mountain" is made of trash.  We all hear about the problems with trash and the plastics in our ocean, it becomes one more sad story in a whole list of sad stories. I hope that in presenting the problem in this way, people will see the problem in a new light.  I will post additional squares in the future, and some information about how I will connect and hang this piece.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Shaman Basket

Well, I have not posted in a long while, but I have not been idle.  I have recently joined an Art Quilt Group (The Out of the Box Fiber Artists) associated with the Upper Valley Art League in Mission Texas.  Great group of ladies and they challenge me (which is what I was looking for).  They recently had a Fiber Art Show and I hung 2 wall hangings and a Tunisian Crochet basket.  The basket sold (I am sooo excited).  The basket was Tunisian crochet in the round with a variety of novelty yarns, charms and wild turkey feathers from New Jersey turkeys.  I riffed off of the infinity scarves I have been making so there is no pattern, but I am going to try to make another one.  I am also going to try to resume posting...we will see.



Shaman Basket 2016 (photo by Tara Kalima)