How my polar bear came to be

It began as I usually do with playing with photos in photoshop. I took two photos one of the ice on Great Slave Lake as I flew into visit my daughter in Yellowknife a few years ago. I deleted the wing of the plane and desaturated it to grey scale.

I combined this grey scale photo with one I had taken on my kitchen floor of my soapstone polar bear sculpture which my husband brought back from Baffin Island a long time ago and I got this wonderful shadowy photo that looked like the polar bear was navigating through a snowy landscape.

Then I printed it onto silk organza. It came out a lot fainter so I hand stitched the bear outline and stitched some of the landscape lines then after much trial and error decided to place it on a pieced background of quilt batting intensively stitched. What with working so many fine stitches and waiting for decisions to be clear on what I actually wanted it to look like it took me about six months to make but I love it and it has become an image that I call up when I need to be calm.

And isn’t that what art is for?

One of my animal totems

I’ve been working for some time figuring out what animals seem to inspire me in conjunction with my archetypes. I thought originally that I might have an animating animal for each archetype but I have since come to the conclusion that my animal totems are easier to see when I connect them to the four elements,earth,air water and fire. That lead me to consider what animals have always resonated with me.

As a child camping , I was always a little afraid of bears, and as a family who camped a lot we had several encounters with black bears. My Dad was always thinking about being prepared in case of a chance encounter while on a trail, so we used to do drills where my dad would leap out of the forest and chase us. It was a little unnerving but we all understood the purpose and laughed a good deal afterwards. There was one day I was sitting by the creek playing in the water and a black bear came out of the woods just a little upstream of me. I think the wind direction must not have blown him any scent of me or it was because I sat very still, in any case he did not show any interest in me but splashed through the water to the other side and disappeared into the forest.

Later as a mom who took her daughters to the zoo regularly and the polar bears were one of our favorites to visit, a polar bear swam up to the glass and looked me straight in the eye.

While starting a hike one day with friends we were striding through a meadow and I noticed how suddenly all the ground squirrels went silent!. I was at the back of the line of hikers and saw my husband turn around and start to walk back towards me rather quickly. He said there was a grizzly on the trail headed our way and we should return to the car to wait and see where he ended up. I wanted to see him so went over the rise… and there he was ambling along the trail. I did turn right around and we all walked back to the car picking up the pace as we realized how his ambling was a lot faster than we thought. Once again he was uninterested in us and took off up the mountain on the other side of the meadow so we restarted our hike to enjoy the alpine flowers.

So I really felt a bear was likely one of my animal spirits. Reading about them I was still undecided about which kind of bear it might be, and I also wondered if that mattered. But one day I was playing around with photos and my polar bear found her way into my art and into my heart. I will leave you with the finished image here and explain how she was made next time.

Welcome to August! It is always the hottest month and one that I’ve always found full of emotions. As a little girl August was often boring, summer had been around for a month and I had enjoyed days full of nothing but play and lazing. But when August came it meant summer was nearly over. Some of what I felt was anxiety,what would I do, with another full month of freedom. Some of it was anticipation of the new school year with maybe new friends or the dreaded old ones who were often terrifying. Who would be my teacher? Would I like her and grow and learn things and more practically which would be the best supplies to buy and oh I loved shopping for new school clothes but…. It was Still August.

Today, many years later I find I still have the same feelings though usually about how quickly the time will go. I have so much yet I want to accomplish before the time outside disappears into crisp days and the inevitable winter cold. As I write here today the resident squirrel is already harvesting cones, chucking them down as fast as she can to ripen before she scurries around to stash them somewhere safe.

I have more projects to sew, some underway and some sifting through my mind, getting organized in my random fashion. But here are two small pieces that I have completed in the last couple of weeks.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

And now it is suddenly JULY

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting…. Grin… but I can say I have been making, albeit small things. In working through my personal archetypes and examining my own art practices I have somehow fallen to the conclusion that I do really love small work . That is not to say the intent need be small, but the pieces I most enjoy working on are small and full of detail. Jane Dunnewold says in her book ,Creative Strength Training that with regards to art she thinks there are two major schools of thought: go BIG, or go obsessive. I think at the moment I am on the side of go obsessive.

Those of you who have been here before will know that I love doing paper collage. I have started using magazine pages in my collages as well as some of my own photo papers cut up. These past few months I have done some small paper collage then used them to inspire a small embroidery. The collages are about 3 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches. And this first embroidery was done in a square of cloth that measures 51/2 inches.

I decided to try this for the following reasons. A fellow embroidery enthusiast shared Trish Burrs work. Burr embroiders fine work in simple stitches while paying extra attention to blending colours to achieve an accurate rending. She, as do most instructors, suggests you do some samples to learn the technique. But you all know how that word sits with me, so I decided I could try to do this using my own “patterns”. Except I found that my collages were not actually colours that were blended so much as just numerous. I do blend in around the edges, but I was having so much fun using the numerous colours that I simply kept going. I hope you find them as interesting to look at as I did in making them. I’ll share the second pair next week.

Work in progress

I’ve been working on a small piece for some time. My work table goes through various changes daily as I try different threads and such but still usually manages to remain like this!

I started this piece by painting random marks on a piece of fabric. It was a free workshop aimed at a final roll simply of marks. As always I ended going a completely different direction. Because I had discovered a lovely wee bird in the painting I decided to capitalize on the cheeky wee creature. But she has challenged me in lots of ways. I could see her plainly but was not sure if others would if she was not emphasized in some way. How to do that, became a series of trial and error maneuvers. I tried highlighting her with other strips of yellow, but I felt it wasn’t quite enough so because I was also experimenting with trying out embroidery stitches I have not used for a while I decided to use a herringbone over the strips of fabric. Then I laced some blue metallic thread through that just to see…. I have this other gorgeous ribbon like thread that I thought would make a good branch framework. I like it but she is waiting to tell me if she is finished. My work table is a little tidier but mostly the bits are waiting too. But here she is in close up.

Variations

Trying my hand at neurographic drawing was a fun exercise. I really got going with fluid lines and using my brush markers was like painting without the possible mess. I did some small ones in a sketch book that weren’t too detailed but then I thought I’d try a bigger one and maybe make it the extension of my last years embroidered word design, abstract.

I liked it for a couple of days but decided it didn’t really work so I got my scissors out and started cutting out lines and weaving them together and soon I had a great nest. One of the shapes I randomly cut was a bird shape and the image began to take shape. I had to add a wee eye and eye stripe . There was a tiny triangle left over that made a great throat marking . She sat in the nest quite well but needed some context. Out came the handmade paper I have always thought looked like tree trunks, and a soft yellow magazine page made a sunny background, some squiggly painted lines on a chunk of cotton resembled branches to me and the nest was anchored in a tree on a sunny day. I had just received some lovely silk yarn in greens and browns that made shadows and vines and I declared this variation on a theme finished.

Words

One thing that everyone seems to do now is to think about a word that might keep them company for a whole year. Steer them when they lose focus or despair about their own intentions and how sometimes they get sidetracked as daily life takes over our existence. There are lots of ways to reinforce these words or help remind yourself. Some simply note it down in their journal, others write it in something that they can pocket and run their fingers over or some post a sticky note on their computer screen.

However you do it it lends itself to a bit of creativity as well as being a reminder.

Last year my embroidery group set a challenge of embroidering a word in some way. It could be how the word made you feel or something it made you think of or you could embroider the actual word. I chose to try making a design out of a word and embroider that design. I had read in a design book that one should do a number of designs, 25 was the suggested number, not just stop with the first or second one for those end up usually being the usual design and that if you want something truly different you keep trying things until you find something you like. I needless to say didn’t do 25, but I did do a bunch and I think I shared my design of “Abstract’ with you here last November.

this year I decided to embroider my word for the year. I also was learning a new Needle Lace stitch and wanted to try that as edging around the word. Then I got carried away and collaged it onto some papers and now it has a prominent place to hang in my studio as an ever present reminder of what I want to remember to do this year. It was a very enjoyable concentration of energy exercise,

Feb 3

Hello.

Last year I did a course with Jane Dunnewold, where we worked on establishing our personal archetypes and began discovering just how they influenced our art work. It was a fascinating journey. We had the opportunity to present a work that had been made during the year and which referenced your archetypes in some way.

I will elaborate later on the archetypes but for now I wanted to show you my finished piece.

“discussion on the line” is my piece.

The design was taken from an experimental painting I completed a long time ago and I traced it onto a piece of white linen, hand embroidered it then painted the background with inktense blocks. I stretched it onto stretcher bars and finished it with a surround of orange silk yarn.

jan 19

Where does the time go? The last photo I put here is the complete embroidery roll I did a while back, as a challenge with an embroidery group I meet with. It was decided that we should each take a roll of fabric and do some stitch practice on it . I being the rebel that I am couldn’t commit myself to practicing or keeping track of new stitches so I chose to look at this project as a doodle practice using stitch. so I drew and stitched or simply stitched randomly in a wiggling line or collaged some wee bits of fabric onto the linen then stitch embellished that. It was great fun to just have something to hand to pick up whenever I had a few minutes to sew. it is not a pristine finished project, rather a slow stitch scrap became something in its own right.Oh and the linen was a pair of my husbands pants that I cut up after he ,of course, wore some holes in places… and that made it soft and pliable to sew .

Jan 10

and now it is November...

I have been embroidering more than I used to. The fascination of different threads is all consuming. And, I have a small group of people who also embroider. It is interesting how when one has a group of friends who appreciate the same things you do how much more you work to make interesting pieces. This same group of people agree to try certain studies… most people call them samples but That word sends me fleeing… so I call them studies. This particular challenge was to embroider a word. It could be the word itself or the idea behind the word or…. if you wanted to do, whateve,r as long as it was around a word… hey that’s OK! My kind of challenge absolutely.

I decided I would embroider the word. I found a scrap of fabric and did the work. I read that when one wants to do a design one should try 25 different suggestions, otherwise you may be falling into the desgin that is the easiest or the most common iteration . I didn’t do 25 … but I did draw several designs and this is the one I chose to sew. Can you see the word, or does my poet brain obscure how I see.

cheers

End of October

It’s been a wonderful fall here, but today we had the first dusting of snow and freezing rain . The leaves are mostly gone but this bush at the corner of my house was a bright spot in the light.

I have been embroidering a piece for a few weeks now that is mostly orange. Many of the same shades here. Pictures to come soon.

august

Back in January I hinted that there was a piece of work that I was finishing but was not yet ready to share.

it is finished and I hope you enjoy looking.

This is a photo I abstracted in photoshop and then hand stitched it onto a piece of linen. I used rayon thread and the shape developed naturally as the stitching got more intense.It took me a whole year to do but I enjoyed every moment.

I named it stream!

May30

Months ago I did some collages and I have been playing around with crops, to see if some parts are more appealing than others. Now I’m thinking I may try and print these on fabric to add stitching to see where that might take the piece. Here’s a crop to start, and perhaps it will come with me on a trip both figuratively and literally to see what might happen.

feb 1

It has been quite hard to get motivated to do work this past month. Whether it is the pandemic, still, or the rest that I usually desire after the holidays, or just a block is hard to tell. But I really want to resume my mixed media online course, and yet I have been procrastinating. I have always had trouble with the idea that I should make small pieces as samples that I can use then to make bigger work. Perhaps the reason for this is my dislike of doing things twice. Part of me doesn’t want all the clutter of wee pieces that have no purpose other than experimentation. But with this course I have done a number of smaller pieces to practice the techniques. I painted some mini abstracts months ago and put them away over the holidays just because… but this past week I got them out again in an attempt to get going.

I have recently begun to read, A Primer of Visual Literacy by Donis A Dondis . I always seem to read when I’m having trouble doing. It seems to clear my mind . Somehow I usually find a book that helps me understand more about this art making process, at the very least, and at the very best it clears up the issue that seems to have me stymied. I’m not quite sure where this one is leading but it is encouraging me to look at the work I have done and see if it speaks.

The three little square ones, the top and the two on the bottom,were the first I tried, I find them quite interesting, what they might be saying …. “Well?” The three pieces in the middle were cut from other small pieces. These ones I looked at with a frame to find the most pleasing parts as I felt the wholes were less than interesting. I’m wondering if these will become wee cards on their own or if they will be added to other larger collages that decide to make themselves known.

These four are definitely a series, I like that the colours and shapes find themselves in each one

At the moment I am feeling uncertain about whether any of them are more than exercises, even if I like them. And where to go from here is the big question?

I’d love to hear any reactions from readers. Do you see something? Do you feel they speak of something or is the fact that the intention was to experiment, to learn about media and composition, all that is coming through.

Does an artist have to have a specified intention before an abstract can accomplish more than just splash?

hmm, I may have to get further into some books!