Kandinsky Again

For our next assignment in Color class, a calendar of Kandinsky's works was cut up into pieces, each student got a piece.  Our  mission is to duplicate the colors as precisely as we can.  My piece was the lower left quarter of this work, Landscape 1913.

Quilts and Color

Michael James' "Lush Life."

This week's assignment for color class was to go to the museum and look at the quilt exhibit.  There is no way I can call that "work!"  We were asked to pick one piece and write about it in relation to the color combinations used.  I felt a little bad for not picking the Nancy Crow piece, but it was "March Study," from the 1970's, and the use of color in it didn't really excite me.  Since James uses strip piecing I thought it would be more relevant for me.    Here's my essay.

 I chose Michael James' "Lush Life,"  which was created in 1992.  The piece is constructed using strip piecing, a method I am exploring in my current series, so I thought it would be interesting to look closer at a master's work.  

Very generally, strip piecing involves cutting long thin strips of fabric, then sewing them back together into new "made fabrics."  The "made fabric" is then usually cut up and reassembled in various ways.  This is where any similarity between Michael James and I ends.  Obviously there are an infinite number of ways to slice up and reassemble fabric.
Unlike some of his other works, such as Rhythm/Color: Morris Men,(See below) in "Lush Life" the  the strips are arranged in a very simple allover 45-degree diagonal pattern.  Although each made fabric is made up of various colors and patterns of fabric, the simple overall piecing design allows sections of dissimilar value to read as solids when placed adjacent to each other. 
Looking at the piece from a distance, or on a small screen,  what you see first is the stencil-like cut-out shapes that appear overlaid on a contrasting background.  Low value figures on a high value background.  Or is it the other way around?  James is able to achieve subtle gradations of value and hue by carefully selecting the alternating color strips.

 In places the light fabric gradually transitions into dark rather than being sharply contrasted with it.  Where does one figure end and the other begin?  This draws you in closer, to the point where you realize it is all one very, very, carefully constructed symphony of strips.  Or stripes.  The lightest areas use pale gray and  pastel tints, so that there is little contrast between them.  The fabric reads overall as light.  In the mid-range values there is more contrast, so that the patterning is more evident.  In the darkest sections contrast is reduced again, and the overall image is "dark." 

I think that blue is the dominant color, but that is by no means certain.  There is also a lot of yellow and pink.  The blues tend toward blue-green and range from palest tint to darkest shade.

To me, this piece is so complex I can look at it, and try to understand it, for hours.  There are so many levels of color, shape and design that it's hard to know how to take it apart.  Here is the Nancy Crow piece that was featured in the show:

Nancy Crow, "March Study"

And here is Michael James' other work mentioned,  Rhythm/Color: Morris Men.

Rhythm/Color:
Morris Men

The Art of Color Class

I've been so busy actually doing art that I have not had much time to blog about it.   No complaints, that's the way it should be.  I waste way too much time staring at a screen and not creating.  But I like to keep the blog up, if for no other reason, to have an ongoing record of what I was doing and thinking at various times.  And it's stored in a place where I can't lose it, unlike paper or even digital files on my computer.  

So today I am sharing last night’s projects in my Color in Art class.  I didn't know we would be using oil paints or I would probably have been too intimidated to take the class.  Not sure why painting and even drawing scare me off, but they do.  It's like this little hidden secret, I'm afraid someone will find out that I really can't draw to save my life.  I know I could learn, and I think I eventually must go there.  The whole idea of learning how to use oils seemed intimidating and I feared failure.   But the experience so far has been the total reverse of that!  Being told exactly what to buy and how to use it solved much.   Last night when I started seeing all the amazing colors that would emerge out of mixing the six simple primaries (two of each) I never wanted to quit.  Merging two things that I was sure would produce a brown muddy mess instead created a mind bogglingly beautiful teal blue.  Wow. I'm hooked.  So - yesterday:

The first project was to try out all the combinations of our primary paints to see which ones produced what sort of secondary colors.  I knew nothing about oil painting, so it was fascinating to me to mix the colors and see what came out.  We did this in the classroom, but mine was a smeared up mess so I redid it.  Sorry the photo is crappy.

The second assignment was to create some sort of grid on a piece of paper 6″ x 9″ and then make an exact copy of it. One version was supposed to illustrate “color harmony,” and the other “color dis-harmony.”    No explanation or definition was given of those two terms.   In class each person put up one of their pieces on the wall and others had to guess which one was which.  Not as simple as it seems!  Very fun, though.  Everyone had quite different interpretations.

The other thing that is fun is that our teacher is very into Nancy Crow and quilts in general, and unlike most people already recognizes that there is such a thing as an art quilt, so it's nice not to fight that battle.  In fact, our assignment this week is to go to the local museum exhibit, American Quilts, the Democratic Art, and write an analysis of the color use in one of the quilts.   Fun! And an excuse to go back and soak in the exhibit one more time before it closes next week. 

Gearing Up

It's been a long time since I've posted to the blog.  It's been a busy time - once the quilt show and holiday socializing was finally over last week I turned my focus to "back to school" mode.   I've taken on a lot, but it doesn't feel like a lot of responsibility or something to dread.  I am excited and feel like a kid filled with anticipation of the first day of school, excited about the new things I'm going to learn and as much or maybe more about the new friends I'm going to meet or reconnect with.  Turns out that Katie from the Nancy Crow workshop is also part of the online class that starts Sunday.  She lives just north and across the border from here, so we may meet up in person one of these days.

On Sunday morning the first assignment from Lisa in Working in a Series arrived. Class officially starts NEXT Sunday but she gave us some little warm up assignments to get us thinking, learning our way around the blog (Wordpress, UGH!) and posting pictures properly.  I'm okay with posting but even with a bright work light my pictures are not coming out properly.  Look at these!  I borrowed Greg's big construction light  why can't I get the lighting right?!

Anyway it's been fun and busy putting up my first assignment - the "About me" page, and checking to see if others have done the same. So far there are only eight of us - two spaces left, and I'm sure it's not too late if anyone is interested.  I am sure it's going to be fantastic for me - I can see that Lisa is really well organized and has her class carefully thought out and prepared.  So the last piece of my assignment is to declutter the studio - I'm glad to have that assignment -it needed it!

I got through the registration process at Whatcom Community College for the Color in Art class. That should be interesting, and I 'm a little more apprehensive about it, because I'm fairly sure I'll be the only "textile artist". Probably the only one over 40 too.  I definitely won't use the word "quilts" around there. Their quarter is very late so class doesn't start until October 2.  I'm also nervous about disappearing from work for three hours, but probably no one will even notice.  I don't want to keep it a secret, I just don't want to advertise it.

The third part of my "back to school" experience is that I have signed up with SAQA for something called the "Visioning Project."  It's not really well described but it is structured as a way for members to publicly post goals, report on them, and receive feedback. Only a few of the participants have checked in so far.   It seems it does not formally kick off until October, and I know that for anyone making a submission to Quilt National, the deadline is Friday so many people are probably tied up with that.  I am looking forward to seeing that process, and trying to hold back from my urge to jump in and comment on everything.  I don't want to be that person.

Anyway, that's it from here. I will be working on the remainder of my assignment from Lisa - the decluttering and organizing. She did mention purchasing any supplies you might need so you are ready, and gosh, I realized I really really needed this stack of all the new Kona Cotton solids from Pink Chalk.