For the birds.

I have this idea.

I know I said that I was looking for an idea. I am ready to make new artwork. I am not convinced of the last posts idea in the least. In fact that idea diminishes by the nanosecond compared with this idea.

You see. I love birds. Everyone who has read this blog, even for the shortest amount of time, should know this. I have wanted to be a bird since I was nine years old and even wrote an essay to the effect. (My best friend wrote that she wanted to be a watermelon seed going through the intestinal tract and got in trouble for it. But that is a whole different story.)

So getting back to it, I have this idea.

There is a list of birds in decline. Just writing those words gives me shivers and makes me want to cry. There are tears in my eyes while I type. See? There is just that much love between me and the birds.

So this is my idea:

I would like to make a piece of art for each bird on the top 20 list.

In a cohesive and uniform size.

With the intention of creating a traveling show to raise awareness of my heart's topic. For the birds.

It frightens me to verbalize this idea. But we only live once and we all live on this planet, weather our wings are are made of dreams or feathers.

Thinking it though.

I am searching for a new piece, a new idea. I am ready to start. Something.

So I opened up journals past and began looking through each page. The above image is a drawing I did just recently. I may have posted it, not sure. But because I now live in a city, I figure it is a good idea to draw using perspective, which is not a strong point of mine. I have never taken a class and don't know the principles of the endeavor. But I try.

This drawing I did a few yeas back and I have to say, I love the ground I used. When I was a poster restoration artist, I would sometimes come across aged papers and oddities. I would save them as I was able and this was one of those. I glued it into this Moleskine and drew this building on top. I love the acid brown, the odd angles, the hidden words on the paper.

So yesterday I combine these two images using photoshop and experimented some with cloth. I didn't like anything that I came up with but I do like this image and would like to work it through some more.

Not lost!

I have been working up a storm. Working so hard, in fact, that a fun deficit occurred. I am now in the process of fixing this deficit! In fact, I have been playing for the last two days and plan to play today! A friend is coming into town and we are going to HANG OUT!

I have been teaching two online classes through Joggles, and creating the content was an intense experience for me. But I created some neat samples which spurred some personal creative growth as well. So, it is like a win, win...win, situation.

Take this bird, which is a page in the mark making book. I created it three different times and each time came up with a totally different image.

I love working with the same image repetitively. It teaches me how to divorce from previous technique and color choice while allowing me time to explore without reinventing the wheel.

Creative language

I did get some schooling in art, it wasn't fine art training so much as vocational artists training. The fine arts training that I have acquired is as a result of being released into this creative world of ours. It takes time to integrate what you learn in school and to make it your own. I think it is a lifetime pursuit. (Don't believe for a minute that you need to go to school to embark on this journey).

I have to say that school learning is dry and perfunctory-the playing field needs to be leveled in order to lay a ground work, learning for the self and for the passion of making is much juicier, tasty like. Last night I had a little epiphany. What would happen if I replaced the dry thoughts of learning past and recreated a language of design and composition that works for me in my current world?

So as I look at and evaluate ideas in design and composition as they relate to me and my creative language, I see patterns, repetition, and acts of play. I am also exploring my three words for the year, Mend, Intuit and Random.

This little nude asked for creative release, that is when I sewed the smattering of scallops along the left hand border. Last night I began thinking about the sleepy pose of the nude and what this little gal might be dreaming about. Which made me think of Repose in Yellow.

Do you see the connections and flow of my thoughts?

So our dream gal is dreaming of music, perhaps sleeping to tunes that are soothing to her soul. In my creative/visual dictionary, beside loving music and needing to listen to it as I create, I often break out in dance to release the exuberance of the making. Music is also my husband (a musician), a connection to intuit. So...dream, exuberance, intuit, love.

Will you join me in exploring your own creative language? What and where do your ideas and images connect? Can you implement these ideas into elements of design? This is creative voice.

Creating a sense of movement.

I have been cross posting on the Quilting Arts Community web site for the last 9 months, time that has seen the release of my book, my efforts to promote it, my move back to the East Coast, and the settling back into my creative center after having written a book. These are and were major pieces in the fabric of my life.

It is time for me to make melanietesta.com and this blog my home again. I would like to spruce this ol' blog up, give it another face lift, as it were, and I would like to reevaluate the manner in which I choose to blog. More on that soon.

If you are coming here from the Quilting Arts site for the first time, welcome! If you are a mainstay of this blog and have always read this blog in this location, thank you.

This is the only image I have of the following Boro tatter prior to fixing it up.

This piece or Boro tatter has captured my creative imagination. Originally, it was covered in lint, probably as a result of having been part of a garment and being laid against cotton insulation. It had a few more rips in it and a few less patches. And, you are looking at the 'wrong' side of the cloth, although, this really is the right side of the cloth. At least for me.

I love the composition of patches and felt the need to patch up a few additional and neglected holes. I await a shipment of water soluble stabilizer. I have plans for this little piece of blue...

Then there is the Slow Nude I have been working on.

This piece came to a halting stop and I couldn't figure out why. So I put it aside.

A few months ago, maybe even a year ago, a friend gave me a stack of handkerchiefs. They are a collection handed down from an aunt, many are well used and stained, all are heavily washed and very soft and some are down right playful. I love the entire collection.

So I took out the lot and started playing with the little hemmed squares.

When I saw the little calico scallops and how well they played with the colors of my Nude, I knew that what the piece was asking for was a sense of movement. A move away from what it had been and toward what it could be. The little scalloped addition to this Nude is an opening, a broadening of what the piece could be. This piece seeks completion and has been jogged out of its comfort zone, sparking a new sense of awareness and excitement.

Very suitable, I think.

The Winner is....

Using the Random Number Generator, commenter #21 won...

That means Judy Haas WON!!!

Congrats Judy, see you soon! Thank you all for visiting my site and I do hope you will join in on one of my upcoming classes, Freezer Paper, Paint, Oh my! or Mark Making and Hand Dyed Embroidery Floss. I have been having great fun creating the classes and would love to see you there.

mend, random, intuit.

I do not make resolutions in a yearly manner. I don't feel compelled to make a particular change on a particular day, but this year I have been thinking about words for creative exploration.

After some thought I have come up with: mend, random, intuit.

mend: I am in love with stitches that are not intentional. Or perhaps I should describe it as stitches that are purposeful without the willful intent of beauty or symmetry.

random: disparate imagery cobbled and pulled from different sources. The connections might be evident or private, you never know.

intuit: I don't want to use the word intuitive. Intuit. Intuit feels more present-tense somehow. Ituit feels embodied, trusting, internal.

I have been exploring stitch. Hand Stitch. Slow stitch. Slow cloth. I have joined a group on facebook called Slow Cloth and am enjoying thinking the idea through. The term is akin to slow food, as it might to compared to the more ubiquitous, fast food.

Slow Cloth is intentional, takes time, energy and thought. It doesn't necassarily mean that you sew by hand, it also means you make the cloth you use, paint or dye, it can mean that you sew by machine. But more often than not it means that you engage in the path of mastery, intention and wonder of materials.

This weekend, my Man and I went to Sri Threads here in Brooklyn. The man who owns the gallery collects Boro cloth and garments. Indigo dyed cloth-rags and tatters, for the most part that has been mended and repurposed for long term use.

I beelined it for the rag basket. I really want scraps. I found a few gems, I didn't go overboard because the lil buggers can be expensive. Now I need to search my cloth bins for some other pieces that will go with.