Feature Works Archives - Page 95 of 117

Driveway Messages – Resolved – for now

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Sandy Webster

Remember that I did not like the work I had done the week before. It did not have the layeredness that I wanted. That idea of receiving messages while pursuing messages. So I took all the etched plates, inked them up and tried different fabrics and papers.

The tiny plates of asphalt patches went onto several types of cloth and paper. I liked the cotton ones made from rusted bits from here at home. There also was this sheer fabric in a pale blue and soft burnt sienna. I have had that cloth for years thinking it would make nice overlays in books. It was one of those lovely things you touch because it was rolled up and tied with a pretty ribbon and popped out of a barrel in a shop called Pettygrew or something like that. All very charming and successfully staged toward purchasing something….anything.

The etchings of tree shadows and my own shadow were printed on more odd bits of cloth and paper. On the right are the scraps of an Egyptian cotton that I made pajamas out of. On the left is just plain tracing paper. Center is more of that rusted cloth. I even found some cotton cloth that I demonstrated earth pigment coloring on using soils from here….actually the driveway…..so very appropriate.

And after they had all dried on the print line I took them down and began cutting them up and piecing them together to get the layers of mixed messages. And in the middle of putting bits and pieces together, especially the shadows of leaves, I remembered the samples of contact printing done in workshops as demonstrations of documenting place. These too were added into the piecing.

At first I tried hand stitching overlaps of the pieces with black thread. It looked way too “loving hand look.” So I had gone from the coldness of using just scanned images of etchings overlaying shadow photos to fabric with hand stitching. They were one hundred and eighty degrees from each other and neither one was looking like what I wanted to say.

But because it was a day for mending and the machine was sitting there waiting for something else to do, I started stitching the paper and cloth together like I was a piece quilter.

I ended up with four finished pieces that now have newly delivered frames. Here is one of them.

I like them. They are the messages of leaves, shadows and marks that I step over daily on my way to find other correspondences in my mailbox.

The challenge of working with a limited palette on such a variety of materials was good for me. Then how to finish the backs and mount them….more challenges.

It was surprising how quickly I went through most of the etched cloth that hung on the line just to get these four. I would like to do more work like this. But in a book form? I think that will have to be made of something else.

For now I have cleaned the studio and just plan on stitching into the dementia shawl. Funny how those same stitches look fine on the cloth shawl and perfectly lousy on these little pieced Driveway Messages.

Til next week.

The Things We Live With – Part III

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Sandy Webster

This is the last of the What We Live With series. Above is the living room wall of open shelves by the stairwell. Very little changes here. But some close ups of some of the things.

Bird cage with a palm woven bird from Bali. The cage came from Common Ground in Asheville. Always a good place to find things that need to come home.

Below the cage is only a part of the oil can collection.

Bamboo pieces from Japan and an Indonesian healing gourd figure.

Baskets from a friend in Australia, an assemblage from a man who ran a restaurant in an old stone church in Tasmania, a voodoo basket from Africa, and a clay bottle a student made at Arrowmont.

A boat I made about memory recollections, three lovely baskets by an Australian artist and a piece of wood with metal weaving and beads made by me in the early nineties in a class on metal patinas. You can pick it up and shake it because copper things are behind the woven mesh that closes over a hollow in the wood. It feels good in the hand.

Coming into the open room of kitchen, dining and living room hangs these two small pieces. A lovely photograph Phil Diehn took of some of my oil cans and a fun piece of folk art from the show in Atlanta. It is simply masking tape over sticks…then painted. An irresistible cow on my side of the fence.

In the den are egg tempera paintings I made about the loss of farming/farmers in western North Carolina and just part of a wall filled with New Zealand flax baskets that I make every time I go to Australia.

Behind the door in the guest bathroom hangs a very large woodblock print by Gwen Diehn and a small nest of mine. It was my first wood engraving.

Also in that same bathroom hang among other things, a large print by Walter Anderson bought on a trip to New Orleans, a long scrolled journal painting that Helen Sanderson of Australia gave me from her trip to Antarctica. And three hand printed illustrations that were from a children’s book on Jamaica made by Philip Kuznicki, who rented a house from us at one time. There are many more prints in this small room but these I could photograph without getting too much reflection.

In our bathroom hang the Inner Navigations Series minus one that sold. They are around my corner tub with a Nantucket basket I made in the eighties.

Over my dresser hangs several smaller pieces. More egg temperas I did of my water garden and an oil can. Plus a collage piece by Philip Kuznicki.

Another egg tempera painting on board that I did depicting a story told through three generations of men.

The beginning of a series I painted of man’s encroachment on the earth hangs with those egg temperas to one side.

Pictures of our cat, Spooky, no longer with us on another side. Photographed by Phil Diehn.

And long gone Sara on a small wall.

The last thing I gaze at before dropping off to sleep is the last of the encroachment series. Man now has it all…

So that is the finish of the things we live with. No need to open kitchen drawers or cupboards. No need to photograph books on shelves. These are things that have stories. These are the things that remind me I went some place, I did something, and it mattered.

As for the dementia shawl, I am filling it with stitches.

Art Group meets here in a couple of days. Hopefully I will be getting back to printmaking.

Til next week.

The Things You Live With

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Sandy Webster

When you walk into someone’s house you see what it is they live with. What things matter enough to see every day, all day. Hopefully this person’s house is not a package setting such as “Rooms to Go” or a section of Ikea that looked like it should come home in boxes to be assembled to look like it was in the store. Hopefully the person whose home you enter has things that have stories. And the stories are why it still sits on the shelf, hangs on the wall, crowds the floor.

Thinking of how to pare down our belongings I decided to do a blog of details of the things around the house that I take for granted. These are vignettes of a much larger space. These are things that the cleaning lady swipes a duster over twice a month with no idea of why they are there.

The reason they are there is because of their story. They tell me the story over and over again each time I look at them. They sit next to other stories and make up new ones just by rubbing elbows with each other. I am spending more time with them and will take at least two blogs to cover the ones I photographed just today.

Above is the detail of a long painting/drawing on a wood panel that hangs on the wall between upper and lower cabinets. It is above where the liquor is kept below and the dinner plates above. On it is written some of the text from a poem I wrote about the “Position of Periphery.” Being on the edge of not belonging, not getting involved frees a person from expectations. I love this piece. Here is another end of the panel.

Carolina wrens perch along a stick that comes from the mouth of a Xian warrior. I got the idea from a picture I saw in art history classes of the first attempt to put sound into artwork. A small Asian monk had a stick from his mouth with birds perched on it….at least that is how I remember it…..the book is still here not fifteen feet from this but if I look it up to be sure, there is a chance that the story would have to change. I will leave them apart and stick to memory. The wooden bowls were turned by a local wood turner whose wife also turned bowls and had jazz performances in her studio on Saturday nights after her husband passed. One of them has a wine stopper my husband made that I keep handy to plug into red wines only. Just a small pat on the man’s head and the wine is sealed. The large clay vessel is a gift from a friend in the Art Group. Pouring wine from this jug is a performance…..and it takes two hands. I like how these things look together and when I see the wooden turned bowls move further away from the jug, I bring them back and let my fingers linger on their smooth surfaces and think of quiet old Knude and his wife Lissi.

Further down the same set of cabinets is another wooden panel painting with the sugar molds holding bees wax candles and waiting for the next holiday dinner party.

The other end of the same panel has the earth pigments from here as background for a Gaston Bachalard quote about childhood and the discovery of a nest. I think his book, Poetics of Space is my most favorite “art” book. In front are some cups that hold Turkish coffee in just the right proportion with a bit of cream. They were marriage ceremony cups made by a bride and groom who did not stay married. More pottery and a bowl turned by my husband that has dried weeds that a friend and I picked to decorate the Thanksgiving table maybe four years ago. And I still taste her contribution of shredded wheat rolls when I look at these dried up stems too fragile to dust.

The long trestle table my husband made sits along the length of those cabinets. It is made of wormy chestnut salvaged from an old building we bought in town years ago. The wooden bowl on the table sits on a Mexican tapa cloth given to me by the same guy who made the jug. The wooden bowl was carved by my father and husband when they first met fifty years ago. I filled it with these strange balls someone called “monkey balls” and burned driftwood from a friend in Australia and Aboriginal carvings of goannas. The bird with burned markings like the carvings was the perfect addition when I found him in a shop filled with clever things…a shop called Sugar Boo. I think I bought it the same day I saw a woman in there wheeling her therapy pig dressed like Sherlock Holmes around in a baby carriage. Other bits and pieces in the bowl make this such a magic place to dip your hands in and remember.

Just off the end of the dining table is a pair of book cases. On top of one sits an upended packing box that held Japanese tea bowls. Now it houses gum nuts and a sharks egg in one cubby, a beaded basket from Bali in another. But the best part is the little antler family I found in a museum shop in Vancouver. I saw just one in the case and fell in love with it. She said, “We have more”. I said, “Show me.” I stopped her after four. They were so hard not to keep together. They are a family. Those little carved faces with drilled eyes and mouth. Their arms and legs swinging on strands of sinew….all that and made by an Eskimo in northern Canada. And next to this box is this.

There are three hens or chicks (not sure which) in a soap dish from Africa. They are watched over by this wonderful stoneware bird….a bird with a smile on its face. I like this kind of pottery. The marks of the hand are all over it. The stoppered piece behind the big bird is made by an Japanese potter living and working in Asheville…..a gift from a friend. The three chicks were made by an older woman in Penland. She took a class I taught there and this was a way of bringing her home. I love how she pressed shells into the clay to look like wings.

Over on the other book case sits a collection of Indonesian bottles made from wood and horn. Very intricate designs. The head for the one has been knocked off again and is likely lodged between the book case and the wall. We put them in bamboo cups when they tip over too frequently and now it seems they belong there. A wooden Balinese mask hangs on the wall and a complex weave snuff basket stays close to these figures. A small basket made by a friend in Australia hangs off a branch. All of these things feel good in the hand and bring back the stories of being in Bali with friends from Australia. They stay away from the Eskimo family….like two different tribes that have only me in common.

More dried things are on the wall just past the window by the bookcases. They are from our lotus plants in the water garden outside the front door and are stuffed into a piece of bamboo brought home from Japan. There is an African doll and a Peruvian doll hung between two forks bought in a shop on my first trip to teach in Australia. It was a wonderful big old place in Mittigong. The basket I bought to use for serving crackers, but like most things took on a preciousness because of where it came from.

I will do another blog another day…..there are so many more pictures of things that I live with in this large room of kitchen, dining and living space.

Now I am getting ready for company and the eclipse tomorrow. And during the past two weeks Sadie and I are still working on the shawl.

Patches and Stitches

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Sandy Webster

This is the linen shawl that was much thinner than the scarves so the damage of the natural pigments was greater. I pulled out some of the pieces of silk that were scraps tossed in with contact printing while in Australia. They looked like they might be just the right thing to patch the holes by placing the scrap behind the holes. At this point I was thinking I would wear this shawl like I would wear the scarf below. Remember last week I said I would add some beads for color…

I just randomly filled some places or followed along with the earth pigment marks. I like the double thickness of this and I like the holes. It feels good to the hand. And while selecting the earthy colors of beads to go with this scarf, I decided to rid myself of about seventy-five percent of my beads and jewelry findings. It filled a duffle bag and the recipient will make good use of them.

Anyway back to the shawl. I also had a selection of very old silk threads that I had purchased at Wafu Works in Hobart, Tasmania. It is a lovely tiny Japanese cloth and sewing shop that I manage to go to each time I am there. And each time I bring home a little something. Here are the threads.

The spooled one is a thread made in France but purchased in Goolwa, South Australia this past March. And now you can see the silk scraps pinned over holes.

And how it looks from the other side. At this point I am still thinking I can wear this.

Then removing the embroidery hoop from my stitching done to reinforce the frayed edges, I put my thumb right through the cloth. Maybe this is not so wearable after all.

Sadie likes it.

And I still like stitching on it. I still like how the silk looks. I am going to continue with it because held up to the light, it tells a story. A story of fragmentation, holding together, making do, not letting go. Plus I am guaranteed good company while I stitch. Now I am adding areas of metallic threads and am thinking of how the cracks in pottery are filled with gold to emphasize the special-ness of an everyday item.

I am also mindful of the other side and now am backing some patches with other gauzy cloth on the opposite side. Note the small whitish patch on the lower right. And then the opposite side from it.