darkness intruded

"light thinks it travels faster

than anything 

but it is wrong. 

no matter how fast light travels, 

it finds the darkness has always 

got there first, and is 

waiting for it."

-terry pratchett

no matter how hard i try to hide from the morning sun, it always finds a way to intrude upon my thoughts. waking my day to the reality coursing through the world outside my bedroom window.

yet, daybreak is one of my favorite times of day. teetering between the realms of dream and waking. some of my best ideas are born during this between time.

idle hands

"happiness is

a warm puppy."

-charles m. schulz

i've been so busy with building barns this summer that i've been tuckered out by the time i drag my butt home at night and can't bring myself to do much more than let my hands sit idle at the needles. this week i have been playing around with a some ideas for a slow cloth version of bodhi though. i really like the direction this one is going so will have to muster the energy this weekend to dig through my fiber stash and see what i can come up with. maybe i'll manage a little rust dyeing and stitching, too?

namasté

squirrels and other distractions

"i often imagine

that your mind wanders

through the same

forest as mine."

-raine cooper

a dear friend of mine opened a wondrous resource for creating new artistic tools.  it is amazing what a plasma cutter is capable of making from a flat sheet of raw steel!  these lovelies are still shiny and as distracting as chattering squirrels, but will soon be coated in lovely rust and ready to go to work!  i have some very specific ideas in mind to try out with them this weekend...

she also had this delightful rust dye tank created for me.  created from raw steel, it will soon be rusty and ready to go to work.  my idea when discussing the possibilities of such a thing with her was to create a rust dye tank that i could use to get an all-over dye bath brewing in.  my hope with this experiment is to be able to create softer rust dye results than direct to metal rust dyeing.  i'm also hoping to see if it will lend itself to more of a shibori dying technique with rust.  i don't know of anyone who has tried this as yet so don't know if it will work, but the theory seems viable.

to this end, i have already dumped a starter rust dye mush into the tank, created from the rusty bits and rust dust collected from the floor pans of my 1960 International Harvester B112 truck that were removed in the process of fabricating shiny new floor pans.  this rust dye mush has been cooking in a bucket with rainwater for a few months already.  now i'll add more rainwater and some vinegar and really get the tank cooking!

as a happy serendipitous surprise, she also found this lovely small rust dye tank for me.  we are not sure what it was intended to become before it was abandoned in the scrap pile, but it is water tight and made of raw steel, so it is now my new experimental rust dye tank.  the perfect smaller size for one offs and mad experimentation!

so many new squirrels to chase after!

namaste'

salvage blues

things that people

have used 

and cherished. they

have personality,

character,

and soul.

here we have two of my favorite things: music and cloth.  both created, or to be re-created, from salvage.  in the background is my latest acquisition, the troubadour, talked about here.  in the foreground is one of my favorite pair of work jeans. carpenters, complete with the extra little side pockets and hammer loop.  blown out knee with a minor repair already chanted in. chewed to salem and back heel cuz i love to were my jeans a few inches longer than my legs can manage. one of the legs is ripped several inches up along one side where i stepped on the trailing fragments of hem and continued to try to walk.

if you've been following my blog for some time, you'll remember i've already done a pair of skull pants. now it is time for something different. new. at first blush, i'm thinking something japanese. oni masks; foo lions; noh theatre; hannya masks...that sort of vibe. so, over the next few days, i'll be sketching some ideas while needle chanting in some stabilizing scraps and preparing the jeans for what is to come!

namaste'

road trip

"if you don't imagine,

nothing ever happens at all."

-john greer, paper towns

it's a bright, sunny morning and the ideas are percolating for something fun in black. but i don't seem to have much by way of black salvage fabrics at the moment. nor do i seem to have any black dye. guess it's time to fire up the beast and go in search of something dark and wonderful and crow-like!

namaste'

...and another thing

...and another thing hunkering in during rampaging winter storms is good for is to get those creative vibes bouncing all over the place!  i always have a wagon load of ideas floating around in my noggin...most of which will probably never realize manifestation. but every once in a while one or two will push through like a hope filled seedling on a cold early spring morning.

for some time i've been entertaining focusing on the "mixed media" part of my creativity...something that has not been prominent of late as i continue to explore the fiber filled avenues of my musings. somehow, these cold winter days and nights have been inching me closer and closer to those mixed media roots once again. i've been digging through my old jeweler's bench, re-acquainting myself with the tools and possibilities that have been laying dormant in their own creative winter for some time.

some of the things that have caught my eye are metal alphabet stamps like these; random pieces of assorted metal sheets and scraps from past projects; etching supplies; and various tins of random adornment fodder.

ideas are beginning to form amidst the whispers. unfinished cloth art dolls have found their way to the top shelf of the jeweler's bench. as have tiny baskets and minuscule boxes of beads and vintage buttons and other bits of riff raff just begging to be used somehow. to the left of the bench appeared a tall wooden hatbox sort of critter, overflowing with scraps of salvaged cloth and fibers.

something is lurking just outside my peripheral vision... i can see piper fixing his feline eyes intently upon it. but, as usual, i still can't quite see what it is that has captured his attention.  so i will continue stitching open seams on community and allow this silent lurker to watch and perhaps grow more comfortable with his new surroundings. comfortable enough to reveal himself in due time...

namaste'

old cloth, new direction

in an effort to simply start doing, rather than thinking about doing, i've picked up community and begun top stitching the seams on the first row. just continuing on. though i have the thought that the name will be changing soon. i'm still listening for the this new name, so until the whispers become loud enough to hear, i will still call it community.

as some of you may recall, community began as a human wrapping cloth comprised of various salvaged scraps from discarded and unwanted clothing from the community in which i live. some garnered from local thrift shops. others from yard sales. still others donated to the project from friends and strangers who heard about the endeavor.

now, as i enter into the last year or so that i will be living here in montana, my thoughts about this cloth have begun to evolve. grow. enlarge. it is no longer content to be a series of squares and rectangles quilted in a more common manner (i had been contemplating even machine quilting this one). it wants to have more story to it than this. whispers of beasts and words are becoming coherent. insistent. so between bouts of stitching the seemingly endless seams with vintage variegated threads, i will begin exploring visceral, almost totemic, illustrations of beasts. lions. tigers. leopards. bears. who knows what all else? but these are foremost in thought at the moment.

with the riotous color already present in what will now become the background blocks of this cloth, i shall have to get somewhat inventive to keep the new beastie population soon to appear from disappearing into this cacophony of color!

namaste'

a place of no thingness

there are places in the dark, empty corners of my mind that i am inexplicably drawn to roam. to wander. aimless drifting. seeking...for some thing i can't ever seem to wrap in a frayed cloth of understanding.  it is a place that compels me to venture further into the depths of...no thingness...for there is not even darkness there to cloak my restless in.

a place a part of me believes...or wants to believe...harbors great creativity. hidden somewhere amongst its vast emptiness. if only i could just open these eyes enough to see it.

a quiet, rasping chuckle shuffles across the landscape of my breath as i hear jude observe mirthfully, "joe has gone into story mode again..." her voice tinged with crisp winter apples. and smiles. the glint of her glasses reflecting worlds of creative vision that taunt and tantalize artistic souls near. and far alike. a welcome, inviting sound...

striving to touch the fragile, frayed edges of the muse who drives me deeper into this place, i search deeper. wandering a vastness that only frightens with its emptiness that is filled to bursting with things i just can't quite perceive beyond knowing that they are there. just out of reach. leaving me frustrated. thirsty. yearning.

yet still, my fingers are idle. resting in nests of thread. and scrap. they itch to commence. to embark. to manifest. but they just lay there...

what are they waiting for?

she said "rusty" like it was a bad thing!

after having breakfast yesterday at a trucker dive just outside of town, a dear friend and i decided to poke around a nearby antique shop for battered, vintage cigar boxes and the like. joyously waltzing up to the register with an arm full of boxy treasures, we got to chatting with the 150+ (or so it seemed) year old british lady behind the counter and listening to her time-worn war stories back in jolly old england of yesteryear. it was a fascinating trip down her memory lane! somehow, the conversation about the bombing of england and hunkering down in the dark recesses of bomb shelters found its way around to an old bedspring sitting out along side the barn. i don't know how we got onto it, but i expressed interest in it and the clerk raised an eyebrow in surprise, and perhaps a little disdain, and wondered what on earth i would want an old rusty bedspring for? always having a bit of stitchery tucked away somewhere on my person, i pulled out a rusted sunburst cloth that i had been stitching on and told what wonderful patterns i thought i might be able to coax out of the bedsprings, what with the repeated circles and x's that i could immediately see across the top and so forth. with curiosity in her eyes, she informed me that she couldn't take less than $5 for it. she said it hesitantly, as if she thought i might abandon my cigar box treasures and flee the shop without a making any purchases at all! of course, i couldn't leave my new found treasures behind and was only to happy to cough up $5 for the bedsprings...my mind awhirl with ideas of visions of the cloth that i might be able to create!

the next few days are supposed to be quite warm, dotted with thunderstorms. wondrous weather for earth dyeing!  i can hardly wait to fling some vinegar drenched fabric across these springs, blanket the whole affair with plastic sheeting and see what emerges over the next few days!

namaste'

creative chaos

"don't think.

thinking is the enemy of creativity.

it's self-conscious,

and anything self-conscious is lousy.

you can't try to do things.

you simply must do things."

-ray bradbury

i ought to find something in this drawer that'll work...

it's been snowing these past couple days and night. snowing and bitter cold. well, bitter cold by spring's standards at any rate.

in keeping with the bradbury quote above (which, by the way, hangs prominently in my studio), i've been reaching past the threads and bits of cloth. ignoring thoughts. forgetting thinking. fingers grasping wires and solder and wood. can't help it. that cigar box guitar bug has bitten my butt hard!

almost finished with the first rendition....

namaste'

not all roads...

"when's all said and done,

all roads lead to the same end.

so it's not so much which 

road you take,

as how you take it."

-charles de lint

i have been spending a lot of time lately communing with my cloth and eco-dyes. music and imagination. opening myself to the possibilities of my work. trying to see where it has all be leading me. this past year has seen many new starts. new directions. new experimentations. and i am quite certain that there are many more to come. will always be too many to contemplate. however, in this moment, this is what comes to mind: each path, whether explored in depth or merely given a cursory glance, seems to be leading me in a myriad of directions. not as easy a journey as the old proverb suggesting that "all roads lead to rome." instead, each road leads me to the next. and the next. and the next after that. each contributing a cobblestone, if you will, to help pave the way to what will come: figure; story; eco-dyes; salvage cloth; re-designed cloth; tattered edges; community; fragments of thought and fiber... but where is it all leading?

at the moment, i am taking a step back. creating some spaciousness wherein i may see more clearly. a task which has lead me to pull out my salvage quilt and begin working once again on its seemingly endless array of mindless machine-stitched seams and hand-stitched allowances. there is a story in this cloth. a story of community. cobbled together from the cast-off garments this town's residents. some known to me. some not. and like all communities, there are layers forming. first, and simplest, are the machined seams holding the fragments of garments together. forming a foundation. second, the hand-stitching to hold the seam allowances down, yes. but also to begin to add texture and a foreshadowing of color and line and direction. once these have been brought to a level where the cloth will reside in strips (or rows) we will begin to see a coming together of community. then will begin the next layer. the continuing of story. figures. thoughts. fragments. stitched in layers upon this foundation. and the next.

it will be a long journey. no community manifests overnight. but it will be an interesting one. full of revelations. of heartbreak. and celebration. a laying down, step by step, fragment by fragment, of the story of this community of residents. human and otherwise. which will create a human wrapping cloth...a haven of fragments of time and memory to warm the body. to hearten the mind...that will allow me to take my town with me when i leave in a couple years. a gift to myself...and to what will eventually become my memory of this place.  amongst its whispers, this cloth has been asked to be re-named: relic, a gathering of lives.

relic is keeping me quite busy tonight...

namaste'

silent sunday - 02/24/13

when revisiting becomes something new

these past couple of weeks have not found my fingers doing much needle chanting, but my imagination has not been as idle as my lazy fingers. today i found myself browsing through old photos from projects years ago and i came across a stash of photos from my old goddess project collection. it was a series of mixed media, fiber based art doll jewelry celebrating the divine feminine that i had created nearly a decade ago after first moving here to montana. these are only a few of the many pieces that comprised that collection, but they got me what iffing again...

what if i were to infuse the figure with my current body of slow cloth work? what sort of characters might emerge? what range of textures and media incorporations might be inspired to translate 3d figures into 2d representations? after three decades of creating 3d cloth figures in the guise of bears, rabbits, dragons, dolls and so forth, what challenges might manifest to go the opposite direction? to render a two dimensional figure that still exudes life and depth and movement?

how do i do this without losing my focus on fragments and story? i have some ideas forming. whispering from  the dark corners of my mind. and my fingers are beginning to itch in anticipation...

namaste'

fragments of word and cloth

i have a mind to embark upon a new journey. a journey of cloth. and words. i am done with attempting to coerce myself into completing cloths that simply don't have their heart in being completed. that's not to say that they will never find themselves finished. it just means that i am tired of beating myself into submission to try and finish something that isn't ready to complete its cycle of metamorphosis. to this end, i have designated my great-great-uncle's old steam trunk as home for wayward cloths and will continue to visit, live with, and work on (as they allow) on my various creations of cloth and fibre, have pulled my travelling boots on and pointed them in a new direction.

i have an extensive collection of thoughts and words. my own. those of others both known and unknown. while sitting by the fire and allowing my shoulders and neck time to heal this past week, i had a thought or two that ultimately lead me to an idea. one where fragments of word and cloth come together and instill deeper thought by their seemingly incomplete natures.

there have been many whispers bantered about in mind with regards to what will be done with these fragments. incorporate them into something more? or simply allow them to remain in remnant form? i imagine the answers to these whispered wonderings will emerge at a much later time...

in the meantime, the fragments will flow and manifest and simply be allowed to be what they choose to be. transforming a seemingly impossible situation into a very possible one!

namaste'

proverbial pain in the neck

i've been rather quiet this week because i have been unable to do much stitching. aside from doubles at the cottage, i have also managed to pinch a nerve or something in my neck and haven't been able to move much without excruciating pain. even sitting here trying to type this brief message is exacerbating the problem. my trusty tens unit is helping but i will be more than relieved when the kink works itself out!

meanwhile, i was playing around with overlaying some old sketches on that recent background cloth and am rather fond of this one...

but for now i need to step away from the computer and give my neck a rest.

namaste'

silent sunday - 10/28/12

memento mori

i have struggled with time again this week. perhaps i am simply unused to actually having so much time on my hands and am lulled into complacency? perhaps it has been the dull, drizzly weather that has moved in, heralding the immanent arrival of winter?  whatever the reason, i decided today that i was definitely in need of minding my time better, so i picked up some cloth and thread and set myself to work.

dia de los muertos is quickly approaching so i thought i might start with a calavera. i wanted something with a bit of chaos and thought some free-motion machine embroidery might serve admirably as my foundation. i started with a nice variegated thread of black, ox-blood, and tan. then added a couple of black and white flowers for eyes that i plucked from a salvaged cotton skirt. this all laid down nicely on a salvaged linen background.

this calavera is far from finished. it's time now to start adding color and hand-stitching (i've been thinking a lot lately about combining machine and hand stitches). but first, i must delve deeply into my stash and find some other fabrics to compliment and layer with...and rummage through my thread baskets and drawers...

meanwhile, i was inspired by these cookies today. i may just have to try my hand at some of these!

namaste'

a little brainstorming

click to enlarge

i spent a little time today with paper and cloth. brainstorming. just a little, in lieu of the promised rainstorms that were not forthcoming.

i found myself wondering if i enjoy the brainstorming as much as the stitching because i also enjoy the feel and sound of old paper beneath my pens and pencils. like the salvaged fabric i use in making my cloth, there is something special about old, yellowed paper salvaged from the linings of old books, ledgers and other discarded or overlooked folios. the marks made in ink and graphite in attempt to capture fleeting thoughts and ideas seem at home with the ghosts of other fingers...scribblings, stampings, and old typefaces. torn edges echo the frayed edges of their fabric counterparts. each a continuing of the other. both being steps in the continuing of mind and thought.

it feels like there is an allegory in there somewhere...

now it is time to start getting it down in cloth and thread. a little late-night needle chanting, i think.

namaste'