Love Quilt

As I thought and thought about what kind of project I wanted to make for our final, I couldn’t get out of my mind all the beautiful images I have seen in these two books we’ve been reading. I just couldn’t decide which topic inspired me the most. All of them seemed so inspiring and interesting. There was one section that kept coming back to me in my mind: textiles.

I kept thinking of when my mom was teaching me to sew a simple hem at six years old. My mom has been a seamstress since she was very young. She instilled in me the importance and tradition of sewing. I always accompanied her to the fabric store to pick out patterns, threads, and styles. I loved going with her and looking through the books and thinking how fun it would be to make one of those styles. Soon after she taught me to sew I began making clothes for my doll. I tried to emulate the patterns my mom was making for her projects. She gave me advice and sometimes taught me to fix the mistakes I made.

When I looked back through my notes and the bookmarks I left on the two books, the one image the stood out to me the most was the Center Diamond Quilt on page 71 of Craft in America. I love the bright colors and the contrast they make between each other. I can’t image the amount of time that was taken to create these beautiful quilts but I decided to get a little practice on it. The quilt I created was inspired by the Amish quilts mentioned in Craft in America. I used simple shapes and contrasting colors. I wanted this quilt to also be a gift for my future baby niece who will be due in July. She will be the first grandchild from my husband’s side of the family so I wanted to create something for her. I took the idea of the square border from Nancy Crow’s Bittersweet XII quilt on page 423 of Makers. I began with sewing the patterns by hand and finished it off by sewing machine on the outside border to secure the edges. It had been years since I last used my sewing machine. I love the sound it makes when I run the fabric through it. The spiral-like patterns spawning from the pure, white, heart in the center represent the radial love that awaits baby Isabella.

As simple as this quilt might seem, I want the love and time put into it to shine the most. I hope that it becomes something of use for the little bundle of joy we all can’t wait to meet. Most of all, this quilt once again brought me closer to my mom. Her advice never fails me and her loving patience was what kept me going with this project. All the times that I was discouraged and wanted to just put it away and make something else that I thought would look better for this class, she encouraged me to keep at it and put to use what she’s taught me. This idea of bringing people together to create and share ideas is what I’m taking with from the readings in this class. I think back on the beginnings of Makers and realize the morals craft artists were so passionate about: being true to materials, creating something of use, and utilizing your innate skills to create works from the heart. I’ll be honest and admit that at first I didn’t understand why I had to read about “crafts” when the idea I had of them was different than from what I know now.  After completing this class, I have gained a deeper appreciation for the things around me. When I go shopping or even just visit my friends’ houses I look around more and appreciate the objects around me. I try to think back on how it must have been an item of creativity and hard work.

I am thankful for this class and for the readings that were chosen for it. I have a new understanding of crafts and the things I can create. I can’t wait to meet all of you and learn more from each of you and the new people I will meet in Junction. See you all soon!

Gypsy Constellation

 

 

 
Gypsy Constellation

When deciding on what to create for my final, I knew I wanted to combine different techniques along with aspects of my esthetic to create a textile sculpture. Diane Itter, Jane Sauer, Claire Zeisler and Nick Cave were four Craftsmen in Makers that initially caught my attention and their work is where I gathered all of my inspiration for Gypsy Constellation.  When reading about Diane Itter and how her work was “admired for their optically playful patterns, splendid color, and determined smallness and detail” Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (p. 427), I knew this is where I wanted the direction of my fiber/textile sculpture to go. I wanted to make a piece that was rich in color and on a verge of a visual overload just as Itter did with her work. Jane Saucer also caught my attention with inspiration because I like her choice of material she used to make her textile sculptures with twigs and linen. This is where I thought of incorporating jute and manila rope for the bases of my color overload. Claire Zeisler overall had a big impact on my vision. Her “constructed balls of wool that looked both very dense and light enough to float away”, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (p. 262) is how I thought of the idea to use wool pom poms. I wanted to create a sculpture heavy in color but light on the eye as well. Zeisler’s coil works along with her weaving/ knotting techniques also inspired me. Therefore, I decided that the manila rope and jute base could be made into circle coils/spirals as the foundation for the wool pom poms and my two weaving pieces. Nick Cave inspired me with his use of randomized materials and 3D dimension. Then there is my background as what type of artist I am. I have always been into textiles and worked with many textiles before, but I however, also paint. This is where I came up with the idea of having my textile sculpture on canvas. I wanted to merge both of my passions into one…

 

 

Hula Hoop Loom Weave

 

 

 

 

Cardboard Loom Weave

 

 

 

With my inspiration flying off the charts I decided to get busy. The size of my sculpture is 5ft x 4ft. All of my materials are fiber/textiles which include: canvas, jute, manila rope, wool, cotton, parachute rope and t-shirt yarn (rayon and cotton). I made two homemade looms for my two weaving pieces. I have never woven textiles before so this was exciting but also a learning process. I built one loom out of a hula hoop and the other from cardboard.  The hula hoop weave took me about a month to complete. I wanted this piece extremely 3D so it is about 3 ½ inches thick in the middle. I created it thicker so when I did a thin boarder around the thick middle, it would bulge up and resemble a flower to incorporate with my pom pom flowers that are on the manila rope. My weave that was made on the cardboard loom is flat in the middle and budges on the outside. I did this to create different structural appearances throughout the sculpture.  

Coils/Spirals

 



Laying it out...working progress

 

For my coils I generated twenty four different sizes. For each one I decorated them with the different yarn fibers I mentioned above. This is how I held the manila rope together to create the spiral shape. I wove each thread through the rope and tied knots whenever needed to generate the patterns. I then arranged different neon colors of wool pom poms to each piece. The big coils spirals took me about two to three hours each to complete and the small coils took me about two hours. Each piece is uniquely different and it feels as if each piece has its own spirit to me since I created one at a time very slowly and with a lot of thought. The coils/spirals started looking like constellations to me and from the beginning I wanted to create something bohemian, therefore I created the name Gypsy Constellation. I know mine is probably really odd compared to everyone else’s in the class so I hope you all really like it!

 

 

Brea Huseman

Gypsy Constellation Fiber/Textile Sculpture

Spring 2013

 

Reference:

Artist/Quotes

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft

Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf

2010

 

From Branch to Bowl

From Branch to Bowl

While reading the book, choosing which medium in which to work has been one of the biggest challenges.  Each page offered a new, interesting medium, making each section more difficult to choose between jewelry, clay, and glass.

I became fascinated with the woodwork. Ultimately, wood became the most accessible to me.  Looking at pieces by George Nakashima and Wharton Esherick, helped focus my interest in the concepts of Zen, the simple natural form and the implicit beauty of wood. Artists like Rude Osolnik and Mark Linquist helped shape my ideas to create a turned form.

Once I decided, I realized in needed training, I went to my expert.  I talked to my Dad.

My father insisted that before we began, I should watch one of his many wood working DVDs. After he woke me up several times, at the drowsy end of a wood turning DVD, I had a plan. 

A piece of green wood with varying grain and unpredictable qualities would be the choice. A forking branch would have rugged beauty with grain changes as the branches attached to the trunk.

The perfect piece of a forked branch lived in a wild plum tree on my Parent’s property. 

Process:

To turn the branch, a centering disc needed to be attached to the branch and that branch mounted to the lathe.   

Working with green wood, offered challenges in lathe turning. The bark came off quickly, revealing the beautiful swirling grain on the sides.  The branch left a lovely irregular shape to the lip of the bowl reminiscent of David Ellsworth’s Bowl.

In order to hollow out the interior, I used dull chisels.  It was difficult. I thought we should cheat and use the drill press to carve out the majority of the interior.

However, if we are born poets and become craftsman, I am on my way to craftsman and my father is already there.  He refused to let me continue with the drill press insisting that we needed sharper or more specialized tools for hollowing out the interior.

Offering one chisel has spinning wheel, he explained to process to hollow the interior of the bowl. 

When the walls were hollowed to an appropriate thickness, the bowl felt shaped and complete, I applied a Tung oil finish. 

The bowl is warm and jammy in color: the heart of the plum.

Lessons learned:

Always wear goggles: flying tree bark is scary.  Finding the proper tools and mounts can be challenging.

Proper glue, proper mounts had to be explored and redone until the bowl held together on the lathe.

Capturing the delicacy of thin bowl walls juxtaposed next to the rough raw edges was particularly challenging.

The exterior surface was much easier to shape than the interior surface. 

Conclusion: Wood turning is a craft that given the proper equipment could be accessible to all skill levels.  It’s natural, beautiful, and functional.

Post Script: I have already chosen my need lathe project.  I am lucky to have a very encouraging and loving teacher. 

Final Project: Table Center Piece

 Table Center Piece

I was inspired for my work initially by the words of William Morris and his motto “Art into Life, and that the functional pieces we use on a daily basis should have an artistic quality to them”. The piece would have to serve both as functional and art.  I would be the maker and the designer, thereby placing a humanistic approach to my work. I wanted to experiment with the mixed medium of clay and wood. The clay portion of my piece Laura Anderson inspired me with her philosophy of hand built earthenware made from simple, functional forms inspired by nature. The wood portion of the piece was inspired by Rude Osolnik. He was different in his approach to wood making in that he would let the natural characteristics of the wood and its imperfections become part of the design. I decided to make a table center piece bearing in mind the philosophies of these 3 individuals.

The size, design, and the room were all important aspects of the design, function, and aesthetic. My table is 60 inches in diameter, oak with a natural finish, so the piece would need to have a scale that would fit it visually and physically.  The room has cut lime stone rock, natural terrazzo flooring, and lots of windows where one can view the outside gardens.  Therefore my work would need to be nature inspired; I incorporated lots of leaves into the design, with a soft and curvilinear form to emulate nature. The colors are greens, with hints of blues, and natural wood colors.  The clay platter is long to match the table, and shallow, so as to see over it when seated. It has little ornamentation, and is simple and organic in its design. It is made from clay, and hand built. It has leaves and vines pressed into the top of the platter only. I used a mat green glaze, with chunks of blue that ran and swirled throughout the clay. I designed the base to match in a way that would complement the clay. Unfortunately the design was altered by my cousin inadvertently in the cutting stage, for the wood is very had and difficult to cut. Fortunately it did not take away too much of the overall aesthetic and design. The base is made of black walnut from a fallen tree in my yard. I could have made a base out of clay, but wanted to experiment with mixed media and incorporate. The medium not only had to be organic in nature but was personal to me as well.  I feel a sense of pain when any of my trees die, and this is a new way in which to give them life after death, bringing me great joy and a sense of pride at the same time; a vessel of memories. In the overall design I wanted to maintain some of the natural imperfections of the wood, such as holes made by insects, and areas that had rotted away. The wood has a soft color palate of browns and reds, complementing the green of the pottery. I decided to leave the wood in an unstained, natural state, with no varnish, it was only buffed with was to bring out the colors and give it a soft glow.    I was so inspired by this piece that I have started saving pieces of limbs and cut portions of the black walnut trees from my yard, with unusual patterns and shapes, to use in combination with future clay projects. Two important lessons that I learned from this project is one, you must have the right tools, and two that the two pieces need to be designed together assuring a perfect fit upon completion.

Final Project: Wired Coil Pot

Wired Coil Pot 

                I got the idea for a coil pot when reading about basket weaving. Basket weaving is something that I have always thought as a craft and pushed it away because of its simplicity. After reading The Makers and letting go of my arrogance, I began to look more into basket weaving. It was Cordelia Everidge Ritchie's image of one of her baskets that inspired my to do a basket, coil pot. I admire the beauty of its shape and the texture of the natural limbs with the twist it had to form the artwork.  I find the different techniques interesting and wanted to adapt the technique to a new material. Therefore, I got the idea of working with wire. The wire I have is a copper wire that is coated with colored plastic.  After I started the coil process around a thick rope, I realized that the wire does hurt your hands after awhile. I started using different colors as wrapped and interlaced the wire. At first each color was random, but then they started to have a meaning. I was working on this process and noticed the different feelings and experiences with each color. Because I am a teacher, I began working on this during any free time in my class as my students worked on their own projects. I noticed that as I worked, I was reflecting on things and focused on my work in a calm, focused state. Working on my pot was therapeutic. As I started to form the bowl shape, I remember my frustrations in the time that it took to get where I was. It happens that I was the color red wire. I was feeling a frustration in how the pot was forming and away from my original plan, but I kept moving forward.  As I changed from color to color at the base of the pot, I noticed my experience with the technique change; frustration to a determination to a focused to a calming feeling and to even a joyous feeling. I decided to tone it down towards the end of making the pot and change to a dark gray. I wanted the bottom to be colorful and the top to be neutral colors to bring the coil to a stop and conclude the process. As I worked, my fingertips hurt worse and worse, but I found it a sacrifice and part of the project and whole experience. I remembered reading about Ruth Asawa and seeing her work with manipulating wire in The Makers. "The artist must discover the uniqueness and integrity of the material" she explains about her process (Ruth Asawa Lanier). I was motivated by this and to see how the wire works. Therefore the ending of the coil pot ended in the color white for a final touch to give it closure.

References:
http://www.ruthasawa.com/ © 2013 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.

Makers: A History of American Studio Craft

Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf

2010

University of North Carolina Press, Chaple Hill

last part

After driving 7 hours, giving a lecture,then  a workshop ,a reception, and then loading up my art, only to spend the next day driving the last 5 hours against a cold front with high winds, I am very happy to be home. This is the part of being an artist no one ever tells us about...travel, prep for workshops, packing /unpacking usually alone with only CDs for company.

For the last part of Craft in America I am going to suggest another change. Look over the chapter, enjoy the beautiful images and keep them as a reference for your future work. In place of a question over this reading I want to revisit an issue that came up in our last question on your best lesson. A couple of students shared with us stories of being challenged in a harsh or dismissive manner. I know those lessons and have my own scars from my MFA.  I try not to be that kind of teacher. I hope I am not that kind of teacher. If you take a face to face seminar with me you will hear me at times says that some part of a writing response in "bullshit". Yet, I know I continue and explain why I find that part of the assignment misleading or shallow. And I work to help the words become true and meaningful. My point is I believe that we have the power of changing all education and especially art education (at all levels) by changing the way we explain /motivate/guide. So, I am asking each of you to think about the hidden or not so hidden hurt from being dismissed. Why do we (and I am including myself) think we need harsh criticism/ mean spirited assignment? Why do give the power of our art away to one teacher, one gallery, one critic? What can each of us do to make a difference?

Do not get me wrong. I am not proclaiming that no work or totally lazy work is OK. What I am talking about the energy in a class or group of artists that is motivated by excitement and joy and support. In place of the moaning and bragging about how hard it is, imagine a classroom or joint studio filled with conversation on what someone just figured out or is trying to figure out. The celebration when someone, even if it not you, completes a solid good work of art. Try to think about a place where artists of all ages and all stages of development want to come and work.

If you think I am crazy take a little time to look at Outsider Art or Visionary Art. Look at the art of kids. See the heart connection that is not broken by mean words or an arrogant attitude.

You have been a wonderful class. I thank each of you for the thoughts you shared with each other. I can't wait to meet you in person. And Stephen, best of luck with your MFA. Know you are always a part of TTU and if you ever need to share or talk we are here for you.

See you in Junction.

Final Project & Essay - Gail S.

Rule of Three Necklace and Earring Set

I created this Bronze and Fine Silver necklace and earring set as a tribute to the craft jewelers of the 1920’s and 1960’s. I have always admired the simple, clean lines of the modernist studio jewelry movement, and our readings on American Craft history really solidified my appreciation for the art forms that came from this time.

Modernism, as a design philosophy, came to America through the immigrant-refugee fine art and craft population in the early 1920’s. This concept, born in Germany’s Bauhaus design schools as early as 1917, swept the United States and Europe throughout the 1920’s – 1960’s. Modernist design pushed the highly ornamental Art Deco design far out of fashion very quickly. The new Modernism eschewed simplicity, demanded honest treatment of materials, and a definite lack of flourish in presentation. Items could be hand wrought or partially machine made as long as they stayed true to the ideals of the movement. The artists in this genre generally produced one-of-a-kind, pieces. The pieces could be very sleek or loosely organic, with tool marks visually evident on their pieces. The hand of the artist could be seen in the work. That’s an ideal that harkens back to the original founders of the Arts & Crafts movement.

The following are some of the best known modernist studio jeweler/craftsman from 1928 – 1950’s; Alexander Calder, Sam Kramer, Ed Weiner, Art Smith, Betty Cooke, Peter Macchiarini, Margaret De Patta, and Frank Rebajes,  Ed Levin, and finally Paul Lobel.  This group of artists is highly collected internationally. They are a inspiration for my work in metal smithing and enameling.

The set pictured was created from a simple slab of recycled bronze that was pounded to 1/8” inch thickness. I then soldered and inset slivers of pounded fine silver onto the surface, and drilled holes for the chain. I enjoy working with bronze because it is reminiscent of ancient materials and is malleable enough to take on just about any shape. It is stronger than copper or silver, so it wears well, plus it appears warmer and richer in color than brass. Because bronze is made from 80% copper and 20% tin, when the bronze comes in contact with fine silver (.999), the copper is attracted to the silver and moves to border it on the surface. This process of bringing a single metal to the surface of an alloy is called depletion gilding. When this process happens the surface becomes wrinkled or reticulated in jewelry terminology. The insets appear to have a halo of surface copper surrounding them. They almost look like coffee beans inset into the pendant. The earrings are solid bronze discs with copper and silver beads. Both the earrings and the pendant are suspended from patinated copper chain. The necklace measures 22” in length, as homage to the longer lengths of jewelry (opera length) worn in the late 1920’s and 1930’s.

I created this set a few weeks ago and have completely enjoyed the experience of wearing it. I’ve received many compliments on the set and a few questions about it. Viewers have described it as sleek, simple, organic, clean, and unusual. A perfect addition to my style! Every time I wear this piece  I’ll be reminded of the studio jewelers who came before me and their commitment to modernist design.