A visit to England

While we were on family vacation last summer I received a pleasant surprise: an e-mail by Denise Davies, secretary of QGBI, the British Quilters’ Guild. She invited me to come and teach at their April 2013 annual meeting in Nottingham.

Who would say no to that! Especially with that much planning time ahead - my husband can block a certain part of the month from anything outrageously time-consuming on his side, making it possible for me to go away despite the fact that a then almost eight-year-old might need special daily attention.

Denise mentioned that the British Guild would in time advertise the fact that I will be in the country, so perhaps another teaching possibility could be arranged for before or after that particular weekend, making it worthwhile to travel that far. We are still negotiating exactly which workshops I will be offering as the QGBI’s workshop format at their convention does not really coincide with my usual workshop schedule. Basically I have designed my workshops as two-day-events, whereas the QGBI-meeting is characterized by half-day or at most one-day workshops. But it should definitely be possible to come up with something for a shorter occasion.

I’m very excited – although I majored in English and even got a Ph.D. in English Linguistics, I haven’t really been to England itself that much. A couple of short visits probably add up to just about five weeks of my life that I’ve spent in England. Instead, I lived in the United States on several different occasions (adding up to a total of more than four years), and traveled through New Zealand on my bike and on foot (adding up to not quite three months). So England somehow acquired a status of white spot on my personal map, which can definitely be modified. For that I am already planning a trip to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham next August, but Nottingham is a place I’ve never been to before. 

Emergency room, again

Yesterday just after noon I had to go to the emergency room of the nearby hospital. I had been grating carrots while preparing lunch, and managed to include my right thumb in that process that it needed two stitches. It was the third time in less than twelve months that I showed up there, always around the same time of day, always for the same reason. First time, on the day of New Year’s Eve it was the left thumb, two months ago my left index finger, and now the right thumb. The first two times the offender had been a knife, and the whole thing could be fixed with one or two of those long narrow band aids, this time it was the grater, and had to be stitched.

Shows you how dependent you are on your right hand, if you’re not lucky enough to be ambidextrous. First of all I realized how many things I do with my right hand, even though they could be done with either hand. For example, when I learned to type in High School during my year as an exhange student in the US, we were told we could use either thumb for the space bar. Now I am surprised to find out I am in fact only using the right thumb. When I try to use the left thumb it slows down the process considerably, because I keep hitting the shift button instead. Wrong wiring... Secondly it gives me the very personal and first-hand-experience of how fantastic that evolutionary step was, shifting the thumb to its current  position opposite of the index finger. If you’ve lost that thumb to a thick band aid there isn’t really much you can do comfortably any more, except for reading a book. Can’t write with a pen, can’t really button up your pants after going to the bathroom (not to mention any of the other steps just before), can’t really safely hold a glass when you want to drink.

And picking up pins or fabric is not exactly easy either, so working has been slowed down considerably.

I guess I will make the best of the time by figuring out what to do about my kitchen utensils so my fingers and thumbs are well removed from the danger zone, since I can’t really stop preparing lunch.

Little escap(ad)es: Ellworth Kelly, Black and White

Since I had seen the announcement on the side wall of the Haus der Kunst earlier this year I had known that I would have to return to this museum once more this year:

Pre-announcement earlier this year

Ten days ago I finally managed to get away and spend a day in Munich, and it was well worth the trip.

The Haus der Kunst, with its history as a Nazi-building and its role as place where the “Degenerate Art” exhibition was shown in Munich, is not a museum that I can develop a special sympathy for. But it certainly is a befitting location for an exhibition like this.

Abstract paintings, objects, sketches, all in black and white, with a plentitude of space around them – the effect is almost indescribable.

Outside announcement of current exhibition

The place was brimming with guards, so it was not possible to sneak a (forbidden) picture to show at least a little bit of the combined effect of space and Kelly’s works. Unfortunately, the catalogue does not nearly convey what it meant to be present in the huge rooms, surrounded by several of Kelly’s large scale paintings in odd shapes and interesting positions.

One room was almost completely filled with a floor-covering-sculpture/painting commissioned by Haus der Kunst, “Black Curves 2011”, which will be destroyed after the exhibition ends. I made several little sketches of the arrangement from a viewer’s perspective, here is one of them.

sketch by a dilettante

This piece is not even displayed in the catalogue itself, but only as a study from a bird’s eyes view. 

Kelly's study for "Black Curves", photo taken from catalogue

It was put into the room touching the walls on each end such that you could not walk around it, robbing the viewer of the possibility of walking around it like a sculpture. What you see is a painting placed on the floor, submitting a two-dimensional piece to viewing conditions dictated by three-dimensional space. The perspective changes completely, depending on where in the room you're standing, and much more so than with an ‘ordinary’ painting hanging on the wall.

Just as interesting as his paintings and sketches were his exhibited photographs. Kelly takes only photos in black and white, and it is mostly the forms that he is interested in. I take lots of pictures like that myself – even got a guard’s official permission to do so in the sacred halls of the Haus der Kunst to catch a shadow that was very befitting to a Kelly exhibition in black and white. Of course nowadays one doesn’t have to take photos in black and white, as it is easy to turn a photo into black and white via software:

Kelly-type shadows in Haus der Kunst...

... transformed into black and white.

And – perhaps except for the colors – this could be a Kelly, too, although it’s entirely mine (found art in local town hall):

You get a lot of inspiration for the ten euros entry fee that you pay for this exhibition! Open through January 22, 2012.

Bauhaus philosophy and transformation into textiles

In the middle of November I spent four days on a workshop by Margit Amann vonGlembowski. I had spontaneously signed up for it after talking to Margit at the German Patchwork Guild’s Annual Meeting in May, when she was so enthusiastic about the atmosphere of the house where the workshop would be held. I had figured it would be a good way of summing up the year, which had brought me a lot of teaching, by being a student myself again. And by being a student with a different teacher than Nancy Crow, who was the only one I had been taking workshops from for several years.

Margit certainly was right about the peaceful and creativ atmosphere of the place where we were staying. A monastery on the western side of Lake Starnberg, close to the “Museum der Phantasie” initiated by Buchheim. (I have already written about our visit to the museum here.) The house is located in a hugepark area which has been saved for the public through the generous donation by Wilhelmina Busch-Woods.

I went for a short run before breakfast almost every morning and enjoyed seeing the different appearances of the old trees in the park, depending on the thickness of the fog. (I did not really enjoy the fog, but...)

When I had received the supplies list for the workshop I had been briefly tempted to chicken out and cancel. There were so many things on there that I had finally removed from my many kinds of collections when I decided that I had not used them in several years and was probably never going to use them anyway, such as sweets wrappers and things like that. (One of Margit’s attitudes is “anything that fits under a sewing machine foot can be sewn!”...) But then I thought “what the heck” – I have enough experience to manage in a situation like that with little material available, so off I went.

The car was FULL up to the roof, because I was taking my handdyed fabrics for sale, so at least there wasn’t going to be a lack of fabrics.

The topic of the workshop was “colour - form – object: textiles after Bauhaus-philosophy”. I have done a bit of studying about Bauhaus over the years. Not only did we take a brief stop at the actual Bauhaus building on a family trip up north, where my son, who had just learned to walk, very much enjoyed the staircase, and climbing up and down the famous Bauhaus design chairs.

  

But I also have several interesting books on the Bauhaus, its history and its most famous protagonists. Many times have I admired the beautiful desings for carpets which were carried out in the weaving department. Nevertheless, I had so far not made any attempts at integrating Bauhaus design or philosophy into my own work, so the workshop would possibly open up new fields of activity for me.

We started off with some history of the Bauhaus and the various developments of and changes in the faculty. After that we did a couple of exercises as they might have been done by Bauhaus students (e.g. touching and feeling various materials and shapes that were hidden under a piece of fabric), and trying to apply them to the textile medium. For example, we sewed a number of pieces that dealt with Kandinsky’s attribution of yellow, red and blue to the triangle, the square and the circle respectively.

Amongst these were hollow objects in color, difficult to sew, delicate to handle, and intriguing to look at. In the final „exhibition“ of all our completed works at the end of the workshop we presented a collaborative textile sculpture “Objects in Color” in which we combined every participants’ objects on a black background.

As for a way to ‚use’ the objects at home I have decided that I am going to try to find foam that can be cut into the respective shapes to stuff them, so that these delicate little things don’t get squished completely. Beyond that I haven’t made up my mind yet. They are certainly too interesting to just leave them lying around, too voluminous to fold them up and pack them away as reference material to remind me of the workshop, and too nice (and too big) to turn them into a needle cushion.

The various types of „sewable“ materials that almost scared me off were needed for an exercise in which we were supposed to create a small collage inspired by a pair of opposite adjectives which we had drawn from a bag of papers. My pair of opposites was „starr – bewegt“ (stiff – in motion) and used up a pair of knitting needles with additional string attached to them which I happened to have with me. In addition, I made creative use of a little bag of organza in which we had received a little welcome-present, and a few items from Margit’s large collection which we were allowed to take from. And suddenly I had again produced something about the topic “dance”, although I claim that I never work in a representational manner...:

The entire workshop lasted for four days, which made for a pleasant and leisurely atmosphere. We weren’t rushed for time or pressing deadlines, we had plenty of opportunities to sit down with our sketch-book, and I jotted down many ideas about the triangle – square – circle combination.

Here’s another small piece for which I had the idea during my morning run before breakfast.

Unfortunately it turned out just a little bit larger than the assignment had called for, which is the reason why it couldn’t be mounted on a frame for the final exhibition.

I’m planning to use this as a study for a larger piece. And then we will see how much of the Bauhaus will enter into my future work.

Daily Oak: November report

Number of days missed: 10

Number of days with more than one visit: 2

Number of visits with more than the two standard perspectives taken: 7

guest trees: 7, plus one picture of neighboring tree from across the street

Total number of pictures taken: 61

In my memory this was a very gray month, during which it didn’t really matter at which time of day you went to the tree, because it looked the same all the time anyway. Looking at the pictures, it turns out, of course, that this is not entirely true. In any case, the days are so short now that there were very temptations to go visit the tree twice...

I was away during the first week and can’t really say anything about that time, and during the second week I picked the sunniest spots of the day, and there were some.

Perspective a, November 8, 2011, 2:13 p.m.

The second half of the month was indeed rather gray, though, but I can’t really tell whether the tree looked different at various time of the day because I ended up going there at almost the same time during those gray days, combining my trip to the tree with my trip to pick up my son from school.

Perspective a, November 24, 2011, 2:35 p.m.

 What surprised me was the way the tree shed its leaves. I had mentioned last month that nothing spectacular had happened in terms of changing of color of the leaves. When I returned after my week of absence, all the leaves were gone, whereas its neighbor, about 50 m away on the other side of the street, which had displayed such a more interesting color development, still had many of its leaves up.

Perspective b, November 7, 2011, 11:35 a.m.

Neighbour to Daily Oak (which is in
my back right now) on November 7, 2011,
with still many more leaves

Very much noticeable, of course, is the lower elevation of the sun in the sky. Whereas in June the sun would not even appear in the picture around 2 p.m., I would now have to shift position so that it would bed covered by a branch in order not to spoil the picture, as you can see in the first picture at the beginning of this post.

Perspective a, June 22, 2:37 p.m.

 Or, close to sunset – which happens more than four hours earlier now than in June: the sun now sets to the left of the tree when looking from perspective b, whereas it was far to the right of the tree in June.

Perspective b, June 19, 2011, 8:49 p.m.

Perspective b, November 22, 2011, 4:44 p.m.

During my second absence in the middle of the month, I encountered a very interesting tree during my morning runs, which I chose as guest tree for one day. This tree has a threefold appearance. It looks like a single stem when approaching it from the north.

Then it seems to be two stems when you are nearing the eastern side of the tree.

And then it turns out to be three stems in total, looking from the South-East of the tree.

Too bad I don't live there, this would be a perfect object for another daily tree project next year. But I'll probably do something else.

November Blues

November is definitely not my type of month. Too much fog, too few hours of daylight.

Isn’t this stifling to anyone’s creativity?

A few years ago I would try to escape by going on vacation to sunnier spots such as the Canary Islands. Can’t really do that when you have a six-year-old who just entered school. One time I made the quilt which I called “More Light!”, and which was an important step in my development.

This year I tried to overcome the greyness by going away to a workshop, which I will write about in a couple of days. (It was mostly foggy there, too, but the whole arrangement was inspiring enough.)

Apart from that I did a lot of cleanup. Found a floor beneath lots of boxes which had not been emptied, partly from things that had gone on before summer vacation. Funnily enough, when I put those boxes back into the shelves where they belong, there was room in the shelves, too. Dates back to my fabric party in January.

Took my sewing machine for a little check-up.

Then I continued cleaning up my writing desk. Lots of stacks there, too (I am lousy at putting away paper stuff.) Now that November is drawing to a close perhaps I can get into a creative working mood again. The blue scraps are waiting – but they needed some gestation time, as I have been realizing these past few days. The piece will be called “international blues” or something along that line. Almost as good as more light.

"The Art of Manipulating Fabric" by Colette Wolff

I like to buy books in a real bookstore – I want to see and feel them, and to leaf through the pages, perhaps read a short section before I buy, and I just love the situation when I am standing in front of the shelves, reading the titles, and looking for ones that I don’t know about but might like. There are a few books in my life that have been “wonderful reads”, and which I would have never found if it hadn’t been for that shelf-situation, and a title flashing out at me “read me! read me!” (A Short History of a Small Place by T.R. Pearson is one of them.)

But it is a different story when it gets to English books, and especially to books on quilting, fabrics, textiles. Living in Germany, English books that I find interesting are still not widely available in bookstores – although stores in large cities do carry English sections now. But I live in a small place, and the local bookstore's English section is rather small, and mostly crime and mystery. Books on quilting, on the other hand, are hard to get in normal bookstores anyway, and I live more than 60 miles from the closest quilt store that carries a wide range of books.

So every once in a while, when I know what I want, I do take the advantage and buy with that greatest data collector of all. Usually I ignore their suggestions based on what I have bought before, or the “other people who have bought this book also bought...”-section. But a few weeks ago the first book that popped up in that area of the display looked promising and interesting: “The Art of Manipulating Fabric” by Colette Wolf. Published by krause publications.

So I caved in and ordered it along with my other purchases, and when it arrived the next day, I was surprised at how heavy it was. Nothing compared to the usual quilting book – 310 pages! It dates back to 1996, but is certainly not out of date!

I dare say unless you were trained as a seamstress or tailor you probably would never have thought of even half of the multitude of possibilites of manipulating fabric that are presented in this book – which does not cover any kind of surface design currently in vogue, using dyes, prints, wonderunder or whatever. All samples which are presented in black-and-white photography were made from unbleached muslin. No fancy colors trying to attract my eye with currently fashionable fabric selections, styles or colors.

It reminds me a bit of a book I once received from my mother and from which I learned almost all my techniques of handicrafts, published in 1954 in its 19^th printing:

But back to my discovery of “The Art of Manipulating Fabric”:

The book is divided into six parts by different methods, with a total of thirteen chapters:

Part I, “Controlled Crushing”, with chapters 1, Gathering, and 2, Shirring;

Part II, “Supplementary  Fullness”, with chapters 3, Making Ruffles, 4, Making Flounces, and 5, Making Godets;

Part III, “Systematic Folding”, with chapters 6, Folding, 7, Smocking, 8, Tucking;

Part IV, “Filled Reliefs”, with chapters 9, Cording, 10, Quilting, and 11, Stuffing;

Part V, “Structured Surfaces”, with chapter 12, Using Darts;

and Part VI, “Mixed Manipulations” with chapter 13, Combinations.

In addition, an appendix gives a brief introduction into stitches and a glossary. The book also includes a select bibliography, followed by the index.

Non-native speakers of English will learn a multitude of new vocabulary items – but I dare say even native speakers of English might be confronted with a number of things they had never heard of before. Or do you know what “shirring” is? (Shirring configures fabric with bands of soft, rolling folds released between rows of gathering. The pinched, puckery, stitching lines that bisect shirred fabric run parallel or diagonal to the fabric’s edge, cross each other, or form multi-directional patterns. With its network of gathered stitching separated by zones of fabric crowded with variable folds, shirring shrinks the original fabric while adding substance to the decorative fabric it creates. page 28)

The chapter on quilting already provides many insights even to an experienced quilter and exceeds the kind of information usually given in quilting books.

The chapter on folding presents a multitude of pleats – such as flat, partial, protruding, or double-controlled, to name only a few. So far I have only leafed through the section on smocking which hasn’t been my thing in clothing so far, but I was certainly struck by number of ideas how these things could possibly be included in textile art. The chapter on tucking was one which I thought I would need for the workshop I went to last week (but that’s a different post coming up.)

Still need a hint for somebody who wants to give you a Christmas present? How about this book? You’ll have plenty of exercises ahead of you, and many ideas developing from it.