It May be Spring!

Pardon the pun - I just can't help myself.  The snow is finally easing away from the edges of our lives and it is so wonderful.  The renewal of life is miraculously happening again with real evidence to back it up - like freshly grown greens and lettuces from my miracle gardener friend, Patsy, who even delivers them to me in her cute PT Cruiser.  The primal lust that rises up in me looking at the compact clear bag of greens is a strong indicator that winter has been long.  Again.  BUT!  Look at the lovely pictures below:

 I took this picture on Tuesday, May 10th.  The ice is just breaking up on the lake and rushing through the out-take which is a short distance to the left of the big rock you see on the shore.  It is rare to catch this moment and I was lucky this year.  I love the shades of sage green in the ice remnants.

Just THREE days later, we are canoeing on that same icy lake with friends! Unbelievable and joyous.  When we got to shore with our canoes, two young girls in bikinis were in the lake up to their knees and shrieking.  Clearly from out of town with no idea that ice was   

very recently covering their chosen swimming spot.  Their parents stood benignly by, arms crossed and patient.  

The water this day was the clearest, most beautiful shade of green/gold.  It won't look like this in a couple of months when the jet skis and power boats have had their way.

 This picture was taken just a few minutes ago.  Receding ice burgs allow us to do some much needed spring maintenance - Scott still had to shovel a bit of ice away to get his ladders into position for painting and window cleaning.  The green patch underneath the hammock needs mowing - all else is still thatched and flat from melting snow.  The buds on our aspen and crab-apple are just now coming on.  The good thing about this slow transition is that it gives me days to get the spring raking done!


Now let's talk about my favorite topic - art.  I like to see how things are done.  I can read and read and read, but I really don't understand the wherewithal of things until I see it.

I'm working on a moderately-sized complex canyon/river landscape right now.  You can see my line drawing in this photograph. The drawing is really a collage of closed polygons as each polygon will become a pattern piece connected to its neighbor.  The drawing took me about 8 hours to complete (I know this because I am now logging my time on the file jacket for each client) and of course is adjusted as work progresses.  

On top of the drawing, you see a piece of Sulky Totally Stable taped into position.  This is my preferred substance for making my pattern pieces because it irons onto fabrics so nicely and pulls off easily when you want to remove it.  You can see that I number each polygon and draw little hash marks through each one so that when I cut all the pieces apart, I know how to reconnect them.  As I move through each piece, I am creating one jig-saw puzzle after another.  It is so much fun!

Picking a spot to start takes some thought as the initial fabric selection sets the tone for the entire piece.  Because of the complexity of this piece, making that initial move took me a couple of days of contemplation.  My first selection was a strongly patterned piece of silk - in my mind, I could see how it would propel the entire piece in exactly the right direction.  My husband, however, walked by the studio door, looked at the silk on my design wall, and yelped!  Oh ye of little faith, I said, just watch and wait...

And indeed that piece did pull the entire thing together nicely.  This photo shows how I make sure things are fitting together properly.  As I complete each jigsaw puzzle, I tape them onto my light table and match them up to the line drawing before I join them together.  I save myself a lot of ripping and re-sewing this way.

I took these photos last week but never found the time to blog.  Today, the top of this piece is nearly complete and I'm thinking about quilting lines....  

Lake Snow-be-Gone

It's hard for most of you to even imagine this kind of snow and ice, but when you live at an elevation above 5,000 feet I promise you it is all true!  The good news is, once the snow begins to melt it goes very rapidly.  Here is my version of time lapse photography:  This is the berm in my front yard that has many daffodil bulbs planted in it.  The first picture was taken on a Sunday afternoon walk, the second picture on a Wednesday afternoon walk.  Amazing, huh?  At least I think so...


Okay, I couldn't get these to stack the way I wanted them to.  The one to the right is Wed., the one below is Sunday.  Dramatic difference!











Please bear with my  lousy formatting.  The picture below is of Payette Lake from Legacy Beach on Wednesday, same day as the above picture.  See the yellow barrel located between the bare aspen tree branches?  Locals put in bets on when that barrel will roll to shore.  As soon as the lake breaks, there will be small children swimming in it.  I see it every year - where are the PARENTS of these children? Don't they check the lake temp before allowing these water-winged tykes to flounder into it?  Goodness.

Anyway, this blog is supposed to be about art, not ice.  But you can imagine that such an extreme climate has it's effect upon sensitive souls like me causing us to do all kinds of crazy things - like BLOG.

I'm very proud of the art piece entitled "Healing Elements" pictured below.  While "Desert Music" was my first effort in a non-square format, this piece had me going in multitudes of circles.  I spent one morning googling math solutions, taking notes, and drafting the initial shape.  I hadn't done this much geometry in quite some time and was pleased to find myself thoroughly enjoying the process and "getting" the math fairly easily once I got going and refreshed my memory. 

The detail shot at right is of the Wood Element, represented by a tree, as is traditional in Chinese art representations. The corresponding internal organ is the liver, which you can see here as a knothole in the tree trunk.  The Chinese character for "wood element" is to the lower right in a sheer silk organza overlay that I fused in place, machine satin stitched the circumference,  and then heavily quilted to bring the shape out.  Each of the five elemental Chinese characters are on this piece to the right of the representational medallion. From the top clockwise they are: Wood (liver), fire (heart), earth  (stomach), heavy metal (lungs), and water (kidneys). 

Another challenge in this piece was figuring out how to hang it flat upon a wall.  What I ended up doing is sewing a narrow sleeve along the spoke line of each medallion on the back of the quilt.  My husband had some narrow bamboo scraps from a carpentry project that he fashioned into narrow rods.  He drilled a hole at the top of each rod so that the piece may be hung with any of the elements in the top position.  He tapped a small upholstery tack into the base of the rod to keep the rod from slipping out once hung.

"Healing Elements" was created for a physician who, in addition to practicing traditional Western medicine, brings complimentary Chinese medicine into her practice as well.  This piece will hang in her office and I look forward to seeing it whenever I have an appointment with her!