Honored and Transformed: Painted Quilts

Denise Mucci Furnish
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A.

Surface Series Installation at The Cressman Center, University of Louisville, March 2009

Blue

Green

Yes/No, 91 x 40″ Yoyo quilt, archival digital ink on cotton, canvas, acrylic

Two worn and discarded Nine Patch quilts, cut and reassembled, acrylic, canvas,77″ x 136″

All images Copyright © 2009 Denise Mucci Furnish

Ms. Mucci Furnish transforms quilts as found artifacts and transforms them into paintings. She honors the unknown women who made the quilts and whose stories are now long lost by  giving them a refreshing rebirth.

Please visit her beautiful site here. 

Obsessive Color Cuts

Jen Stark

Miami, FL, USA

"Streaming Gradient" by Jen Stark from Jen Stark on Vimeo.

Prismatic / 19" x 19" x 4" / hand-cut paper / 2009

Coriolis Effect / 12" x 12" / hand-cut paper / 2007

Plasmascopic / 36" x 19" x 3" / hand-cut paper / 2009

I like Jen Stark's art.
I became aware of her work in 2007-08. 
She has a BFA  in Fibers/Animation concentration. 
WOW. 

From an interview found on the Miami New Times

Why paper? “The fact that it’s so common and universal,” Stark says. “People see it on a daily basis.”

And why the obsessive patterns? According to Stark, they were inspired by the anatomical cross sections pictured in the medical textbooks her sister, a doctor, brought home.

It takes Stark a couple of weeks to create one small work: “It’s pretty crazy,” she says. “It’s meditative.”
Please see more of her colorful work here.

Asterisk Gallery: Repetition/Correspondence

Asterisk Gallery
Cleveland, Ohio
I'm preparing work for a 2nd exhibit in Cleveland, Ohio.
The 1st exhibit will be here.

Repetition/Correspondence opens April 9 - May 1, 2010.

I will be showing works on paper and the corresponding 
embroidered work.
Final pieces will be posted after both exhibits open.
Please stay tuned.
See link to Asterisk Gallery here.

Snow Persists. Ice Melts. Minds Think.

Snow persists in my yard...

Snow Rose, C. Mauersberger, 2010

Snow Seat. C. Mauersberger, 2010

...and ice melts

Katharina Ludwig

photos: K. Ludwig

Katharina Ludwig exemplifies water as a precious commodity. As the ice melts, the skin gets wet and may also leave small red mark.

It's an interesting idea to communicate the scarcity of water in many parts of our world.  

I am reminded that 1.5 million children  die each year due to lack of access to clean water.  

Katharina may not have intended to evoke my response, but her simple idea to freeze water for jewelry caused me to think about others today.

or perhaps she did.

See more of her innovative ideas on her site here. 

Click on one of the dandelion seeds to see more.

Devotion to Line

Ronald Sulak
Cleveland, Ohio
(1940 - 1993)


My parent's first born, Ronald, would have been 70 years old this weekend. 
He was a lovely man and lived a beautiful life filled with dreams of becoming a policeman, owning a house, having a girlfriend and flying a plane. 
Among many interests, he adored dancing (with girls at weddings!), playing the harmonica, and having a good time. 

He had down's syndrome and always liked to draw.  He had a singular ability to distill an image down to its most elemental parts. 
I'd like to think he had a devotion to line which is one reason I launched a Facebook Fan page to show my artwork under that title.


Here are a few sweet images.
It's been a life-time without him already.

Portrait drawing Ronnie did of me. I faithfully traced the drawing as a monoprint which is why you see dark smudges.
I will scan the original drawing when I find it in my stuff.
circa 1989.

Ronnie like to copy his name onto paper. Here's an example written on an index card. Notice that he is missing the letter "D" in his 1st name and "L" in the last.

Ronald Sulak circa 1941.

Marks of a Life

Ganga Devi (1928 - 1991)
India

Ganga Devi, aripan, 1990, from the Japan Series

Ganga Devi, Naina-jogin, 1988-89

Ganga Devi, The Cycle of Life, 1983-85, detail (Pregnant woman reclining on the ground)via will

I respond to the quality of line drawing in Ganga Devi's works. 

She began life as an Indian village artist and ended up traveling the world documenting ordinary life using the traditional art form known as Madhubani. 

Imagine my good fortune to find a person who scanned many pages of her work from a long out-of-print book.
Please skip over to this blog to read more  and see many more images here. 

Slow Simmer

On the back burner...

These are a sample of small works I've got stewing. 

These aren't for the upcoming exhibit.

Rather ideas I'm parsing.

Stitching on vintage handkerchief and drawing

stitching in process on vintage handkerchief 

detail

drawing of things I see on my walks

stitching map and images

I'm meditating on the words of Agnes Martin lately:

"When I think of art I think of beauty. 

Beauty is the mystery of life. 

It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds eye there is awareness of perfection."

A Teaser

Preparing my work for shows

I thought I'd give you a peek at what I'm up to these days.

As I mentioned in this post here. I'll be in a show. 

I've been stitching my hand-embroidered maps onto 1/2" thick 100% wool felt.

The felt block will be surrounded by a deep frame with no cover (i.e. no plex or glass) 

I want the viewer to be able to really enjoy the stitches.

I'll share more later this month.

Enjoy!

I draw maps of places I've been. 
This one is stitched onto vintage table linen. Then I stitched the linen onto 1/2" wool felt.

Sometimes a Simple Idea Is All You Need

Open Your Heart 

Music by Mia Doi Todd 

Video directed by Michel Gondry

I like the simplicity of this video and its use of Color. The music...meh, but you may enjoy it's hopeful words and melody.

Sophisticated Color Compositions and Summer Retreat in Michigan

Terry Jarrard-Dimond
Clemson, SC U.S.A.

I am smitten by the work of Terry Jarrard-Dimond. 

Her stitched quilting lines are perfectly harmonious with her sophisticated color compositions. 

Amulets

49" x 59"

Hand dyed cotton, pieced and machine quilted

Best in Show, 2010

Form Not Function

Carnegie Center for Arts and History

Here Comes Trouble

18" h x 14" w

Hand dyed cotton, pieced and machine quilted

Wrestling Jacobs Angel

53" h x 80" w
Hand dyed cotton, pieced and machine quilted

I admit to having a love-hate relationship with FaceBook (FB).

This is a story of the Love part of FB.

Terry Jarrard-Dimond and I friended each other through means that only FB can do.* We've corresponded for about 7 months and found we live parallel lives. 

I think you'll find a nice connection to her when you skip over to her blog. 

She is a teacher, mentor, explorer, innovator, and exciting textile artist all wrapped up in a beautiful person willing to share her art path with those who she meets along the way.

But wait, there's more!

Terry will be teaching at the premier season of  Budding Art Ideas in Ann Arbor, Michigan in June, 2010. The location for this artists' retreat is the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens.  Nice.

I encourage you to visit her blog here.

See her extraordinary work on her website here.

Read more about her workshop: Fiber Art Quilts-  Ask “What if?” Building Pathways to Creative Work”  here.

*My first introduction to Terry's artwork was when I designed the Artist as Quiltmaker XIII (AQM) catalog in early 2008 for the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin, Ohio. At that time, I had no idea I'd ever meet her.