Category: Blog Entries

First, an update on the 27 dresses….

I will say, for all my complaining, I am actually enjoying this, I’m learning a lot, since prom gowns are not my specialty, I’m fascinated by what industry uses as stiffening agents, and I’ve discovered heavy gauge fishing line can be sewn into the edge of ruffles to make them stand away from the body.  Who knew…

Believe it or not, I’m just about to the half way point of the alterations.  It has gone much quicker than I expected, and without having to make everything perfect, I’m actually enjoying speed sewing!  Again, who knew…

But the BIG news came today in an envelope from the HGA.  First, some background…

I have applied to exhibits off and on for most of my professional career as an artist, and I can wallpaper my bedroom with the amount of rejection letters I’ve received over the years.  That goes with the territory.  It makes you thick skinned, and more determined, and that also goes with the territory.  I probably shouldn’t say the letters are rejection notices, because they aren’t.  They are letters that say your piece wasn’t selected, and in a show of 35 pieces, where 350 people applied, chances are pretty good your piece won’t be selected.  But you just keep on sending in those jury fees and hope that someday your lottery number will come up.

Last year, for Convergence 2008 in Tampa, I was determined to push myself to get more of my work exhibited, and in shows I wouldn’t normally have placed my work.  Convergence 2008 had eight different exhibition opportunities, of course the Fashion Show, and others that had themes like felted, home furnishings, accessories, basketry, etc.  Among the exhibits was HGA’s annual Small Expressions.  I have applied to Small Expressions a number of times in the past, and of course, haven’t been selected.  But I keep on trying.  Out of the eight exhibits for Convergence this past year, and I applied to all eight believe it or not, I got accepted into six of the exhibits.  I was really thrilled, mainly because I managed to apply to all eight exhibits, making work specifically to fit the themes.  But I was really disappointed that I wasn’t selected for Small Expressions, for that is the show that meant the most to me.

The Visual Art Center of NJ held their members show a couple of months after I was rejected from Small Expressions 2008.  I had done a new piece to enter into Small Expressions, two dimensional, that I thought was pretty powerful in content, and a bit difficult to look at, and very graphic, but it took more than a quick look to grasp the message.  I decided to put the piece, “Survivor” into the members show at the Visual Art Center, among 200 other works of art, mainly photography and painting.  It was the only hand woven piece in the show.

I received a phone call from the Art Center two days before the show, they needed to talk to me about my piece.  I was terrified they were going to say that the piece wasn’t good enough, or wasn’t up to their standards, OK, I admit, I can have a pretty thin skin and low self confidence when discussing my work…  Anyway, they wanted to know if I would be attending the opening because I had won an award.  That caught me completely off guard, and I assured them I would be attending the opening, and I nearly fainted when I arrived at the opening and saw that out of 200 other works of art, mine had taken Best in Show.  It was a very validating experience, the same piece that had not been accepted a couple of months before, was give a Best in Show, and some very nice ink in NJ’s largest Newspaper.  That all happened last May….

The Economies of Scale exhibit at the Phoenix Gallery in NY, which I wrote about in a previous blog, just closed this weekend, and one of the pieces in that exhibit contained the same imagery as the Survivor piece I just described above.   But I rewove the piece in a smaller scale, about the size of a post card.  It is part of my Personal Post series.  I entered this year’s Small Expressions, 2009, using the Personal Post Suvivor piece, and two others, one of which I’ve pictured here called, The Spouse.  And today, in the mail, came a packet from the HGA, with acceptances for two of the three pieces I entered.  It is a proud day for me, I will bask in my success for a day or two, because I know tomorrow, the same works can just as easily not be accepted.

If you click on the February 24th Small Expressions Exhibit over in the Upcoming Events Widget on the right, you can see both The Spouse, pictured here, and Survivor.  I chose to put the Survivor piece, because of its graphic nature, over in the Events Column.

If you go to the blog entry of December 20th, there is a detailed description of how I did this piece, basically the image is printed onto silk, cut into strips, and rewoven back together in a Theo Moorman inlay technique.  The gray background is the ground cloth woven at the same time as the image.

Back to altering prom dresses…

I am throwing out a quick update before I head out to a Super Bowl party.  I am not of course interested in the game, mostly hanging in the kitchen with my girlfriend, though the commercials interest me, and I’ll be especially curious as to who is actually going to be advertising with the current economic crisis.  And my step-sister is a marketer, so our conversations the following week are much like a critical analysis of a current art exhibition at the MET.  But I can catch the commercials tomorrow online, without having to be bothered following the game.  And my daughter is recording the game, so we can fast forward through it and only watch the commercials.  Now that’s a switch….

My husband returned safely this morning, about 5am, from Mumbai, India.  It was a long 16 hour non stop, but he is home, and in his suitcase were 10 georgeous silk saris, he picked some lovely colors.  I use these for linings, and trims, both of the coats photographed over the last week had saris for linings.  All ten saris cost around $90, and each one contains yards of material.

I believe there was a enjoyable chick flick recently, titled “27 Dresses”.  Something about a perennial bridesmaid who had a wardrobe full of the oddest collection of prom gown/bridesmaid dress/costume ensembles.  When I walk into my studio, I feel like I just opened her closet, hanging from the archway between the two halves of my studio, are actually 27 garments, I counted them last night after I blogged, though two of them are mens trousers.  They are almost all prom type dresses, some wedding types, beaded, sequined, and I’m a bit overwhelmed looking at the rack of alterations I need to do in the next few days.  This is where the “One Day at a Time” slogan comes into play.  In this case it is “One Dress at a Time…”  I managed to work through three of them last night, burning the midnight oil, and I am getting into the rhythm of down and dirty sewing, no handwork allowed, constantly remembering, “It won’t be seen from the audience”.  That is my new mantra.  And if any of you know my work, you will know that this is the complete antithesis of how I usually work.  The sewing needle and thimble are my best friends.  Alas, that won’t get me through this stack of froth.  So, tomorrow, I’ll attack the next group, but for today, I have a party to attend, and a day to pay attention to my world traveling husband…

The best way to learn how a garment is engineered on a body, is to take it apart.  When I was 15 years old, my mom had me tailoring my own coats, and some of the more affluent citizens of the township where I grew up, began asking me to do some basic alterations to their clothing.  My mom was always nearby if I had a question, but I had quite a lucrative business going, for a 15 year old, doing alterations, basic dressmaking, and learning how to deal with clients, and with deadlines.  I did that for a few years, through High School, and a bit while in college, and then life after college got in the way, and I swore that I’d never do alterations again.  I considered it tedious low pay work, and I hoped with my new degree in art, that I was quite above that sort of thing. (I know all of you are snickering uncontrollably here…)

Fast forward many years.  The current economic crises is what it is, no one is immune, in fact, where I was once booked a couple of years in advance for lectures and workshops, other than the fiber conferences where I am scheduled to teach this summer, there is no contracted guild teaching work at all now and in the foreseeable future.  And there are rumors of lay-offs at my husband’s company as well.

So, though I am very busy inventing things, and creating things, and learning new things, like any artist would be doing with the gift of time, I got my arm twisted to some “minor” alterations to a “dozen” dresses, for a local High School production of Footloose.  They are paying me, which helps, but I was quite unprepared for the volume of work that was waiting for me when I went to pick up the work this afternoon.  Two hours of fittings, and at least three dozen garments, most of them prom dresses, with huge 2 and 3 layer full skirts, at least a half a dozen need to be completely redesigned in the shoulder area.  I can do this kind of stuff in my sleep, though the challenge will be for me to do speed work for costuming, not handwork for couture.  The show is in 28 days, and I gathered from the conversation that this may not be all I have to do for them.

I am grateful for some paying work, and I’m not complaining, I can do this work easily.  But it isn’t what I really want to be doing.  I’m sure everyone reading this would rather be doing something else than what life throws at you.  After all, I promised four more projects if you were counting.  Plus the Irish Handwoven Fabric I got for Christmas which I blogged about in December.  Sadly none of that will produce any income, only experience, and publicity, and the thrill of the process.

So I’ll hunker down, get organized, and plow into this pile tonight, and keep track of my time since they are paying me by the hour.  Stay tuned…

Even in Camelot they had to pay the bills.  I have all my bills due around the same time of the month, so I only have to deal with paperwork for the most part, once a month.  I have a large “inbox”, on my desk, and any mail I have to deal with goes in there, and the last day of the month, or thereabouts, I sit down, and go through the stack, tossing junk, filing what needs to be filed, sticking things in a folder that need to be dealt with, but not today, (and here is where I put the deadline on my to do list, so I don’t forget about them), and sort out the bills by which account pays for them.  Though I work every day, I haven’t had a paying job since the late fall, so my pile of stuff to pay for the business was small.  I didn’t spend anything.  But the Christmas bills were all there, and I had to clear the 2008 files out of the file drawer and make way for the 2009 files, so it was a morning where I was, tea mug in hand, spa music playing in the background, in the zen zone of paperwork.

I have most of the accounts online, where I can do my bookkeeping once a month for my business, and I noticed that my business charge had some odd things happening, so I called my charge company and experienced the frustration of first, not being able to get a live person, and endless loop of automotive technology, and no way out, stuck on a ride with no end, pushing “0” on the keypad, only to be told by an electronic voice that that entry was invalid.  Finally in frustration, I screamed into the phone, “HELP”, and do you know, I was immediately transferred to a person.  Go figure.  No matter that the person was in India.  After giving him all my particulars, I was put on hold for 15 minutes and then got an English speaking person in some other continent, I traveled the world and didn’t leave my desk.  Turns out, they decided that my card might have been compromised and without telling me, they transferred all my purchases in the last week to a new number, but I don’t know the number.  (It was probably the sari’s my husband purchased in India that did it…)  So I’ll have to wait until my new cards come in the mail, and then call all the people who have the card on file.  I got a lot of eye exercises in for all those crow’s feet I’m developing, with all the eye rolling I was doing.

So that was my day.  Not creative, but a necessary part of running a business and a household.  I paid all the bills, and cleaned off my desk, took care of a number of conference emails, and then left to take my daughter to Volleyball practice.

First let me say that I have two nearly grown children.  I took them when they were in pre-school to all the town sports, soccer, t-ball, and I was NOT a good sports mom.  I didn’t have the right chair, scream out the right encouragements, I always winced when my kids were up for their turn.  I didn’t have star athletes, I didn’t even have average athletes.  My daughter lasted one season of soccer, she largely sat and played in the sand when the ball wasn’t near her.  My son wasn’t very coordinated back then, part of his ADD, he has made up for it now, he is a fantastic freestyle skier and snowboarder, but I didn’t know that back then, and I would largely hide in the back of the stands, bringing my inkle loom, or kumihimo on a plate (I actually brought a floor marudai once and sat cross legged on the side of the field.  I didn’t do that again.)  The other mom’s sort of tolerated me, and would be kind enough to tell me when I should look up because my kid was about to do something that I might want to observe.

Fortunately my kids took to music and the arts with much more skill and creativity, I never missed a concert or show, unless I was traveling, and would cheer them on with the best of them.  My son plays a fabulous jazz flute, Ian Anderson is his Idol, and my daughter plays the trombone.  So it is rather ironic that my daughter has developed a passion for Volleyball.  It is a sport that I understand, starts when a child is older, and I found a local club in a nearby town for her to play a couple times a week.  There is no Volleyball offered in her High School, so this is her only opportunity.  She is a pretty powerful hitter, and is beginning to develop control over her body and mind, working them in sync. So here I sit, two nights a week, three this week with the snow make up practice, for a couple hours, the club is too far away for me to drop her off, go home, and then try to head west again to pick her up in rush hour traffic.

About four years ago, my son took an interest in Fencing.  I found a local adult school that allowed teens that had a fencing class, and he did this for a couple years.  Watching your kid fence isn’t as bad as watching them play T-ball, and for the most part, you only had to look up when they were actually in a bout.  So I picked up some knitting, a pattern I found in Piecework Magazine, the Jan/Feb 2005 issue, for a tank top with beaded Trompe L’oeil Cables.  It was very cool in the photo, designed by Lily Chin, from her book, Knit and Crochet with Beads, published by Interweave Press in 2004.  I dug around my studio for some yarn, found a shrimp colored acrylic/wool, and found a whole pile of beads that would work, though I didn’t have enough of any one color, so I just tossed them all together and began to pre-string them onto each skein.  This took quite a few fencing classes, and then I could start knitting.  I actually finished the back of the tank top.  Then my son quit fencing.  So the tank top sat in the tote bag, as a UFO for four years.

Back to Volleyball.  I dug the UFO out when my daughter started this season of Volleyball, and I’m determined to finish it so I can wear it this spring.  I’m half way up the front now, and my gauge is a little off from four years ago, but no matter, I am determined to move forward.  The beads are pretty, and I like following the grid for their placement.  And I look up every once in awhile to see what my daughter is doing, and then quickly get back to work.  I am a very bad sports mom, but at least I am there, and I am encouraging, and I am determined to get a sweater out of this.

This coat/dress ensemble was made in 2007, and exhibited in the Tampa Convergence Fashion Show.   It is a colorful piece, and I especially love the Inkle Band I made, which wasn’t made to actually go with the coat, but happened to go with it, and made a lovely trim.  The dress is a raw silk that was sitting in my stash, courtesy of a student who passed on some leftover fabric.  The original photos had my daughter modeling the piece, but I wanted the photos I am submitting to the SDA Fashion Show to be consistent, so I took the opportunity to reshoot the piece.

I actually don’t like the way the piece fits me.  I made it using one of my jacket patterns, but did nothing to alter the pattern for my specific body.  I do that occasionally, just make the piece, I don’t care who it fits.  But now I’m sort of caring, because I really like the coat and dress, and as I was putting it on my dressform, I’m thinking that I might add to my list of projects a remake of the shoulder/armhole/sleeve area to actually work on my body.  What’s one more project in the pile?!?

But I’ve finished the photoshoot, and I’m going off to lunch with some girlfriends, this week we hit the sushi bar.  I’ll enter the show when I get back, and then start working on all the bills and paperwork due at the end of the month after I put my studio back together.