Creation and Co-Existence: The Respectful Interdependence of All That Is

Just making a quick entry to suggest that anyone who lives in the Chicago area go to see the exhibit titled "Creation and Co-Existence: The Respectful Interdependence of All That Is" at The Mary-Frances And Bill Veeck Gallery in Hyde Park Chicago (click on the above postcard to see a larger image with gallery and exhibit info). The exhibit features the work of Akemi Nakano Cohn and Lindsay Obermeyer. You can see a slightly longer post (with more pictures) written by me for the LillStreet Textile Department Blog here: http://lillstreettextiles.blogspot.com/ . I attended the exhibits opening reception and let me just say that the artwork by both artists blew me away. I hope you are all having a great summer. Sorry this is not a longer post (I will do something longer soon though)!

I am in the LillStreet Textile Sale Tonight & Tomorrow Afternoon

(click on photo to see larger image)

Hi!
Sorry for the late notice. I am going to be in The Textile Sale on the Third floor of LillStreet tonight and tomorrow afternoon (and so is mom with her hats). Also, tonight is the First Friday event at LillStreet where the whole building is open including the private art studios for your perusal. If you decide to come out, after you check out LillStreet Art Center, you can walk down Ravenswood to the Art Lab at 1802 W. Berteau and check out their First Friday event.
LillStreet Art Center: http://www.lillstreet.com/
Art Lab: http://artlab123.com/

Check Out This Show Featuring The Fiber Work Of Artis Rebecca Ringquist

Hello!
If you are in the Chicago area there is a fantastic show featuring artist Rebecca Ringquist's works in Fiber/Embroidery. I highly recommend the show. Rebecca's work features old vintage embroidered items that have been reworked with heavy machine embroidery and hand embroidery. Her work has incredible depth with lots of texture and color. The show is at the Packer Schopf Gallery at 942 W. Lake St. in Chicago. Their website is www.packergallery.com . The show runs till June 18th, 2011. Above and below are some pictures (taken with the artist's permission) I took at the reception. Her work is amazing (and I have been lucky enough to have her as a teacher too). :)

Guest blogger over at the LillStreet Textile Blog

Hi,
I plan to write a more in depth blog entry later tonight, but till then, I wrote a little entry for the LillStreet Textile Blog on 'Inspiration' over here:

http://lillstreettextiles.blogspot.com/2011/05/inspiration.html
(for some reason blogger does not want to publish my links...I hit the link button and paste in the link but it doesn't work...I will have to investigate further)

What's New?

I started taking a class on how to create Fabric Collage at LillStreet Art Center several weeks ago. It was a short five week session that ended just this past week. The new session starts this coming up week. It was an excellent class and I highly recommend it if you live in the Chicago area. More information can be found here http://www.lillstreet.com/class-detail/5774 .

Below is a picture of how far I have gotten. The next step is to embroider on it. I haven't decided whether I want to try machine embroidery on it or not. The class gives you a brief introduction to freehand machine embroidery but I think I need more practice before I actually use it on this piece.

The piece is a bit abstract, it is based on a drawing I did of the cracked and plastered sections of my bedroom ceiling (goes to show you, you can find inspiration in anything...lol). I used sheer silk over cotton in some places to illustrate where plastered portions had been replastered a couple times (plastered ceilings can be very interesting in the layers that can build up in touched up spots).

I also managed to get out and get some spring photos during the Easter weekend.




All in all it was a nice weekend. There was an Easter Egg Hunt at my husband's Aunt's house for my niece a and nephew on Saturday (my Husband and Mother-in-law were the bunny's hiding the eggs while I mostly took pictures). And, a Sunday brunch with the cousin's at my Aunt's house. The weather here in Chicago is finally getting spring like after a "mostly" cool start (there was one day a while back that we hit almost 80 degrees and then it promptly dropped back down into the 40's). We have actually been in the 50's and 60's since Easter weekend (and the trend is supposed to continue according to the weatherman). The downside is we have had a lot of rain (all kinds of flooding in the southern part of our state). Which of course it not as bad as the killer tornadoes that hit the southern part of our country. I feel so bad for those who lost their homes and/or loved ones. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

Wordless Wednesday...well, mostly wordless.

I figure this is my last chance to put up a winter picture as it looks like spring is going to fully hit us this weekend. This [above] was actually taken just outside of South Haven Michigan just before Valentines Day.

And, below is a picture of me doing a snow angel in the street the day after the Chicago Blizzard of 2011 [just a couple of weeks before Valentines Day] taken by my wonderful husband [and published with his permission :)]


I guess I need to go out and catch some pictures of spring this weekend.

More Pink!

I just wanted to put up a quick note that you can see my entry as well all the other artist's entries which were in the Ravenswood Pink Walk on House Beautiful's Flickr page (photos taken by a professional photographer...I had serious digital camera envy when I saw him taking photos...lol). Below is the link to their Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/housebeautiful/sets/72157626113654489/
(For reasons unknown to me I can't seem to get blogger to put this in as a link so you will have to cut and paste...sorry!)

Been Awhile!

Yikes! A whole month has gone by since my last post (actually , I think it has been two months....arghhh). Well I haven't just been sitting on my laurels. The project I began in my last post is finished as far as the felting goes (still needs to be embellished some more) although it got interrupted midstream and put aside so that I could do a last minute piece for an artwalk I got into (It was called The Ravenswood Pink Walk and was sponsored by House Beautiful Magazine and The Ravenswood Art Walk Organization). House Beautiful Magazine declared that the color for this year is pink. They did their whole March issue around the theme of pink.

Anyway, first up is the project I started at the last post.

The above picture is the culmination of the lace, vanilla & white & oatmeal merino wool, the natural colored blue face leicester wool, cotton doily, silk roving, and locks you saw in the picture of my last post. It took me quite a while to felt and the lace on the sides did not get as tacked down by the wool as I would have liked. The doily is tacked down nicely though (I wonder if it is because the lace trimming is synthetic...usually that is not a problem if the weave is loose enough...hmmm, I will have to ponder on that). Of course I am planning to do some embroidery on it and maybe even a little beading (not sure about the beading). Anyway, the wall hanging is my representation of the tree of life crossed with the idea of the hearth fire or the furnace of our being.


Next up is the wall hanging I made for the Ravenswood Pink Walk.


As I said the theme was pink and I only had two weeks to pull it together. It was February, the theme was pink, and the only thing that was coming to mind was hearts. Hearts...hearts...and more heart! I know it it cliche but my brain was fixated on it, so I tried to think about what hearts are associated with and just went with it. The title of the piece is "Three of Hearts" and it is made of various shades of pink, purple, and red merino wool and merino prefelt, lace inlay, and some violet merino tencel blend wool. It has some embroidery around the pink hearts (I did not do as much embroidery as I wanted because I ran out of time but I may revisit that now that the walk is over). Lastly it has an old time medical illustration that I silkscreened in each of the hearts. I had a lot of fun with it even though I felt a bit rushed. Below is a picture from the reception for the Pink Walk which was held at Architectural Artifacts (if you look close you can see my piece standing on an easel in the back).


Hopefully things will calm down for a while so I can continue to work on the first piece. I hope all of you who are reading this are safe and well.

Beginning a New Project

Today Chicago is in the deep freeze. With wind chill we are presently at -2 degrees below zero and tonight we may drop down to -15 degrees below zero. There is frost on many of our windows (as you can see above) and the contrails of the airplanes flying overhead earlier today were hanging in the sky for quite a long time before dissipating (as seen below).



I am starting on a new felting project. I plan to make a felt wall hanging in shades of white, vanilla, buff, and light to medium brown wool with lace inlays. I will most likely also embroider it after felting it since I love the look of embroidery on felt. I also plan to use some silk roving, some angora, and some locks. Below is a picture of the supplies I have laid out to be worked with this weekend.


I don't have a clear design plan at the moment. It is kind of a nebulous idea floating around in my mind that I am trying to flesh out tonight. I am doing some sketching and hope to have a clear (or at least mostly clear) idea of what I want design wise by tomorrow afternoon. Well I am off to bed. I hope all of you are staying warm (unless you are in a part of the world where you would prefer to be cool...lol). Goodnight!

Starting the New Year off right

...so, in the vein of starting the year as you wish it to proceed, I have been doing some blogging, some stitching on felt, some sorting of photos, some reading, some facebooking, some exercising (went swimming), some more blogging and facebooking, some rearranging, and finally some more stitching. All in all I think it has been a good start to the New Year. Next I plan to do some sketching.

Happy New Year!

Well it is officially the first day of 2011. I decide to update the picture heading my blog since the flower was a little too early summer. And, although the snow has been washed away by the rain I am sure we will have snow again soon once the cool down comes this weekend (this is Chicago after all). My husband and I were supposed to be at a party tonight but he has been sick with a really nasty cold since the beginning of the week and still isn't better. From what I am hearing this really bad cold has been going around and takes a good ten days to clear...poor hubby! Anyway we toasted in the New Year with a glass of sparkling grape juice with my mom and then he went off to bed. Definitely hope 2011 brings good health to us all. I hope you all are having a safe and happy New Year!