Help a girl out...with French Knots!

On my list of things to do this week is to stitch a little collection of french knots for Bay Area artist Lisa Solomon.  It occurred to me this morning that you might want to do the same.  She's collecting french knots and stories for an upcoming exhibition.  What a cool opportunity to help another artist and tell a little about yourself at the same time.   Get all the details here....

Come out tonight.......

Rebecca Carter, Handwriting from an imagined Other

It's been a jam packed summer of travel, and often times over the last few months I have felt like a nomad.  I'm off again to teach at Arrowmont on Saturday, but before that, I'll be attending an artist talk tonight at the Center for Book Arts.  Two friends of mine (Rebecca Carter and Iviva Olenick) will be speaking about their work that is a part of Tell Me How You Really Feel: Diaristic Tendencies.     I can't wait to see both of them and to hear them talk about their process.

Iviva Olenick, How I Really Feel

Oh, Roger.....

One of my favorite places to visit in Chicago is the Roger Brown Study Collection in Lincoln Park.  Brown left his studio, and his vast collection of art and objects to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago when he died, and the School has kept it preserved as a museum.  Henry Darger, Gladys Nilson, Jim Nutt and others hang from the walls in his beautiful upstairs apartment, but what gets me excited is the overwhelming collection of other things.

Hand painted signs, Boy Scout knot diagrams, popsicle stick chapels, beer trays, hurse doors.  Lisa Stone, the collection's curator gave my class a great introduction to the collection, pointing out connections that she and others have made between specific objects and specific shapes, images and themes in Roger's work.  In a city that is bursting at the seams with second hand shops, Roger Brown makes all but the most minimalist artist inspired to collect.

*The collection is primarily available to the SAIC community, but private viewings and tours are possible.  See this link for more info.

Artist I Love: Kim Eichler Messmer

I met Kim four years ago when we were both teaching at the International Surface Design Conference in Kansas City.  I fell in love with her layered narrative quilts, and her respectful almost scientific approach to dyeing.

I used to teach a lot of dye classes in Chicago, and I loved the process.  I love the quick potential for layering, particularly with thickened dye that you can screenprint with.  The thin washes of color and texture can add up to something pretty amazing pretty quickly, and for someone who spends months and months working on the same effects with embroidery, this is pretty cool.  The problem for me was my lack of patience.  A lot of people balk at the idea that I could lack patience when they check out my work, but I find that everyone has the things that they are patient with, and the things they aren't. For me, spending the time to really understand dye recipes and dye chemistry was never on my top ten list.

Unlike me, Kim has got dye all figured out, and as a result, she creates amazing dyed,  pieced and quilted works that are colorfast and beautiful.  I love the way she repeats images to suggest stories.

Her new website just launched, and a new collaboration with West Elm launched this last winter.  She's on fire!   She's also got an etsy site where you can buy her work as well as  her meticulously dyed fabric for your own projects.  Her colors and resist techniques are awesome.