This is the year the youngest turns 21. We’re in the midst of planning his birthday trip to celebrate. However, his girlfriend, who we love to pieces, beat him to that milestone. In fact, she kicked off this Labor Day weekend with birthday cookies and legal fun. When the realization set in that this was the year the children wouldn’t be children any longer (at least in terms of age), I knew it was important to mark the celebration with something out of the ordinary.
Combining her favorite elephants with the symbols of her sorority and her school colors, 21 Elephants came to life. She tells me she loves it.
In lieu of a poem, the label for this piece was used for a birthday message.
21 Elephants
21 ElephantsThese elephants come in assorted colorsThis elephant is one to grow onA birthday message
Next up: An experimental piece to practice technique.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts for this series that, while working on Any Color’s All Right As Long As It’s Red, in honor of my Grandpa Clark, I realized Red (for Basil) was the first in a series for my grandparents.
This third honors my paternal grandmother, Neska, who loved purple. She wore it in dresses and hats, brooches and shoes. I believe she would have had purple carpets, drapes, and even walls if my Grandpa had been willing.
Neska passed away when I was 10 or 11, during a time when our family lost several loved ones. I wish my memories were stronger, but those I do have are of a woman who loved her children and grandchildren. She called each of us Pet and gave the best Grandma kisses. My grandfather adored her, this woman who worked as a nurse before they married in the ‘20s. She was strong and sweet and loving.
While working on this piece of art for her, I realized the memory, of how much she loved us all, is the only one I really need.
The paletteThe canvasThe top…the hearts, kisses, and other items have been fused and the quilt sandwich made
Quilting is underway. Check back in a week or two to see how Purple turns out.
This homage quilt to my paternal Grandfather could have been finished in a week if I didn’t have a day job. 🙂
However, because, like everyone, I have bills to pay and I prefer eating to starving, off to work I go. I’ve mentioned I changed jobs in November; the requirements and obligations of taking on a new role are such that the time to balance my life with creativity has been diminished. I’m working on getting that balance back.
In the meantime, I did finish Any Color’s All Right As Long As It’s Red (for Basil). I think it’s my best art work yet (and that’s saying something because I’m pretty hard on myself). Primarily pieced and fused, it’s the little extras like lettered beads to spell “transmugliforcandanbumshamity” and a scanned copy of the famous Basil that make this art quilt pop. I kept the quilting to a minimum and think I’ve found a style that represents my voice.
The first in four panels honoring my grandparentsMinimal quilting. This piece didn’t need the density.The beads spell “transmugliforcandanbumshamity”, Grandpa’s invented word.The whales look 3D to me.Poem labelGrandpa Clark
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Any Color’s All Right As Long As It’s Green (for Lucille) is up next.
My paternal grandfather lived to be 91. Born in Mississippi, he and his family moved to California when he was 2. While he spent the 89 intervening years claiming a strong Southern heritage, epitomized by a deep love of fried catfish and hush puppies, he embraced the quirkiness that is California by inventing his own word, making up his own song, and spouting personal bon mots that became fact in our family.
“Any color’s all right as long as it’s red.” This was his response to any inquiry regarding his favorite color. In an era when men’s suits were limited to a few dark colors – black, navy, charcoal grey – Grandpa added a splash of color with his tie. He sometimes wore a bolo tie when he wanted to shake things up a bit, but the cloth tie with those three-piece suits was red more often than not.
Grandpa Clark passed away my 17th Spring. No one in our family ever recorded the words to his song, but bits and piece remain in our memories. His word, “transmugliforcandanbumshamity”, was 29 letters of nonsense and serious fun to say. I’ve always thought of it as an inventive curse word, but please feel free to create your own definition.
When I started making quilts in the 1990s, his saying about the color red popped into my head during a visit to a fabric store. My immediate reaction was to think, “That would make a fantastic name for a quilt!” And so I began to collect red fabrics. Over the years, I built up a rather impressive stash of red. The time to make his quilt is now.
This quilt only uses a small sampling of that stash. Either way, I think Grandpa would like it.
A small selection of reds.A panel of redBackground close up
I will fuse items that represent Grandpa to this panel and add a bit of embellishment before making the sandwich and quilting it together.
This is the first in a series of four, one for each of my grandparents.
It was a near thing, getting it completed before the end of the year. I had several thoughts urging me on before the calendar rolled to 2015:
I had established a SAQA Visioning Project goal of 4 new art pieces in 2014 (this is the 4th). No way was I going to miss achieving the goal by mere days. Not that there’s a gold star or a smiley face or a trophy for the goal meeting. Instead, there is satisfaction in accomplishing something I set out to do in the time I set to do it.
I refuse to let the busyness of a new job stop me from creating my art, and….
I needed the dining room table cleared of sewing machine, cutting mats, fabric, thread, scissors, Ott lites, and art to make room for Christmas cookies, Christmas cake, and Christmas Eve dinner. Food, drink, and fabric don’t mix.
Somewhere through the process of creating this piece, I realized its name had changed to Sunburst. The bright, bright points of color in the compass explode across the pale, pale yellow of a dawn sky.
Both the art and the duvet it is laying on have some warp. I’d love to know what I am doing that prevents the finished piece from laying flatStraight(er) shot. See the sun exploding in the sky?The poem label
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Next up: “Any color’s all right as long as it’s red” – My Grandpa Clark used to say that. I always thought the statement would make an excellent art quilt name. Check back in January for a progress report.
Hilary Clark Studios 