So here I am, doing what I've been telling others to do for months. Just doing it. I'll share my baby steps, in hopes it encourages others to do the same--TODAY!
I decided to start with simply picking fabrics for backgrounds.
I picked up my shield series with every intent of working on them. I actually have four more ready to embellish.
But I'm not "there" yet. I need to "warm up". These are powerful, powerful pieces, and I want to be centered when I handle them.
I decided to go back a step--work with some compositions and themes I'm already comfortable with. I decided to start a fish series. Haven't done a fish wall hanging in ages. The first--and last--big one I did was beautiful: "Sea Lion Woman", inspired by the song on the soundtrack of the movie, "The General's Daughter." It's an old rope-skipping chant set to music, and I love it. The hanging sold immediately--I barely had time to have it photographed and it was gone.
Hmmmm.....
I picked four background colors--deep olive, a lighter willow green, deep bright turquoise, and cerulean blue. I THINK it's cerulean blue. It might be I just like that name and want this fabric to BE that color.... I tore up a linen suit to get the bright turquoise color. It's a beautiful color, and I love the weight of the linen.
I almost pulled fabrics for a cave bear series, but firmly told myself to F*O*C*U*S.
I actually cleared off my little ironing board (again!) to prepare the fabrics.
I went through my fabric stash to find good patterned fabrics for accents. Nothing looks right. So I did a dye bath this morning, creating "new" fabric by overdying black-and-white patterned fabric in a dye blend of turquoise and cerulean blue. They're in the final soak stage now. The good news is, I can also use this fabric in some of the shields.
I'm even thinking of returning to an earlier style of collage quilting, using more geometric shapes than my free-form shapes. Maybe I'll do both and see how they come out.
I think I'll need bigger fish artifacts, so I'll work on those this weekend. Moving back and forth between the fabric and the polymer lets my brain work out little roadblocks in each medium.
As I look back over this week, I can see how things came to a head.
A fifteen-year-old friendship came to a crashing end earlier this week. I'd been overlooking the signs of toxicity for ages, and cannot do so any longer. I feel a little sad, but I know what I have to do. It helps that others are saying, "What took you so long??"
A book project for Lark Books bounced back. I'd used a song's lyrics as the theme, and at the last minute, it turns out there are copyright issues. Duh! I totally spaced that one...
Unfortunately, nobody caught this until I'd spent two precious days just before ACC-Baltimore finishing that project and an hour writing up the project directions this week. What's really frustrating is I only took on the project because I didn't want to let the editor down again, after dropping the ball on the last book project.
At most I would have received an extremely modest sum for the work. Now I'll get nothing. A real kick in the pants. At least I'll have a very sweet little graduation gift for my daughter.... But I fear my project designing days for Lark Books are drawing to a close at last.
Finding out that people I KNOW are reading my blog, and holding my feet to the fire about what I say I intend to do, was just the final straw. I'm being held accountable, so I gotta do it. Now.
Let me add in my defense that I've also developed two new animals for my sculpture line, created many new jewelry designs I'm pleased with, and wasted a heap o' time trying to make lower-priced versions of the wall hangings. This year I've done two paid speaking engagements (whoo hoo!), two major teaching gigs (yowzer!), written a regular column for a national magazine (yippee!) and blogged 4-5 times a week. And done my first ACC show.
So I haven't been totally lazy, just misdirected.
But now it's time to take that same energy and devote it to big, new, beautiful wall hangings. Fish. Bears. Those wonderful little masks I made up just before ACC. Those tiny little figurines of people are waiting for the perfect little presentation....
On that happy note, back to the dyepot!
