Be gone from me

Not everyone has been good to me.

Homely little book

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about how important my friends are to me and how grateful I am to have them in my life. And I talk about the joy I get from making things for people I love.  But the other side of that is, of course, the friends and former loved ones who have hurt me. Badly.

Not talking about the way we can unintentionally hurt those we love. I'm talking about the people who hurt those who care about them with intent. With selfishness.

Coptic stitching in the folio center

For some reason I couldn't sleep last night. The pain of being used, lied to, ignored, judged and rejected by people I've loved hovered over my bed, pressing down on me when I tried to rest. Making it hard to breathe. I have no idea why. But I was reliving the hurt and shock of several events in my past.

So I got up and finished stitching up the coptic binding of the little book I made in the workshop earlier in the day. And as I was working on the homely little thing, fighting off the bleakness of my thoughts, I came upon the idea of binding these people and events up in the book and putting them far away from me, where they can't touch me. And that brought me a weird solace.

Sewn, coptic binding

The book itself is just a draft, an exercize in how to make a book. My first one. And now it has another purpose. Good bye to those who chose to be selfish and intentionally hurt me.

Stitching at 3 am

Be gone.

Far away from our regularly scheduling programing... Coptic bookbinding

Well, maybe not THAT far.

Stitching something different

It involves stitching, after all.

Preparing matt board for awl work

I decided to take a Coptic bookbinding workshop last minute this morning through a group called Jack's Crafts. Just wanted to play with a new, completely unfamiliar creative endeavor. I didn't have many supplies, but they were mostly provided by the workshop group and The Scrap Exchange, where it was held.

I loved piercing paper and matt board with sharp awls. I felt tough! But mostly, I loved stitching the binding together.

Finishing my binding chez moi

Thinking forward and plotting my text-based, stitched sketchbook for The 2012 Sketchbook project for the Arthouse project. I have the moleskin sketchbook that they sent, but since mine with be mostly a textile sketchbook and predominately stitched, I've been researching different ways of binding it all together.  Coptic binding may be the answer.

So happy to use needle and thread!

In the meantime, working on the Phat Quarter piece and exploring other ways of being creative, too. Have been cooking for the first time in many years. Feeding friends and colleagues is surprisingly joyful!

Chopping jalepenos

Even started growing herbs: basil, for cooking, and French lavender for the overwhelming, sensual experience. I wish I could share the dense aroma via this blog!

Sauteing ground turkey for a Thai dish

Next up... attempting to bake my very first Key Lime pie for a beautiful friend who grew up in Florida for whom this is a favorite. (This small New Yorker feels the pressure, in a thrilling way, to master this regional specialty.) Cooking is like stitching. Very methodical and slow, but with so much room for creativity.

Key limes and orchid blossoms

Does anyone else feel that making things for the people we care about and sharing our passion for our senses are among the most pleasurable things in the world?

Getting carried away with fill stitch

I love heavy fill stitch on my embroidered pieces. I love the texture and the sheen of the thread all piled up together. But I always underestimate how long it takes to stitch all that fill!

Back stitch in red.

So I'm late, once again, for my swap piece for Salvaged Mutinity. Sorry! Fortunately she is in some remote part of the world and not able to receive mail, so even if I was done, I couldn't send it. But I feel terrible.

I love the texture.

Stitching is an unbelievably slow, repetitive process. Just have to keep putting the needle into the fabric. Again and again.

Damn, I love it.

Battling My Pink Robots

This is a blog about stitching, textile art, creativity and community, not about the visitudes of my emotions. But I try to be a honest maker and artist and, for me, my emotional and intellectual life is a huge part of my art practice, so please be patient with me.

My view: knees, sheet and stitching

Woke up lonely and blue this morning. Unsure of myself.

I had two choices. 1) Stay in bed, stewing in my sadness, feeling like no one cares about me. 2) Get up, eat a big bowl of Greek yogurt with berries, put on some music that feels like an embrace and stitch.

Guess which one I chose.

The yogurt was tart and fresh. Listened to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (The Flaming Lips) and stretched out on my soft bed and stitched. The music, Wayne Coyne's voice, the simple red back stitch and my vibrant purple sheets... it seeped through my skin and worked its way down to the sadness.

I love stitching in DMC 321 red floss!

I wouldn't say that it removed my blueness or loneliness or shaky self-doubt, but it softened it. It put the lonely blues within the context of being a "part of life" that I can embrace, experience, survive and even create from, rather than be overwhelmed or crushed by it.

I don't know where the sun beams end and the star

Lights begins it's all a mystery

And I don't know how a man decides what right for his

Own life - it's all a mystery

~From, Fight Test

I have a long, busy, lonely day ahead of me today in the corporate salt mines. But tonight I meet up with friends, go to an art opening at The Nasher (The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure  the Signs of Power, 1973-1991) and meet Wonder Woman!

Opening night talk at the Nasher, 9/15/11, 7pm

And I had this morning and my music and food and stitching to buoy me. And there are so many people in my life that I care about and love and, I have to believe, that they care about and love me, too.

So I'm going to keep fighting and living and embracing experience and making what moves me to make it. And I'll keep reaching out to people, trying to make connections, both with my friends and by meeting new people.

I'll keep battling my pink robots.

Remind me of this gift when I'm lost

Woke up crazy creative and hyper visual today. I see patterns, textures and outlines of drawings to be stitched everywhere I look.

Da Vinci, Study of a Hand

Played with a friend’s hand it kept looking like a beautiful Da Vinci sketch... his fingers curled in the most elegant, graceful way. I saw his hand stitched in red thread on cream cloth.

I take a lot of photos of myself.

Looked at my own outstretched, bare leg and saw a painting. My kneecap a sea of chain stitch on canvas. 

I'm a constantly available subject & I do whatever I tell myself to do!

Even my fingertips seem to have eyes… Touching my own ribs and hip bone, I can almost see them drawn and stitched onto fabric, blue tattoo and all.

Looked at veins on leaves at the plant store and saw rivers, highways and train tracks stitched out over mottled, green-dyed fabric.

The texture of my own lips wants to be rendered in deep red thread on cotton.

Sometimes life is bitter and sad and I feel like my eyes are oversized and full of blue rue, like an Edward Gorey woodcut of some lost orphan.

And then there are times like this weekend when, despite what I know are challenges and overwhelming losses in my life this year, despite even my not-too-infrequent loneliness, I’m given a gift from the universe… Having my senses turned up and seeing beauty all around me. I am so grateful. 

And when I’m gripped with fear of being alone, being completely and wholly unlovable, and like I’ll never create anything again, I need to remember weekends like this. Moments like this.

Please remind me.    

Inspiration Sponge, or, Two books that are BLOWING my mind

Money is tight so I spent a quiet night at home instead of taking myself out for a drink and I'm so happy I did.

Just released! by Jamie Chalmers

Gorgeous book by Katharine Harmon

Quick post about two books that I've been devouring this evening: Push Stitchery: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Stitched Art (Jamie Chalmers, a.k.a. MrXStitch) and You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (Katharine Harmon).

Quantum Entanglement (2009) by Orly Cogan

I will be exploring and writing about these two beautiful volumes for ages because the images are intoxicating and capture my imagination like nothing I've seen in weeks.

Fairy Tale (2006) by Orly Cogan

Chalmers' book features so many of my favorite artist/stitchers (Bascom Hogue, Joetta Maue & Penny Nickles, to name a few) and exposes me to the astonishing work of many artists who are new to me.

Contour Map of Identical Female Twins Face to Face (date unknown) Dr. Robin Williams

Harmon's book is not about stitched or textile art. It collects and reflects upon different kinds of personal map making and features the art of a wide range of new (again, to me) artists creating images of maps.

Druksland Physical and Social 15 January 1974 (1974) by Michael Druks

To say that I adore personal map making is an understatement. I often sketch my own maps, rudimentary scribbles of my love life, my passion for particular men, my crazy geography of desire, for example. And yes, I want to stitch these private images.

Mapping emotion on my back? self portrait (2011)

Thinking about stitching a map on this theme of desire and passion for a man onto this image of my back that I haven't worked with in a while. Or, perhaps, my heartbreak. My fears.

So many ideas! Perhaps being broke and needing to spend more quiet nights at home, alone, isn't a bad thing. I can stitch my way through the lean times.

Back to my stitch-speration. Love to all. 

Late for a very important date! And photo inspiration at First Friday!

Me, stitching, ah...

Got a very late start of my piece for the Phat Quarter food-themed swap. The fabulous Salved Mutiny is at sea right now (literally, she is somewhere on a ship) and she told me to take my time with it, which I really appreciate. With the chaos of my recent move and all, I haven’t done much stitching or sketching.

Do Not Eat sign on my light box

Decided to do a hazard sign for the swap. I haven’t stitched up a hazard sign in a while. I don’t know why I love them so much. The odd simplicity of their designs? The way the image is reduced to the simplest elements to convey the warning?  There is something poetic about them to me.

Biohazard quilted piece, still need to make it a proper pillow

I’m stitching the swap piece up on white cotton in the traditional red and black colors. But I also like to switch up the colors or ground fabric, like I did with my bio-hazard pillow or the Hans the Riot Cop piece.

Close up of simple back stitch

Lots of excitement about my new apartment. It is very unadorned at the moment. Want to fill it with threads and fabrics and stitches and color. My artwork and the artwork of people I admire.  Want to have gatherings. Want to fill it with passion and life! I know I will.

How beautiful is this orchid color? Want to fill my home with this color.

For now, finally finished my spirograph dishcloth, so there is some color for my place! Gonna stitch up a lot of spirographs as gifts… let me know if you’d like one!

Had a fabulous time at First Friday in Raleigh this weekend! Local art rocks. Wandered around from gallery to bar with a rockin’ friend who appreciates art and creativity. It is just energizing to explore art with him. Electric stitch-speration abounds!

We saw some cool music photos from the Hopscotch Music Festival, the annual live music event in Raleigh. The exhibition inspired me to possibly pick up my camera again to take photos of something other than myself and what I make. We’ll see.  (Who am I kidding? I have too much on my plate already.)

I was particularly taken by the work of NC photographer Abby Nardo and this piece:

By Abby Nardo

I love the high perspective of the shot. And I love the clustering of the audience around the stage and the scattering of empty chairs. Gives the viewer the experience of being at a live, local show. Moody and gorgeous.  I encourage folks to explore her flickr stream for other lovely live music shots. Yah!

OK, back to stitching, kids! Gotta finish this piece for Salvaged Mutiny. 

I adore this Spoonflower fabric. I want every color!

Sending out my love and affection to all of my friends online and in meat space. Life is great because I have you in it. For real. Keep rocking…

Happiness! Spirograph Embroidery included in whipup.net's post today

Needed this boost today, truth be told!

My Spirogragh featured in whipnet's montage, bottom row second from right. Woot!

Saw this on Kath Red's whipup.net Twitter feed today and was thrilled to see my WIP Spirograph dishtowel included in her flickr montage post today. 

Moving this weekend and life is in temporary disaray. Virtually no stitching or making this week, just packing, cleaning and trying to keep my chin up. So grateful for this reminder that I DO make things and play with thread, you know?

One more reason to enjoy my Twitter explorations, so big shout of thanks to the friend who turned me on to it. I just love reading the quick tweets on all kind of both artistic and personal subjects of some of my favorite makers.  For example, these are some great Twitter feeds to follow:

@followbunny

@meetmeatmikes

@whipup

I will add more, later, but must head into the salt mines of my corporate job at the moment.

For now, THANK YOU whipup.net! Yah!

All for the STITCH… On blogging, flickring & tweeting like a joyful MOFO

Keeping this blog has rocked my world.

Editing photos for a blog post in my NYC hotel

This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but there you go.

I started reading arts and crafts blogs about two years ago. At first, I lurked on the whipup & Feeling Stitchy sites, gobbling up the posts and following the links to the amazing creative spaces of artists and crafters around the globe.

Through Feeling Stitchy, I remember stumbling upon Jenny Hart’s Embroidery as Art and feeling like I was home, like I had found a long lost, secret family.  Here was a stitcher who was making art, often out of portraiture, and I was mesmerized.

Turntable embroidery featured in a whipup mosaic

When I found my way to the MrXStitch blog, things really cracked open for me. Beefranck and MrXStitch have a gracious, loose, egalitarian approach to blogging and feature the work of so many individual stitchers in their Stitchgasm posts. Following links from their posts, I found my way to the blogs and flickr galleries of 20-30 other stitching artists, including (to name a few of many):

The Smallest Forest .  Joetta Maue  .  Penny Nickels .  Bascom Hoage  .  Drucilla Pettibone  .  Ric Rac  .  Mimi Love  .  Beadgirl  .  Jennifer Andrews

So, I took the leap last fall and started cocoaeyesthestitcher. And my creative world flew open. Suddenly, I had a space to capture all of my attempts and thoughts about making. Not only to document, but to muse. Not only to record, but to connect.  When MrXStitch and Feeling Stitchy featured some of my work on their sites, I could NOT believe it.

Blogging lead to flickr and wonderful flickr groups like Phat Quarter and Embroidery. Phat Quarter lead me to the January 2011 Music Swap, which introduced me to jojobooster, gigglymama and so many others. Gigglymama invited me into the EFU group on Facebook, where equally stitch obsession people happily gush about stitching.

Unexpected present from jojobooster, all the way from New Zealand. LOVE!

And about a month or so ago, in a completely non-stitching turn, I met a new friend who turned me on to Twitter, which I completely adore.  I follow dozens of textile artists and it gives me a view into a more casual, quick and organic part of their stitching lives… a tweet about thread selection is followed by one about melting chocolate croissants or a tune. I love the joyful, random playfulness of tweeting.

Now I tweet almost every day, too, mostly about work I’ve seen online, but also about songs, my changing moods, dinner dates, and my own stitching.  Check out my twitter stream for lots of little posts about amazing artwork… a running quick list of things that inspire me. And tweet me a tune! @o_corcoran.

And my thought of the day, as I pack for me move next weekend, stitch on my Phat Quarter Swap piece for Salvaged Mutiny and dine al fresco and see the Paperhand Puppet Intervention tonight… 

...link to work and artists you love...
...leave comments on blog posts or flickr shots that touch you...
...tweet and share your creative life with like souls online...

BE GENEROUS. It makes life more fun. And it can give other makers a much-needed charge in the loneliness of their making.

Besitos, my friends!

That's it. Just be generous. 

Oh, Mr. Bergstrom...

Is there anything more wonderful than being told that you are going to be just fine in your life because you are yourself? That's how I feel about the friend that I stitched this up for.

Screenshot from "Lisa's Substitute"

"Lisa's Substitute" is one of my all-time favorite Simpsons episodes. Dustin Hoffman as the sensitive, creative teacher who recognizes what is special about Lisa... it is a wonderful, sweet exploration of childhood loneliness and invisibility and that overwhelming craving to be seen.

When I was a dorky, isolated kid, I would have floated away with joy if a beloved teacher (say, Mr. Stewart from 7th grade, the cool, bearded English teacher with red hair, dry wit and who called me OK Lisa) would have given me a note that said, "You are Olisa Corcoran."

I've wanted to stitch up this little note that Mr. Bergstrom hands to Lisa on the train platform at the end of the episode, when he is leaving her on her own in Springfield, for a long time. Beadgirl did it a few months ago and I loved her simple piece so much. (She used a yellow hoop to display her piece.)

When I saw the yellow-bordered cocktail napkin in the fabric store on Sunday while shopping for ground fabric for my Phat Quarter Swap piece, I remembered Beadgirl's piece. I instantly knew I had to make this for my friend. He appreciates the note as much as I do.

On to more "serious" stuff another time... This whole thing just makes me smile! Gaw!

Confusion and color and projects and more confusion...

Rainy and gray day in Durham and I’m feeling a little rainy and gray on the inside. Much less sure of what the future holds or where I’m going in my personal life. Trying not to make any big life decisions from this place of uncertainty.  It seems almost impossible that my heart could hold so much and be so tangled.

The weird thing is that this huge knot is almost completely separate from my creative life. I have so much excitement about what I’m making and my current projects. I’ve never experienced such a disconnect between the personal and the creative parts of me. Aren’t they the same thing? Aren’t they intertwined? I don’t understand!

Right now I’m working on three main projects.

Number 1: A dishcloth decorated with spirographs in happy colors! Let these happy colors wash over me and cheer up my soul!

I had forgotten how much I loved spirograghs as a child until I saw the wrist tattoo of a dinner companion. It wasn’t a spirograph, but the design was early 70s and it reminded me of those magical plastic disks and the fantastic joy I felt as I played with them… it was amazing to see what designs would come out on the page.

Number 2:  Just starting on a Phat Quarter (MrXStitch) sponsored, food-themed swap for the incredibly talented Salvaged Mutiny, a British mixed media artist and costume designer who travels the world on ship. I’m serious!  Sounds like a very cool person and her work is AMAZING. 

After much sweating and searching and sketching, I have created an image, which relates to my passion for hazard signs, believe it or not. Must nip off to the fabric shop to get my background fabric this afternoon. More to come…

Number 3:  And finally, I’m in the very early stages of collecting images and doing preliminary stitching for the Sketchbook Project 2012 as part of the arthouse coop with the Brooklyn Library of Art. I chose the theme “Writing on the Wall.” I know that I will focus on stitching text, both found and intentional. 

By Andy, China

By Erin, NYC

Friends have been very generous about sending me images of signs, graffiti and other text that they’ve come across in the world for me to collect and potentially stitch. If YOU have any images, please email them to me!! The pages and pieces will be quite small and I’m excited about the space for experimentation that this allows.

Me, NYC

But despite all of this creative excitement and stitch-speration, my heart is all tumult. I just don’t know what to DO with all of this emotion.

So for now, I’ll just stitch.

So Much Stitch-Speration at the MOMA, my head exploded

Haven't been to the Museum of Modern Art in 5 or 6 years and I took myself there on NYC trip this past weekend. Of course, one wanders around, unsure what to focus upon, being pushed this way and that way by the throngs of other museum goers, some clearly suffering, wildly uncomfortable and not sure why the hell they are there.

Me, excited in my taxi, en route to the MOMA

Me, I'm there to just absorb, to allow my eyes to be tantalized and my heart to be stirred. I did my own aimless wandering for a few minutes, after leaping from my taxi. But I thought to myself, O, why are you here? And I answered myself, in that weirdly clear-headed way that I can conjure when I'm not too self-conscious. I said, to look at images and think about stitching. What I call Stitch-Speration, just like a did a couple of weeks ago with a friend at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh.

Natalia Goncharova. Imagine piling stitches up on top of each other in this way.

So that is all that I did. I roamed and let my eyes fall on anything--any color combo or pattern or speck of a design that resonated with the feeling of putting a needle into fabric, or building layers of color and pattern on cloth.

Umberto Boccioni.

At first I was attracted to color and shapes.

Gino Severini. Imagine attaching dull sequins to your piece, over stitching.

Piet Mondrian. Black outline around your stitches.

Diego Rivera. Playing with stitched portraiture inspired by this.

Vasily Kandinski.

Then I started finding text, which I adore stitching.

Joseph Kosuth. Imagine providing false definitions.

Marcel Broodthayers

Finally I found the Talk to Me exhibit, which featured MANY works that had text and symbols within them, but were really about the interaction between people and their technology. As someone who texts constantly (to the point that I probably drive people crazy), is on Twitter and Facebook, has met a few amazing people through online dating, has reconnected with old friends through email, blogs, lives with her iPhone in her bra and gets her news almost exclusively through the NY Times online, interacting with technology is an interesting subject.

What 100 Million Calls to 311 Reveal about NYC/

Imagine false info being mapped.

This is a a pitifully abbreviated sample, but I was particularly struck by two pieces: A NYC 311 graph of when and why people call the City of New York for various public services (at 3 am they want HIV testing but at 2 pm they want to complain about odd odors) and a lovely document about symbols homeless people leave to instruct other homeless about the conditions in their surroundings. I ADORE the symbols and the documentation about what is most important to share. And it reminds me of 1930s Hobo chalk markings that served a similar purpose.

Homeless City Guide

I adore the symbols.

Oh, and the the catalog of "Ss" in Parisian graffiti really appealed to both the artist/text obsessed part of me and the nerdy kid who loves lists of things part of me.

Graffiti Taxonomy, Paris

And then there is the wonderful, fragile beauty of drawings on napkins. And I imagine stitching into paper napkins and leaving them to be found.

Jim Hodges. A Diary of Flowers.

Another project for another day, no doubt.

The garden is peaceful even if we are not.

Rested in the sculpture garden at the moment and allowed all of the ideas to wash over me. So many sources of inspiration out there. So many wonderful people in my life.

I'm goofily grateful.

Octo-Boxers, Tentacles and Stitching from here

The Octo-Boxers are done.  I repeat, the Octo-Boxers are done!

(This is my headline, à la the Simpsons spinning headline “The Lincoln Squirrel Has Been Assasinated!”

I’ve never taken so long to complete a fairly simple project. A testament to the challenges of this Spring and Summer.

I hope that my friend likes them. They were stitched with a lot of love and appreciation for all of the support and kindness he has given me during a time of unbelievable change in my life. That kind of friendship is rare. This is the kind of friend for whom you make handmade gifts. That you put in the time and stitch in the love.

Fingering the crazy crotch tentacle

My friend is considerably larger than me and these will fit him differently, but here I am modeling the Octo-Boxers after nipping them in with clips.  (Forgive the horrible beige background…this is the horror that is my sublet apartment.)

The final, happy crotch tentacle

They make me smile, crazy things. I’ve decided that embroidered boxers are great stitched gifts for you male friends or boyfriends. Boxers and dishcloths, because every man seems to cook these days! Whew-hew!

Next up in my life: Finding a more permanent place to live (I’ve been living like a refugee in a sparse summer sublet). Continuing to form deeper connections with people I care about. Continuing to be wide open to the world and possibility and friendship and passion. Full discloser: Over the last several month, I have learned just how warm, open and embracing of life I actually am. And I think it is kind of extreme and one of my unique traits. I’m vulnerable just like anyone else, but I’m unafraid. I won’t be crushed. And this feels amazing!

Looping chain stitch garter belt

Artistically, I will gather up my art and stitching supplies around me. I’ll set up my beautiful Bernina sewing machine in my new home.  I will absorb all of the inspiration I can from my world (last week’s museum visit was a revelation for me; I should be doing that MORE.) And I will sketch and stitch and sew and make my art and crafts. I could not be happier about this.

Writing this post from NYC.  I’m trolling museum and galleries, collecting found text, shopping for art supplies, visiting friends, feeling grateful and just enjoying the city of my birth and how far I’ve come. Musing a little bit about what comes next. But also, living in the moment.

Octo-Boxers, I love you! I release you and your eight tentacles back into the ocean. Be free and be happy! 

Happily Trolling for Stitch-Speration, Raleigh-style

Ledelle Moe, Congregation

Spent a fantastic Saturday afternoon with a friend, floating around the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, searching for "stitch-speration." I'm participating in a 2012 Sketchbook Project and working on the theme of Writing on the Wall, so this was in part to get ideas for that project and beyond.

Specifically, I was looking for uses of text in the artwork. I adore stitched text and I'm constantly seeking examples of text within other artists' work. I am also interested in finding examples of patterns or motifs, including but not limited to text, on the edges of artwork.  Sort of a liminal design... images and patterns falling of the edge of a piece. Two ongoing passions of mine: text and liminal designs. I found some lovely examples at the museum, but I was also inspired by other work and my mind is full of ideas!

The piece above is densely layered words that are virtually unreadable. I thought it would be amazing to write a confession, whether criminal or personal, and stitch it up. The terrible act could be documented and confessed, but safe within the layers of the piece. That is a New Project Idea 1.

This is a beautiful painting that has the appearance of a grid or a map. The long rectangles contain names and they are connected through a series of lines.

I'm musing with the idea of a stitched map or grid with the people or place names. I'm not sure yet what the collection of text will be the the connection between them. But this is New Project Idea Number 2.

I love the idea of giant text over a stitched portrait. New Project Idea Number 3.

And finally, outside of the text/liminal design idea, there were other images and pieces that attracted me and gave me kernels of ideas for other project. This shot of my friend through a prism gave me an idea of a way to playfully construct a portrait.

The use of thread spools to "paint" a version of the Mona Lisa made me think about stitching blocks of color to construct a bigger image. Sort of a pointilist idea, but simple and using threads. Plus it is just so freaking cool to see spools of my precious thread used like this!

Ledelle Moe, Congregation

And this stunning collection of concrete heads, arranged into a cluster on the wall, just amazes me. ("Congregation" by Ledelle Moe, 2005-2007) Each face is completely different and completely tortured, rendered roughly in the concrete yet each head also, somehow, has a delicacy of expression that is haunting. It just moves me and makes me want to play with faces and clusters.

Writing this blog post a 3:30 am, filled with ideas and energy and excitement about projects.  What an unexpectedly lovely day of absorbing stitch-speration with my friend! Now to find the time to focus on it. I know that 3:30 am is not that time, however energized I might feel by the images I saw. So back to bed for O!

Last note: I'm embarrassed to realize that I did not write down the names of the artists or the pieces I photographed, which is NOT like me at all. I couldn't find these particular pieces on the NCMA website, so I'll definitely go back soon to collect them. Terrible omission, on my part. OY!

UPDATE: Thanks to Katherine for sending me the name of the concrete head piece! Read more about it here: http://ncartmuseum.org/untitled/2009/11/follow-our-journey-talking-heads/

100 Visual Journals – Stitched Tree Rabbit Cameo

The ever cool Juline, my great friend and fabulous source of art and inspiration, enlisted me to contribute the this cool collaborative art project. Over the course of the year, the Vis J's 4 NC project is attempting to fill up one journal for each county in North Carolina with creative yumminess.

As part of the Durham County journal, I was happy to stitch up this little rabbit tree cameo. The image is from a book that I go back to again and again: "4000 Animal, Bird & Fish Motifs: A Sourcebook."

(I bought the book when I took an intro to embroidery workshop at the John C. Campbell Folk Art School a few years back. That workshop started me on the creative stitching journey. And the school itself…DYN-O-MITE!)

The rabbit is from the Islamic art section.

I love images on tree trunks. (See my self-portrait as a tree.) After lightly padding the image with felt, I sewed the little cameo onto some black and white tree-trunk-esque fabric using feather stitch. And then I sewed it into the journal.

Fun, simple project. It feels good to finish something, however small.

Still a bit scattered by life and all of the changes and new people in it. But still being as open as possible to the world and to experiences. Living with my dial set at 12 and trying to embrace the days and see where they take me. I’ve met some amazing people in the past few months… other artists and writers. People who are passionate about what they’re making. So far, it is an amazing journey.  

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.

Read more about the Visual Journal Project at: http://www.100visjs4nc.blogspot.com/

So Much Depends Upon a Red Ant

Hine Mizushima

Hine Mitzushima's needle felted red ant, my one glorious purchase from The Needle Felting Extravaganza exhibit at Gallery Hananhou in Manhattan last March... so much depends upon her.

I could almost eat this little wool ant, in hopes of absorbing a tiny fraction of Hine's imaginative skills. Doesn't it work that way? If you eat the artwork you love, does it give you it's essence and can you use that to create?

Hine Mizushima

Better not risk it!

Just don't let any rainwater get on my beautiful ant. And keep it away from white chickens, dammit.

The Final, Happy Tentacle

Decided to go all in with the Octo-Boxers. Embracing all that is the playful, racy and inappropriate about embroidering a pair of boxer shorts for a man. Stitching this final, curving, thick, huge tentacle on the fly of the boxers.

Could this happy tentacle suggest something phallic in its tentaclehood? What a question!

My stitching and creating continue at the pace of a geological epoch. Intend to finish the Octo-Boxers before the end of Cenozoic Era. I remain hopeful this is possible!

To that end… back to stitching.

Initial Pencil Lines on My Back... Leading to Stitches, I hope

Unable to sleep, so I played a bit with pencil marks, which I'd like to translate into stitches, on a self-portrait of my back.

Thinking about stitching lines and and swirls. Very rough and preliminary. I can see the beginnings of a twisted, almost snake-like scroll down my spinal column. I like where that is going. And big bowed shapes along my shoulder blades. The simple lines of hair remind me of a fountain But the parenthesis of rib lines... these are just beginnings of ideas.

And the hip lines I'm completely unsure about. Maybe there doesn't need to be anything there at all. Maybe I should let that be an empty expanse of space and not embellish it at all with marks, lines and stitches. I'll have to play with the image some more when I get back into town from my trip to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to see my beloved Keefie.

As very rough and basic as it is, it feels good to be sketching again. Oh, yes.

Good Intentions Paving Company… How Do you Stitch a song?

Tell me if you know. I can’t stop listening to this astonishing song recommended by my brilliant friend Joe in Brooklyn, an amazing, musical man with ranging, eclectic taste. How did he know I would love it so much? Lucky me for having friends like this. Sometimes you are just fortunate for no good reason.

“Good Intentions Paving Company,” by Joanna Newsom is the most beautiful, weird, raw, surprising song I’ve heard in a long time. And yet, I recognize that it might me hugely annoying to other people.

And, although I can’t see when I listen because the tears almost instantly blur my vision (the song is so beautiful and “mysterious” as Joe described it), I’m moved to try to stitch it, the beautiful lyrics and the strange, fluttering, surprising vocalizing, the changing tempos, the moods.

It feels like a layered tapestry, this song. It makes me feel like something cracked open inside me. And I didn’t know that I could crack open any more. I’m going to be nothing but a pile of shards at the end of my short existence. How to stitch these layered emotions… No clue, but I will try.

I think Newsom, this artist (at least as far a this song goes) lives in such a crazy, free, open, honesty and fearlessness. And I know that I can (as much as anyone who supports herself by working for a corporation) live in this kind of honesty… I always have, often to my own detriment. But to live in this kind of fearlessness to say and create whatever I can possibly imagine… I want to be in that place in my life. I crave it. I’m not there, now. But, I am getting closer by inches…

My favorite line, squeaked out in a scary high register without any apologies on her part, is:

“And am in love with the hook

Upon which everyone hangs”

When you’re in love with the thing holding us all up and it is not defined… it is a hard way to live.

Felt Popsicle Plush Toys and Octo-Boxers, Oh my!

Surprisingly fun times on Saturday with Juline at the Maker Faire NC in Raleigh! Must admit, I haven’t been in a “making for sale” mode for a very long time, but I went to support Juline and OJ Designs. Juline sold her beautiful, spiral felt earrings and necklaces and her embroidered felt hair clips (both available on etsy.) Lucky me, she even made me a pair of felt drop earrings!

Spiral felt necklace, by Juline, OJ Designs

Maker Faire is a hands on event, not just a craft sale, so OJ Designs had a very popular button making table and, freakishly exciting for me, I got to teach kids how to make my simple Felt Popsicles Plushies! This was amazing!! The design is insanely basic, but walking kids (as young as 4) through the process of cutting, gluing, stitching, stuffing and assembling a smiling, google-eyed popsicle plushie was oddly energizing! (I’m not a kid person, I admit.)

They showed such focus, such determination! And they held needles and STITCHED with their chubby little fingers! I was teaching STITCHING! They’d look up at me, not believing they could do it, could stitch ALL THE WAY AROUND the edge. I untangled many a string. They stuffed their little plush toys with "cotton candy you can't eat." But in the end, they smiled with insane glee when they held up the little, smiling popsicle friend that they’d just created with their own two hands! SHAZAM! How inspiring and fun it was to walk them through that.

One little girl was very proud to say that she was taking sewing classes and had a sewing machine. Most of them had stitched before, but a few hadn’t. The six-year-old little girl who was with her parents all day at the booth behind ours held her popsicle all day. I even saw her kissing it late in the afternoon, as her eyes got heavy with sleep. How sweet and amazing is that?!

So, hell yeah, that was a surprisingly fun day. Who knew that I’d like teaching kids to make something so much? That I would find it inspiring? Not me, that’s for damn sure. I know that crafting with kids a a huge part of the crafting community, but for me... I’m an artist, not a teacher. I swear and make inappropriate comments, not suited for children (but I didn't yesterday!) Life is so freaking surprising and odd.

Making weirdly slow progress on the Octo-Boxers (I’m digging this new name for the boxers coined by a clever new person I've met online, but not yet in person.) But I’m still enjoying making them for my friend in Brooklyn. Just have to decide how inappropriately wacky I want them to be.

Other than that, just slowly, haltingly, trying to make it through each day, connect with friends, new and old, and embrace the moment. Stitch the moment. THANK YOU to everyone who has been so kind and supportive of me, both online and in 3D, as I stumble through this tumultuous time of change and uncertainty in my life. 

People are freaking awesome. Most of the time. Gaw.

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Maker Faires are held all over the US, so check them out because there is likely one in your area.  It is a super cool event that describes itself as a celebration of  “Makers, Crafters, Inventors, Evil Geniuses, Scientists and Artists.” There were crafters AND robot fighting and hacking clubs (I didn’t know such things existed!) and all kinds of ways to get your geek on.