Thursday, January 29, 2015

Do You Like A Challenge?

     Do you ever make art as a result of a challenge? One of the things my art group, ArtsEtc, does periodically is set a challenge for ourselves. At our January meeting, we went on a field trip to a local park and we walked and took photos. Our challenge was to make an art piece 8 inches by 8 inches as a result of our inspiration from our visit and our photos. It's due at our March meeting. The park is a really cool place. Not only does it have amazing plants, but also has ruins from a sugar mill, dinosaur sculptures about 10 feet tall, a few cement ponds, some buildings here and there, and lots of pathways. Here are some of the photos I took.
lots of Spanish moss
from the old sugar mill

from the old sugar mill























I like circles and use them a lot in my art so I wanted to incorporate the shape of the bowls somehow and definitely wanted to use green and capture the texture of the Spanish moss. There were also several rusted remains there, too. As I wandered the pathways and took and took my many photos, I immersed myself in the feeling of the place.
     At home, I tried several arrangements of fabrics and in the end I used two of my monoprinted fabrics, a commercial fabric, a sheer that a friend hand dyed, a cotton that I had rusted, a piece of a dryer sheet that I had painted, and some cheesecloth that I had dyed. I even used a car part (I think) that I found in a parking lot a long time ago. The circles I embroidered represent the many pathways and also represent a stack of rocks (which, to me, represents reaching a goal). I embroidered stitches around the rust marks of the washers in the lower left and that also represents pathways. The archway is an open passage to somewhere. The piece is called "Passages".
Passages
     This kind of challenge is a good one for me in that it makes me put together images in a meaningful way. It's a small piece so it doesn't take a lot of time. And perhaps it could lead to a larger, even more meaningful piece in the future. We will probably take another local field trip later this year that will lead to another challenge if the group likes how this one turned out for our members. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

10 comments:

  1. Beautiful result of this challenge! Hope you will make many trips.

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    1. Thank you. We actually have two sugar mill ruins in the area. I only recently found out this one existed. I will have to go back.

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  2. Perfect! I can see some of all of the photos in your piece. You are very lucky to have a group to "play" with. I find challenges ......... Well challenge me and I love them.

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    1. Thanks. I agree about my group. They are both fun and encouraging.

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  3. I too like your results of your fiber art from an inspiring trip. I also like that stitch you used to imitate the gears of the big wheel or circle.

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    1. That stitch is one of the utility stitches on my machines. I like to use it on my art quilts instead of zig zag.

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  4. I like how this worked out. The park looks like a great place to look for inspiration.

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    1. Thank you. There were so many things in the park to focus in on it was difficult to choose. I was even tempted to make a whimsical piece with the dinosaur sculptures as a focus.

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  5. I love your piece! And I love the field trip idea!

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    1. Thank you, Heather. Our group comes up with some great activities. Maybe I should list them on the SAQA discussion group.

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