What Kind Of Art Do You Buy?

     Since this is mostly an art quilt blog and most of my readers are probably interested in art quilts, do most of you buy art quilts? Or do you also buy other kinds of art? Do buy art from local artists or artists who live far from you? Must you see the art in person or do you buy your art on-line? Or do you only have your own art hanging in your home?
     I once attended a lecture about how to sell my art and the first question from the lecturer was "How many of you own art from an artist other than yourself?" Only a few of us in the audience raised our hands. And, in my case, most of the art hanging in my home was indeed my own.

     That got me to thinking about why. Part of the reason was space. I create art quilts and need a place to put them. Another reason is cost. Good quality art quilts are expensive. And again space. The art quilts by other artists I like are huge. And my walls just won't fit them. I travel a lot and my walls are taken up with art like masks and shelves with sculptures from my trips.
     Later on, I attended another art lecture. But this one focused on how to collect art. The two main points were to buy art either that you like or that would be a good financial investment or both. For me, I doubt that I would ever try to resell my things to make money so I buy art that I like and don't pay attention to whether or not it's a good financial investment.
     Two weeks ago, I made a new art purchase from a trip to Devon and Cornwall in Great Britain. My husband and I rented a car and drove around without any real definite plans. There were only a few places I wanted to visit for sure. One of them was to visit St. Ives to meet Carolyn Saxby who was having her art in an exhibit during the time I was there and to buy a piece of her artwork. I've followed her blog for some time and the photos she posts of the area helped inspire my trip.

The mixed media piece by Carolyn on my studio shelf

I bought a beautiful mixed media piece that reminds me of my beach walks in Cornwall. It has all the right colors and I love the textures. I've seen her art online, but waited to buy any until I could see it in person. And, to top it off,  she's a sweetheart of a person.

     Another place I wanted to visit was the Jurassic Coast to collect fossils, which I consider artwork from Mother Nature. I booked a guided walk at Charmouth before we left home, which was marvelous and we collected fossils on our own a second day, too. You are allowed to bring home whatever you find, no matter how large or valuable. 

I wanted to bring home this heavy rock full of ammonites, but due to baggage allowance, there was no way we could.

I love this fossil-laden rock!

Here's some of what we brought home. 

My artwork of fossils and rocks

     Mostly they are ammonites and belemnites that are about 200 million years old. In the photo, the large, angled rock with the ammonites is one that I purchased there. I collected all those rocks on this trip on the beaches there and consider those works of art, too. You can see some smaller ammonites that we found and the bullet-shaped looking rocks are the belemnites which are the remnants of small squid-like creatures.  

 

Another rock that was too heavy to bring home

I thought long and hard about how to bring home that gorgeous rock! There must have been a way. But alas... no.  I couldn't even dig it out of the sand. Let alone pick it up.

     I like to buy art in person as opposed to on-line, although I often look at art online and have thought about buying it there. I think buying art quilts online requires some effort from both the buyer and the artist that is different than it would be than buying other types of art. Since there is stitching involved, the photography must be able to show the nuances of the stitch. There should be detail shots of the artwork to do that. I, as a buyer, might contact the artist and ask for other detail shots of certain parts of the quilt to see it better since I can't see it in person. Many of the quilt artists that I follow have excellent detail shots on their websites already so you know what you are buying, but some don't, so you would have to ask. 

     For a time, I was actually shopping on-line for some art quilts to fill a space and I browsed several sites: firstly, my favorite artists' websites, then Artful Home, SAQA, and Pinterest. Now there are even more. You can shop for art quilts on Invaluable and Amazon.com (fine art/fiber). I eventually decided to fill that space with something else, but the resources are there.
     And I occasionally sell some of my quilts. Most of them get sold online through SAQA. One recently sold to a client who saw it online through SAQA several years ago, then contacted me a few weeks ago and asked for a discount. I agreed and we both were happy.

Beach Fence - SOLD

So it is always a good thing to communicate with the artist. It may be the start of your art collection. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting. I hope that this post links up OK. I've scheduled it ahead of time, but may not be able to check and hook up to Nina's place, since we are due to be hit by Hurricane Matthew on Friday and may not have power. So if you don't see me on Nina's list, then I'm off the grid and may be for a while. Last time this happened, people in our area were out of power for two weeks. Fingers crossed... 
Addendum: We made it through Matthew with no damage to the house. We lost power during the night and got it back on Saturday afternoon. Lucky us. We have a large tree uprooted and hanging over the driveway that we will have to have removed and lots and lots of debris to clean up. Our town has lots of damage and many are out of power and the outlook for them is 5-9 days. We are so glad Matthew took a jog to the east and wasn't as bad as it was forecast. Well, on to the clean up.

What Do You Get Out Of On-LIne Classes?

     Have you ever taken an on-line class that you have found very freeing and refreshing? Well, I've just finished a piece from one that has done just that for me. Before this class, I've done most of my work on the sewing machine. This class and this piece was done totally by hand. It was pieced by hand, basted by hand, appliquéd by hand, embroidered by hand, and quilted by hand. I never thought I would do such a thing, but I was so inspired by the artist's blog and art, Jude Hill at SpiritCloth that I signed up for her class Spirit Cloth 101. I started it in February by reading through all the text of the class and pondering about what my theme would be for quite some weeks while I worked on other projects.
     If you haven't followed my blog before, you can go back and see how I progressed on this piece here  here, here, and here.
     And here it is finished. The story is that the rocks fell from the moon into the river. There are eight rocks shown on the quilt. The river has eight eyes in it and that symbolizes the eight rocks peaking out of the river as they dance about in it.

Moon Dance

The background fabric is indigo I dyed several years ago with my art group. Most of the rocks I gelatin monoprinted and then hand painted the veins, two of the rocks are from commercial cottons. the "tree" is a piece of commercial silk, the multi-colored strip across the bottom is commercial cotton, and the borders are commercial from Marcia Derse.  I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.
     I don't take many classes or workshops, but I'm glad I took this one. I learned some new techniques, but most of all, I learned about storytelling. And to let go more in my work. Thanks for visiting.

The Eyes Have It

     In my art group, ArtsEtc., we start our meetings with a 10 - 20 minute sketching warm-up exercise to get the creative juices flowing even though we are really a fiber art group. Last month the exercise was to look at a photo of an eye and draw it lightly with pencil four times on separate card stocks. Then, at home, on one of them, with pencil, sketch it very accurately. On the second one, develop it with ink. On the third one, develop it with colored pencil. On the fourth one, develop it with vine charcoal (I skipped this one because I don't plan on working in this medium.) The purpose of the exercise is to compare the different types of media. It was a valuable exercise for me, although I really don't enjoy doing something more than once. Here are my sketches.

Photo and sketches in various media

     And then, I got the idea, since I had eyes in my head, to add eyes to my hand sewing project from the class I'm taking on-line from the Spirit Cloth website. Since the rocks fell into the river, I embroidered eyes in the river to symbolize having the spirits of the rocks in the river.

Still in-progress

It's not laying flat because the river is quilted and I haven't yet quilted the area around the river. I think I'll add some more eyes in the river, too. Then I have to quilt the rest and more fabric at the bottom and quilt that, too. I'll decide the edges later. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by.

Moon Rocks Falling

     I'm continuing with the hand sewing project from the on-line class with Jude Hill on the Spirit Cloth website. I've sewn a bit of prose using a split stem stitch and added roots to the tree symbol. After I took this photo, I started to embroider a river. The river is going to wind around the quilt from rock to rock. So here's an update.

Falling rocks in progress

In between planning the next steps for this project, I've made two more wheelchair covers. I'll post those photos on a future post. And I'm working on an iPad cover. I may never post a photo of that. I'm not too talented with functional items.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you stopped by.

Moon Rocks

     I'm so loving the hand-stitching in my Spirit Cloth on line class. Since my last post, I added rocks that I monoprinted and then later added veins with paint. (Two of the rocks are from commercial fabrics.)  I sewed them on by needle-turned appliqué, which was new to me. Then, I needle-appliquéd a moon from fabric that I had printed on my printer. To represent a tree and get some complimentary color in there, I used a method of raw-edge appliqué from Jude Hill on some commercial silk fabric and on a fussy-cut leaf fabric.
     I left one of the blocks empty so that I could embroider some prose into it. Actually, I started doing that tonight. My husband left me alone for the evening so I cranked up my iTunes and set my playlist for female vocalists and I have several thousand songs there. It played Lena Horne, Sheryl Crow, Reba McEntire, Ane Brun, Maria, Taylor, Sarah McLachlan, Ella Fitzgerald, and so many others. I love how you can shuffle the songs on iTunes and get surprised by what comes up. Do you have favorite music you like to listen to while you sew? Here's a photo of the piece before the text got added. The white cloth at the bottom is where I'll be adding more fabric later.

Still in-process

So, I still have much embroidery to add, more fabric to add at the bottom, and things that I haven't yet thought of yet. It's turning into a story about rocks that have fallen from the moon and end up in a river.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please leave comments on their blogs to let them know you stopped by.

Indigo Impression

     Now that I'm working slow for a bit, I'm taking an on-line class from Jude Hill at her site, Spirit Cloth. The class I'm taking is Spirit Cloth 101. It's all hand stitching and basically about making a sampler and I'm really enjoying it. I spent several days just reading through the posts on the class and watching the videos. Then I spent a week just thinking about what my theme would be for my sampler. And then it came to me. No surprise if you're a reader of my blog... Rocks. And Blue.
     I went through my bin of blue fabrics and found two pieces of indigo cotton that I had dyed with my ArtsEtc group many years ago and had only used a small portion of. I treasured this fabric and this project would be perfect for it. I found some commercial fabrics that went well with it and some oranges that would be good accents. Here are some fabrics that may get used.

Indigo with possible accent fabrics

     Then I monoprinted some fabrics in various grays in rock textures using a procedure I developed
to mimic having a moldy gelatin plate using a permanent gelatin plate. You can visit this older post to see the procedure here.
     Here's a photo of the fabrics I monoprinted.

Monoprints sitting on Marcia Derse fabric with
a previously painted rock on top

     Finally, I got busy and actually hand-pieced a nine patch. As I was sewing, I was thinking that I could machine stitch it so much faster. But then I would be missing out on the idea of spirit cloth so I got into the rhythm of the stitch and it went well. The next step was to do an invisible baste onto a thin cloth instead of batting to stabilize it and get it ready for the appliqué step to come.

Nine-patch basted onto its stabilizing cloth

     I have several ideas floating in my head of how to place the rocks, what accents to add, what to embroider, etc. But these things change one by one as the pieces get added and I see how one thing affects another. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.