On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Making Art Cloth – by Faithful Lurker
Art cloth is cloth transformed by adding or subtracting color, line, shape, texture, value, or fiber to create a compelling surface.
That is the classic definition of art cloth. Most cultures have a tradition of taking plain cloth and turning it into a more decorative form. The Japanese have raised this to a spectacular art form with shibori, resists and embroidery. Africans have a long tradition of using color, weaving and dyeing to make extraordinary cloth.
I love dyeing cloth. I really like watching the colors run into each other and become another color. Like a flower with different shades of color on each petal. I started dyeing fiber when I was a weaver. I dyed my silk yarn in patterned colors and then wove it into big pieces.
In the mid 80’s we, my academic husband and I, spent a year in southern China,120 miles north of Hanoi. We went home and then 8 months later spent 2 years in Malaysia. Traveling put a stop to weaving but in Malaysia I studied hot wax batik with an Indonesian master. That cemented my love of changing the color of cloth and taught me the wonders of cold water procion dyes.
The next 10 years I made batik silk scarves and handmade books. I didn’t pay attention to the revolution going on in the quilt world until much later. It was changing from hand pieced, intricate and traditional patterns into something much more open and freer in expression.
Needless to say, there was a lot of pushback from traditional quilters. My own guild almost broke up over the question of machine piecing and machine quilting as opposed to hand piecing and hand quilting. The big quilting show, Quilt National (https://dairybarn>quiltnational,) erupted when an art quilt instead of a traditional quilt won best in show. Then came the quilts of Gee’s Bend( https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org) community and art quilters never looked back.
I belong to a group of fiber artists called The Art Cloth Network (artclothnetwork.com). There are 32 of us scattered across the US and Canada. Many of our members have never made a quilt but they make art with cloth. Two organizations that support art quilts and art cloth are the Studio Art Quilters Association (www.saqa.com) and The Surface Design Association (surfacedesign.org).
Surface design is a baffler, any painter works on the surface as do most other artists. If you want to get into a fierce discussion, ask a sculptor or painter or any artist about the legitimacy of fiber art and whether it is art. And once you’ve negotiated that thorny subject ask casually about the difference between art and craft. And then stand back while the fight rages on for hours.
photo credits: Myron Gauger
artshots.biz
Let There Be Light. 44” X 56” Discharged and over dyed cotton
I principally do three forms of cloth dyeing, discharge, resists, and whole cloth dyeing Discharge involves removing color from cloth and then redyeing it.
Carpenter’s Dream 44” X 54” clamp resist, discharged and over dyed cotton
Resists block areas of fabric to protect them from the dye. Then the fabric is over dyed. Hot wax batik works like this or masking tape or I usually use a paste of flour and water. This piece was folded and then metal pieces (you carpenters will recognize them) were clamped tightly and the cloth was discharged and redyed.
Procion dyed cotton
Whole cloth dyeing is what is sounds like. You start off with solid colored cloth and change it into shifting patterns of color.
Blue Moon 36”X 36” Various dyeing methods
I got tired of rectangular quilts and started making round ones.
Untitled 23 Various dyeing methods, cotton
and triangular ones
Lady Spring 44”X 56” Discharged and over dyed, resist dyed and dyed cotton
Very often various techniques are put together into one piece:
Night Sky 76” X 77” Hand dyed cotton,
That is the infamous Drunkard’s Path pattern on the right side. Those circles can be difficult but, like many other things, there’s a trick to putting them together.
Lately, though, many fiber artists, me included, have been making computer generated images and putting them through Photoshop and then sending them off to be digitally printed and then put into art quilts or other forms.
As you can imagine this has caused another uproar in the art cloth community. “But it’s not completely made and touched by hand” is the common complaint. Tough, is my response.
All art evolves and is met with resistance but so does life.
WaterGirl
Faithful Lurker, let us know if you are here!
Yutsano
Wow…I mean I don’t know what to say beyond that.
satby
Very beautiful, and what a lot of work that must be!
WaterGirl
@satby: Right in your color range, too! :-)
arrieve
These are just spectacular! I started doing wet felting a dozen or so years ago after I’d broken my hand and I needed to get the strength back. I love painting and collage and photography, but I find working with textiles satisfying in a very different way. I’m not enough of a seamstress to be tempted by quilting, but I love your dye work (unfortunately not really a possibility in a tiny Manhattan apartment.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
How beautiful!
zhena gogolia
Stupendous!
Faithful Lurker
I’m here and a little stunned at seeing the work all at once. Thanks for the opportunity to show my work
Betsy
How fantastic and spectacular!!
Faithful Lurker
@arrieve: Most dye work is pretty messy but there are ways around that. You can use a microwave to dye silk on a small scale, scarves for instance. I haven’t done it but have friends who do. I’d look it up on the webs, Youtube has everything.
CCL
@Faithful Lurker: These are gorgeous. Thank you for sharing.
JPL
Wow! The High Museum in Atlanta displayed the Gee’s Bend quilts, and they were amazing. I’d gladly pay to see your work. They are just beautiful.
rikyrah
These are so beautiful??
arrieve
@Faithful Lurker: If it is possible to make a mess out of something I will, but the idea of dying silk in the microwave is very tempting. (The nice thing about felting is that you just use soap and hot water — you get wet but not dirty.)
Van Buren
Very pretty, all of them, but I like Blue Moon the best. I was taken aback by the comment re sculptors being dismissive, but then I remembered a classical violinist I once knew,very talented, and completely dismissive of fiddlers
I guess artists can be snobs just like anyone else.
trollhattan
Eye-popping. In a good way. Seriously impressed with your work.
Faithful Lurker
@JPL: @JPL:
The Gee’s Bend quilts were a game changer. I’ve watched a few interviews with the quilters. My favorite part was when a very high profile male fiber artist is talking with one of the quilters. She is watching him as though he was a dog of uncertain disposition (the fiber artist is a white male) and he asks her how she comes up with her hand quilting patterns. She looks at him and says,” I quilt in one direction and when I get tired of it, I go in another direction”. I think those are words to live by.
SFBayAreaGal
Beautiful
Faithful Lurker
@Van Buren: I don’t know where the idea came from that artists were any more broad minded, intelligent or even tempered than most of the population. They can be ferocious snobs and very protective of their territory. I’ve known a lot of artists and have found some to be very generous and others to be perfect beasts.
Raven
The boss lady is very familiar with the hub bub about what’s art and what isn’t. Her “ thread paintings “ are in that mix.
debbie
@Faithful Lurker:
Your work is spectacular!
Raven
@Faithful Lurker: My wife does a good bit of dyeing and when I saw the skull and crossbones on the bottles I got her a full gas mask!
eta, she loves your work!
debbie
I smack back at arguments about art vs. craft or art vs. illustration. It’s all creative; it’s all art.
Mike in Oly
These are just wonderful! Thanks for sharing your creations with us. I have never understood the snobbery over materials or techniques. Isn’t the human creativity and vision to point of the art?
Faithful Lurker
@Raven: I was really impressed with your thread painted Christmas present. I’m really bad with machines and can barely keep mine running. Doing the work involved with tread painting is daunting and amazing. What kind of sewing machine does your wife have?
Faithful Lurker
@Mike in Oly: Well, I think so but there are a lot of artists, etc. really concerned with protecting their turf.
H.E.Wolf
Spectacular! Thank you for sharing these with us.
WaterGirl
@Raven: I believe the rule about Artists in Our Midst is that they have to be lurkers/commenters or spouses/partners, no kids or other relatives.
I’m sure we would all love to see the boss lady’s work here.
WaterGirl
@debbie:
That is a great description of what we call art for the Artists in Our Midst series.
Dan B
Me want more than one! I already have a place for two that doesn’t involve a major addition to this house. These all fut my definition of “art”. I know I could look at these for years and find myself intrigued and not grow tired of them.
Now about my bank balance ;<(
Begs the question are these for sale or for your personal pleasure?
WaterGirl
If anyone would like their work/art/talent featured here, send me an email message and I’ll let you know how to get started.
Faithful Lurker
I want to thank everybody for their warm and very welcome comments. It’s always a little difficult to see your own work through other eyes. Making each piece is such an effort of concentration that perspective gets lost. My work is usually shown in places far from where I live, so I don’t get that much feed back. Thank you all.
WaterGirl
@Faithful Lurker: Did you happen to notice Dan B’s question about whether any of your work is for sale?
SiubhanDuinne
These are staggeringly beautiful.
Faithful Lurker
@Dan B: Most of them are for sale but all of it is negotiable.
If you want, go to my website http://mbtyler.net It has my contact information too.
While I’m adding links:
http://artclothnetwork.com
http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org
That last one is a good look at the Gee’s Bend quilts.
DB11
Beautiful and fascinating work.
Faithful Lurker
@WaterGirl: I did. It took me awhile to figure out how to add links.
WaterGirl
@Faithful Lurker:
I’m sure that 9 out of 10 people on BJ know that if someone’s nym is in blue, that means it’s a link to a website.
I will point that out here in case anyone here does not know that.
Betty
All gorgeous pieces. My favorite is the last one. Fascinating process.
WaterGirl
@Faithful Lurker: Also, I had forgotten to take the “On the Road” part off the beginning of the title of the post!
We are using that form for convenience, but I hadn’t intended to leave that there. Apologies if that confused anyone!
Ajabu
I was in a rehearsal and just got a chance to look at your work. I love every bit of it! And I absolutely agree about art evolving. I’d hate to be playing now The same way I did decades ago. I’d bore myself and the audience.
As an aside, I have some dear friends in assisted living in Sequim. Old friends from L.A. many years ago.
Regine Touchon
@Faithful Lurker: These works are fabulous and bring to mind an artist friend who does fiber art. Like you she started out a traditional quilter and now the sky’s the limit. Thanks for letting us get to see them.
Miss Bianca
Holy crap, are these amazing. I’m sorry, I just don’t have anything more clever or insightful to say than that.
karen marie
My family lived in Ibadan Nigeria from October 1970 to May 1973. I still have two pieces of Adire cloth but, sadly, the years swept away the many other textiles I had from there. I loved the cloth market – the colors, the patterns, the smells. Adire cloth had a fairly strong smell, and the “spoil cloth” – dye jobs that went off, making the cloth a brown color instead of blue – smelled even more strongly. I used the two pieces of Adire as table cloths for decades but finally stopped because of fading and wear that was starting to result in holes.
It seems a bit silly though, because if I don’t enjoy it now, isn’t it wasted? Whoever comes to shovel out my apartment when I die isn’t going to have a clue as to its provenance or what it might mean to someone else.
Faithful Lurker
@Betty: Thank you for liking the last one. Those are the latest and I love them. If you go to my website and look at the Art Quilt portfolio, the computer generated images are the first ones. I’m still working out how to deal with them. The images are so complete in themselves that it’s difficult to inject anything of myself into them. It would be easier just to use them without alteration but I think that is cheating.
Faithful Lurker
@karen marie: Amen to all of that. I look around me and shudder to think what the executors will think and do.
Faithful Lurker
@Ajabu: We go to Sequim about every 10 days. That’s where the Costco, Walmart and all the evil necessities exist that aren’t allowed in our pure environment. The lavender is blooming now and is a gorgeous sight. Purple for as far as you can see.
namekarB
Magnificent! This IS art. I had to go get my spouse to see these. We were hippies in the 70’s and she did sooo many batiks. She got all excited with your work. Thank you!
martha
I just love your work. The colors and the designs are incredibly complex and so gorgeous.
WaterGirl
Thank you, Faithful Lurker!
I will just say again – if you are reading this thread and you are interested in having your art featured, please get in touch.
MazeDancer
Wonderful work!
The Fat Kate Middleton
Thank you so much, Mary. You have opened a whole new world for me with your fabulous work. Some of my most treasured possessions are quilts and other fabric work from my mother, grandmother, etc.
Raven
@Faithful Lurker: Bernina
Faithful Lurker
@The Fat Kate Middleton: I too love quilts. Especially, old bed quilts. I see them here used as padding for equipment in the back of pickup trucks, handpieced, hand quilted some of them. It makes me want to scream. Women’s work has been undervalued forever.
Raven
@WaterGirl: she’s incredibly busy preparing for her niece’s wedding. She altered her mother’s wedding dress for our wedding and is doing the same for this one! Plus she’s making her own.
Faithful Lurker
@Raven: Those are very good machines, especially the older ones. They have no plastic parts and can sew through anything. Even fingers. At our last quilt guild meeting someone asked “How many of you have put a machine needle through a finger?” Nearly everyone in the room raised a hand, including me.
Raven
@Faithful Lurker: She says she uses a darning foot. I’m lost.
WaterGirl
@Raven: Wow! The offer doesn’t expire at midnight :-) so it’s always an option.
Raven
These poor waving people at the closing ceremony!
Raven
@WaterGirl: she smiled
Faithful Lurker
@Raven: Don’t worry. I get lost when people start talking about fishing gear.
Dan B
@Faithful Lurker: Thanks for the links! They’re very reasonably priced but mostly dreams at this juncture since the front porch is rotting, and the steps, and….
If you had a lease arrangement. Ha!
We’re off to Scenic Beach Park tomorrow at Seabeck so are sorta in your neighborhood, probably by 70+/- miles.
MomSense
Amazing! Lady Spring is beautiful but I think Night Sky is the one that really speaks to me.
Dan B
@Faithful Lurker: Sewing fingers!#*₩¡\¤《!!
Personally I’m more disposed to several flu shots, thank you very much (with requisite cringing and chest tightening..).
Faithful Lurker
I think it’s closer than that but you know what an adventure it is traveling that far here. Bridge closed, ferries late, etc. We’re technically 50 miles from Seattle but on a good day it takes at least 2 hours to get there, usually 3.
Dan B
BTW Your work reminds me of Galen Garwood an acquaintance from decades ago. His work was unfailingly evocative. He showed at Foster White.
Faithful Lurker
@Dan B: It ain’t easy giving everything for art.
Quiltingfool
I make “traditional” quilts. I think these art quilts are fabulous! As far as I know, there isn’t a Quilting God/Goddess who decides how quilts should or should not be. I love your fabric art – but, then, I love fabric! There was a woman (in Missouri) who sold hand dyed fabric, and whenever I was at a quilt show and she was there I would drop quite a bit of coin at her booth. She would have bundles of 8 fabric pieces, all of one color, but from light to dark shades. Beautiful. I have a bundle left and I want to make a quilt out of it, but then I don’t want to cut it up as it is so pretty. And the woman doesn’t dye anymore, so no more.
UncleEbeneezer
Neat stuff. My wife dragged me to QuiltCon in Pasadena a couple years ago and I was pretty impressed by the many overtly political (Resistance, NoHomanIsIlegal, BlackLivesMatter) ones. They were all amazing but especially those.
And if you are ever in Burlington VT, holy shit, does the Shelburne Folk Art museum have some serious amount of incredible quilts. Also the folk art museum in Santa Fe NM, though we had to move through that one fairly fast.
Faithful Lurker
@MomSense: Thanks. Lady Spring always reminds me how out of shape I am.
I wish that I could show the detail of the beautiful quilting Marcia did on Night Sky. We had a lovely working relationship, I would hand her a quilt and say ” Go play” and she would come up with the perfect stitching to make the quilt. She has since retired. Long arm quilting is hard on the body.
Quiltingfool
@Dan B: My quilting machine needle went through my finger – had to get pliers to pull the needle out! Actually, it looked more horrifying than it felt – and I was more worried about knocking my machine out of time than my finger, lol.
Faithful Lurker
@Quiltingfool: I make traditional quilts too. All my relatives are gifted with bed quilts and are reluctant to take any more. My guild makes what are called Comfort quilts and Quilts of Valor. QoV is a nation wide program to provide every military veteran with a quilt. We make quilts for Hospice patients, children in protective services and patients in local chemotherapy. There is no such thing as the quilt police. Every quilt is beautiful.
Faithful Lurker
@Quiltingfool: I broke the needle off in my finger and ended up in the emergency room.
dexwood
Beautiful, labor intensive work. Nice sense of color. I know many fiber artists in New Mexico. They’re always smiling. Chemically induced? Nah, cool, happy, artistic people who do what they want to do.
Dan B
@Faithful Lurker: I am on the floor in a fetal position!
My partner who lost his middle finger to a table saw belt at an early age will not be hearing about this but he may be perplexed by the whimpers coming from the living room….
Faithful Lurker
@Dan B: Sorry, I couldn’t resist. The emergency room Doc. had much the same reaction and while I was there casualties came in from a traffic accident. He didn’t turn a hair at that but he flinched when he saw my finger.
Faithful Lurker
It’s time for me to go eat dinner. I’ll be back later. Thanks for all your lovely comments.
StringOnAStick
@Faithful Lurker: i love my ancient Bernina 801; I’ve seen many miles on that heavy, solid machine!
Just out of high school (1976) I sewed for Marmot Mountain Works for a little over a year and that convinced me to go to college. It was high speed industrial machines and I sewed the edge of my thumb once. I also was going so fast repairing a thick tent part once that the thread caught on fire from the friction. After an industrial machine experience I couldn’t stand my mom’s pokey old Singer but the Bernina 801 brought me back to sewing. She gave it to me and bought something in the 900 series which I didn’t like nearly as well.
Sherparick
@Faithful Lurker: Thank you for the Sunday treat. I loved “Dark Sky.”
Ida Slapter
These are spectacular! You have a such a strong eye for design, and your craftsmanship is impeccable. Thank you so much for sharing your work with us.
pinacacci
wowww, just wow. Ya damn skippy it’s art. Thank you
ETA I love Carpenter’s Dream
Zelma
Absolutely gorgeous. Night Sky was my favorite.