penny-studionotes-2

This project started a couple of years ago, when I began writing down sentences that have been stuck in my mind for a long time. "You're the one who goes away" was first on the list, but there are another dozen or so, words spoken to me that continue to have a place in my psychic geography. My first thought of how to give them a life in art was to combine them with a line drawing of an object, with the sentence below. For "You're the one who goes away," the object would have been the rolling laptop bag. But some of the sentences didn't have an obvious image associated with them, and I decided that it was the words themselves that were key--that the words themselves needed to be the whole composition. I've used words/text in other pieces in my body of work on Loss. I stamped a narrative in " Accident ." I did a large screen-printed version of the same narrative in " Accident II. " I wrote out my many regrets on the back of " R...

An explanation of " Words Spoken " When my son Jeremy was growing up, he had a talent for remembering things that David and I had forgotten, so we would sometimes call him "The Rememberer." And David had a talent for finding things that Jeremy or I had mislaid, so we would sometimes call him "The Finder." At one point, I asked the two of them, "If Jeremy's the rememberer, and David is the Finder, what would a nickname be for me?" Jeremy answered, "You're the one who goes away." Of course this phrase has been with me ever since. In the morass of guilt that any parent carries after the death of their child, these words are an unchanging catalyst that over and over again, across the sixteen years since Jeremy's death, precipitates my sense of failure and loss.  And why this nickname? It was true that my job involved some travel, a night or two or three away from time to time, attending a conference or giving a guest lecture som...

Here is the difficult piece that I have held back. It is intended as the first in a series.   It is hand-stitching on linen, 42 x 14", stretched over a wooden frame. A detail to give you a better sense of the texture. I will let this stand on its own for a day or two, and then post something more about the work.

Although I haven't posted since August of last year, I've been thinking about posting. I've even started a half-dozen posts, all still waiting to be finished or discarded. And wondered why I wasn't finishing any of them. I think it's because I've been holding back on writing publicly about a difficult piece. Nothing to do but to go ahead and write it. But to warm up, I'll write about a couple of simpler pieces I've finished in the last few months. Simpler in the sense that there's no complex emotion behind these quilts, just a love of shape and color, and enjoyment of the design challenge of coming up with a pleasing whole. The quilt below began about a year and a half ago when I happened to have out on the table some blue/turquoise/teal batiks from my stash. These are all leftovers from making Shelter . The fabrics looked lovely gathered together. I cut some up into half-square triangles, liked how they looked, and cut up the rest of the fabric into...

A special opportunity to see two superb textile artists in conversation with each other is coming up in a couple of days. I've been lucky enough to take classes with both  Dorothy Caldwell and Claire Benn  and am eager to watch this event. Dorothy and Claire work in abstraction, in close relationship with the land and its component elements. The conversation this Friday will be available both in real time, and then later on youtube.  Here are the details: Friday, March 12, 4:00 p.m. EST Link to the facebook page of Fibre Arts Take Two where the video will be hosted: https://www.facebook.com/fibreartstaketwo Link to the YouTube live stream, where the conversation will be archived: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbSWEfUADOE