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Central Park on a beautiful fall day My husband and I spent four days in New York City last week.  We timed the visit around the  Agnes Martin  exhibit at the Guggenheim, and the show was definitely worth the visit.  It's difficult to convey the impact of her work in photos, as almost all of it is very quiet.  Her work looks minimalist, but is at heart abstract expressionist.  If you can be in New York before it closes (January 11), do go. We filled our days with museums, walks in Central Park, music, good food, and time with friends--a lovely visit.  Here are the exhibits I went to: Carmen Herrera  at the Whitney (through January 2).   Carmen Herrera is not someone whose work I knew about.  I love her work, which has much in common with Ellsworth Kelly.  You can read an analysis of why her work is not better known in this NYTimes article .  Herrera is now 101 years old, and still working. Paths to the Absolute: Kandinsky, Male...

I find that I can't post about my work in progress as though nothing else is going on in the world. Since I like to keep this blog focused on my studio work, I've posted my thoughts about the election on Facebook instead.  If you'd like to read the post, you'll find it here .    I am hoping that writing these thoughts out will clear space in my mind for other things. . . Penny

While I continue to develop screens for printing designs on napkins, I thought I'd also try some folding techniques, while I also tried out a few more colors.  In these seven napkins, each fabric square was dyed one color, low water immersion, and washed out.  Then I soda-soaked again, folded in various patterns, and overdyed with a 3% solution of Dharma's MX Indigo dye.  Depending on the base color, the dark blue Indigo overdye either stayed dark blue (over light blue and lavender) or changed as it merged with the base color (most noticeable on the rust colored fabric, where the orange and blue together turned the darker color to more of a brown).  Here's a record of the folds, starting at the top and going left to right for each row: Light blue base:  a diagonal accordion fold, with dark blue applied in horizontal bands. Gray base: diagonal accordion fold Pumpkin base: folded in half to make a triangle, then accordion folded perpendicular to base of triangle. ...

Last month I wrote about my preparation for a workshop with Claire Benn, working up designs for hand-printed napkins .  Once at the workshop, my direction changed from clean-line designs to something else.  The two above are my favorites, both done by stamping with matte medium to make a paper-laminated screen.  The one on the left used a 3" square of acrylic, the one on the right, a variety of stamps I made in a bowl shape.  The virtue of the paper laminated screen is that it can be made any size (here I'm aiming for an image 18x18), and can be re-used many times.  I've worked with a "paplam" screen once before, a very large one made for Accident II .  In that case, I wrote on words with the matte medium.  So, in addition to stamping, I can also try drawing some designs onto the screen. Below are two more pieces made with the bowl stamps, the first stamping directly with dark blue dye onto lighter blue cloth. In the one below, I stamped with discharge...

Finally, the web site is up.  I've been waiting for the video of David's recital at the opening.  Everything is now there, including photos and commentary on each of the quilts and the text of my short gallery talk, which focuses on the character of abstract art.

This summer, I had the good fortune to take a week-long workshop with Paula Kovarik at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.  The workshop was called "Follow the Thread," and was aimed at teaching a process of generating quilting lines that are not just the standard repetitions, but that originate from an idea or inspiration, with the line developing from there, and then changing as the thread leads one on.  I deeply admire Paula's work , and leapt at the chance to do a workshop with her.  (You can see other posts of mine about Paula's work here .) Paula's own work is often "whole cloth"--that is, the cloth is one piece of fabric or simply pieced, and the focus of the work is in the stitching. I don't imagine myself ever doing whole-cloth pieces, but was confident I could still learn a lot from Paula. I had two goals for the workshop.  The first was simply to further develop my skills and confidence in machine quilting.  This is the aspect of quilting...

I will be taking a week-long workshop with Claire Benn in early October on "Lines and Rows: Rhythm and Repetition."  Claire describes the aim of the workshop:  "to focus in on the power of the repetitive mark, building lines and rows to create cloth that has rhythm and simplicity."  This will be a chance to followup on work I did with Claire in 2014  (which led to my Accident II quilt) and also work I did with Dorothy Caldwell in 2013 .  Claire asked participants to prepare ahead in various ways, including laying out 100 of the same thing in lines or a grid, looking for pattern everywhere, and narrowing one's focus to a small number of types of marks/shapes of interest.  I've spent the last few weeks, since the close of my show, working on this, and look forward to developing ideas further at the workshop.  I have a humble goal in mind, which is to make fabric that I can then turn into table napkins.  I've long made napkins for our own use ...