Showing posts with label stitched houses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stitched houses. Show all posts

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Gimme Shelter

The symbolism of home and shelter is very significant to me right now. I am on the cusp of a major life transition, and home, as I am sure I will have some form of shelter as I go through this, is a bit ambiguous right now.

My marriage of more than 20 years came to an end a few years ago and because of the bad economy I remained in Chicago with my (now adult) kids, unable to sell our loft. I am in the process of negotiating a short sale and crossing my fingers it all goes through, which will allow me to move back to California in the next month or two.


I made this house for Kathy York's curated exhibit the Artists Village about a year after my initial split. My house incorporates floral/plant imagery for growth, bees for hard work, a heart for healing and love, 


roots for staying grounded and figuring out where to plant myself and even a couple of female nudes to represent rediscovering what it meant to be a single woman again.
My finished house is about 10 inches tall.
This was the house that started it all, The Cicada House is about 20" tall and 6" wide. The fabric is layered with printed paper imagery and multiple layers of transparant and metallic textile paint, then fused to heavy weight interfacing and quilted. The panels were stitched together and the roof and windows were embellished with embossed metal trim.

I enjoyed making the cicada house so much I needed to explore the house construction further with a couple water themed houses which were featured in a two part tutorial in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine March and May 2008.

I've also done a series of houses with stitched painted imagery with embossed metal stitched to them that I like to think of as personal altars. Bees and hives are symbolic of industry and craft, so I like to have them in my work.


This house series was painted and quilted fabric stitched to painted and hand stitched lutradur with embossed metal stitched to it, sewn to copper screen.


I know there will be more symbolic houses incorporated into my art in the future as a I transition to a new life living in Northern California as a single woman, with kids embarking on adulthood while I explore new forms of shelter.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

An Artist Village

Welcome to my stop on the Artist Village blog tour.

My house is one of the little ones in the center circle of the village.

Symbolically the bird, who spreads its wings and flies, has spoken to me over the last couple years, so I decided to make a bird house.
The house incorporates floral/plant imagery for growth, bees for hard work, a heart for healing and love, roots for staying grounded and figuring out where to plant myself and even a couple of female nudes to reacquaint myself with being a single woman again. 


Making the House


I tried something a little new for making my house. I found out that abaca paper is often used to make tea bags (and money). Abaca is also used to make unryu tissue which I have used in my collages before. Unryu is the tissue paper that has little fibers visible in it. You can buy plain abaca here or here.

I created several black and white collages, combining text and imagery in photoshop, cut some heavier weight abaca paper to 8 1/2" x 11" and stuck it in my toner printer and printed out the collages. 


Next I painted the paper with textile paints and fused it to Peltex (heavy weight interfacing). Although the fuse from the Peltex did not stick that great, it did hold well enough for stitching.


These are the finished stitched panels, before I stitched them into a house form.


A sewed, stuffed and painted a bird to put inside.




My finished house is about 10 inches tall. 


Be sure to check out the last few stops on the blog tour


Melanie Testa  May 20 
Laura Wasilowski  May 23 
Kathy York  May 24 


LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails