Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: sewing

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Thursday, October 8, 2009

Musings: Art outside the Box:Other People's Stuff

11:37 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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As someone who's dyed fabric for over 20 years, it's almost unthinkable for me to use someone else's fabric in an art quilt. It's almost like putting on someone else's underwear or using their tooth brush. It feels very strange and wrong somehow. I'm used to the definitions I get from what I do in a dye room. I can create a whole world just in the dyeing and then embellish from there. I play with quilt fabric for my own entertainment, but usually what I do is make myself aprons. I quilt with hand-dye.

And I would have said that was written in stone if I hadn't gone back to making baby quilts. One of the ministries we do in my church is make quilts for babies and shut ins. I swore I would never do that kind of quilting again. Of course, that kind of quilting is only a little bit about blankets. It's about caring for people and learning how to give to people. It's about building community. It's a whole other art form, and absolutely vital. We forget that in our mothers' time so much of the world ran on what we called "service organizations". In a world where people are struggling to make things work with two jobs, volunteerism is almost impossible. But it covered a great deal of need, in giving to the community and in being able to have something to give. Both those states are a vital ying/yang of basic human existence. We give, we take. Hopefully we live in a balanced world where both of those things are possible.

So I found myself finishing a quilt for a lady with a brain tumor. We'd shopped specially for that quilt. Lots of Kaye Fasset, an amazing cat fabric, and some contemporary abstracts. I showed it to a friend. It was nothing but nine patches. The people I'm working with have some pretty limited skills. We tend to keep it simple.But she said"You're fabric's doing the work for you here." She was so right. With fabric that pretty, who cared? The lady loved it. She's been taking it along with her for her treatments. That quilt is busy doing it's job.

That being said, how much of our art is totally ours?Certainly when we use commercial fabric, it's easy to forget that there's a designer in a back room who it really belongs to. It's their art. But what we choose to do with it is ours.

Ever since the first calicoes and Jacobean prints came from India, we've redefined, reworked, undone, redone and embellished other people's art into our own. I don't often use other people's fabric. But I do look at photos for anatomic information about animals I draw. All art is derivative. It all comes from somewhere. Perhaps the question is, are we honest enough to fess up to saying from where? I won't use calico. But I do find I have a weakeness for brocade. And when I'm done with it, it doesn't much look like what I started with

So the next time you see an amazing piece of fabric that is the work of someone else's hands, celebrate it. Buy it. Cut into it. It's only fabric. It only bleeds in the wash.

Labels: art quilters, art quilting, books, craft, embroidery, fiber art, quilters, quilting, sewing, story telling |

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Musings;Art Outside the Box-Symbols I have known.

10:15 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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As someone who has always turned to animal imagery, it's always a hard moment when someone says, " You really like frogs, don't you? "Or bugs, or any of the other creatures that fly, swim or crawl through my work.
Symbolism doesn't work that way. It's not a matter of what you like. Images are taskmasters. They grab hold and won't let go until you somehow dance with them. Work with them. Run them through the mill of the mind. Do what you will. Somehow that image will come around again and again until you've found a way to flip it into a different place internally.

Every so often I run into some bright eyed youngster who tells me their totem is the wolf, the dolphin, the eagle, etc. I loved the young man who told me his was the great brown bear. He didn't know enough to know that that image is usually viewed as female. He was trying to follow indigenous religion and thought. He thought it was cool. I think I would have shocked him had I told him, but perhaps he was improved by a female totem.

I've been writing art statements long enough to be aware of where much of my imagery starts. The frogs and bugs come from some fairly deep seated body images.The fish are about life in the stream of life. The birds are about the mix of feral wisdom within a bird's life. And in the midst of all of it, I know with certainty, I'm quilting people I know. Most often it's about me. It's mostly social commentary. I'm trying to make sense of my life.

At one point when I was constantly on the road, I couldn't leave the dragonflies alone. Then it hit me. They live a transitory life, flitting from place to place. It was like they'd read my itinerary.

I often don't understand my own imagery except in retrospect. That's fine. If I pay attention, listen to the images that drive me, they will fuel my art.It may heal the bruised bits of ego and id that rule the internal chaos.Art is causative and purposely for transformation. Good art changes the relationship between the artist and whatever symbol they're in action with.

Perhaps what each of us have to give that is most precious as artists, is the unique view that spills out of our art. The symbols are a vocabulary. It makes sense if each of us is an island, a separate and distant country, that that language not be the same as anyone elses. What is most miraculous is when someone else sees that land from their distant shore, reaches it to view that different county, and can make the translation of it for themselves. When that happens, art breaks all boundaries, changes people's thought's and minds and hearts.