Category Archives: Books

A Thick Slice of Cake

If you’ve subscribed to my periodic newsletters, then you will already know that my latest Full Bloom portrait is finished.

This one was a challenge for several reasons: the glasses, the full-face angle and the need to subdue any competition between the model’s subtle skin tones and silver-ish hair vs her colorful clothes. That said, I’m very happy with the results — especially the way the subject and the stitched background ended up working, both independently and together.

Measured Response in process

After roughly drafting in the head, I sat with it for several days. There was a quality about it that, although incomplete, seemed to have a lot to say in a ghostly, disembodied sort of way. This is a great example of a point in the process when ideas start to flow for possibilities in future work.

Measured Response Watercolor Embroidery Stitching

Measured Response, detail

What was it about this particular image that made me hesitate in moving forward? Was it the straight-on stare speaking volumes on its own? Or perhaps simply that I tend to be drawn to art where elements of the underpainting/drawing remain visible? I find a sense of poetry in work where the hand and thought processes of the artist are laid bare.

Plus, backgrounds are a bit of – I wouldn’t exactly say nemesis, but definitely a puzzle for me, requiring another level of consideration because of the stitching. I want to create more than a mere backdrop, yet avoid having the piece appear overworked.

Measured Response Angle Watercolor Embroidery

There’s nothing like an angle shot for bringing out the texture of the stitching

In the end, I placed her head firmly on her shoulders, integrating her within space – although admittedly somewhat nebulous space. By pushing the color and pattern of the stitching while keeping it relatively sparse, I was able to hold onto the qualities that had stopped me in the middle, yet reach a satisfactory and full resolution. And, trite though it is to say, ultimately finding a way to have my cake and eat it too.

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While some of you live where your gardens are already coming back to life, those of us in Northern New England have a while yet to wait. But we can dream and plan. Here are a couple of ideas if you too are ready to get back to your plot of earth, but it’s not quite ready for you.

First, a shout-out to my mother-in-law who recently recommended Monty Don’s 3 episode series Adriatic Gardens on Amazon Prime or Acorn TV…it’s wonderful, so check it out.

Alice Fox Wild Textiles Book

And secondly, during the Surface Design Association conference in late January, UK artist Alice Fox spoke inspiringly about her practice using natural processes with found, gathered and grown materials. She made me long to collect the spent daffodil, iris and garlic leaves from my own garden to start creating with them. Granted, it will be a while before that can happen, but in the meantime I purchased a copy of her book Wild Textiles to learn more and to start the creative juices flowing while there’s still snow on the ground.

Small Bites

In the spirit of working with what is available, there’s a lot to be said for short bursts of time — the long haul isn’t necessarily always better. I’ve learned that regular, quick drawings and paintings in my sketchbooks are one way to keep the wheels greased when working around the edges of busy days. And that goes for reading too.

This, and the image below, are an example of just a couple of sketches from the last week. Short and sweet, a half hour of drawing during the day helps to balance the long hours of stitching I’ve been devoting to my eclipse piece (more on that work in my next post). Even a short sketch helps to keep the drawing muscles in shape.

When our kids were little and there just wasn’t time to read more than a couple of novels a year, I developed an appreciation for short-form writing. At that time the interruptions came faster than the length of the shortest chapter, so I really appreciated the luxury of being able to finish what I was reading in one brief sitting. Short stories and magazine articles became a mainstay.

Trench Sketch

I may have plenty of time to read now, but I do still value finding something that I can pick up and put down without disrupting the continuity of either the writing or my train of thought. With that in mind, let me recommend the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston publication Fabric of a Nation, American Quilt Stories. As a companion to their 2021/22 exhibition of the same name (which I did not see), the book includes 58 stunning quilts with numerous detail images. Accompanying each quilt is a bite-sized essay that delves into the provenance of the piece, framed within the historic and political context of the time in which it was made.

Fabric of a Nation

For one who isn’t drawn to scholarly history tomes, I am so enjoying this book! It’s a richly informative and fascinating look at American history, told through the narrative of each creator’s needle. Plus, it has the added benefit of being written so that it can fit into anyone’s schedule…win/win.

Mending Magic

Here’s a final recommendation to close out 2023.

Mending Life – A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts by Nina and Sonya Montenegro has been on my radar since it first came out in 2020. But it took having the perfect recipient this Christmas for me to finally buy a copy. Of course I had to ever-so-gently read it before wrapping it up to put under the tree.

Mending Life

If ever there was a book containing love, this is it.
Filled with gentle stories and charming illustrations that shine a light on the humble art of mending, you will never again think of repairing something with needle and thread as just a mundane chore.

The Montenegro sisters frame mending as an act of homage – to the clothes we wear, to those who made them, to the earth we want to protect, and to those who took the time and love to mend for us in the past.

Back Cover Mending Life

The easy-to-follow illustrated directions cover an assortment of ways to darn, patch or repair — perfect for beginners and seasoned sewers alike. The authors address sewing basics, as well as the more advanced Sashiko, needle-felting, crochet and needle-weaving, reminding us that an act of repair can also be a creative gesture (think Wabi-sabi or Kintsugi). The possibilities are virtually endless.

As I grew up, every woman in my orbit had a mending basket; it was as much a fact of life as any other set of household tools, completely unnoticed in its ordinariness. A skilled repair was meant to remain invisible. And even though I patched my jeans in high-school with contrasting fabrics, I never really thought of mending in general as a form of healing, let alone creativity.

But this sweet book has changed my mind. Suddenly I’m scouring my closets, looking for something to mend. That is indeed magic!

Happy New Year!

Something To Set Your Sights On

I have my eye on a bit of time off this week…

Latest Eyes

but first, two recommendations for you to consider:

Life in Five Senses

Gretchen Rubin’s book Life in Five Senses: How Experiencing the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World.

How To Academy Podcast

And, in an unexpected but interesting intersection with Rubin’s book, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross discuss “Your Brain on Art” on the How To Academy Podcast.

Enjoy, and see you in two weeks.

Eyes Ready

Side B: Black & White

And now for the flip side of last time’s color-centric post.

The learning continues, thanks to Summer’s slower pace. This month I’ve found myself taking a bit of a detour to focus on composition and value.
My impetus was a Substack entry from Urban Sketcher Suhita Shirodkar, linking to an Ian Roberts’ video about working outside your comfort zone. Watching it reminded me that I have a terrific book Roberts wrote called Mastering Composition. I pulled it out to flip through again and decided to take a stab at his “composition a day” exercise. Refreshers never hurt.

Ian Roberts Mastering Composition

My sole tool has been an HB graphite pencil, making value an integral part of each composition. Repetitively sketching this way for a couple of weeks has made it glaringly obvious the degree to which I gravitate toward, and get caught within, a middle range of values. It’s clear I need to concentrate on pushing for darker darks and blacker blacks.

As an experiment, I converted images of my latest life paintings to black & white in Photoshop. It confirmed, as you can see below, that I need to pay closer attention to my values.

On the bright side, even if this is the only thing I learn this summer, I will consider the season a success.

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My latest art-related treat has been watching videos by artists Sandi Hester and Frances Ives who cover various aspects of their practices on YouTube and Patreon. One of the aspects I most enjoy is they each spend a fair amount of time talking about, experimenting with and swatching new materials, taking a deep dive into the differences between brands and applications.

A screenshot of Sandi Hester’s video “Favorite Color Pencils & Markers”

Regular hauls from Blick and Jackson’s (the UK equivalent to Blick) include all sorts of goodies. I fully acknowledge that for most, watching someone swatch a couple of fistfuls of colored pencils while elaborating on their minute differences might feel akin to joining Edmond Dantès at Chateau d’If (can you tell I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo this summer?). But for this art nerd, it’s indescribably entertaining. I’m all for learning about the specific details and layering possibilities of unfamiliar materials before buying.
Needless to say, I just placed an order with Blick last weekend.

Southern Venture

Ready for a quick trip to the South?
Last week we visited Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA and, as on most travels, there was plenty of art to enjoy in the moment and to think about after coming home. Here are a few highlights from The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, my favorite of the various art venues we visited.

Imagined Boundaries ©2017 – present, Raheleh Filsoofi, Multimedia Installation. In this striking wall installation, Filsoofi asks viewers to consider — What is a limit? What is a border? Who is on the other side? Her aim is to interrupt cultural preconceptions and to create dialogue around socio-political issues such as borders, immigration and community building by creating boxes that act as portals communicating shared humanity.

These are still shots from a video within one of Filsoofi’s boxes. The viewer becomes participant in that the video subjects appear to be checking us out as closely as we are observing them.

Self Portrait Emma ©2002 Alison Saar, Oil on Skillet. Saar’s work frequently focuses on societal notions regarding the positioning of African Americans and women in domestic realms. This oil portrait of a domestic worker on the bottom of a frying pan is intentionally faint, (I have drastically over-exposed my photo to make it visible to you) invoking the relative invisibility of a typical household cook or kitchen maid.

Never Again ©Mary Jackson, Sweetgrass and palmetto. Mary Jackson is an internationally recognized master of sweetgrass basketry. This piece took 3 years to complete.

What attracted me to The Gibbes Museum in the first place was their collection of miniature portraits. According to the museum’s literature, the first-ever American miniatures were painted in Charleston and the Gibbes collection holds over 600 works spanning from early colonial examples of the 18th century to the Revival Period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They are remarkable!

H.F. Plowden Weston, by Charles Fraser, 1824

Miss Reynolds of Fenwick Hall, by Charles Fraser, 1835

Christopher Gustavus Memminger, by Charles Fraser, 1823 This gentleman looks so familiar to me! I think I’ve watched way too many Masterpiece period dramas.

Actor Jack Farthing

How wonderful to see Joseph Jackson’s sketchbook which held preliminary portraits that he may have used to impress perspective clients.

Moving on, there’s nothing quite like an independent bookstore for providing a sense of grounding when visiting a new locale. Curated shelves that reflect local pride in the history, authors and artists of a place reveal the rich undercurrent of a city in a way that generic travel books can’t begin to match.
If you’re willing to snoop around a bit, you never know what you might discover. A visit to Buxton Books in Charleston opened a couple of interesting doors for me.

I loved the art on the cover of this book of poetry by South Carolinian Marlanda Dekine, and had to find out more about Fletcher Williams III, the artist who created it. The piece is named “Westward”.

It turns out that Williams has a resume that extends far beyond book cover illustration. He is a multi-media artist living and working in Charleston, making identity-based art and is a rising star. With an academic foundation in psychology and anthropology, his artwork speaks to the history of Charleston and the culture of the Lowcountry, but not in the way one might expect.

Taking time to follow the interview links on Williams’ website gave me a much deeper understanding of both his artistic aims and the challenges he confronts. He is incredibly thoughtful and articulate. His discussion regarding having to navigate the complexities of feeling pressured to speak to the Black experience, while coping with narratives thrust upon him and his artwork that are not his own, was enlightening. While I don’t think one can ever fully grasp the underlying dynamics of a specific place unless one is a native, I found it fascinating (and important) to get a glimpse, via his interviews, beyond the usual tropes and assumptions.

And for those more interested in textiles, the other book that caught my attention was Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and the School of Making by Natalie Chanin. It was way too fat and heavy to bring home in my carry-on, but I snagged a Kindle edition and am looking forward to reading, rather than just flipping through this part autobiography, part “exploration into how sewing and embroidery relate to wider concerns of sustainability, community and women’s empowerment”.

If you go, other bookstores to explore in both cities:
Blue Bicycle Books, Charleston
E. Shaver, Bookseller, Savannah

Two museums to check out in Savannah:
Telfair Academy (The first museum in the US founded by a woman), and
The Jepson Art Center
Oh, and there’s a Blick store in Savannah too!

And now, it’s nice to be home.

That Time Again

A sneak peak at what I’m currently working on…

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know that sooner or later a book post is bound to roll around again. I love reading (obviously) or just living for a while in the world of pictures. But I also get a charge out of discussing books, listening to podcasts about them, learning more about the author’s backstory, what s/he had in mind when writing, and ultimately sharing the titles of those I just can’t keep to myself.

So for this first post of 2023, here are three books I received this Christmas that I hope might brighten your new year as much as they are brightening mine.

David Hockney A Yorkshire Sketchbook

No words, only pictures. A sweet little book of the English countryside through the eyes of one of my favorite artists. It touches on a few of the art-y things that get my pulse revved up: loose watercolor work, organic pattern, and the geometry of divided space.

Inhabiting the Negative Space, Jenny Odell

What a fabulous jumping-off point this book is for approaching the new year! Very short and to the point, it was Odell’s 2020 virtual commencement address to the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Within its pages she pushes back against our current tendency toward incessant productivity, looking instead to periods of inactivity as vitally important for generating ideas. Frankly, I needed a reminder that time spent in reflection and contemplation is valuable, and that mind-space is a necessary ingredient for sowing the seeds of insight and is crucial to creative work.

Drawing for Illustration, Martin Salisbury

Suggested by illustrator Lucia Leyfield (another book recommender!) in her newsletter, this reference book is wise, informative, and discusses aspects of drawing that I find so enjoyable. Very inspirational.

And, because I can’t resist: my latest happy discovery is artist Sandi Hester. Her irrepressibly joyful personality spills into her informative Youtube art videos and her work. The world is so darn serious these days — she just makes me smile for so many reasons.
Below is a video where she talks about her favorite art books. We share some overlaps, but I also learned about a handful of new-to-me artists. Maybe you will too.

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Finally, for those of you near enough to make the trek, I’ll be part of the upcoming exhibition “Transformations: Material Environment, Us”, which opens at Studio Place Arts Third Floor Gallery on January 25th.

Join us for the Artist Social on Saturday January 28 from 3:30-5pm. Please also note that on Friday, February 3rd at noon there will be a panel discussion moderated by Leslie Roth with 3 of the participating artists: Jane Quimby, Heather Ritchie and Dianne Shullenberger.
Hope to see you at either or both events!

The work isn’t over once the brush and needle are set down. Framing is just another step in the process and I think this floating approach is a good way to go with these stitched paintings. This piece, “House on Fire”, will be part of the upcoming “Transformations” exhibit.

Inspiration Over Perspiration

It was a relatively quiet Thanksgiving here on our hill, so for once, with less kitchen duties to tend to, artistic inspiration won out over culinary perspiration. Having the time to immerse myself in and to reflect upon the creativity of others was a gift.

Here are several recommendations I think worth passing along:

If you haven’t already seen them, be sure to check out the two new episodes of “Craft in America”: Inspiration and Home.
How have I not been aware of Diedrick Bracken’s spectacular woven tapestries before now?! Brackens is featured in the Inspiration episode.

Because I have always been attracted to clay objects (little known fact: my first real job was potter’s apprentice), I was riveted by the segment on Syd Carpenter’s ceramic pieces in the Home episode.

Carpenter’s three sculptural series: Places of Our Own, Farm Bowls and Mother Pins resonate deeply, despite the vast differences between our heritages. I find her exploration of home and garden through the lens of African American owners and stewards of the land, interlaced with the connection between the land and strong female figures, quite moving. The forms she creates are absolutely lovely.

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Not a new book, but new to me, Ann Patchett’s series of personal essays in This is the Story of a Happy Marriage are outstanding. Her piece “The Getaway Car”, (also available as a stand-alone book), is a must-read for any creative. Reassuring and invigorating, this essay recounts her persistent life adjustments toward the goal of carving out room for the one thing that mattered most to her: writing. Eschewing inspiration, Patchett humbly credits her success to hard work and devotedly putting in the hours — on both good days and bad. Her insights ring true for any artist, regardless of medium. And she’s not too proud to remind us that doubts and worries come with the territory, no matter how far your practice takes you. Ultimately, as she so eloquently puts it, “the pleasure is the practice — to touch the hem of the gown that is art itself”.

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I also had time over the weekend to plow through to the end of this latest piece in my post-Roe suite. I’m not sure yet whether or not it will be the last. Frankly, the three pieces have been emotionally exhausting.

Eroded Boundaries, detail ©2022 Elizabeth Fram By stitching first and letting the paint flow over those stitches, then adding another sewn layer after the painting is complete, I’ve tried to straddle a space where the stitching adds another dimension, without overpowering the image. In the end, I really love the textural quality of the paint and the stitches working together.

The iconic “No Trespassing” warning fades, underscoring the fact that with the overturn of Roe a conservative Supreme Court has dictated the erosion a woman’s right to physical autonomy in this country.

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Finally, I invite you to check out Pigeon Pages, an online literary journal featuring prose, poetry, author interviews and more. Each written piece is paired with an artwork. It’s a wonderful online rabbit hole of creative diversion. I am so pleased and gratified to have been contacted by their art editor who requested the use of an image of “Isolation”, one of my sheltering-in-place houses, to accompany Rachel Lloyd’s recent award-winning piece, “Unraveling”. Both pieces can be seen/read in their entirety, here.

Unraveling Header

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, December will sweep by in a flurry. Wishing you a creative season of inspiration and perspiration before January arrives.

For Love of Color

A couple of weeks ago I gave in to impulse.
My shelves are sagging under the weigh of the many books I’ve collected throughout the years, so I’m consciously trying NOT to indulge in oversized art books anymore, opting instead for Kindle editions.
But everyone falls off the wagon from time to time.

Kaffe Fassett In The Studio

Kaffe Fassett In the Studio: Behind the Scenes with a Master Colorist is worth every inch of shelf space it will someday occupy — although I think it will be a while before I let it out of immediate reach. It proved a really fun read in the moment and will be an inspirational resource for the future.

This and below: a selection of the wall colors I love living with

Textile artist, painter, mosaicist, designer and collector of all things eclectic, Fassett ushers the reader through his intermingled home and studio (who doesn’t love a good peek into another artist’s working space?) writing extensively about the evolution of his long art career. With the flip of each page, one gets a further glimpse into the many aspects of Fassett’s prolific creativity, all of which seem to turn on an axis of color. The experience has the effect of making one feel a bit like Alice journeying into Wonderland.

Fern Green

A dozen years ago, while we were still in the design phase of building our Vermont home, I gained a lot of inspiration and courage from Susan Sargent’s book The Comfort of Color. I’m pretty sure I freaked our painters out when I handed them a spreadsheet outlining the panoply of colors I wanted applied throughout our new house. Let’s just say I put a bit of a wrinkle into the ease of blindly using one version or another of white from room to room.

Red

Most artists I know surround themselves with strong colors and eclectic collections. On a more universally known level, think of Monet’s Giverny or Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul. The trip through Fassett’s home/studio is no different although, compared to many, arguably on steroids. And what’s not to love about that?

Seaglass

If you’re lucky, the colors outside your home are just as vibrant as those that surround you inside.

View from my studio

It’s hard to beat nature’s colors as autumn takes hold here in Vermont.

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For a deeper dive into the rainbow, don’t miss Dian Parker’s sparkling essays on individual colors. Start with your favorite and then savor each one – you will be fascinated reading about their history, chemistry and their significance in art and everyday life.

Flipping Pages

How’s your summer reading going?
I’ve been on an unusually good roll this past month and have lucked into a string of excellent books. If you’re on the lookout for some ideas to round out your August picks, consider the following:

The Nature of Things – Essays of a Tapestry Weavery by Tommye McClure Scanlin
Always intrigued by the behind-the-scenes methods of any artist, I gravitate toward the compare and contrast game that surrounds learning how someone else approaches their work. Scanlin clearly and effectively writes about the not-so-straight line from inspiration to finished piece that is familiar to all of us. While this book shares many practical details particular to weaving, you don’t have to be a weaver or know anything about the discipline to enjoy these essays. Rather, this is a book for anyone interested in learning how an artist’s process unfolds.

Blue Rib Sweater ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches Somehow my needle and thread have taken a back seat this summer and I find myself practicing relatively quick portraits. My goal is to completely fill this sketchbook, hoping to see progress. I’m not flipping the page from textiles, rather I’m taking an intermission with the thought that everything is a potential deposit into the creative bank.

Paradise in Plain Sight – Lessons from a Zen Garden by Karen Maezen Miller
As a huge fan of Japanese gardens as an art form, this book taps into my love for the layers of complex beauty manifested through each garden’s deceptive simplicity. Meandering through her own adopted garden, Miller highlights ways that life is often reflected in the specific characteristics of a Japanese garden and what can be gleaned from that parity. Elements of this meditation/memoir reminded me of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. Calm and wise, this is a great read for our tumultuous times; it’s one I expect to return to in the future.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult
Although Covid is still with us, unless one faithfully kept a journal throughout those early months, there are a lot of sharp details that have blurred, even in the relatively short time that has passed. This book is a crystal-clear fictional reminder of those fearful early days when the world changed so drastically almost overnight. While I would only give the story itself a B/B+, as an historical marker of the details surrounding our universal uncertainty, paired with the reality of what a tough climb recovery could be for those who survived being on a ventilator, I give this novel a solid A+.

Art & Fear – Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland
A perennial favorite that should be on every artist’s shelf. Like many good books, it will strike you differently depending where you are in your life and practice at the time you pick it up. That is exactly the reason this one is worth reading again and again.

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
There’s a certain joy to a book that can be picked up, put down, and opened at any given page without losing steam. St Clair’s bite-size essays tell the stories of specific colors, their history and the impact they have had upon human civilization and culture. You won’t look at your palette in quite the same way after reading it.

Profile ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 12 x 18 inches At life drawing, we all gather around the model in a somewhat haphazard fashion, skootching a bit to the left or right to try to get a good vantage point. I can’t remember the last time I had a true profile to work from, but this lovely example was a real treat to try to capture.

Taste – My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
After watching Tucci’s gastronomic romp “Searching for Italy” last year, I’ve been waiting for our library to get a copy of Taste. I recommend the audio version, read by Tucci himself. At times humorous, other times touching, and always rich with anecdotes and recipes, this book is a feast unto itself. It is the ideal of what I think of as a “summer read”.

I’d love to know what books you’ve been reading this summer. Please share any of your favorites in the comments below.