Category Archives: Discussion

Pushing Forward

When I left you last week, I had no idea how I was going to proceed with the piece that I’d just finished dyeing. The pre-stitched imagery was completely overpowered by the dye and I didn’t have a clue how to pull it back into control.

As you may remember, this is where we left off last week – you have to really strain to see even a hint of the stitched image.

As with many things, the only way out is forward. And as we’ve frequently discussed in one of my art groups, the most fruitful option is often to just dive in and make a move, see how the piece responds, then make another move, and so on. Slowly and surely the elements (hopefully) begin to fall in place.
And the definite advantage to stitching is that it can always be undone.

Adding strong darks and experimenting with color help to bring the image out from the dye. Note the dark lines in the back corner behind the bowl and pitcher, they serve to push the flat surface away, introducing depth.

There’s a lot to be said for this type of problem-solving and discovery. I often think best while working; a myriad of ideas tend to pop to the surface in the midst of stitching, probably because the work itself is slow and methodical.

I also find it very helpful to take a break overnight before progressing too far. When I come back with fresh eyes the next morning the verdict can easily go either way. Often what I thought was brilliant the day before is decidedly not so — and vice versa, but the time away helps to make that judgment clearer, regardless of which way the needle points.

Drawing out and amplifying the minimal reds from the dye in the foreground (see previous picture) not only brings it forward, but ties it to the nectarines so they don’t appear isolated.

With each new piece in this series, I uncover more avenues I’d like to explore with this process. I’m learning a lot along the way, but don’t feel I’m quite “there” yet. In the meantime, despite the moments of hair pulling, I can think of no other place I’d rather be than on this particular path to discovery.

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Sweet Bowl of Summer, detail ©2018 Elizabeth Fram What was sorely needed was contrast. Intensifying the amount of stitching overall, including complementary sunset-tones to offset the blues, and adding highlights and darks to specific areas, pulls everything together. Remarkably, even though I had virtually no control over where the dye would land within the pre-stitched image, with mindful after- stitching the dye often works to my advantage (i.e. the color on the left side of the bowl and within the pitcher heighten the illusion that they are receding in space).

As the camera pulls farther away, the image holds its own. The stitching, texturally and visually, adds the necessary heft that keeps the surrounding pattern from overwhelming the piece as a whole.

On a different note_____________________________________________________________________________________

Get your weekend off to a great start with these images by Portuguese artist Luisa Azevedo. Pure delight!

Enjoying the Ride

Last July I started experimenting with a new approach to my dyed and stitched pieces.
Flipping the coin from the way I’d been working, I started embroidering the imagery with white silk thread first, and then dyed the cloth afterward using a new stitched-resist method that I had begun experimenting with at the Vermont Studio Center in April.

My hope was that the silk thread would absorb the color and pattern of the dye process, leaving the image to some degree camouflaged while still maintaining its visual strength. I wanted the viewer to be drawn in by the pattern and to discover the imagery upon closer inspection. Unfortunately, the results were decidedly unsatisfactory because the image became almost completely lost. It shows more clearly below because the angle of the photo catches the light to its advantage.
To jog your memory, check back to my post “Committing to a Process of Search” to read about my initial stab at this new process.

After working my way through the more recent lobster piece (my second attempt at this idea), I returned to the original this week with new thoughts on ways to salvage it from its ghost-like appearance.

While there are elements of the process I’d like to tweak, I am definitely making progress toward my initial objective. And more importantly, as I work back and forth between the stitches and the pattern they sit upon, I’m really enjoying the ride. For lack of a better way of describing it, there’s a satisfying rhythm to considering both image and surface, puzzling out a way to bounce between the two so that they can simultaneously work together and independently, with neither being overwhelmed by the other.

Meanwhile, serendipity happened in the form of Neil Gaiman’s 2012 University of the Arts commencement address “Make Good Art”.
The thing about a good graduation speech is that it’s just as inspiring to everyone else in the audience as it is to the graduates…maybe even more so because being older provides the benefit of life experience as a measuring stick. Gaiman’s advice resonates loudly and clearly in its encouragement to make mistakes and to keep trying.

If you too are attempting to gain some traction in your current work, give it a listen and see if it doesn’t give you a boost.

Another Week

I love reading about how other artists organize and manage their practice and in that spirit thought I would share the variety of things I’ve been working on Monday through Wednesday of this week. If for no other reason, it’ll show you that I usually toggle back and forth between several things at once.

Monday = life drawing and whatever else I can squeeze in.

I post this blog on Thursdays. It publishes immediately but is sent out through the wonders of Mailchimp to my mailing list at 4am on Friday mornings. This is why those of you who have subscribed can read it with your morning coffee every week. I have found that setting up and keeping a schedule is the key ingredient that has allowed me to post consistently each week for almost four years. And while my schedule of stitching and drawing is a little more flexible, it is the same devotion to consistency that results in a sense of accomplishment.

This week that “squeezed in” Monday project was working on the lobster piece

I try not to think too much about the next week’s post over the weekend other than to keep my eyes and ears open for new ideas. But each week unfolds the same way: Mondays are for entertaining various possibilities for that week’s post, Tuesdays I compose a draft, Wednesdays are devoted to polishing, and I publish on Thursday. Depending on the week, any of those steps can run very smoothly or be quite laborious, which makes it easy to see how blog-writing has become an all-consuming profession for some.

Tuesday = the start of a new drawing and the final touches on the lobster piece which will still need to be framed.

I started Eye of the Needle as a means of better articulating my practice and of opening the door to a conversation with other artists and with anyone who might be interested in what goes on behind my artistic curtain, so to speak. It has given back to me more than I could have imagined on both counts.

One unexpected discovery is that the time spent writing often spurs ideas for the practical side of whatever I’m currently working on, and while I’m stitching I can sometimes work out the wrinkles of my post that week. Drawing is in a whole different league though because it requires being constantly engaged in the process at hand, with moment by moment decisions necessary.

Wednesday = experimenting to create a shaped resisted area before folding, stitching and dyeing a new piece. The shape below is cut from cotton cloth, and I stitched a duplicate directly underneath it on the other side of the silk – hoping that since cotton won’t absorb the dyes I use that I might have at least the shadow of this shape remaining after stitching and dyeing the silk.

Cotton resist basted in place

Piece folded, stitched, and dyed. The lighter area is the cotton which has barely absorbed any of the dye

The results didn’t turn out anything like I hoped – let alone expected. I’m thinking now about my next move.

The images of this week’s work are an example of the variety of things I’m juggling at any given time. Believe it or not, they all feed into each other, although sometimes I wish my various disciplines developed in a straighter line. As you can perhaps imagine, sometimes my practice feels a bit disjointed, but I have come to understand and trust how the three legs of the stool – writing, drawing, and stitching – have become equally necessary to each other.

My son just gave me a copy of the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. I’m looking forward to seeing what ideas it may have to help me to pull these elements together more tightly.

Maine-ly Art

Art and travel go hand in hand, which is one of the reasons I’m always happy when I can get back to Maine.

School Street mural, Rockland, Maine

Akin to the sight of white pines backed by azure skies and the smell of salt in the air, many of Andrew Wyeth’s images speak to me as an indelible representation of the state where I grew up. PBS recently added an episode on Wyeth to their American Masters series; it’s quite good and addresses the often uneasy sense of mystery that hovers in the stark beauty and loneliness found in many of his paintings. I can’t speak to any connection those from Pennsylvania may feel toward his Chadds Ford work, but for me, Wyeth got Maine exactly right.

Olson House, Cushing, Maine

Although I visited the outside of the Olson house (the forbidding clapboard farmhouse that anchors Wyeth’s iconic Christina’s World) as a child, one can now see the inside as well thanks to the Farnsworth Art Museum assuming ownership in the early 1990’s.

Hathorn / Olson Graveyard looking out to Maple Juice Cove, Cushing, Maine

The ‘tour’ that comes with admission is really a half-hour history of the house and its generations of inhabitants — a single family line — told to wonderful effect by a local docent. With dramatic pauses and a spooky affect that gave the impression of a cross between a no-nonsense schoolmarm and a wicked witch, she relayed how the original settlers were descendents of John Hathorne, the notorious chief justice of the Salem witch trials. They came to Maine in the 1700’s seeking to escape the tainted shadow Hathorne left upon the family name. Our docent capitalized on that air of eeriness with tales that encompassed deprivation, childhood death, and of course Christina’s disability.

Front Room, Olson House

Afterward we were free to roam the house which has remained as it was when Christina and her brother Alvaro lived there, and as it appears in many of Wyeth’s paintings. It’s an other-worldly experience walking into rooms that are hauntingly familiar, immersed in the same sense of place and light depicted by Wyeth, looking through the frames of windows he depicted to the views he recorded with a combination of faithfulness and artistic license.

Roofline, Olson House, no doubt the vantage from which End of Olson’s was painted in 1969.

Much has been said about Wyeth’s place in the lexicon of American painting, and I’m not going to debate that here. For me, his superior draughtsmanship, emotionally charged brevity, and compositional fluency negate any question of merit. But beyond those attributes, his paintings speak to a sense of Maine that anyone with a strong connection to the state would recognize, a quality that makes his work so intimately relatable.

If you’d like to dig a little deeper on the subject, let me recommend Christina Baker Kline’s novel A Piece of the World, a wonderful first-person portrayal of Christina Olson’s life inspired by her circumstances and her relationship with Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.

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©Abe Goodale, Watercolor

On a more contemporary note, I was thrilled to walk into the Archipelago Store and Gallery of the Island Institute in Rockland and to discover an exhibit of wonderful paintings of lobstermen by Abe Goodale. On his website Goodale notes this series, the Eastern Waters project, is a tribute to the hardworking lobstermen of Penobscot Bay and that he “set out to capture a way of life, a generation upon the water and an industry that is thriving, yet fragile”. I think it’s remarkable how sensitively he portrays the toughness surrounding these men and their work.
I regret the quality of my photos is so poor.

Pause ©Abe Goodale

Sea Smoke ©Abe Goodale, Watercolor

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And finally, because I believe censorship is wrong, I am sharing a link to textile artist Salley Mavor’s recent story of being forced, ten days before the opening, to withdraw from her solo exhibition Liberty and Justice: New Artwork by Salley Mavor. The show had been in coordinated planning for a year.

In relating the circumstances, Mavor is careful not to cast aspersions on the organization/venue, its staff or volunteers. I truly hope you will take the time to read what she has to say. It is not a political rant, it is a measured response to where we find ourselves in society today. She says, “For me, the work is about stepping away from a safe, sheltered existence and into a very real reality, one where there is possibility for action toward making a difference in the world.”
I want to honor her request that links to her work be shared in order for it to be seen. Maybe you will too. It is so important that we work together to subvert censorship and support artistic freedom.

Regardless of your political stance , please take the time to explore Mavor’s website. Her work is beautiful, and if you share a love of nature, I’m sure you will find it both magical and delightful. Her creativity and skill with a needle are remarkable.

Many thanks to Eve Jacobs-Carnahan for bring this to my attention.

Indomitable Self

Reclamation, the spectacular exhibit of portraits at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe this summer, closed last weekend. As a parting shot, Margaret Bowland, one of the exhibiting artists, gave a wonderful talk — easily one of the most engaging I’ve ever attended.

Bowland’s piece in the show, a young African-American girl covered in white paint, spurs difficult questions, especially as our country continues to struggle with its racial history and its ongoing disparities — open sores that show little sign of permanent healing. Could she really be depicting this youngster in white face?

But as is often the case, there is a greater narrative that lies below the surface. This quote from the Helen Day’s Gallery Guide of the exhibition clarifies Bowman’s self-imposed directive.

Margaret Bowland’s large-scale portraits attempt to untangle power. As the artist explains, “when making works I have often covered my subject in paint to make this point. I feel that I am doing what the world does to my subjects, tries to obliterate them or turn them into people they are not. For me, the victory is that my people stare back at you completely themselves. No matter the costume or the make up you are looking at an individuated and very real, human being. They have, or are learning to survive through what the world has thrown at them.”

The depth of Bowland’s art, careful layers of insight portraying questions of identity and ‘self’ through the lens of social and political mores, encompasses both her personal history growing up in North Carolina and her deep understanding of art history. She is a dynamic teacher, and her talk last week shed light on her brilliant ability to synthesize difficult and diverse questions of what it is like to be “other” through a portal of empathy, all the while rooting her work within the realities of history, both the history of art and history in general. I am envious of her students’ access to her theoretical and practical knowledge.

Please take some time to study the paintings on her website and to read her artist’s statement, which is an abridged version of the talk she gave. You too will be impressed.

The Other Side

In this technology-driven and divided world, exactly how much relevance can the art of fabric and thread expect to maintain?

Last week Antrese Wood of the Savvy Painter podcast talked with realist portrait artist Cayce Zavaglia, whose medium just happens to be embroidery. The interview didn’t disappoint. The nuggets of information and wisdom shared surrounding Zavaglia’s process, the content of her work, the way she balances her workday with raising four children, and how she migrated from paint to working with thread, encapsulate the particulars I am eager to learn about any artist. So much of what she has to say directly resonates, and boy, what I would have given to have heard this discussion 20 years ago!

As she often does, Wood asked Zavaglia if she could share a time when she experienced a particular challenge in her practice and what she learned from that occurrence. Zavaglia responded that she now actively seeks failures and mistakes in her work, noting that failure is often a closer link to creativity than success because, while riding on one’s success can be great, it can also be a creativity suppressor, making it easier to pigeonhole and compartmentalize the work by inhibiting further exploration and discoveries.

The pivotal moment Zavaglia related involved a work that contained a section she had reworked over and over in an effort to get the mouth just right. By continually removing threads she had compromised the integrity of the linen ground, resulting in a distorted image. The piece was exhibited but she was never happy with it, and afterward pulled it from circulation, keeping it in her studio for a couple of years, face to the wall.

During that time she became more and more engaged with the back of the piece — its knots and messy tangle of threads — finally arriving at the epiphany to reframe it in reverse. In doing so, the original distortion seemed to disappear as it was now shielded from direct light by the shadowbox of the frame. She displayed the piece on a pedestal so that both sides were visible, with the “back” side now considered the “right” side. It was the first work that sold from that show.

Zavaglia says that while the portrait was an obvious failure, with time and distance she was able to find the beauty in the mistake. That discovery completely changed the trajectory of her studio practice, such that now the backside of her stitched imagery is integral in both her embroidered pieces and her paintings.

The point I found most enlightening is that in searching for the relevance of her stitched family portraits in the grander scheme of the art world, Zavaglia realized that these back images represent a portrayal of the hidden side of ourselves that we all possess but don’t often expose. Referencing the emotional impact of Anthony Bourdain’s and Kate Spade’s suicides, she acknowledges the parts of us which are messy and tangled and human, and the importance of being aware that they exist despite outward appearances to the contrary.

In that light, to answer my original question, I can’t think of a more appropriate medium than fabric and thread to make such an impactful statement about the effects of contemporary life within our society today — politically, socially, and emotionally.

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And speaking of the relevance of embroidery: Did you read this article: “An Artist Unites North and South Korea, Stitch by Stitch”? Who says there isn’t power in the needle?

Committing to a “Process of Search”

I recently finished Creative Authenticity, the Ian Roberts book I recommended in this post several weeks ago. Because each essay has a fair amount to digest, I’ve been reading one section at a time, letting the ideas simmer a bit before moving on to the next. In a later section he discusses creativity in relation the to “process of search”. Reading Roberts’ thoughts now couldn’t be more timely or welcome because they relate directly to what’s going on in my studio this summer.

Who knows what ideas may crop up as you go about your regular chores. Each year I have to work really hard to be sure I don’t miss any of the sugar snap peas in my garden. Since they’re the exact same color as their leaves, and because I have them planted so densely, it’s a challenge to be sure I get them all while they’re still young and tender.

Commenting on the importance of commitment (to your concept), Roberts highlights a differentiation between merely thinking through ideas internally and actually beginning the outward process of manifesting them physically. Tackling problems within our minds allows us to move through a host of possibilities that might conceivably lead us to where we think we want to take the work, but without jumping in and committing through action, we’ll never know for sure whether any of those ideas might truly bear fruit, or if they were mostly illusion.

©2018 Elizabeth Fram While talking with a couple of artist friends, it suddenly occurred to me that if I switched my approach, embroidering an image on fabric before creating the stitched-resist pattern, the silk thread would absorb the dye, and the two would become one.

Roberts says, ” We have to realize that in our art, we need to go through the same process of search, with all the same kinds of dead ends and idiotic attempts that go on privately inside our mind throughout the day. …Avenues need to be explored, ideas tested. And like our thinking processes, most don’t work. Some are clearly ridiculous. But when we’re thinking, no one, not even ourselves, “sees” the results. …When we paint, it’s out there in front of us, graphic, black and white, or perhaps in full color. If it isn’t working, it will be oh so obvious”.

Espresso & Peanut Butter ©2018 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk. From this angle the sheen of the silk thread picks up the light really well and the image comes through clearly.

By moving beyond our heads and committing to the physical process, we begin to see whether the ideas that seemed so brilliant in the privacy of our brains have any actual merit. And even more importantly, the unexpected will inevitably crop up to inform and direct the work even further, which leads to branches of exploration and discovery above and beyond what we could have dreamed. Roberts calls this “process thinking vs product thinking”, encouraging readers to concentrate less on the finished product and to relax into the process of arriving at it, focusing on the benefits of the discoveries that occur along the way.

But as you can see (or rather can’t see) from this straight-on shot, the image becomes lost. In the next attempt I will try stitching more densely, playing with the direction of the stitches. In addition, I need to make some further calculation so that the placement and size of the image is correct within the pattern. In other words, I still have plenty of “process thinking” in front of me.

It’s a perspective that takes the sting of frustration out of the necessary time and missteps that lead to success. And who wouldn’t welcome that?

Welcoming Possibility

In 2012 I made a series of pieces that incorporated synthetic bulk tea packaging as their primary “fabric”. The bags were cut, collaged together with snippets of silk, and then heavily embroidered. Looking at those pieces now I still find the effect of the bags’ crinkled matte black and metallic-printed surfaces, offset by the seemingly more organic resist-dyed silk and fields of hand-stitching, creates a visually enjoyable textural combination.

I noted in my statement for that series that it had been strongly influenced by growing up among family members who were often quite ingenious at repurposing worn-out everyday objects so they could serve a second life beyond their originally intended use. It’s a mindset that encourages one to look at materials with a sense of possibility.

Thinking somewhat along the same lines, haven’t we all experienced an unplanned “accident” (i.e. potential disaster), when something goes awry mid-process — like an errant splotch of paint or a tear in the silk when the the seam-ripper slips? I count it a successful day when I can come up with a way to switch gears with a solution that not only makes the work even more effective than originally planned, but which fits the piece well enough that it appears to be a choice I intended all along.

Detail 1

In that light, you won’t be surprised that I was inspired and amused by these 15 examples of artists creating a fix that makes their results so much more engaging than the unmodified original.

Detail 2

This is why I never plan too far ahead in my process; doing so tends to be a sure recipe for frustration. Being open to possibilities has led to results that are often more successful than I could have planned ahead of time, and I’ve discovered that the process of working through unanticipated issues is far more rewarding than going from start to finish without any snags.
How about you? Can you relate?

Hearthstone Anecdote We moved into our house when there were still a fair amount of details left to complete. One of the many things on that to-do list was finishing our fireplace and laying down the hearthstone. Choosing a beautiful piece of soapstone for it’s color and pattern, I felt especially lucky that the stone seller had just enough left for what we needed. The day it was due to be laid in place, our builders were cutting it to size on our front deck. Suddenly there was a noticeable quiet and their heads were tightly grouped together in discussion. It was obvious from the uncharacteristic whispering that something must be seriously wrong. It turns out the stone had broken in half and, knowing it couldn’t easily be replaced, they were mortified. This is one instance when I truly believe all the practice with studio disasters was a saving grace. That and the fact that not too long before I had read about the Japanese art of kintsugi. With a bit of research and the benefit of local artisans who generously shared their knowledge of metals, we were able to join the two halves with bronze (really a bronze powder stirred into a fixative that allowed it to flow in place without heat), resulting a lovely metallic vein that makes for a one-of-a-kind hearthstone that I think is far more beautiful and interesting than it would have been without the unexpected snafu. Plus, it’s become one of my favorite memories of our house-building process.

Are You a Cezanne or a Picasso?

During Season1, Episode 7 of his Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell discusses an interesting theory about the way that artists produce work. For some, ideas tend to materialize instantaneously, practically fully-formed. Their work succeeds when the artist is very young, and they often remark that it flowed out from them as though it was just “there” — ripe for the picking. Others labor over their art for years, needing time and space to make the many, many finely-tuned adjustments that eventually bring it to the point where they can comfortably say it is complete.

I figure it took me around 10 hours to complete all this pre-dye stitching. If you’re wondering how I have time to listen to all the podcasts I recommend, now you know.

The idea behind this theory originated with David Galenson, a University of Chicago economist who posited that there are two completely different camps of art-makers. The first group, the Conceptual Innovators, are youthful stand-outs. They create quickly, with easy articulation, achieving revolutionary breakthroughs from an early age. Picasso is a prime example.

The stitching becomes obvious once the piece is dyed.

The second group Galenson identifies as Creative Innovators. These artists often take years to develop their work through arduous trial and error, never having a clear-cut trajectory in their efforts to figure out what exactly they want to say. They tend to never be satisfied as they work their way through endless drafts. He tags Cezanne as illustrating this category of artist.

I made an effort to saturate one side with deeper color than the other, hoping for some interesting variations.

Galenson points out that this theory isn’t unique to the visual arts, and it is fascinating to note icons who easily fall within one of the two categories. Conceptual Innovators include Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick in his early 30s, Orson Welles who made Citizen Kane when he was 26, and Lorde, whose musical prowess in her teens earned her a spot as the youngest person on Forbes’ 2014 “30 under 30” list of “young people who are changing our world”. He cites Mark Twain and Alfred Hitchcock as two Creative Innovators who didn’t reach a peak until they were in their 50s.

©2018 Elizabeth Fram , 28 x 28 inches, Stitched-resist dye on Silk All told, it only took about two hours to dye and carefully pick out all the stitching. I absolutely love this part of the process because it’s always so exciting as the details are revealed – and you can’t know until the very end how the overall piece with appear.

The majority of Gladwell’s podcast centers on the layers of exploration and experimentation laid out in the writing of two songs, one by Elvis Costello and the other by Leonard Cohen. I found it fascinating to learn the specifics of the years of reworking and painstaking evolution required by each. If you have a soft spot for Cohen’s iconic song Hallelujah, which took more than 15 years (with contributions by other musical artists) to achieve the level of recognition that came with the late Jeff Buckley’s beautiful version, that in itself will make the 40 minute podcast worth your time.

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If you’re interested in this subject, I’ve discovered that Galenson has written a book: Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.

Forward, March

“Creativity takes courage” ~Matisse

My week at the Studio Center opened a door that won’t close tightly again. And that’s just fine. I approached my time there as a portal for experimentation, and now I realize that there’s no going back; it’s a one-way path.

While I don’t have any idea where exactly I’m heading, let alone what it is I’m seeking, my goal is to figure out how to “stitch” previously learned lessons into something new. For all I know, I may eventually circle back around to a point very near where I left off. But for now I’m feeling the need to stretch, and it’s equal parts liberating and scary as I jump in with no specific end-point in sight.

With that in mind, I stumbled across a couple of resources that have been both encouraging and reassuring. Maybe you will find them so as well.

Nicholas Wilton often shares nuggets of good advice on his blog, but this quick video about breaking through to something new in your work couldn’t have come at a more timely moment.
Finding this 2014 issue of NEA Arts, “The Art of Failure – The Importance of Risk and Experimentation”, was a score. I haven’t made it through the whole issue yet, but the interviews I have read are illuminating. Don’t miss what Perry Chen has to say on “Improving Through the Creative Process” on page 09. It’s good to be reminded that plenty of others have been on this path before me (us).

©2018 Elizabeth Fram, detail, Stitched-resist Dye on Silk, 10 x 25 inches. What I find most exciting about this process is it seems to be equal parts careful planning and pure serendipity. The dye acts as both a partner and an opponent, but its unpredictability is the secret that makes the process so rewarding.