Tag Archives: Ann Patchett

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.

the cup is a cloud, ©Diedrick Brackens, Woven cotton and acrylic yarn and mirrored acrylic, 74 x 78 inches, 2018

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.

Indiana Hutson ©Syd Carpenter, clay

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.

When We Emerge

My first piece of 2021 has returned from the photographer, signaling it is well and truly finished. Although it was a bit of an engineering puzzle compared to all my other little houses, who doesn’t welcome a good challenge at the start of a new year?

Since the coronavirus took hold, books have been a refuge for me; this piece is a nod to that fact. In addition, inspired by a set of Christmas matryoshka dolls that are part of our holiday decorations, I wanted to reference the joyful surprise of uncovering something unexpected and special within an outer shell.

This piece opens like a book to reveal a smaller house within that depicts a diverse crowd of people on that proverbial sunnier day we all anticipate so hopefully. It conveys that we will get through this dark period, and we’re doing it together.

The buttons, while not exactly a silver lining, are a reminder that beauty is 90% perspective and that positives often lie hidden within the gloom. Despite the challenges, my family and I have had much to be grateful for during this time. Not least among those advantages, I count on art-making because it has kept my mind and hands busy through all the uncertainty. It has been no small boon to be able to process the varied emotions of the past year via these little structures.

When We Emerge, back view ©2021 Elizabeth Fram This shot of the back of the piece shows that the threads used to sew the buttons to the inside were carried through and left hanging on the outside, suggesting the prickly nature of the past year, and to some degree, the virus itself.

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Book Report

I’ve set a goal of reading at least one non-fiction art/business book each month this year. Written in 2006 by architecture critic for the New York Times Michael Kimmelman, The Accidental Masterpiece – On the Art of Life and Vice Versa was my choice for January. Kimmelman draws a connection between art and daily life as experienced by all of us as regular folks — not as a phenomenon meant only for the elite. While discussing such subjects as creating one’s own world*, collecting, following a routine, and appreciating the beauty and exceptional qualities to be found in the ordinary, he makes the point that it’s not a stretch to imagine that our days are often steeped in artistic endeavors and influences, even within our outwardly most humble actions. Fostering the ability to recognize what that idea means individually to each of us, and how that concept manifests itself, is a path toward enriching each day.

Generally fascinating, although I felt a few of the chapters could have been shorter, Kimmelman unpretentiously offers some thought-provoking and relatable musings about how the pleasures of art are within reach for everyone.

*Coincidentally, and in the same vein as Kimmelman’s ruminations, a new subscriber sent me a link to Ann Patchett’s moving essay These Precious Days which appeared last month in Harper’s Magazine. It’s not short, but it is oh-so-worth reading. It will move and uplift you, and I bet, like me, you will finish it feeling grateful that there are those who have the ability to translate even the direst of circumstances for our consumption, helping us to digest them and still find beauty.

Inspiration

I come across many wonderful artists on Instagram while I’m scrolling by myself. There are a few that make me want to exclaim “Wow! Look at this!” but I’m usually alone at the time, except for Quinn. Then I though of you. I’m going to try to remember to share the most exceptional of what I find at the end of future posts.

@Khaled_dawwa
Khaled Dawwa of Clay and Knife is a Syrian-born artist who has been based in France since 2014. A short post about him on Hi-Fructose, that incorporates images of his work and a bit of his backstory, states that he is “influenced by his own experiences (which include being)…injured in a 2013 bombing, then arrested, imprisoned, and now exiled.”
Powerful stuff.

Leap of Faith

Do you remember this piece from several weeks ago? I am taking what I learned from it and trying again with the goal of figuring out how to portray something “hidden in plain sight” — a stitched image that is camouflaged within shibori patterning while remaining visible.

Another challenge is deciding what the shibori pattern will be so that it works together with the shape of the image, not against it.

This time I’m using my lobster drawing from a couple of weeks ago as a jumping-off point. I sewed the stitches as densely as I could, trusting their solidity would make it possible for the image to hold its own in relation to the visual strength of the dyed pattern that is yet to come.

The rectangular stitched area is 6 x 9 inches. The background stitches were added to set the image apart from the rest of the cloth, hopefully helping the lobster to stand out once the shibori pattern is in place.

In reading Young Yang Chung’s Painting with a Needle, I’ve learned that Asian embroiderers commonly placed various kinds of padding underneath areas to be embroidered in order to achieve a three-dimensional effect. Perhaps creating a relief-like form will give this lobster the oomph it needs to mingle and co-exist with the dyed pattern, each with its own voice, but neither overpowering the other.

I used both batting and heavy silk thread to pad the lobster, some areas more heavily than others. I think it adds something of a sculptural effect. The process is very reminiscent of trapunto.

The middle image in this post shows the completed embroidery. The next step will be a huge leap of faith as I move forward with the dye process. I hope what I have to show you next week will be a happy outcome, or at least a step in the right direction. For now I am cautiously optimistic.

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Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life both hold a place on my “favorites shelf”. I return to them from time to time for inspiration, encouragement, and solace. Writers may write about writing, but for the most part the wisdom they share can be directly translated to any form of creative work. It’s just that they’re, well, writers, so they have a knack for making the information both inspirational and accessible.

I will be pushing the above two books closer together to make room for Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, which I read this past week. It has earned its spot next to the others. At 45 pages, it’s short, to the point, and so very worth your time if you’re interested in such things.