Post Felt:Feutre

I am fortunate to have a very supportive other half.
He encourages me to spend time on my Professional Development.
I travelled to Saltspring Island to attend Felt:Feutre and 2 workshops with Marjolein Dallinga.
The images above and below are of a piece I made in the second workshop and finished felting at home.

Marjolein gave many pieces of advice which I have taken on board. One was not to go public with work you are not happy with.  Well, this piece makes me happy, so I figure that is more or less the same thing. It might be the first piece of what I am now calling Free Felting where I really let my hair down and see the journey as the message, as Marjolein taught me.

By coincidence I had called the workshop I am facilitating this coming Thursday "Freedom in Felting" and to get my creative juices going today, I took this new (to me) philosophy to a 6" square pocket-shaped prefelt. Just look what happened.

Just back from a week's felting with Marjolein in BC, but so much to do, I miss having the wool on my hands, but a little admin. this morning for SDA

Just back from a week's felting with Marjolein in BC, but so much to do, I miss having the wool on my hands, but a little admin. this morning for SDA.
Here is a publicity shot. No fancy evite... yet... Just the raw data and lovely photo.

Surface Design Association - Alberta, October meeting

Non-Members welcome

“Spend an evening embroidering with visiting Vancouver artist Lois Klassen! Participate in her new project that celebrates the slow pace of traditional handwork and uses it as a metaphor for the progress of the equality of the sexes.”

For more information go to : http://www.surfacedesignalberta.blogspot.ca/2013/09/next-sda-alberta-meeting-collaborative.html

Lois Klassen, Margaret is a verb: A Tribute to Margaret Dragu (from a blind contour drawing by C. Mochizuki), 2013

When: Thursday October 17, 7 - 9:00pm

Where: John Snow House, Calgary

Cost: $5 members, $10 non-members

RSVP - (Karin Millson) ioftheneedle@me.com

On Thursday October 17, spend an evening with visiting Vancouver artist Lois Klassen. Participate in her new project that celebrates the slow pace of traditional handwork and uses it as a metaphor for the slow progress of feminism. 

"Slofemists" (2013) on the inception and under guidance of artists Lois Klassen and Lori Weidenhammer, is a project that enables unhurried production of feminism. Starting with found linen fragments, the project invites participants to materialize through needlework particular feminist voices and feminist moments from  their own experience. A library of supply packets that include material and relevant textual and media resources will be part of sewing events or accessed through a lending system.

This project has just started. By October 17 it will include a small collection of embroidery patterns derived from feminist inspirations, by the hosting artists.  Those patterns will be available on paper and printed onto a few 16 x 16" linen squares. The artists have amassed some "found linen" swatches from a high quality drapery supplier. Many of them already feature machine embroidery and elaborate surface prints. The hand embroidery is like/will be another layer of intervention, making them mixed media collage. Participants can make their own patterns, recommend topics and resources for the kits, or work on the squares that have already started. The materials in the kits can be looked at and discussed during the sewing event or they can be borrowed and taken home by the participants. Lois will have mailing packets for participants to send them back by project end. (Date to be announced.) Over 100 squares will eventually become an ornate patchwork cloth that will serve as a couch cover to form a mobile artwork: "Slofa". "Slofa" is expected to be a prop to enable and engage with the public in discussions and performances about the slow pace of feminism, and the tireless work required to materialize it in one's everyday life.

  

Lois Klassen is an artist and writer based in Vancouver. She is particularly interested in participatory art in the city, and the social life of crafts. Her on-going social sewing project is documented at comforterartaction.org.

Lori Weidenhammer is a performance-based eco-feminist artist and educator. She prefers to make art in “galleries without walls”, i.e. gardens. She is part of the Second Site Collective and a founding member of the Slofemists. She blogs at www.beespeakersaijiki.blogspot.ca.

Klassen and Weidenhammer are past collaborators on Means of Production Artists Raw Resource Collective (with Sharon Kallis, 2009) and CornerFarm: Repurposed Planters for Avant Gardeners (2008). Lori and Lois have collaborated on a number of projects concerning ecology and sustainable lifestyles.

Embroiderers are invited to bring a hoop, needles and any extra floss they are happy to share. Lois will have more supplies, including drawing paper for patterns, the linen and some patterns. The meeting/gathering will also be a time to talk together and share ideas about crafts and feminism.

Finished Panels - Very well done Pupils at River Valley School

I would happily bid at auction for these pieces... 

A fine piece from Grade 6 Standard Stream

Love the snail and the clever use of mirror imagery where the sun is reflected on the water.

wonderful use of colour and texture.

 We have works inspired by flags and gaming, moustaches and pattern

Is that a blue-bird I see before me?

These are by the Upper Elementary Montessori pupils Grades 4-6

And more Grade 5's stunning

Love you too.

Thanks for the allowing me the pleasure of teaching you!

River Valley School Fund Raiser... Excellent school should be supported.

River Valley School Pupil's work - I do not name him for privacy reasons

Those of you who are my personal friends will know I haven't been keeping up with my emails -
sorry-O.  It is because I have been devoting so much time to felting.

Thanks to so many of you who responded by sending me felting and other materials for River Valley School - I hope you can spot some of your materials in the photos.  I loaded up the car last Friday and off I went to work with the students.  After 13 hours in the classroom I now have about 80 felted squares (or more or less square, squares) that I am needle-felting onto a background to make them up into 5 banners that can be auctioned on 28th September. Many of the students enjoyed themselves so much they carried on making felt till the bell went!

The students had none of the over-20s inhibitions concerning art and design and just got on with the fun job of painting with wool on their layered roving canvas.  Moustaches seem to be 'in' at the moment.  We also had dinosaurs, flags, cosmic scenes, animae and abstract textural pieces.  In fact many were made wonderfully textural by the addition of the lovely fabric and thread remnants (the latter I found are more frequently referred to as 'yarns' in Canada - it is a whole other language).

River Valley School Pupil's work - I do not name her for privacy reasons

I think the school could make gift cards with many of the images, they are so  good, or a calendar... I must ask the principal about that.... it is  a definite possibility.

Currently they are laying gravel for the playground (the whole surface having been swept away by the Bow).  And the contractors are in working round the clock, I was told, to get the classrooms back to functioning so that the students can all come back under one roof as soon as possible.

Thanks again to all those who donated.  There were so many of you, you are the salt of the earth.
I will upload images of the finished panels when I have finished and photographed them.

Sorry for the hiatus... or perhaps unconformity would be a better description given the circumstances.

My one month's residency at ACAD was terminated abruptly by the severe, indeed devastating, June flooding of Calgary.
After this I have had a tremendous summer with my family and consider myself extremely fortunate.

Now, I am back to work - just finishing off a proposal for a teaching session in 2015!

But also - the following oughtn't be missed:-

Please comment or email me if you will be attending.  (Click on the image to enlarge - it is legible, honest).

And this Thursday - 5th September for the reception of:-

Bad news for my husband - How do I tell him?

Me: "Darling, I feel I need to tell you, I can't go on like this.  Whilst you have been working such long hours, I got lonely... I needed to get out of the house and do something and ....I have fallen in love with... Indigo."
John: "What?  No!  It can't be true....How long has this been going on?  Who is he?  ... and did I miss you going to Mexico?

As my time at the ACAD, Contextural, Self Directed Summer Residency 2013 draws to a close I feel I ought to review what I did and didn't achieve from ttheh nerve centre of my studio space:-

• Met and worked alongside very interesting and inspiring established and aspiring artists.
• Nice to meet you, Anna. Nice to rekindle a friendship, Carmela.  I hope to be able to stay in touch with many... Barbara, Susan, Eleanor, Madison, Anna Maria....
• From the size of the list, above, it is clear that this year's June day-time participants were more numerous than in previous years. And several, like me, were in regularly during the day for a few or many hours.  We were an active bunch.
• As I said in my previous post, I worked in the dye rooms, the print room and the home studio.
• I learnt that I can establish and manage an indigo vat (synthetic indigo, soda and thiox).  Dying cotton, silk, wool, stone, chalk...
• I learnt that when a vat looks dead it isn't!
• I now have many projects on the go and hope I don't lose the momentum but actually manage to take some to fruition - particularly as I want to take part in the end of residency exhibition at ACAD.
• I think I have my work cut out for me for the next year  and that is before I consider the collaborative project I have on the go (puppets), the commissions (shibori - more on that in a future post), teaching - serious demands of students for more felting..., machine embroidery in Calgary, High River and maybe A.N. Other place, and possible mark making workshop in a Calgary school.

Now I have to shut up shop at ACAD as our friends are currently packing up to visit Alberta next week and I turn into a hostess.  Just how I am going to transport the indigo vat home is a mystery yet to be solved, just as this blue maggot is a mystery - what will it turn into?

Thanks to ACAD for allowing this collaboration and thanks to Contextural for arranging.

I particularly enjoyed today - getting Anna Torma together with Arlee Barr was such educational fun.

 Not exactly a stunning piece, but is an example of me!  Experimental - coffee filter paper, stitched shibori and indigo.

What's to say.
Busy with something going on in each studio.
Indigo vat smouldering away in dye room.
Feltmaking - lace in printing studio
How much wool does it take to make a prayer flag in dye mix area (it's where the scales are).
Stitching ready for dipping in home studio.
Shibori and recycling of coffee filters in studio.
... and having chats with interesting people all over the show.

But a month is too short.