Early Morning Club, Week Fourteen

Sorry for the delay in posting. Busy week of 12-hour work days, leaf raking and yard work, and cleaning and cooking for company. So without further adieu, may I present Week Fourteen!

Monday, October 13th
It's not surprising that my work one week influences the next, but what is surprising is the type of influence it has. Last week's work was fairly involved with lots of stitching and surface elements. So when I faced my work Monday, I wanted to play with the simplicity of line. What would be the minimum stitching I could do and still create an interesting composition?

I created this piece improvisationally--without a preconceived design. I embroidered the blue rectangle and then thought it needed something behind it for depth, so I added the mustard rectangle. I balanced it with the red square.

Tuesday, October 14th
Simplicity again. Here I wanted to explore lines and see how just a few lines and shapes can convey meaning. I wanted to create a calming, quiet fall scene. I like this piece because it matches my intention. I look at it and feel serene.

Wednesday, October 15th
This piece is a really a joke stemming from my undergraduate days as a psychology major. I started this morning thinking of embroidering words like hope, dream, wish, but it felt too cliched. Then I remembered learning about the Stroop effect, which shows that people can read a color word, like red, quicker when it's printed in red ink then when it is printed in blue ink. You can read red faster than you can read red. So consider this a homage to my undergraduate psychology days.

Thursday, October 16th
A few years ago I took a drawing class. I thought that some of my sketches would work well as embroidered pieces. So here you see an embroidered version of a gestural sketch of my cat Max.

Friday, October 17th
Here is a sketch of garlic from my drawing class.

Saturday, October 18th
As I was curling up in bed Friday night, this tag kept tickling me. I ripped it off intending to throw it away in the morning, but then thought it would be amusing to use it as the focus of a piece. This turned out very simple and the red embroidery doesn't stand out in the picture as much as I wanted. (Also, the buttons aren't properly aligned, which annoys me.)

Sunday, October 19th
This little photo transfer has been hanging in my studio for almost a year. So, inspired by the raking facing me on Sunday, I created this quick little composition. There is a lot of apricot in the leaves, so I emphasized it with the frame and the buttons.

General Thoughts

My word, this is becoming challenging. I know I shouldn't whinge too much here, but whew, when life gets hectic it becomes harder and harder to get these pieces done. But that is part of the process.

It was nice to play with simplicity this week. The embroidered versions of my sketches reminded me how much I enjoyed drawing. Once life gets less busy, I'll start drawing again. (I think that will be in April.) There is something completely mesmerizing about learning to look at something and really see it as it is, that is a combination of lines and values, rather than the cartoon-like sketches our brain uses to identify things.