Web-o-rama

There is a spider and her web in our kitchen window caught between the storm window and the window into the house. I have been watching her all summer.

She seems to be self sufficient and very busy. Food shows up. She builds more web. There are these egg-like shapes that she sculpts and tends. I wonder if they will hatch. Maybe they are mini pantries for meals in the future. I debate about removing the storm window so that she can escape but then I wonder how she got there in the first place. There must be an exit. She chooses to put on this show in the safety of her enclosure. I feel that way sometimes.

I am fascinated by webs and geometry. My phone has hundreds of found textures in its catalog. I never quite know when one of these inspiration shots will show up in my work. This week the webs I have witnessed started showing up in my stitching.

Here’s a series of shots of this work in progress that shows that discovery process.

I often talk about being in process when making art. If I can divorce myself from my expectations the work becomes more honest and spontaneous. Without the expectation of a successful finished product I learn more. Explore more.

I hope that house spider will last a long time.

Fruit

I love dropcloths. I don’t often make them myself but if I happen upon one that is allowed to go home with me I am delighted. Dropcloths show effort, action and revision. Dropcloths protect what is under.

Dropcloths are a record of time.

So when I came upon this discarded dropcloth I couldn’t resist taking it home with me. Bright and deep magenta, brilliant yellow and a hint of sky blue. There are some stampings on it and a sprinkling of raw umber spots. It is soft and worn, damaged but intact. I worked with it for a couple of months before I came to my final decisions about its form. Here are some of the steps I took in the process.

The cloth went through many stages of composition and texture. I loved all the stitching and texture but did not find the end result compelling enough to consider it done. The work ended up in the raw materials section of the studio where it could rest and be considered for a different life. See a post about its first incarnation here).

Then one day I decided to cut it up to experiment with curved seams and 3D features. The cloth really came alive. It started looking like a creature or a giant squishy comfort toy.

I loaded those squishy bits onto the leftover dropcloth to create a larger piece. I added cone-shaped objects into the mix from another cut up quilt. Eventually the pieces came together to form a whole.

I’m still settling on which way I want to hang it. I like it both ways and it may still go through a transformation while I work on details. It makes me laugh. Something I need more and more these days.

Fruit, 25” x 50”, Paula Kovarik

Fruit, 25” x 50”, Paula Kovarik


The Herd show is at the International Quilt Museum until September. If you are traveling anywhere near Lincoln, Nebraska please stop in to see it.

Sutured

I talk in my sleep these days. I think it’s all about watching and reading too much news and processing the insanity of our times. One night Jim said I sounded like a drill sergeant. I guess I am trying to fix things.

Let month I made this piece. I called it Disruptors in honor of the dialogue that is happening around disfunction and malaise. I intentionally made this chaotic and layered it with stitch and pattern.

I wasn’t happy with the results. It felt forced and cartoonish. (not that I don’t love a good cartoon) So I decided to cut it up.

The first cut is always the hardest. This practice has taught me that I can always find a way to a new solution. If I don’t it isn’t world shattering. There are too many world shattering things going on right now to worry about “ruining” a piece that I spent time on.

I decided to cut it into 1/2” and 1/4” strips so that I could stitch them back together to create a new pattern. What a pretty nest.

I looked around for more raw material so that I would have more contrasting colors to combine. I sacrificed a beast to this exploration.

I’m reading “The Women” by Kristin Hannah which is about nurses during the Vietnam war. There is a lot of talk about suturing wounds and mending broken bodies. Sewing these scraps together to create new shapes felt like triage to me. I think the world could use a battalion of nurses right now.

Sutured, 40” x 44”, Paula Kovarik, 2025

The piece undulates.

I may turn it horizontally.

Click here to Tell me how you are inspired.

Second thoughts

I think I am done with this piece. Problem is I am not sure what side is up. While I was working on it I just let the stitch tell me where to go. It is a drop cloth that I stitched together to create a surface to respond to. I turned it East, then West, then North and South. Each time responding to what I had stitched in the former session. The composition was secondary but it did seem to hold together when I took a breath to look at it.

Zooming in

Each session brought new textures. The fabric is billowy and unstable. It was difficult to tame until I let it have its way with me—letting the billow billow. I think it might be an old poplin sheet. I used a wool batting and a cotton muslin backing to keep it light. The whole piece is 35” x 37” so it was easily finished in a couple of weeks. After free-motion stitching I added a tight textural filling with hand stitching to contrast with the open negatives spaces left unstitched.

When to call it done?

I might be done with the stitching part of this piece. Just not sure which end is up. Each configuration could be the right one. Here are the four for your consideration.

Number One. This one has a large face in it.

Number Two. This one looks like a vehicle of some sort with wacky wheels.

Number Three. Here’s a happy guy in the middle with his arm upraised.

Number Four. This one turns those two wacky wheels into two wacky heads.

Let's take a vote

Where to go next?

Another piece of fabric, some thread and a little batting.

Remember: It’s Process not Product.

OK, yes, it does take some time

I came home from my residency in Japan with a bucket of ideas. And a bad cold. Despite the sniveling, snorting and hacking I was intent on making progress on works that I had started as well as new works brewing in my mind. The cold won. And I floundered, frustrated. It was another lesson in expectations vs. reality.

The first task was to preserve the work I did in Japan. Like this 18.5 foot drawing on a rice paper scroll. I fused the paper to muslin and now I am considering a wooden roller for it. It’s tricky. I am moving slowly to resolve the challenge.

I left for the residency with a piece on the wall that was unfinished. It’s a challenge in pattern and color. (see previous post) And after six weeks thinking in black and white I had to put it in the “works-in-NO-progress” pile. It just served to frustrate me rather than inspire.

I’m not really good at giving up. But the minute I did that with that piece I felt a rush of adrenaline that gave me permission to think about new things. And open up that bucket to start fresh.

When I am in a quandary about how to move forward I wrap thorns from a black locust tree with discarded thread. Or I fold fabric scraps into neat piles. It serves to slow me down so that I can clear my mind of distractions.

Giving myself permission to fail is something that takes practice. My expectations are high. I am impatient. Judgmental. And distracted. There are not enough hours in my day to accomplish what I want to do. I need to go back to the idea that it is all about the process and not about the product.

Stream of consciousness stitching on found fabric.

After folding a couple of shelves of fabric, reorganizing my tool closet and wrapping some thorns I found this piece of drop cloth that I had saved from a particularly colorful day of playing with ink. It is an amorphous, non-figurative mush of color on a used and reused scrap of sheeting. It pleases me. And challenges me to play. So that is what I am doing. Playing. Responding. Giving my time to that space of no expectations.

Winter is here. A time to notice the shortened days. A time to pay attention to the skeletons of trees.


Join Me!

You might notice that I have a number of scheduled workshops here on this journal page. I’ll be at the Santa Fe Madeline Island School of the Arts in March. The Alegre Retreat in Colorado in April. The Columbia FiberArts Guild in June. Quilting by the Lake in Geneva, NY in July. The Woodland Ridge Retreat in Menomonie, WI in August. Stitch in Durango, CO in September. And the Stitchin’ Post in Sisters, OR in September.

Treat yourself to a workshop in 2025.
We need to play with each other more!