Bluster

I alternate between being obsessed with the news and choosing to ignore it all. As a citizen, I feel an obligation to be aware and to speak up. As an artist, all of that information is stacked up in my memory. It will inevitably show up in the work if I let it.

This is teaching season so a lot of my time is in the classroom or preparing for the classroom. Except for the airports I do love it. A week at Quilting by the Lake quieted a lot of the political chatter I was listening to and made me focus on making art. My students were eager, talented and experimental. We found time to share our stories, appreciate the process and laugh when the work brought us joy.

When I returned I wasn’t counting on being able to work in the studio. I had too many errands and I had to prepare for next week’s workshop at the Woodland Ridge Retreat in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, while unpacking this quilt I laid it on the table next to the piece below that had failed earlier in the year. They were stacked on top of each other and I saw a way to combine them.

Nonsense is made with a printed cloth I designed based on my Disruptors series.

This collage kept getting more complicated. I liked the ingredients but not the result. so it ended up on the scrap pile.

What follows are some of the details and a semi-final reckoning of how it ends. I’m calling it Bluster after all of those politicians and tv commentators who buzz our ears with the same stories day after day after day after day.

Bluster is a tornado of texture and color. I need to finesse the warp of it and I might add some hand stitching.

People ask me all the time how I can possibly cut up these pieces to create new ones. This art is not a fast process. Each piece takes many hours of contemplation and stitching. After all that effort the pieces can become too precious. For me the process of discovery is the prize. I don’t really seek new finished pieces. Instead I focus on working with what I have to make and remake art. The transformation is the point. What is old becomes new. And, look, I end up with lots of really great scrap pieces that can be used for more explorations in the future.

grid interrupted

Grids are elemental. They anchor, organize and subdivide space. They add order to chaos. They bring structure to cities. They show up everywhere: cages, tiling, supermarket shelves, architectural structures. So when I started this project I aimed to break the grid. I had two projects that were not successful up on my design board that I could use as raw material. Those two, added to the multitude of other scraps I have from unfinished pieces, provided a varied and textural group to work with.

I started by cutting the quilts up into 1, 2 and 4 inch squares. These were the tiles that would fit together conveniently when I butted them up against each other. I use a stitch that looks like a ladder to stitch the tiles together–raw edge to raw edge.

Each tile had its own story left over from previous incarnations. At first blush I liked the combination of the brilliant colored tiles against the neutral black and white canvas tiles. And though there is an implied grid here, it is not regular or confining. The piece could grow in every direction.

I could also use these base tiles to add even more texture and information with layered stitching. I admit I am a bit compulsive. I love traveling across a piece to find ways of joining disparate elements with stitch.

The end result satisfies my goal of interrupting a grid. There’s more to it than that though, the piece satisfies my interest in the mysteries of life—the crazy, cacophonous reality in which we live.

Grid interrupted, 57” x42”, Paula Kovarik

The tip off

Here’s a quick post about a piece that came together this month. I had some precious moments between teaching and preparing for the show at Austin Peay. It was good to be back in the studio, surrounded by raw materials.

It starts with some of those raw materials—pieces of cut up quilts, some fabric from Pat Pauly, and a bird chirping a new tune outside my window.

That bird was blasting it out. It seemed like a warning cry or territory claim—something that couldn’t be ignored. I listened to it for quite a while and looked around to see if there was a snake or another bird infringing on its territory.

Designing is a series of choices. This not that. Maybe some of the other stuff? No not that. I add and subtract, growing the piece until it starts telling me what it needs. Nothing is sewn together until I feel like there is a right way to put two pieces together.

I thought maybe the bird needed a witness. So I built one.

I did like the silhouette of the human but did not like the bottom part of him. So I lopped that off and added a wider expanse. The swirly inkblot came from a piece I did last year that happened to be hanging near the design board—a perfect candidate for the warning cry coming from the bird on the left. You can see how I debut other pieces below the composition. Some make the cut, others go back in the raw materials bin.

There comes a time when I do have to commit. I reassemble the composition on a table to be able to pick up each section to connect them. They’re like puzzle pieces. ….I do love puzzles. Each piece is butted up to its mate and stitched with a decorative stitch or free-motion stitch. Since the pieces are already quilted it would be difficult to seam them so this butting process makes that a little easier. The decorative stitching can be more or less obvious depending on how I want the piece to look. In this case I used black thread to emphasize the connections.

All along the way I add some detail stitching. In the case of the image below I thought the background floral fabric was too bright so I painted it with some thinned fabric paint to allow for the detail stitching to stand out more.

This dialog between the bird and the human became a warning cry to me. Living in a city I am aware of how little green space we have and how much is being paved over. So I crowded in some buildings.

The Tip Off. 26” x 69”, found fabric, cotton thread, wool batting. Paula Kovarik

The final piece. Maybe. I’ll let it sit awhile before I decide if it is really done.

Want to take a workshop?

If you would like to learn by doing I will be teaching at a number of locations this fall. Check the listings at right for how to register. I will be teaching free-motion stitching in San Diego at the SAQA Summit Conference September 22-24 and an At Play in the Garden of Stitch workshop in Miami November 3-6. That one is a combination stitching and collage class.

Progress shots

People ask me all the time if I have a plan in place for the work I do.

I don’t. Not anymore.

There are enough raw materials in my studio to inspire me to experiment rather than plan . I have come to understand that my process is more important than the final product. So I play instead of work. I daydream instead of analyze. I start instead of stall.

This piece, Beware the Jabberwock, revealed itself after much experimentation.

Discarded scraps were a starting point for this figure. It didn’t really turn into a being until I saw that eye.

I had some great green and orange patchwork that didn’t work out in its original composition so I cut it up and added a background to the figure. I did notice that he was centered within the green and black portions of the layout and decided I had to change that so that he was more off center. I also didn’t like the way that vertical like when through the top of his head.

The nice thing about using cut up scraps is you can reposition them by just cutting out a hole and filling it with a different piece. Since I was hoarding the green and orange bits I decided to add a third element with the bright white and multicolored bits from a different quilt. Adding more green and orange moved the figure slightly off kilter.

I really started to like this piece so I decided to make it larger by adding yet another grouping of scraps to the bottom edge and the top corner. Then I noticed for the first time that there are two figures, the little tan guy in the center and the monster eating his head in black. Balance problem solved.

Almost done. Just some extra details here and there. The jabberwocky has horns, there is a bit of chaos, the edges are raw. They suit my mood.
Beware the Jabberwock. 40” x 49”, Paula Kovarik

I'm breaking out of the rectangle

Cutting up quilts has become a hot topic out in the quilt universe. Many fashion houses and Etsy shops and clothing designers have recognized the incredible raw materials of hand crafted textiles and are beginning to offer items using those scavenged quilts as raw materials for their products. Everything from placemats to red-carpet robes are multiplying and monetizing something that should really be honored, cherished and preserved. Mary Fons made a great presentation regarding this issue on You Tube that has since been taken down. But you can find discussions about it elsewhere on the web.

I remember seeing an ad with the Kardashians in underwear sitting on quilts. I admit I was affronted by it. The juxtaposition of a vintage quilt and white tidy-whiteys on social media personalities was somehow reprehensible to me. It felt like appropriation of something I held dear. I do understand why the art director thought it might be clever though. Quilts have gravitas, memory, comfort and soul.

Melee is breaking out of the rectangle that normally holds my work. This piece includes pieces of cut up quilts that have diverse textures, colors and stitching. It has since been morphed into a pod seen below.

Some have asked me what I think and how my practice of using cut up quilts fits into the discussion. Yes, I do cut up quilts. They are quilts that I have made or have acquired through friends. They represent work that I did in the past and no longer seems relevant in my here and now. The act of cutting them up is deliberate, catalytic and scary. I know when I get out the rotary cutter that I could ruin something that I once cherished.

At first I was using cast off trimmings in the new collages. Then I looked around at some of the pieces that I had created earlier in my career and realized that storing them rolled up in the back room was getting me and them nowhere. Many of them had excellent texture, color or story in them that could live on in a new piece.

Here’s my base understanding as an artist: It’s process, not product. If I think of a piece as something that could have monetary value or brand recognition it loses it’s soul. I will cut up my work to use it again. I will not cut up someone else’s quilt without permission. I won’t cut up vintage quilts found in estate sales. Those have soul. Those have history. They are still warm, comfortable and represent someone’s careful work.

For now, I am cutting up quilts to create 3D forms. I connect the pieces, cut in darts, resew and add curves, then stitch again.

It’s process, not product.