Blog - Page 10 of 100 - Sherri Woodard Coffey

Rainy days

Azul y verde

Other than the rain, there’s not much news around here. As I’ve said before, living in Texas, I hate to complain about rain. It hasn’t been that long ago that we were suffering a drought, but currently, we’re getting about an inch of rain–per day! And I’m one of the lucky ones. Other sections of Texas are flooding and people are dying. I can only imagine what they’re going through.

The pieces above were cut off, strictly experimental with color. The bottom one has warp showing. I wanted to see how the color would shift with the white warp showing. Actually, the colors are pretty striking in person. I’ve decided that I like it enough to actually finish it, but therein likes the current problem. Since it’s not woven thickly like a tapestry or rug, I don’t know yet how it will look with a hem. Nothing to do but just try it. So, it’s steam-and-hem day, perfect for another rainy day.

And below is what I’m working on with the ikat. See the design yet? After this piece, I think I’m going to do some of what I call freestyle ikat.

New project, part of prairie series. What’s it going to be?

Crystal Bridges

A friend and I have been talking about going to Crystal Br idges for a few years now, then she mentioned it to another friend, and a ladies’ weekend was born. It just so happens that these friends are friends from going to school together in the small town where we grew up. Nice to have friends that have been around for that long. They know everything!

Some of us drove to Bentonville, Arkansas from Texas and two others drove from Tennessee. After all the driving, the consensus is that map programs suck! But we got there and stayed in a nice Airbnb house with four bedrooms and three baths, with a large space to gather and visit–quite reasonably priced, too.

For those of you who don’t know, Bentonville is the original home of Walmart. However, all of us were surprised to find a cute downtown area square with a park in the center. Further, Alice Walton is the one who studied art, built the museum, and bought the art for the museum. She did an excellent job.

This was the first thing we saw as we drove close to the museum building. it’s quite impressive.

Roxy Paine

Images

And then there’s this in the courtyard. She has eggs, hence the title.

Louise Bourgeois, Maman

Louise Bourgeois

Images

And then this…

Philip Haas

images

I took lots of pictures inside the exhibition area, but I keep coming back to this one. Yes, it’s graphite and ink on board. Take a look at the detail. It’s from the elbow of the woman on the right. Amazing! The image is itself so poignant, but when taken with the skill involved in creating this art, well, it’s incredible.

Charles White, Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep, 1954, graphite, pen, and ink on board

Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep (detail)

Charles White

Charles White images

The museum is large and these are only a few of the images. I’m posting more on Instagram–gradually.

Dithering-what’s next?

current weaving

This is what I’m doing in my dithering stage. Using up some of the many greens that I now have. The current weaving is simply throwing a shuttle, using greens in a kind-of-pseudo gradations piece. I have also pulled out many greens that I don’t like to overdye. I think some of them will be dyed by dipping one end of the skein in the dye, seeing what turns out and then dipping the other end to coordinate with it. Others may end up with a loose ikat-tied dyeing. I had an epiphany of sorts about doing some ikat pieces in a very simple way, just to be doing some weaving until the big inspiration sets in.

Below is the ikat board set up and ready to go. You can see the cartoon drawn on vellum, rough though it is. I was too lazy to really color in all those sections, but some squiggles will remind me of the way. This is only one section of many of this piece.

new cartoon, ikat board

By the way, if you’re interested in color, you may be interested in this website and a new color wheel. Have you ever pulled out a color wheel, but not been really satisfied with the options? I have done that, but ended up sticking with my gut many times. So check it out and tell me what you think.

Another lesson learned

Keep in mind–these pieces will be about 30 or more feet from each other when displayed.

paraments–not mirror image

Before writing this post, or at least titling it, I realized that I’ve written about learning lessons fairly often, so I did a search for “lessons.” No matter, I’ve got another lesson learned. As you may remember, I’ve been doing a commission of paraments for a local church. Now usually, when I do commissions, I dye the yarns, then go to the client’s house (or in this case, the church) and get approval for the yarns. This commission was voted on by a committee, and though I had submitted some of the yarns, not all of the colors were dyed at the time. In planning the weaving, I put all the colors on the floor and arranged and rearranged them until I found the order that I thought looked best. Here’s the lesson: I should have taken all those yarns and spread them out in the sanctuary. It never occurred to me that the lights would affect the colors so much. One of the greens, obviously a green, albeit an olive-y green, looks brown in those lights. And it’s in the middle! It bothers me, but one of the ladies mentioned how that color looked good with the wood of the pulpit. I know, this is the usual thing. The maker sees all the flaws, although I guess it’s debatable if this is a flaw or not. So, lesson learned! Even though it might inconvenience people, ask to go into the sanctuary and check out the colors. Go into the living room and check out the colors. Go!

Paraments–mirror image

Mark Making

An unsuccessful start–wonder if I can do something with this.

So what does a mark making book have to do with a weft-faced weaver. I’m not really sure, but I’m going to experiment with making marks on some sampling that I did. Kind of tells your right there that the sampling was not entirely successful, doesn’t it? Or it could have been successful, but I just didn’t like weaving it.

Mark Making

The mark making book that I’m talking about is called Mark Making: Fresh Inspiration for Quilt and Fiber Artists by Helen Parrott. Since I wanted to look at the book before buying it, I had to request it from the Interlibrary. For my purposes there’s one chapter in particular that I’m going to experiment with, although there’s a lot of information that might come in handy for inspiration or just developing a system for creativity. Sounds strange to use creativity and system in the same sentence, but we do need a system, of sorts. You can see some of the topics here in the table of contents.

Mark Making

Love these stitches!

Black and White sample

Speaking of sampling, I did a small tapestry section of the cartoon from last week. I discovered that weaving that particular design would drive me batty! I went back to my original plan to do it with ikat. Then, in setting up the ikat table and boards, I realized that I needed to re-do the cartoon. The re-do will be on vellum graph paper, drawn by hand, since getting enlargements is such a trial nowadays.

What’s next?

Peppers in the grocery store

I had to include the picture of the peppers because they make me smile, even though I had already posted it on Instagram. Aren’t they beautiful? I was tempted to bring some home just to look at, not being overly fond of peppers, but they were $5.00/pound. And I’d want a bunch to look good, so…

I took a workshop at the Kimbell Art Museum last week related to Japanese printing, although I’m not sure the actual printing actually had anything to do with Japan. We did go into the Asian room and look at all the beautiful screens and looked at slides of others, but they were painted, not printed. Then we had a wooden block and objects to glue onto it to make our printing block. There was a long piece of cotton taped and pinned to the table, so that once we had our blocks ready, we used a brayer to spread paint onto plexiglass. Once the brayer was filled, we rolled it onto the blocks and printed.

Printing block

I wanted a random pattern because there’s no way I could get everything to line up, which would frustrate me no end, as that perfection demon sits on my shoulder. Notice how some of the block prints off the “real” fabric. Also notice that the printing looks black, although you can see from the block above that it’s really a dark red. Oh, well. Wonder if it will change if it’s washed.

Cloth pinned on table

Below is just the fabric. I see there are a few empty spots.

Cloth printed

Maybe I should have done something like this rug in a Target ad, or the other black and white ones designed by Nate Berkus. I really wish I could include a picture here, but don’t want to violate any laws.

My neighbor took much more care, not only to make her block, but in the printing she uses too close-together colors. Nice job!

My neighbor

Next weaving?

It’s time to decide what to weave next. This is a part of a cartoon for a weaving. (Ever notice how when you take pictures of paper, it never looks white?) I made the lines right angles but can’s decide if it would be better if they were woven at a different angle. The right angle part was to just keep it simple. Thoughts? Advice?

Frank Stella

Rhombus Wool, cotton, dyes 54.5 x 29 inches $675 ©Sherri Coffey

Exhibition catalog

FRANK STELLA: A RETROSPECTIVE opened on April 17 at the Modern in Fort Worth. The members’ opening reception was Friday, April 16. Although it started at 6:00 pm, I arrived early because I was concerned about parking. I am so glad I did! The curator’s tour of the exhibition was in progress and was very educational. I have found that when you learn more about a particular piece of art, I can enjoy it more, even if it’s not exactly a favorite. A curator tour is not always available, but a docent tour usually is, with a bit of planning–note to self.

The exhibition is organized into several rooms, sometimes by the type of paint used, sometimes by series–or maybe those are both the same thing, as in the copper series. The Moby Dick series is in a room which can also be viewed from above. In these pieces there is a general feeling of water, which is more evident standing in the room above. The Copper series is in another room. (And as an aside, our group was told that Stella used to have to paint the hull of the family boat with copper paint.) He also used Benjamin Moore paint for a series. Also, look Jasper’s Dilemma, one of his larger Benjamin Moore paintings. It is made up of concentric squares, which draws the eye to the center, but look at the surprise when your eyes get there.

Below is a picture from the book with small Benjamin Moore paintings.

Small group of Benjamin Moore paintings. Each is approximately 12 x 12 in.

Frank Stella’s work is colorful and have interesting shapes that draw the eye, but I even like the black series. Maybe the main reason they are so appealing to me is they make me want to immediately get to my design desk and start drawing. And as a girl who discovered that she owned seven protractors when reorganizing the office, how can I resist a series called Protractor?*

Process is also fascinating to me, so I was pleased to find several plates of studies and maquettes for his various series. All of the pictures here are ones that I took of some of the pages of the catalog of the exhibition. There were no studies for the Protractor series, but MOMA has some online here and here. A whole page of studies and maquettes can be seen here.

Irregular Polygon series maquettes.

Images of the Irregular Polygon series can be seen here.

Studies from the exhibition catalog

Studies from the exhibition catalog. I love that he uses notebook paper and graph paper! I have a whole drawer of graph paper.

more studies

There is also a large selection of sculptures in the exhibit, not my favorites, but when you know a bit more about the work, they become much more interesting. By the way, we were told that Stella calls them paintings. When you look at those huge pieces, you can see why he would need the large, one acre enclosed studio space he has in upstate New York. Yes, one acre!

I found some great interviews or articles about Stella. One of my favorites is this one from the Wall Street Journal. In fact, WSJ has several articles about Frank Stella, here and here. Which reminds me, that I enjoyed reading the titles of the pieces, and there’s an article about the wacky titles. Also, if you’ve never checked out WikiArt, it’s worth the effort. They also have an app (for that).

*I use protractors as part of the design process because of angles. Certain angles can be woven as smooth lines, while others will be stair-steppy. I like to weave smooth lines, so use the protractor to make sure the angle is one that weaves smoothly.

Finish work still

A video made with my phone...room for improvement. Doing finish work.

Finish work step 1.

A video posted by Sherri Woodard Coffey (@sherriwcoffey) on Apr 13, 2016 at 12:21pm PDT

Finish work

Three of five

So, instead of weaving, this is the finishing portion of my work. Our guild is having a sale April 30, so I decided that these pieces that have been rolled up in a basket, need to be finished. At least one of them does–I’m still not sure about the others. And this picture shows only three of the five that are woven but unfinished. Do you ever take things off the loom (or whatever type project you;re working on), and just don’t like it? Or sometimes it’s been so troublesome you just don’t want to look at it again? The big half-diamond piece is getting fringe, something I haven’t done in years. For some reason, fringe just seemed appropriate somehow. You can see at the top that one end has been completed. The others will have their ends woven in, or not, as in they might not get finished after all. Both were experiments. Sometimes experiments are just not very successful.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is have a Frank Stella retrospective exhibition that begins this weekend. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Frank Stella’s work, but surely that’s not true. I’m sure MOMA or the Whitney or some other museum I’ve been to in Philly or Boston has one or two, but at the moment I don’t remember seeing them except in pictures. I’m really looking forward to this exhibition. I’ve also added the movie portion of the museum’s offerings to my membership in an effort to get out more. It’s so much easier to not get out. Working on it… There are other exhibitions this weekend and next that I’m going to try to get to. One is in Granbury, a quaint town about 45 minutes away, and one is in Dallas.

They say we may have more severe weather this week, which includes hail. Maybe I’ll call the insurance adjuster in August. At the rate we’re going, you could get a new roof and have to replace it the next week.

In recognition that’s it’s the little things that count–the taxes are done and the mower started. Pretty exciting stuff!

And now for real life

Off the loom

The goal has been completed! It has been cut off the loom. (Green is not my favorite color, so I’m a bit conflicted about this.) Now comes the actual finishing, but for now it rests. Now comes the real life part of my existence. For the next two weeks, taxes must be done. That will be my major goal, obviously, but the brain just cannot do that all day, so there is other catching-up to do–mowing, weeding, planting, studio cleaning, life, etc. And yes, finishing this piece is on the agenda, but first I have to clean off the dining room table, my adjunct studio. That’s the place where the Crazy Monkey is residing for now, all my dye samples, and various other stuff relating to weaving and finishing.

In the midst of all the things that have to get done, there are some things that are good for the soul. One is to have lunch with friends, also on the agenda this week. And weaving–I’ve tied on and started a couple of interim pieces until I have time to get to the “real” work I have in mind. I also made a trip to the big box store for lots of pipe and stuff to make a loom. This is something I started years ago, but walked away. More on that next time.

And now for an image that makes me smile…this is my Kleenex box that sits on my end table. Every time I glance at it, I love it. Maybe adapt this for ikat???

Kleenex box