How I Keep Sketchbooks

I pulled out all my previous sketchbooks this morning to do some looking. I do this from time to time when I’m looking for information or inspiration. I’m always surprised when I look back through mine at how useful I find them.

a stack of sketchbooks

I first began to keep a sketchbook in late 2014/early 2015. Before this time, I did not see how they were relevant to me and my art making. I do not draw or sketch, and so I did not understand how they might be a valuable part of my process.  This all changed when a colleague at school explained how she had recently learned to use them. For her sketchbooks were a place to journal, attach images, to make notes on ideas or specific pieces, and to record feedback from critiques and studio visits.

 Sketchbooks for me are a record of things that caught my attention, artists that I’ve discovered, concepts/words/images that are feeding my process. I often jot down notes, quotes and free writing based on what I’m reading, researching, and talks that I’ve attended. I’ve attached show cards for art events. I attach imagery of artists and their works that inspire me. Usually, I write a few sentences about what drew me to the work. Things I noticed right away, and sometimes insight about how I can resolve a question I’ve been having in my own work.

Sketchbook images of a trip to Santa Fe in 2015

 They serve to remind me of what I was interested in at a particular time and many of those ideas can be renewed. Often there are a brief outline for a piece that I thought about working on and somehow lost interest. Sketchbooks are a time capsule. I usually put the date on the cover of when I began the book and when it was finished.

 I have a few don’ts for using sketchbooks. Don’t hold back, a sketchbook isn’t precious. I use very inexpensive spiral books with blank paper. I tried to use nicely bound books that I purchased at art supply shops. This didn’t work for me as it was too nice to write in. Write everything in them. Usually I’ll find monthly, weekly, or daily goals of things I wanted to work on, deadlines that I was keeping an eye on. Sometimes there are journal entries when I had just a few ideas or feelings that I was working through.

Second, you don’t have to show them to anyone. They can be just for you. You can draw (badly or well) in them. You can cross things out. You can work through ideas – creating a visual record of things you tried that went well or didn’t. I print out some of my process pictures and then just tape them in. My sketchbooks will never be on display in a gallery. They are just for me—for now and for later.

Notes from a online Textile Talk and word notes from a audiobook that I wanted to remember.

Knowing Where to Look

Since blogging a few months ago about reclaiming weaving, I’ve been thinking about where to find my weaving impulses. I’ve tried a few things lately that interested me at the beginning, but then my interest wandered. I’ve flipped through books, Instagram feeds – nothing filled me with fire.

Then I happened upon an Instagram post featuring the tapestry of Finnish artist Soile Hovila and I felt an excitement build. Her work isn’t the traditional tapestry that I was taught with the warp threads covered by weft. Her warp threads were exposed, and it felt transgressive! Why? We get these rules set down by some mysterious “they.” Then an artist challenges them quietly and reminds us that rules are a temporary thing and always subject to change. Hovila’s work shows how she sees into the world with washes of color and light. The movement and quiet are combined skillfully and transport the viewer into her world and the way she sees.

Her act of exposing warp and weft supports the visual imagery of her work and the importance of it being a textile. There is nothing hidden. It isn’t a textile trying to be anything but itself. The exposed warp isn’t distracting or lack of skill on her part, but a carefully considered decision.

If I had made it to Finland in the spring, I would have seen her work on exhibition at The Craft Museum of Finland. That smarts a little, but for now I’ll have to view her work online. She has a lovely Instagram feed and shares her progress with the tapestry on her loom currently.

Where do you find your inspiration, where do you find your way through times when you feel stuck? How do you ask for help when you feel lost? Sometimes I think that the harder I chase my desire to find my place back at the loom, the more elusive it will become.

So how to solve this little problem? I work, I pay attention when something inside me perks up, surround myself other artists working away in their studios (even only if virtually for now), I look into the world, I write, I try to explore and push myself a little more each day. I know I will find it, I trust that, but it isn’t always on my desired timeline. I have plenty to work on, my task list grows each week, so I show up each day willing to get to work.

I have taken a few things off the loom recently. I did a sample with torn strips of map printed silk organza with some left over natural linen from my first transparency sample. I was curious how the silk “rags’ would look and I’m intrigued by the result. I have a book about Finnish American Rag Rugs to dig into for research and maybe that will be informative for where to go with this sample.

“rag” sample with printed silk organza

“rag” sample with printed silk organza - in window for light to pass through

Another piece off the loom is this small 7” x 7” transparency sample. The base cloth is 12/1 linen. I was cautioned that I might need to be gentle with it and prep it with some sizing. Of course, that means I dyed some and threw it on the loom without any sort of fuss. I wanted to see how much harassment it would take. It held up well and the loom waste looked a little fuzzy toward the end from friction. I’m happy with the fabric it made, and I’m interested in the imagery. I’m interested in the areas of open warp and weft. How that might impact the visual message of the piece? I have no idea where this is going, but I’m curious enough to keep working to see if a path emerges. I love the idea of using a traditional Finnish way of weaving and seeing if it has a place in my work. plan to do some embroidery on the cloth to push it a little more.

transparency woven sample

Making Home

In October of 2019, I washed out a bunch of fabric and yarns from my latest dye day. When they had been washed,  dried and ironed, I hung them up on my wall and stepped back. I had originally planned to use the fabrics to make smaller embroidered work, but I saw the potential for each of the three to be used as whole large cloth pieces. I began to work with the larger piece shown on the left in January 2020.  The orientation flipped in its final form.

Working with a larger piece of fabric was a bit daunting. I’m used to smaller works and I did want to lose the intimacy of those pieces. I began by setting some intentions. When I looked at this fabric, I saw lakes and lands of Finland. In planning for travel I had begun to follow a lot of photographers in Finland. They post a steady dazzling display of the beautiful lands of Finland through the seasons. If you ever need a soothing rabbit hole of Finland landscape photography, click here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I started by marking out what was land and what was water. In some places on the quilt, the boundaries were blurry which is a good thing. I then backed the fabric with quilt batting as I was going to do most of the stitching and embroidery with it for added loft and texture. I first outlined in green thread and free motion stitching landforms and then put in some initial water marks with blue threads. It gave me a place to begin and I could quickly focus in on smaller landforms in the larger piece.

I then began the slow process of embroidering and giving the land more definition, texture and interests. I tried not to look at all the surface that needed to be covered but focus in on the areas that I was working on. Again – I didn’t want to be overwhelmed. Embroidery is slow and it only gets done stitch by stitch. But I saw that I wasn’t getting the separation between land and water quite like I hoped for.

I tried a few things and what I found worked was outlining the water with a dark green running stitch.

I worked on this quilt through the early days of the pandemic, the lockdowns, the opening back up and the day to day news grind. It gave me a touchstone. Each day I knew what I needed to do. I just needed to put myself at my table, turn on my light, and let the threads slip through fingers and cloth to give voice to the hidden lands emerging from dye and fiber. It was comforting working on this piece. I thought a lot, listened to podcasts and audiobooks and kept working each day.

This piece will forever be a time capsule of 2020. The disappointment of postponing our trip to Finland, canceled residencies, canceled shows and life on pause. The horrors as the pandemic gripped the world and the anxiety of living in a time of deep never-ending uncertainty.

In each work, there are always problems to create, solve and a lot of work to do. There are times when I have no idea what I’m doing, but bit by bit I figure it out. This quilt never caused me to doubt myself like some do.

The biggest obstacle that I remember from making this piece was cutting away some of the fabric to add in handwoven fabric. Once selected and the fabric was cut, there was no way out but through.

Selecting handwoven cloth to use in the quilt.

I finished the embroidery stage a lot sooner than I expected. Sometimes that happens. It just felt done and I was ready for the quilting part. According to my Instagram notes it took four weeks to do the embroidery. I put the fabric on my worktable to take a look and then begin to pin the layers together for the hand quilting stage. I knew from the start that I wanted to hand quilt this piece. I wanted the slowness, softness that it would bring and the time element that has gone into this piece all along.

embroidery and hand quilting together

I finished the quilt in May way ahead of an October deadline for a show I wanted to enter. The work wasn’t accepted but I’m confident that it will go out in the world some where and sometime. The pandemic has put so much on hold, and this quilt can wait for its time.

I think the hardest part about this work was finding the right title. Sometimes when I’m designing or working on a piece the title will just appear in my head. I’ll just know. I jotted down a lot of possibilities for this one before selecting a simple title with two parts – the Finnish word and the English meaning – Koti: Home. Simple seemed best for this work. There is a lot of weight in the word home.

I don’t consider myself a quilter, but I love working with the quilt form in my work. Quilts come forward into the world with a lot of content just in their very nature - home, women’s work and time. In making conceptual work, you always hope you’ve done your job as an artist to have the meaning of the piece reach the audience.

Koti: Home

46" h x 32" w

Whole cloth quilt with handwoven fabric appliqué, hand dyed fabric, handwoven fabric, cheese cloth, hand embroidery, free motion machine stitched, and hand quilted.

Cotton, linen, and silk

 STATEMENT:

With what began as cloth for several pieces, when I saw the pattern I had created with dye, I saw the lakes and lands of my ancestor’s Finland and their adopted home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I began this quilt, the largest of my embroidered pieces to date, while planning a research trip to Finland which ultimately had to be postponed due to the pandemic.

I come from people deeply connected to land. Though memory fades, traces of ancestral homesickness can still be found in my family. Working slowly, using traditional craft, I capture land, time, and memory in quilt form to create a new map to express what it means to be home.