variations on a theme

At the Art Hospital we're planning a staff show based around this theme:

Reasons not to make art. Different artists explore the distractions, reasons, obstacles, excuses, and feelings that prevent Bloomington artists from creating.

I think about this oh, at least once or twice a day. I'm interested, however, in your reasons for not making art. Or even not wanting to make art. Please comment! I really want to know!

survival skills and stuff in my etsy shop.

At work we got a couple of Boys Own Paper to work on.



If you click on the images, it'll take you to the Flickr page and if you click on "All sizes" you should be able to read the contents. I'm pretty envious of all the stuff readers of Boys Own Paper get to learn. Useful Fowls for Eggs or Meat? Who doesn't need to know that? And look at these ads:



Why pay a high price when you can just build your own steam engine, indeed?

I was pretty lucky, I guess, in that my parents were fairly hands-on and taught me to do lots of crafty things as a kid, but even so I feel sort of underprepared for many situations. I'm really struck by how these magazines, as silly and gender-specific and occasionally offensive as they may be, are so useful. Kids reading this were learning about animals and survival skills and the toys they could order were real tools!

I don't have kids so I can't really say how this compares to kids' toys and publications now, but I'm going to go ahead and guess you can't just buy a kid a mitre cutting machine. My point is not really to rail about KIDS THESE DAYS; more to say that, I feel like no one knows how to do anything, that so few people know real life skills, and if the grocery and the car dealership disappeared tomorrow, I know a lot of people that would be screwed. Including myself, probably. We could probably stand to learn a little bit about useful fowls and building steam engines. Once upon a time it was vital for people to have this kind of knowledge, but not now.

I guess now we teach kids about computers, which is of course good -- I am not one of those that advocates a return to a Simpler Time, but the basics of life don't change. It's important to know how to grow a tomato and sew a button. I think a lot about the fact that by neglecting all of this important "simpler" information, we're really doing ourselves a disservice.

Of course, I'm preaching to the converted here. I know that all 8 of you reading my blog are fantastically talented and self-sufficient people. I take deep comfort in the fact that we can call on each other when society inevitably collapses!

On a lighter note, I started backing my own cloth for bookcloth and I'm selling some on Etsy, if you like garish patterns. Make some books before you can't order online and have to spin and wax your own thread!



Obviously, now I'm kidding. Mostly.

lazy eye patch

lazy eye patch
Originally uploaded by thirdpersonpossessive

Just now getting around to blogging this ... this was a last-minute addition to the Constructive Embroidery show with Meagan Haberman-Ducey and Lucy Robinson I recently participated in here in Bloomington, IN.

The eyepatch is another reverse-punch needle piece (related images: Baby Automaton reverse punch-needle embroidery, a "right-side-up" punch needle embroidery).

Unfortunately because of the rush to get this thing done I didn't document the entire process, & so I don't have a photo of the back side of this piece. What you see here is usually called the the reverse of this type of embroidery, so the other side is actually incredibly dense pile, which I covered with felt so the loops wouldn't come out. It made a nice little pillow for my eye .

This is an actual portrait of my own eye and hence looks even more weird and frightening on than you might expect:



The main problem with this technique is that it's very hard on the floss. If you haven't used a punch needle before, basically it's a hollow needle and the floss is threaded through the shaft of the needle and comes out at the point. The stitches are made by punching the needle into very taut fabric, leaving a pile on one side and small stitch on the other. Because the floss is rubbing against both the needle and the fabric before you're finally done with the stitch, it gets a little shredded on its journey and loses its luster. When you view the image at its largest size you can see how the stitches are very tiny, but also look a bit frayed and messy. So far I haven't found a solution to that, maybe just to use a different kind of fiber than floss entirely. But there are so many pretty colors of floss ... I just don't know. It's still an experiment in progress.