FAMILY, JOHN, FAMILY

Some Family Fotos:

July is...

Bon Soir!

Month of July: full: not much quilting (but a meeting), lots of writing, teaching a Creative Writing class, in-town family, and...and...and.

First, an image of "Self as Bomb, Zelda Bomb," another miniature self portrait in the vein of the fruit/etc. I've been doing.

It's about 14" x 20", from commercial cottons and a kids' shirt, fused and machine-appliqued, and machine pieced. It's subtly about world domination/violence.

Then, a couple photos from Fourth of July fireworks with Mom, Sue H. and family.

I love the parallelism/contrast between both man-made lights in first photo, and the ironies of the beauty happening above and the nonchalance of some spectators in the second photo.

Here's a photo of my now-finished Creative Writing class (MW evening, 6-9:55, at William Carey):

I told them we look like the Twelve Disciples of Literature.

Some writing:

writing poems in class

students scared of getting it wrong

heavy sighs, then silence

classroom

clock ticks

what have you learned today?

watching meteors

after the rain

their moist lips

And that's it for now....

Next time, on Quilts, Movies, Making...

Weekley travels to...

Night shoots

Hey Folks,

Posting from a collection of night photos, inspired by entering UK Competition, "Life After Dark." I started walking around towns, photographing, when I lived in Lubbock, TX, even included some of those in an exhibit with Linda Cullum at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. I enjoyed the low hum of cars, electric lights, and an occasional breeze. Or, nights I went shooting from my car, when it'd snowed and condensation began to form on my lens from the cold. I focused mostly on aged buildings cracking, brought to life by halogen, tungsten, or neon lights and equally important shadows. I also had the fortune of working with author Gail Folkins on the book, Texas Dance Halls, and many nights we spent listening, watching, and recording life in and around dance halls.

Then, when I graduated from TTU in 2006, I started focusing on trees: trees in landscape, trees against buildings, trees in urban settings.

Here are some examples from my earlier night work:

Above: from a fair in Fort Wayne, IN in 2006. I liked the lonely girl waiting for the night to be over.

From the Dance Hall book in 2005: I enjoyed the girl watching me watching the scene.

Above: a tree lit by a streetlight in Fort Wayne, 2006. It strikes me how the trees seem like living things emerging from the shadows, but hiding also.

Also from Fort Wayne.

Also from Fort Wayne.

Also from Fort Wayne. I don't know if I'd gotten a hold of Robert Adams' Summer Nights yet (see the images here), but I can definitely see the similarities.

Then, when I moved back down to MS, I kept shooting at night.

In the neighborhood in Ocean Springs, around Christmastime, 2007. I'd started shooting Christmas lights in Fort Wayne, but kept it up in MS. The above and below photos.

Above: I liked the sad look of deflated Christmas lawn ornaments.

Above: I enjoy cutting off or minimizing what many think should be the focus of photos. So, many would want the beauty contestant to be in the center of the photo. How boring! It's much more psychologically interesting to have her marginalized. Imagine how alone she might feel on stage, lights in her face, everyone watching and waiting for her to do everything perfectly.

Above: Mom in the kitchen at night in Steubenville, OH in 2008. Many happy memories of Mom in the kitchen, but this one's a look at another side of that experience.

Above: Once I'd shot trees for a while, I got into shooting flowering trees and flowers more specifically. This is a tulip poplar or a magnolia, I believe, in Jackson, MS in 2010.

Above: a church on the edge between Petal and Hattiesburg, MS, right next to the train tracks, in 2008.

Above: my older brother, David, and I went to the Henry Ford Museum and it was getting on toward evening and I saw these two lights, shining together in the darkness.

Above: went to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby with a dear friend and her kids. I enjoyed the irony of the young'ins contrasted with the weapons, more specifically, artwork made from war paraphernalia.

Above: this final one, at evening rather than night, is also from Ocean Springs; somebody'd painted over the stop-sign. Who knows what inspired them.

Have a good one.

M

Gee whizzles: a month and a half!

Good afternoon, Dear Readers!

It's been a looooooooong month since you last heard from me. But, don't fret, I've been keeping busy when not limping through gout troubles. :)

Here are some of the most recent projects I've been creating.

First up, I was reading in this book (Quilt Masterpieces or something of the sort) and got inspired by an Amish quilt there. Sooooooo, in two days, I whipped up three tops, then the next week, I whipped up another.  Here they are in the order I created them:

This one's around 30" x 30", and I dig the sparkly blue watery fabric. The whole thing's very...spicy!

Next:

I'd wanted to do a silk piece before (entirely silk), but hadn't. So, I figured, Why not?. Actually, the brocade in the center isn't silk, and neither is the green, if you must know. BUT HEY, it's mostly silk. It reminds me of Superman. It's roughly 30" x 30" also.

Then:

The previous two felt fairly contemporary, so I wanted to give  a shout-out to the old ways, but in plaids. I dig the blue/brown combination, and the plaids really give it life. It's maybe 16" x 16".

Finally:

I had this awesome superhero fabric, and wanted to make an Amish quilt say something through my fabric choices, so, here I've mixed lady superheroes with Nursery rhyme characters in an Amish quilt design in contemporary (not typical Amish) colors. I think it's cool. It's maybe 24" x 24".


After the Amish thing, I needed to finish a piece for a challenge a friend and I gave each other. We were to use silk ties in the piece, and it could be as large or small or whatever style we wanted. Here's mine, which combines the electric blue silk and silk ties in the paper-pieced squares. I left the large open spaces for lots of quilting.

I also wanted to continue the "Self as..." series, but using kids' clothes. I'd gone clothes shopping at Goodwill when they had a great sale, and got some cool stuff. So, this is the result of one of my adventures in kids' clothes:

It's only about 24" x 24" and is titled, "Self as Sapling Silhouette." I dig the brand name of the kid's shirt in relation to the rest of the fabrics' meanings.

I also, for whatever reason, got inspired to make another Bargello quilt, but one which I'd had planned in my quilt journal for a while now. This is only a portion of it, but when it's done, it will be comprised of four exactly repeated quadrants cut at a 45 degree angle, sewn together.

Finally, I've enjoyed Julia Graber's work ever since I first saw it at the Pine Belt Quilters' Show in Hattiesburg, MS about five years ago or so. She's a member of SAQA and the MS/AL/AK/LA regional group as well, and I got a chance to see more of her work and talk with her in person at one of their meetings.

Rena Krol, a friend and fellow quilter from Bay Oaks Quilt Guild, had completed a piece she made in a class Julia taught. I loved the techniques in the quilt and knew I wanted to make something using the same process.

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Rena's piece, but here are two of Julia's, which you can purchase at her site (linked above at her name):

So, here's the start of mine. It'll end up having a water lily, a water lily leaf, and a dragonfly. I chose the dotty green fabrics to mimic the roundness of the water lily leaves and the yellow striped background illustrates the sun reflecting off of the water.

  

I think the piece is about 20" x 30".

Well, folks, that's about it for this long edition.

You might be thinking, Wow! He's been busy! But, I did make it a goal to complete one quilt top per week, and to completely finish one quilt per month for 2015. I'm on target so far!

I hope you're doing well and that your creations are delightful.

For now,

M

A Photo Week...

I tend to do things in seasons: quilt a lot, then rest, write a lot, then rest, photograph a lot, then rest, so that when I'm not quilting, I'm photographing, or when I'm writing, I'm not photographing, though this isn't always the case. Frequently, however, it is. That doesn't mean I don't photograph when I'm quilting or write when I'm photographing, but one tends to take more focus than all three at once.

I used to get on my case about not doing all three, or about not doing one particular thing when I wanted to, rather than what I was doing at the time. I'm learning to ride my waves better, hopefully, though it's still a process.

So, this week I did quilt some (won't show you photos yet!!!), I wrote some, but I also photographed.

Here are a few photos from this week.

First up: it's becoming Spring here in Mississippi, and that means time to plant flowers! Mom bought some from Dollar Tree the other day, and they needed to be soaked before planted, so they're here. I particularly appreciated the reflection of the trees outside in the unyet-formed flowers soaking in the bowl, also particularly ironic considering all the rain we've had this week.

I love how vagrant I look in this photo. Reminds me of photos of Walt Whitman looking starry-eyed. My hair is a hot mess and I'm tired, but I still dig it. I've been growing my hair for this movie I'm hoping to get in, but I'm enjoying how much grey I'm getting in my beard and along my temples. :)

I dig how, in this next photo, the pears face each other, but also the symmetry and suggestion of the parallel trees in the background. Are the pears longing for outside? Have they been plucked from the trees in the back? Are they fallen?

What's better than kitty photos? Photos of your own kitties: here, Sandstorm (looking at us) and Meeka (checking out her brother) lay on the floor, because it's cool and they're not quite sure what to do about this heat yet. Boy, wait until August!

Had lunch with my good friend, Sonja, and enjoyed the light seemingly emanating from this glass. Illustrative of some of our conversation.

That's it, folks!

Have a good week.

Much hugs,
M