Baptism by Fire finished

I finished hooking and binding Baptism by Fire this week.  It is 18" by 46".  The entire surface of the rug is waffled with four analogous colors in 8-values each: McIntosh Million 101; Finnigan Flame 102; Jacky Lantern 103; Somerset Sunset 104. 

There was no drawn design.  To create this original abstract, I simply concentrated on values, hooking similar values downward, with my waffling technique.  To waffle, I work downwards, hooking a few loops and then jumping over and hooking a few more loops, skipping some loops along the way.  I then continue with another color/value and build downwards, hooking a few loops and skipping one or two, jumping over a bit and hooking down some more.  Then I go back in and keep filling in until the area is thoroughly hooked.  I move to the next area and do more of the same.

I have envisioned this for many years, and although I tried desperately to acheive it in paint, I was not able to do so until I turned to try it in wool. 

What I'm learning about Abstract rug hooking

I am almost finished hooking Baptism by Fire. I have about six inches in length to go. It has been a different experience from hooking representational pieces. What am I learning about hooking abstracts?

1. Color matters more. Since there is no 'picture' to view, what really matters is color. Color is what grabs the attention and gives the emotional pull to the piece. So color can't be 'off'. I thought that randomly hooking colors next to each other would be fine. But there were times I had to go back and pull out and adjust the color because it was 'off'.

2. Value matters more. I have known how important value is to representational pieces since it is what 'pops' the object to be viewed. But when you have no object, the values are what the eye sees as the 'picture'. So where I hook the light values is where the eye goes. The eye then rests in the dark values and the medium values disappear. Again, I have found that I have had to go back and rehook areas of the rug to get the value right so the visual flow was not interrupted.

3. Size matters more. The emotional impact of the piece increases with the size of the abstract. The more length I have added onto my piece, the more I like the feeling of it when I view it. I find the same is true when I go to a gallery and view abstract art. The size of the pieces (which are often enormous or overscale) create a feeling of immensity and power.

4. Direction matters more. The direction of the hooking is extremely important. It is what provides the movement. Without an object to view, the direction of the hooking provides the interest. Straight rows decrease the movement and keep the piece flat and slow (which might what you want in certain abstracts). Slight curves all lined up in rows effects slight movement and peace. The more curve, the faster the flow. Interspersed color or value such as the waffling technique I used in Baptism by Fire has the fastest, even chaotic, flow.

Learn more about Abstract Art

Heidi posted a link to this u-tube video about Abstract Art on RHD. The clip is so good that I am embedding in my blog in case you missed it on Rug Hooking Daily. I hope it will inspire you to go abstract with your hooking, and join the 2010 Abstract Rug Challenge on RHD.

Back to rug hooking

The academic conference was wonderful, but it is also wonderful to be back at home in the evenings. I have returned to my abstract, asking Wade to hold it up this way and that so I can see the way the light is hitting it and the movement of the shadows. So I spent this evening pulling out areas and adjusting, mainly removing some of the very light areas and the middle mediums, and replacing them with darker values. I have also decided that this will be one panel of a tetraglyph which I am going to call "Elements". I will hook the other three all the same size, all abstracts, but with different textures.

The red panel (FIRE) is an example of 'color penetration', where I am using four colors in all of their values in such a way that the colors penetrate each other. My plan is to set up the other panels to experiment with other types of abstract expression. I would like one to play with 'color fields' (raw plains of color) and another to work out 'color bands' (linear bands of color). I haven't figured out the fourth panel yet. But I know it will come to me as I make my way along this abstract road.

Generating Abstract Ideas

As I have been reading about abstract art this year, I have been trying to think of ways to apply the principles to rug hooking. I have started to come up with some practical suggestions to create abstract rug studies so I'm going to begin to share them on the blog, and will add more as they come my way.

Abstraction means taking something and moving it away from realism. Abstract art does this by taking representational art and 'abstracting' it, moving it away from a realistic representation of the object, to try to get at the nature of the object rather than reproduce the object. Or it eliminates the object altogether and works in color fields, lines or forms only. The "theory" behind abstract art is that it is not about the object, but about the painter making visible the inner self.

Here are some practical suggestions for designing abstract rugs:

1. Chop a small portion of a photo of an object. Enlarge the small portion to the size of your foundation. Draw this on your foundation.
2. Take a photo, enlarge it to the size of your foundation. Outline the objects you want with a big marker. Cut or slice the enlargement into different pieces. Rearrange them into a mosaic of your liking. Draw lines around various pieces of the mosaic if you want to add a linear element. Draw this on your foundation.
3. Take a photo and enlarge it. Draw thick black lines around the objects. Distort some. Enlarge some of the objects, but not others. Arrange the objects to your liking. Hook stark lines around the objects perhaps like the cubists did.
4. Take a photo, enlarge it, and change up the colors, using unnatural or unexpected colors. Simplify and distort slightly the objects before hooking them.
5. Draw free forms or run free lines across your foundation. Hook by concentrating on color and transition of color.
6. Go geometric, but funky. Keep away from repeated motifs lined up or in quilt blocks. Let the geometrics run around the foundation.
7. Hook colors with no design at all. Just an empty foundation to fill up with color. Hook freely.

Consider joining the 2010 Abstract Challenge over on RHD. I am finding hooking a color field (#7 on my list) to be very liberating.

Making progress

I have been working on the abstract, Baptism by Fire. It is coming along, now measuring 17" across and 12" high. The size doesn't show well in this picture, but the piece is becoming more powerful the bigger it gets.

I am having fun hooking it, although it is much more challenging than it looks. Being conscious of color and movement of line without a drawn form takes some time to get used to. I have done quite a bit of reverse hooking already, and it took about a week to figure out what I am doing.

But hooking this abstract is also liberating, hooking with a certain randomness is a pleasurable experience. I find myself immersed in the color of what I am hooking, and the color seems to be unfolding in the piece emotionally, as I feel so moved to hook a certain strand of red or orange or yellow. I like hooking the darks the best. I feel a sense of richness and deepness when I hook them into the piece and the light values are supported by them, almost dancing in their depth.

Abstract progress

I started to work on the abstract rug for the 2010 Abstract Challenge. It is tentatively called "Baptism by Fire". I am waffling the entire area using 6-cut. I am discovering that the 6-cut is a little more difficult to waffle because it creates a very tight mat. So I'm a little concerned about that. I'll try to address that issue as I hook the mat. I'm using swatches #101, 102, 103 and 104.

Thinking about abstract art

The abstract art challenge is a REAL challenge for me because ALL of my art in the past has been representational. Honestly I have never understood abstract art until I moved to Houston and went to the Rothko Chapel and the Menil Museum and stood in the presence of Rothko paintings. Rothko worked in something called "color fields" which are huge vibrant spaces of luminous colors atop other luminous colors. I couldn't stop gazing. I was transfixed.

So I started to buy books about the Rothko Chapel and about Rothko's paintings, to try to understand what was going on with his work. That was when I encountered his explanation of his work, why he painted color fields, why he abstracted and moved completely away from representational art. Like many abstract artists, he thought that abstract art was a form of revelation and prophecy that translated the artist's inner spiritual vision into a fabric of forms and colors. So abstract art was about expressing the inner self visually.

"White Center" [1950] by Mark Rothko

Another favorite abstract artist, Georgia O'Keeffe said about her art as she struggled to give external expression to her internal vision: "I said to myself, 'I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.' I decided to start anew - to strip away what I had been taught - to accept as true my own thinking.[...]I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown - no one to satisfy but myself."

Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930 National Gallery of Art USA

I keep thinking about these artists. I keep looking at their work. And the more I do so, the more amazed by them I become. But amazement doesn't necessarily translate into my own art. I have challenged myself this year to hook an abstract piece. And every time I attempt to hook an abstract, I struggle. I am limited by my training. I am enveloped in representational and figurative thought. It is so much easier for me to hook a tiger's face than a field of color within other fields of color. But for a year now, I keep having visions of red taking form, interlaced with orange, like spiritual fire or baptism, but I am unable to express this visually in a rug (or a painting).

So this week I searched on Amazon to see if I could find help, some book that might suggest projects I could try to free me from representational thought. The book I selected just arrived in the mail, and I am thrilled with it. It is written by Rolina van Vliet, Painting Abstracts: Ideas, Projects and techniques. It contains 65 exercises written by an abstract artist and teacher of expressionism. It is designed to be simple and break painters free from the cocoons that shelter them.

Van Vliet writes in her conclusion, "I wanted to help you to develop a more challenging way of painting. It is of no importance whether you are now a fan of the abstract or simply of the figurative. Your acquaintance with the abstract method of painting has shown you the way to yourself, your inner being, your own talent. I hope that along the way you have discovered and experienced the essence of free painting. I wish you much success."

So my plan is to go over to Michael's and buy a few packs of small canvases tomorrow. The lessons are so simple and fun that I am going to set up my six year old on the table next to me with his own canvas (he loves to paint) and together we are going to try some of Van Vliet's lessons. My hope is that I will be able to free myself enough in paint that I will be able to translate the experience to textiles and hooking which take much more time and commitment. Baptism by Fire has to be born.

My Ten-Minute project for the second season of the challenge

Now that the second season of the TEN-MINUTE CHALLENGE has started, I thought it might be a great motivation to those of us who have (many?!) UFOs taking up space in our closets and under our beds to encourage us to finish one of them in the second season (by July 31st). I've put up a special discussion forum for it on the RHD group site, and I invite any challenger to post the UFO you would like to finish, and then the finished project. If you don't have a UFO (how lucky you are!) or don't want to finish one in this second season, than just keep working and logging your time as you have been doing.

Here is mine. It is a huge rug (I forget the actual dimensions) and I call it the C.H. Moore rug because I used to hook on it while I was demonstrating on the lawn of the C.H. Moore Historical Mansion in Clinton, Illinois when I lived there years ago.

This UFO is taking up space in my closet that I could be using for other things. It is in a huge plastic box and the lid is broken because it has been banged around from here to there so often. I am tired of seeing the box and I am tired of dragging it around.

The rug was intended for my dining room. It is hooked with all recycled wool that I overdyed. I designed the rug because I wanted to try my hand hooking an oriental. I had no idea how utterly bored I would become hooking the repetitive patterns and limited colors. So I stuffed it away in the box and tried to forget it was there.

I need to come up with a creative way to get this rug finished. I have my thinking cap on. Some of my reading about abstract art (for the 2010 ABSTRACT ART CHALLENGE, also on RHD) has given me some ideas. So stay tuned...

2010 Abstract Rug Challenge begins

I received enough positive feedback about this challenge that we have created a group forum on Rug Hooking Daily HERE. Please pass word around.

Joining is as easy as clicking the button "Join this group" on RHD page.

This challenge has two goals: to learn about abstract art and to hook an original abstract rug.

1. Each month, challengers will read and discuss published information about abstract art.
2. Challengers are encouraged to go to an art museum at least once during the year to view abstract art and share their experiences of it by writing about it on the group's comment wall.
3. Challengers will complete at least one hooked abstract project, no less than 400 square inches, in any shape, using any materials that will hook.
4. Challenge will be completed on December 31, 2010.
5. Challengers are encouraged to discuss their progress, ask questions, upload pictures, share information and support via the group's comment wall.
6. In order to organize things, we will reserve the Discussion Forums for our discussion of the published materials we are reading and the art museums we are touring.
7. Challengers may decide to jointly publish an article in ATHA Newsletter or Rug Hooking Magazine about the challenge and its results.

Is anyone interested in a 2010 Abstract Rug Challenge?

I have been thinking about hooking an abstract, something that isn't concentrated on pictorial form, but texture or color or value - something free form and less planned than I am usually comfortable with.

I haven't seen too many abstracts hooked, and then only in photos or magazines. I'm not studied in terms of abstract art either. So I'm a bit apprehensive. But 2010 seems to be as good a year as any to try something new and push the boundaries of what I normally choose to hook.

I'm wondering if anyone else would be interested in a 2010 Abstract Rug Challenge? We might find and read together a modern art book once a month as we each work on hooking our own abstract piece. This might help inspire us and we can learn about modern art along the way. I'm thinking something doable but challenging: at least 400 square inches (for instance: 20 by 20 square; or 15 by 27/17 by 24/10 by 40 rectangle; or an irregular or round)? Materials: anything goes? Finish deadline: December 31? What ideas do you have? Are you interested?

PHOTOS: all are inspirations I found through google