What is on the inside

I am trying to get ready for a rug workshop next weekend that I am attending on backgrounds and borders.  I want to create an abstract that I can hook with my scraps which have accumulated in a large basket.  So I am thinking of my entire piece as a background.  There will be no foreground or image. 

I have been wanting to do a series of trees, exploring their textures and curves.  So I took some pictures of tree bark when we made our annual trek a month ago to gaze at the bluebonnets in Brenham.  I worked up the picture on my iPad and then downloaded it into Posterazor (what a great program!) to enlarge it.  Here is the result.  I have to transfer it to screening and then to my background, but I am relieved to have the image done.

The image is so thrilling to me - the depth of value, the curving lines, the pockets of dark and light - that I printed a second smaller copy to cut and paste in my Unintentional Art Journal.  I smeared black and white acrylic paint, covering the page.  I cut the image in half so that I removed the dark center.  After pasting the images on either side of the page, I sat and looked at it for a while, and this is what I wrote across the core:

What is on the inside is what matters but where does that leave the outside is it only skin cracked open like birch bark peeling away from a trunk wood cleaved and stripped clean as a whistle gray the heart of things blown raw open and wide leaving what an empty core perhaps hollow and deep yawning with darkness pregnant with life is it something more a place where squirrels nest in leaves and cones and needles or fox or badger or owls only to be abandoned after sleep when the inside is turned outside and new life springs from the womb.

Seeing Red update

I did it.  I finally printed out the back label, bound off the edges, and put it in the envelop.  My little abstract mat "To the Point" will be making its way to Missouri to become part of ATHA's Seeing Red mat challenge.  The exhibit will be traveling a few places prior to its set up at the ATHA Biennial in Lanchaster.  I will try to discover the places the exhibit will travel to in case, like me, you can't make the Biennial but would like to see the exhibit. 

And here is a picture of Alexander for fun, taken Saturday at the Houston Zoo with his new favorite sleep buddy "Floppy".

Starting All in the Family

This week, I have been planning my big abstract.  It looks like it will be about 100" by 50".  What I am planning is twelve columns of twelve colors, arranged according to their familial dye relationship.  Imagine the twelve columns to represent each of the twelve colors on the color wheel.  Each of the columns contains twelve dyes created by mixing together the twelve colors on the color wheel (I show the start of the first two columns in the picture).  In the first column I show my red dye, as it is mixed pure (first red color square hooked in the lefthand corner of the picture ), below this is a square that was created by mixing the red dye with orange-red (the hooked square right below the first).  Below this will be my red dye mixed with my orange dye.  Then my red dye mixed with my orange-yellow dye.  And so on around the color wheel.  The second column is my orange-red dye similarly mixed with all 12 colors on the wheel.  The rug column's will advance accordingly.

I am hooking the piece with a #9 (my new Bee-Townsend cutter head which I LOVE), the biggest cut I have ever used.  I am thankful that I bought a 9mm Hartman hook because I could not hook this rug without it.  Wow does it make the job easy.  It took me a while to figure out the spacing so that I didn't end up with squashed or bent loops.  I am hooking loops in every two holes like I do for any other cut, but when I advance to the next line, I am skipping five (!) linen strands.  I tried four, but some of the loops were bent.  Five seems to do the trick, but it feels like I am leaving a very wide ditch between rows.

I'll update as I hook this rug.  I am going to need encouragement.  It is big, and it is repetitive since it mainly consists of hooking straight lines.  I tried curved lines at first, but was soon pulling out my hair, and decided that for this rug, straight lines would work fine!

Crossing the line

Last night I finished the second 9" by 12" piece in my Kandisky series of 6 (Hooking Point and Line to Plane).  The second piece is called Crossing the Line and it is hooked using Red Jack Palette Wools: Bittersweet Red 162; Riv 'n Dale 165; and Nymph Green 155.  The background is hooked using my pebbling technique.

My inspiration was Kandinsky's chapter "Line" which understands the line to be the product of a point moving through space.  It is the product of movement, a point that has leapt out of its static state into a dynamic moment.  The type of line that is produced will depend on forces acting on the point. 

The straight line, then, is the movement of the point on its course to infinity.  It represents endless movement in a direction, whether it be horizonal, vertical, or diagonal.  Horizonal movement represents flatness and coldness.  Vertical represents height and warmness.  The diagonal represents a combination of these, being both cold and warm in its temperature.

The movement of the lines I have hooked in Crossing the Line represent a collection of free straight lines in an acentric composition (that is: there is no common center where the lines all meet).  As such it carries within it advancing and retreating lines so that the collection is tense.  The lines have a loose affiliation with the plane behind it, piercing the plane rather than fusing with it.  According to Kandisky, "These lines are farthest removed from the point, which claws itself into the plane, since they especially have abandoned the element of rest" (Point and Line to Plane, p. 62).

My New Year's Goals

I am not one for making New Year's Resolutions, but I do find it useful to at the beginning of the year to assess where I have been and where I would like to go.  I like to set some achievable goal or goals for myself in terms of my art.  I stress the word "achievable" because I don't find it useful or healthy to set goals that are out of my reach.  So if I have a really BIG goal, I break it down into little pieces and just work on one of the pieces at a time.  It might take five years to achieve it, but as long as I am working on little aspects of it, I know it will get done.

So what are some of my art goals this year?  Last year I started with the goal of hooking one abstract art rug and learning what I could about abstract art by visiting museums and reading books.  I was able to achieve this goal.  But what is so much fun about it is that I discovered that I LOVE hooking abstracts and want to learn even more about abstract art, especially color fields and impressionism.  So I have three abstract projects I will be working on this year.  Alex in Pop Color which is already underway (see photo for one of the panels); the Kadinsky series of 6, which I am calling Hooked Point and Line to Plane, and which has two panels hooked already; and All in the Family, the big abstract that will consist of my 67 colors in all 8 values hooked in 12 color families, which is only in the planning stages.  I would like to experiment with color fields more this year and see if I can achieve anything close to a Rothko"ish" hooked piece.

The other thing I realized about my art year is that I LOVE rug hooking faces.  So I would like to design and hook one animal face this year (don't know which one yet), and a bigger widecut Santa face next Christmas.

My other art goal is to get my palette wool page up and running on my website.

Because so many have asked, we will continue the Abstract Rug Challenge with a new year (interested? join our group on Rug Hooking Daily), and of course the Ten-Minute Challenge which will begin its fourth 6-month season in February 2011 with a new subchallenge (also on Rug Hooking Daily).

What are some of your rug hooking goals this year?  Would love to hear about your dreams and aspirations.





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. 

Seeing Red Mat Challenge

ATHA has put out a Seeing Red challenge - to hook a mat 9" by 12".   I have completed my challenge mat, although I need to bind it off and send it to Lisanne yet. 

My inspiration came from a book on abstract art that I have been reading.  It was originally published in 1926 by a famous abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky.  It is a book explaining his theory of art.  The title: Point and Line to Plane. 

He makes the argument that the geometric point (the dot) is the beginning of art, signifying the union of silence and speech.  Think about the period at the end of the sentence, how it signals the pause in speech.  He says, "The sound of silence customarily connected with the point is so emphatic that it overshadows its other characteristics" (p. 25).  This is its practical meaning. 

But what happens when we detach the period from the sentence and place it on its own in a canvas?  What happens to the meaning when the point is immersed in a larger space and the sound of the print is reduced?  What happens when the basic plane experiences a collision with the point?  The point becomes an independent being, the subject of the artist. 

I created this hooked piece to test Kandinsky's theory.  What do you think?  What has happened to the point in this hooked context?  I would love to hear your reactions in the comments.

I hooked the point red and the context green because complementary colors create the most vivid environment to "see" the color.  Thus the red should be seen to be more red in this context than any other.  I am calling my piece "To the Point".  I have had so much fun with it, that I am going to do a series to test out Kandinsky's other propositions about the point, line and plane.

The wools I used are: Red Jack Palette Wool - Nightshade Berry 160 (8-value pack); Pixie Green 154 (8-value pack); Fiddlehead 164 (8-value pack).  I hooked the point in a linear spiral.  I hooked the background by pebbling the entire surface of the linen by concentrating on the values of the greens.

Interested in the Seeing Red Challenge?  It's only a matter of months until the Seeing Red Exhibit opens in February 2011 at the Trolio Hotel in Canton, MS, curated by Lisanne Miller, ATHA Communications Director. Consider joining the challenge. Details are in the Feb/Mar issue of ATHA NEWSLETTER.

No Talk Tuesdays: be inspired by lines

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.

Abstract in 1937

You must be able to tell I'm a historian through and through. W.W. Kent's books are fascinating, and what neat thing did I find within today? On p. 212 of Rare Hooked Rugs (1941), Kent displays a photograph courtesy of Mrs. Lilian Mills Mosséller who designed it (Plate 236). Mosséller lived in New York and Asheville, North Carolina. I scanned it and show it here.

Kent claims it is a "famous" rug called "Coffee and Cream." It is an abstract hooked before 1937 when it was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the International Rugs and Carpets show. It was taken on tour across the USA by the American Federation of Arts in 1938. In 1939 it was exhibited at the World's Art Fair in New York. With my interest in abstract rugs, so far this is the earliest intentional abstract I have been able to locate to date.

The design idea was taken from the top of a swirling cup of coffee with cream in it. Unfortunately all we have in terms of a picture is this black and white. But Kent tells us that the colors were fabulous: six shades of white, oyster, eggshell, snow white, with an accent of chartreuse.

Mosséller appears to have been a well-known rug designer in her day. She wrote a few pages about the "contemporary rugs and their future" which Kent put in his book. She had a studio in New York and employed many hookers, whom she calls "artisans" and "workers". She seems to have been known for hiring handicapped people to hook her rugs. Kent preserves a photograph of these men and women working in her studios. She also had devised a huge crude cutting machine which stripped the wool in pieces that look to be around 3/4 inches wide. She was very keen on rug designers being considered on par with Picasso and Van Gogh, and she was very proud that her rug hung in the Met alongside these famous painters.

She is very insistent that designers must start signing their work by weaving their signature in the fabric, just as the painters do with paint. This intrigues me, because here is a shift from the earlier idea that hand-hooked rugs are utilitarian mats manufactured by workers and should not be signed, to the idea that the designer at least is an artist and her rugs will only increase in value if her signature is on it.

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.

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