Leni Wiener

Yesterday I was able to spent some real time in the studio working on the flamenco dancer.  Satisfied with her and moving on to the guitarist in the background, I added his lower half!  Initially, I used the fabric with the silver swirls for his sleeve, but decided that it would be great as the floor so I changed his sleeves.  Looking at it, I got the idea of a rose on the floor at his feet–I am thinking rather than title it something like “flamenco” that I may title it something more intriguing like “unrequited love.”  I know the background needs to be substantially black, but will work next at trying to add other colors or other shades of black so that it isn’t so flat and uninteresting.

I am putting that tree quilt behind me while I let my ideas about fabric weaving percolate in my head.  For now I am back in my comfort zone, working on another fabric collage.  This will allow me to accomplish two things–first it will get this out of my head where it has been nagging for a while, and secondly, it will allow me to clear my mind a bit so that I can formulate more specific ideas about what I want to do next.

This piece came from a video of a Flamenco dancer my friend, Sandra shot in Spain recently.  As soon as I saw it I knew the fabric in my stash that had to be the skirt.  There is so much movement in the fabric, and the light and dark look very much like the moving ruffles.

On another note, I discovered quite by accident that MOMA (the museum of modern art in NYC) is opened on Monday.  Not the perfect day to go as every tourist in the city has discovered the same thing, but none the less, worthwhile.  My friend, Eileen and I were not able to get into the new Van Gogh exhibit, so we wandered through the permanent collection.  Despite having seen the permanent collection many times, I discovered lots of things I hadn’t really noticed or focused on before which relate to what I am working out in my own art.  Now that museums allow photos in most galleries (hooray!) I took lots of photos and have lots to absorb.  I am working out in my head a new direction for my work, and will share those photos and my new pieces as I sort them out.

Where ever you live, get out and look at art!  Especially looking at different media will influence you in ways you can’t imagine.  No matter where you are, there is someplace to see some sort of art.  Take an hour off from your day and do it.  It really gets your creativity working.  I went with my friend Eileen (a very talented ceramicist–check her out at www.eileenbraunceramics.com) and interestingly, we often responded to the same pieces and saw in them ideas to play with in our very different materials.

I got the idea to try weaving the background, controlling placement of colors.  Although I do not adore this final quilt, I do like the idea of the background enough to play with it.  This is often how a series develops– exploring an idea or technique until the seed develops and grows into something that is uniquely your voice.  Right now it looks too much like piecing, and like ribbon weaving.  But I want to play with it.  Check back to see where it goes.

To finish and complement the trees, I need to audition backgrounds to see what I like.  I find that the easiest way to make a decsion is to use my digital camera to record the possiblities and then I can compare them.

My initial thought is that I do not want to worry about the path and the other trees in the background, but to make the background less realistic.  I have decided to start by looking at both hand-dye and hand-dye lookalikes to see if I have something that works.

This fabric is close to the photo in that it is red and green, although I wanted more green and this is more red:

By adding another piece of the green to one side, I have gotten the balance closer to what I envisioned:

But I decide to look at other colors that may not be true to the original photo:  the purple surprises me, I like it more than I thought I would:

The yellow looks a little over-powering:

more orange–this fabric is very bright and seems to fight with the trees:

more yellow?  this fabric is maybe too realistic for the more graphic trees:

finally, more green, which is more naturalistic:

I am not loving any of these, so now I am considering “creating” the look myself using fabrics so I can control color placement.  Feel free to post a comment and let me know what you think.

I am finally back to making art quilts!  This photo was one I wanted to translate into fabric:

I decided to move away from a realistic depiction of the photo and use this as an opportunity to play with some black and white fabrics I have been collecting.  What I thought was so lovely about this tree is the contrast in the bark, something I could duplicate using different “values” of black and white fabrics.

It did not take too long to get to this stage:

Using only a few fabrics, I have made an interpretation of the tree, not a photo realistic copy.  You can see that although the fabrics are all black and white, that they “read” as different values–light, medium and dark.  I love the horizontal stripe fabric with the little circles (on the left) which looked to me like birch bark, and the darkest fabric (on the right) with concentric circles which looks like knots in the tree.

Having pinned these all into position on my design wall, I am ready to glue them together and decide on a background.

On another note, I was surprised and pleased to see my quote and a photo of my piece “endless dance of the ponytail” in the online “Craft Report”.  Check it out at:  http://www.craftsreport.com/images/insight/fiber/Insightfiber.pdf