Dia #2 a Salon de Tommy

A recreation of Tommy's devastating-to-my-diet-dessert, sans nuts. After eating that I became a helpless blob of blubber and had to retire to my room. I am certain I snored. However I was miles away from earshot, so there is that.

Next morning Frieda rose with Vigor and insisted on walking on the beach before breakfast. ( I didn't realize Vigor was invited.) The sand had these delicious wave patterns and I was inspired to take these pictures, and enhanced the one below to emphasize the lines for your benefit.

On our drive from IL to IN Frieda had given me a good talking-to about my art and her advice was just what I needed. The short version is that I need to make my art more personal, whatever that means, and my direction can be better found if I return to the sketchbook everyday and allow my thoughts to flow onto the page. I agreed and funny thing, I almost brought the sketchbook with me on this trip. hmmmm.

For the day we had all planned to work in the studio and with ideas which were quickly abandoned in favor of other stuff that sprang into the brain at that moment.

Tommy showed us some fabric she dyed in a workshop and noted that the patterns she dyepainted were never going to be used in her work, which made them up for grabs.

Grab we did! I found some neato fabrics that looked like stones and gathered up coordinating fabrics that would go into my day's creation. Frieda also went nuts over some purples and Frieda Greens and laid them out on the floor for her project.

Tommy already had work on the wall and was happy to return to it, while wearing her dog Mazy on her shoulder. This is from her series (I am jealous) of ring designs. We plan on making this a duo entry in some future quilt show. I will do the quilting on all that black! Omigod...

For my design, I fused up bunches of Tommy's reject fabrics, and then proceeded to use others instead. I am ashamed. I am sorry. Tommy is not. She takes generosity to a new level.

I started doing this piece horizontally and it looked too much like a landscape, when I really was going for the lines on the beach, as noted in the pictures above. So since it was not doing what I wanted, I cut away almost everything but the lines, and turned it vertically and saw that it was working much better that way.

I am not happy making pictures that the viewer can immediately understand. To me this stops the dialogue between artist and viewer. I prefer to make something that causes the viewer to use her imagination and bring her own opinions to the piece.

If she can't invoke her imagination by the image I present, then I have commited non-art.

Surfline

19x22"

I was using Tommy's Rowenta Surfline iron to fuse this, hence the name. Funny how this all connects with the actual surf lines on the beach. Spooky? Not exactly. More like a gift from God.