Friday, August 24, 2012

The Lacemaker's Garden

Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts www.artisticartifacts.com/ put out a challenge called "Arts and Old Lace". The project was to be 18" square. Judy gave me a little bag of wonderful things for inspiration to do the work. I went through several ideas until I thought about the history, inspirations and reasons for making lace.
I thread painted the large blue spider

When considering the natural world's lace creations, The Spider came to mind. Then I thought of tendrils of stems, the beautiful lace motifs on flowers,etc. I also thought about wrought iron work the design of which is often inspired by nature. Using laces to suggest wrought iron work, flowers, spider webs...using laces which are inspired by these things and then using the lace to represent the inspiration of the lace is a very literal way to interpret the theme of arts and old lace.

One art discipline inspires another to use the lovely designs found in nature.
I think that art is inspired by our world, the collective thoughts of people, the individual exploration of water, forest, sky, social interaction, music. We are all influenced and bound by the visual rules of our world. The reinterpretation of what we see is yet to be fully realized.
It was very interesting to me to take one kind of article highly prized in our needlework tradition and use it as images to reflect where it came from.
Thread painted and old laces are layered over sparkly tulle

"The Lacemaker's Garden" is an enclosed garden that is diligently kept by the Spider (the Lacemaker). You can peer in and see other spiders and little creatures enjoying their home.
The various flowers and foliage are made from many types of lace. Some of the laces were painted or dyed. Some of the laces I made a long time ago. The photos are details from the work.
 Buttons, Beads and Pins...fun stuff!

I made this work over an intense 6 weeks. Everyday, something new was added , stitching, paint, beading, until one day, it was done. The techniques can be found in my book,"Enhance Your Quilt-Embellish"
 You can see this and the Arts and Old Lace collection of work at Artistic Artifacts.

Stitch On!
Terry