Collaged Backgrounds - Finale!

To finish up my month of fabric collage blog posts here, I’ll go through my process for making these collaged backgrounds work for me.

I almost always paint the stitched collage with fabric paint to unify the piece. My choices of light, medium, and dark fabrics start to matter more here. My favorite paints are the Prochem textile paints diluted with the white extender. Sometime I use an old credit card, sometimes a brush.

However, if I don’t have the color I need, I use an acrylic in my collection with the additive to make these paints more textile-friendly.

I might add more white paint to this background, maybe in a pattern, like circles, lines, etc.

After painting, I often do more stitching.

And sometimes, I add sheer fabric, especially organza, in whatever colors are needed - greys, white, black, even green. The sheers can add depth by pushing back a section of image that you want to de-emphasize. Or they can just add a subtle design element.

Thanks for your comments during my month as a Fire blog blogger! And I hope you'll excuse that I didn't keep up the normal quick tempo of this great site. My Mega Move has been pretty intense! (See my blog for some details :-)                                                         

Collaged Background Step 1

These fabric collage pieces all begin with some kind of background or support. Using Valerie Goodwin's technique, I'll show you how I began with fabrics from My Pink House, seen in my last post.

Selecting my fabrics for this technique is pretty easy and a lot of fun because any bloopers blend in so well in the later stages. I generally start with a range of lights, mediums, and darks in the color or colors I have in mind for my finished piece. It is easiest to assemble the collage if the pieces are cut into smallish rectangles, although with a little experience you can use any shapes you want, as raw edges ARE allowed. Above, I assembled my cut fabrics on the crinoline to which I will attach them. (Crinoline was discussed in a past post this month - nice firm backing and easy to stitch through by hand later in the process.)

 I start by stitching one fabric piece to the crinoline by machine, then adding the others, folding each piece over the seam. I often press the pieces down as I go but that's not essential.

 Once my fabrics are stitched onto the background, I begin stitching on the surface to ensure that each edge is surely attached. Decorative stitches can be fun and/or helpful here. Use any color you wish. We used black top stitching in Valerie's class and it looked great.

To finish this stage, I trim the edges.

Next step - making all those different colors and patterns look unified.

Lasting Lessons from Valerie

Last summer I took a terrific workshop with Valerie Goodwin at the annual Quilting by the Lake event held in Syracuse, New York. The title of her work shop was Design with Color, but it was so much more than that.

I have admired Valerie’s work for several years and saw it first in Quilting Arts magazine. Her art quilt maps just knocked me out! Maps?! Fabric?! Geographically-placed visual stories?! Right up my alley! She constructs beautiful fabric collage to tell her stories, and I bought her book Art Quilt Maps to learn more. But the thing that got me to the workshop - in spite of all kinds of complications - was seeing her work from 12 inches away at the Cartography: Artists as Map Makers exhibit at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY last June. Her materials and narratives were so inspiring, that I went home, rearranged my schedule, and send in my registration for the second week of Quilting by the Lake.

I’ll start with the finished collage backgrounds I used for a couple of my recent pieces using Valerie’s technique. Then I’ll explain how they were constructed in the next couple of posts.    

   

Jacaranda

The piece at the right is one of a group of works I made using Valerie's techniques for my backgrounds. This one, Jacaranda, is based on a photo I took in Oaxaca, Mexico of a doorway in an ancient stone building. As I walked past it one morning, the sun was hitting a brilliantly blooming jacaranda tree back in the courtyard. I wanted my background to convey the texture of  the old building with its somewhat crumbling walls. You can see many intentional imperfections and its rectangles of stone blocks.

My Pink House

You may have seen this piece on the left before. It is my Pink House fabric collage, an embellished version of my new studio, gallery, and home. This time, the collage using Valerie's technique makes up the house itself, which is then the background for more collage work. The house is 115 years old, and I wanted the siding to have a somewhat random look (although it doesn't appear that way, at least not on the front of the house). 

Below is an under-construction detail of the addition of the door and windows on top of that background.

If you like the look of this technique, I highly recommend Valerie's book. Even better, track her down at one of her workshops.

Next post - how to get started.

Smokin' Art!

From Cris Winters
This article was written by my friend Matt Burnett, an artist colleague of mine in Saranac Lake, NY. He describes his interest in, purchase of, and activation of an old cigarette vending machine in 2010. He and another artist Todd Smith transformed it into an art vending machine and soon after, with the overwhelming majority of votes from the artists involved, named it the "Smokin" Art Machine." Matt wrote this up at my request after I posted this blog - Cris on Fabric Collage - about making my small fabric collages to include in the art machine last summer. There was such an enthusiastic response about the machine that I thought you might like this story from the "horse's mouth" (sorry, Matt :-).

How do I describe the phenomenon of Smokin’ Art?   Adventure.   Mystery.  History. Wonder. Curiosity may be the best word, because it was curiosity that drew me to this strange machine in the first place.

I first laid eyes on it in a antique store (a front for something less reputable, my wife Amy suspected) in downtown Plattsburgh, NY.  After giving up on the meager vinyl selections (Perry Como, etc.) I saw this machine right by the door.

I recalled a link shared by a colleague, the idea of transforming this machine into dispensing tiny art.   The Art-O-Matic concept has already been well developed, with machines in major cities all over the United States. (http://laughingsquid.com/art-o-mat-retired-cigarette-vending-machines-converted-to-sell-art/)

With the encouragement of my colleague, Todd Smith, then the proprietor of the Saranac Lake Gallery 7444 , I eventually returned to purchase this relic from an era where a pack of Marlboros sold for a dollar. 

 

Matt and Todd with their purchase

The vending machine is the special powder metallic yellow-gold color one only sees now in defunct amusement park rides.   The peeling labels above each knob were solved with colored paint squares courtesy of a local hardware store.   And the machine’s incredible weight made it just barely manageable for two people to wrestle into a vehicle.  Forget lifting it; being completely mechanical, this machine is wall-to-wall gears and steel.

We were amazed to find that the thing still worked, albeit fussily.  In the coming weeks, we would discover that the levelness of the machine, the weight of the dispensed art, and a thousand other factors all contributed to a “good pull”.

About the art

Once we got the machine working, the next part was filling it.  This is where it pays to be part of an awesome arts community like we have here in Saranac Lake.    In 7444’s “stuffing party”,  local artists were given a deadline to come up with a body of tiny works (at least a set of 12)    Todd Smith arranged with a manufacturer to make boxes similar in size to a pack of cigarettes. The boxes arrived flat, like pizza boxes, so not only did art need to be made, boxes needed to be folded together (like origami) and art inserted, then loaded into the vendor. The whole thing worked like a finely oiled machine, or at least more smoothly then the cigarette machine itself.

With the capacity for over 200 boxes, we didn’t fill the machine that first time but we came up with one of the most unique bodies of work that the Saranac Lake Community had ever seen.  I was pleased and surprised by the ingenuity of artists that I had been working with for many years, this format seemed to encourage alternate approaches to one’s artmaking.

The Artwalk

 

The crowd waiting patiently to buy some Smokin' Art for 4 quarters.

The “Smokin’ Art Machine’s” debut came with the June 2010 Art Walk.   We placed the machine right outside of the China Jade restaurant and proudly stood waiting for the crowd.   Our very first customer was Tim Fortune (also an artist contributor) who strolled up, quarters in hand.   Plink, Plink, Plink, Plink---Pull----NOTHING! The machine immediately jammed.

We tried again, but to no avail.  The mechanism was designed such that any box trapped in the dispenser would prevent any other knobs from being pulled…necessitating the front coming off and a sometimes surgical extraction. As I sheepishly handed Tim his newly acquired mangled art, I thought to myself, how often will THIS happen?

Approximately %15 of the time, was the answer.  Not bad one at a time, but what I was not prepared for was the line that developed in front of this machine.  People loved this thing!   The line of 4 to 14 people did not dwindle until well after the end of the two hour gallery walk.

Oh, the pressure of fixing the jams with that many people in front of you waiving quarters!   We artists labor for attention, clamor for it; when you find it thrown at you, nothing must get in the way!  Thankfully another artist, Larry Poole, came to my assistance and stayed for the duration.  Though I didn’t know him well then, by the end of that evening I felt the kind of kinship that I expect fellow soldiers must feel in the trenches together.  Together we managed to fix the myriad of jams and other technical problems, while keeping the masses pacified, the quarters coming in, and the art going out.  

 

Which knob to pull?????

A happy art patron

"How many quarters does my dad have on him......?"

The “Smokin’ Art” machine was restocked and brought out several more times that summer in Saranac Lake, Blue Mt, and a few other places.   Each time, the same mania seemed to result; curiosity ruled.   Not so much for the almost free art (imagine getting an original Tim Fortune or a Mark Kurtz for a $1) but I think even more for the novelty of “What will I get?” and the novelty of the strange machine with the inviting handles.

We had accidently struck on something that in my mind often seems absent or squashed in the traditional art gallery setting.   Kids and young people too young to remember these machines, (which have been out of play since the 90s) got in line again and again to insert a dollar and see what they got.   The fun, the surprise, the accessibility---all good ingredients between artist and community.

I sure hope some people have kept some of the amazing pieces that this machine dispensed.  But one is in many ways reminded of the postmodern approach to art: art being more of a transaction, a cooperation between the object of art, the experience of art, and the strategic deployment of art.   As a protagonist in this adventure, I have had so many adventures with the people that I met in front of the machine, the artists that I have cooperated with on the machine, and many other interactions which have unfolded in the name of Smokin’ Art.   Perhaps it is okay that the artwork itself in this case has become relegated to a crackerjack prize; perhaps the art is somewhere else, in the orbit of this machine, and all that it enables.

Smokin’ Art currently is on loan to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY.  For more info about the machine, please email Matt Burnett @ burnettm@canton.edu

Getting the Work on the Wall ... or in the Hand

There are SO many ways to use your fabric collages! Besides making them in sizes to fit into an art vending machine (if you’re lucky enough to have one in your community), you can hang these little ones from ribbons or give them away in your studio or gallery. The purple square in the photo below is the piece of mat board cut to the size of the collage. I attach these to the backs of the little collages with soft gel medium. It makes a great backing for your business information or a short note, as well as making it a finished piece.

 Frame your work in traditional or shadow box frames.The collages in the deep white frames below have spacers between the art work and the glazing, in this case plexiglass.

The art work below is framed with a mat but without glazing, so that the texture is conspicuous. Many of my fabric pieces are framed in this way, and those seem to appeal to more buyers that the unframed pieces. I also frequently use a frame with glass, especially when my work is being exhibited in shows dominated by other other media, such as paintings.

One of my favorite display methods for my collages is to mount them on prepared canvas, almost always painted to coordinate with the art work. (An example is on the right.) This method is also appealing to potential buyers, as the canvases are very easy to hang. I attach the collage to the mat either with large but invisible stitches or with soft gel medium.









My Pink House collage to the left is hung with a wood slat in a sleeve on the back of the piece with a small holes for nails on each end, all hidden on the back. It is a more traditional way of hanging a fabric piece, and just right for this piece with its irregular edges and homey feel.

These last pieces were hung with simple tabs and small branches, in keeping with the forest theme and natural look. It's a bit tricky to hang a piece with these uneven branches. I had to try out several before finding the right ones, and then made small holes in the branches that the nails slid through.

Just a few of many ways to show off your fabric collages. I'd love to hear about your favorite methods.

Posted by Cris Winters.