Redefined

Making the world more beautiful

Lady Bird Johnson passed away recently. She was the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the U.S. president  during the 1960s. While she lived in the White house, she worked tirelessly to beautify the American landscape. To help her with this mission, she formed the First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, a group of about 20 people that included Laurance Rockefeller, Stewart Udall, Walter Washington and Mary Lasker. One of the other members of that committee was my father, Adam Rumoshosky. At the time, he was the Director of Marketing for the American Petroleum Institute.

Lady Bird eventually left the White House, but my father remained in touch with her and deeply involved in beautification efforts. After he retired and my parents moved to South Carolina, he founded the Keep Oconee Beautiful organization. He was incredibly proud that he never missed a single meeting in the 20+ years he was involved with that group, until age and health made him quit. He didn't limit himself just to group projects, but would often grab a plastic bag and clean up litter on the roadside or plant community flower gardens.

My father died in May at the age of 92, not long before his old friend, Lady Bird. In his whole life, except for the time that he was Arnold Palmer's golf partner, he was probably proudest of the work he did for beautification. He may not have been an artist, but he and Lady Bird both brought a lot of beauty into the world in their own way. How nice it is that we, as artists, have such a great opportunity to give this gift with every single thing we make. Let's not waste it.

Building my posse

I customized the look of my blog yesterday and it made me think about the things artists do to become successful these days. When I started, I never thought I'd need to know web design, digital imaging, search engine optimization and mass marketing techniques to become successful, but unlike most artists, I have a heavy marketing, computer and writing background. Here's my 1982 picture, from when I was a systems engineer in an IBM marketing office. Even with all that experience, there are things I can't do by myself and for those, I look for outside help.

First, I found a great photographer. I stopped taking my own pictures, which were embarrassingly bad, and turned to someone skilled at photographing fiber art. Gordon Bernstein made my work look like Art, with a capital A. At one point, I tried a local person, with a mediocre result, which made me realize that it's worth the shipping costs back and forth from Boston to get the best. Few people will see my work in person compared to the number who will see the images. A great photographer is worth his or her weight in gold to a visual artist, particularly those of use who present unique challenges because of the type of work produced.

Second, I got the help of professional graphic designers. For years, I printed my own business cards, but they looked amateurish. During an internet search, I found Jacques Designs ("jakes"), a married couple who worked as graphic designers by day and freelanced together in their off hours. One specialized in print materials and the other in web-based images. We worked on my logo first and although I created the final design myself, it was a journey that we had to go on together to produce the right result. Around that time, I redesigned the look of my website, so they were able to use the colors and overall style to help them design the marketing materials and make them look coordinated. By the time we got to the final items, they understood me so well that the first drafts were almost perfect.

Third, I discovered a really good printing  company,  Overnight Prints (no affiliation). The prices were so good that the Jacques' initially thought something had to be wrong, but after seeing the high quality of product I received and the good service, they are now using that company for their own printing needs.

Fourth, I made a lot of friends. I'm fortunate to have people both inside and outside of the art community who support, encourage and inspire me, carrying me through rough times.  Many of you fall into that category, like my husband Steve and my friend Jeri Riggs, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart.  If I'm really going to be a successful artist, you will always be the most important part of my posse.

2001: the year I discovered space and became discombobulated

This is a continuation of the story of how my art got from there to here.

In 2001, just for the fun of it, I made a really long, skinny quilt that was two inches wide by 10 yards long. The colors were great, but I had no idea what to do with it. I tried weaving it back and forth on itself, but that didn't look right. For a while, I took it along when I gave school presentations to little kids in our local "artist in the classroom" program. At the end of every presentation, I'd ask "Who wants to be wrapped up in a quilt?" I'd gather everyone in the center of the classroom, pull out the quilt, hand one end to the teacher and start running circles around the group of kids, unrolling it as I went. I could usually do about 3-4 laps before I ran out of quilt.

One day, I was participating in an teacher showcase. I showed the quilt to someone and left it in a pile. Another artist cruised past my table and casually said, "I like it that way". My ears perked up and, for the first time, I started looking at the quilt as a three dimensional object instead of a two dimensional surface to be decorated. A messy pile was perfect. Soon after, a word discovered in a friend's email provided the name that I had been looking for, Discombobulated. This artwork has been displayed in some wonderful art shows around the country and is currently on exhibit at the Visions Art Quilt Gallery in San Diego as part of the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection until August 15, 2007.

Whenever anyone sees Discombobulated on exhibit for the first time, they always laugh. It's probably leftover laughter from all the little children it wrapped up, once upon a time.

This was the beginning of my current style of work. Because of the success with Discombobulated, I created a larger version in 2002 called Melted, which was 6 inches wide by 19 yards long. Since then, Melted has been accepted into some of the top art shows in the country.

With these few exceptions, the individual pieces didn't really resemble each other much. To provide some form of cohesiveness to the series, I adopted a naming convention, specifically one word that ends in -ed. The names I chose described the work, which meant the artwork became the visual definition for the title. This "visual definition" concept was growing inside of me more with each new piece I created.

In the next chapter, I'll talk about other early works in this series.

What to do when you lose your artistic wind

Alyson Stanfield, the best artist's coach around, linked to one of my funnier blog entries today. Afterwards, I received an email from an artist who was obviously stressed.

While reading my blog, this artist realized she didn't find any humor in her own artwork and it just wasn't fun anymore. I think that has happened to every artist during their career. Something is "wrong" with the work, so it stops being satisfying and enjoyable. She was ready to give up on art and look for employment.

I've gone through the same crisis twice and it has always been a sign that my artistic voice was changing. Dissatisfaction with current work could mean that you are at a crossroads, not at a dead end. No one ever said your medium and style had to stay the same throughout an art career. If your life has changed, then your outlook and tastes have probably changed, too. Listen to your gut. It might just be telling you it's time to move on.

How do you find your new direction? You can't force this kind of change. However, you can do things that will invite new discoveries.

- First of all, don't stress about it or you'll freeze in place. Go make art with a three year old. That'll loosen you up. Besides, I've heard that finger paint is the next hot artistic medium.
- Invite your friends over for an art party. Be sure to make bad art. Lots of bad art.
- Take workshops in different artistic mediums.
- Get your normal art materials around you and "scribble" with them.
- Experiment a lot with new materials and techniques. One day, you'll look at something you made and say, "Cool! I wonder what I can do with that?". Your creative juices will start flowing again and a new series will pop out of you.
- If you have friends who are artists but work in other mediums, ask if you can spend a little time watching them work. You'll either be inspired by what they do or you'll appreciate your medium a whole lot more.
- Stay in the same medium, but try different subjects and styles. There's no law saying you have to do portraits the rest of your life. Maybe you should be doing abstract work instead.
- Teach children or do volunteer work. Bring your art to people and they will think you're an artistic genius, because they will truly appreciate that you've taken the time to share your art with them.

How to look like an artist

There are different types of visual artists and what you wear should reflect the artistic milieu to which you aspire. Here are a few pointers to get you started.

The Cutting Edge Art Student
Above all else, you need to show your disdain for the rest of the world, because no one else "gets it" the way you do. Clothing should include jeans left over from high school and a message-heavy tee shirt. Be sure to wear some evidence of your medium, like a spot of paint or fleck of sawdust. If the clothes have been recently washed and contain no more than one hole per ensemble, you can wear these clothes to fancy dinners, too. Hair should be uncombed and rather dirty, which makes additional styling gel unnecessary. Choose at least two neon colors and streak them through your hair. Curl your lip and look disgusted to show your parents you are on the verge of being discovered for your genius, even though you live in their basement. Goth is a good look as a starting point, but layer on a few strange items to tell the world who you really are. Bonus points if those items are not normally used as clothing.

The Fiber Artist
Whenever you go to an opening reception, wear something that you made yourself. It can be a purse, vest, or poncho style garment, intended to hide those postmenopausal overcurves. Look for slinky travel knits that don't wrinkle  Threads on your shirt are always an elegant touch. Be prepared to discuss the surface design techniques that were used to make that garment while you are waiting in the Ladies Room line for the next available stall. Hair can be left gray or colored. Casual wear includes stretch knit pants with an elastic waist, comfortable walking shoes and solid color tee shirt in a pastel or neutral color. The purse must be black, with lots of zippers and compartments.

The Art Professor
Same as for The Cutting Edge Art Student, but lose some of the hair.

The Oil Painter
Choose your easel wisely, as it will be your main accessory. Light pine works well if your hair is blonde, but brunettes might want to go for the walnut look. Palettes also say a lot about you and your approach to painting. Do you use disposable paper palettes? You might want to rethink this approach, which can cheapen your image. The turpentine smell is also a key element to attracting curators and gallery owners, particularly if the dirty rag is tucked into your shirt pocket like a handkerchief. Dress up for opening receptions, so they know that you clean up well. To complete the image, make disparaging remarks about other mediums because, as we all know, painting is the only real art form.

The Performance Artist
Naked is OK. If you really must dress for the occasion, make sure that you are unrecognizable except for your tattoos. You paid good money to get those and, by gum, you should show them. Wear your performance costume in real life and film yourself getting fired from your job at the IHOP.  Casual wear is whatever happens to be around you within a five foot circle at the time. Do not wear anything that has been tested on an animal or was ever actually part of an animal. Do not wear makeup unless it's over your entire body. Do not wear anything that will get you arrested.

High School Babylon - The Reunion edition

I missed my big high school reunion this weekend. I even helped a lot with the planning, creating a small website to centralize the reunion information, but I was not able to attend. However, during the planning, I had the opportunity to rediscover many old friends and learn what a wonderful group of people I grew up with. The last time I saw these folks, we were all teenagers and not in our right minds. Now they have magically transformed into the nicest, most talented people and I am so privileged to have had a chance to reconnect with them.

This afternoon, my friend Toby performed with her band at the picnic by the river. Here's a picture of Toby (in the red) and me when our allowances were so small that we couldn't afford teeth. These days, she fronts a hard-driving blues band, usually performing on Long Island, NY.

When we were seniors in high school, three of us performed a very pretty Jamaican folk song, popularized by Joan Baez, during the high school's Spring Concert. Toby played the guitar, Gail and I sang along with her and we all wore elephant leg pants. We were three smokin' hot folksingers.

One small detail we never told the music teacher was that the folk song, Danger Waters, which was charmingly sung in broken English, is really the story of a Jamaican prostitute and her customer. Here's an example of the lyrics:
First we go in a room,
make me mama no know
Make me lie on a sofa,
make me have-a me labor

We made sure all the kids in the chorus knew the story, but Mr. Robinson, that dear man, never figured it out.

Artistic puberty is when your voice starts changing

I began 1999 with a commission from a very talented jewelry artist here in Wichita, Jed Closson. He'd seen my first solo show the previous October and asked me to make something for him.  I named the finished piece Collaboration3 ("cubed") because it included work from three different artists. The stitchery in the center was made by Jed's mother and he created the beautiful silver pin that's attached beneath it. There are actually two quilts here, joined along the top edge.

Around the same time, I was still reverting to some of my earlier pictorial work, with pieces like Butterfly Garden II.

Here's another work from 2000 and you can see that I was playing more with the third dimension. A number of large objects are attached, plus several smaller quilts are layered are on the surface. The name for this piece was my favorite line from when I worked as an IBM systems engineer (software expert) years ago. If someone telephoned me with a computer problem, I loved to tell them, "Sounds Like a Hardware Problem to Me".

This period, from 1999-2000, was a transitional time for me. I had no idea where I was headed with my artwork yet. I enjoyed playing with a number of interesting elements, but something still wasn't quite right. My work still had a "quilt show" air about it and I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem. In the meantime, I kept making quilts in a wide range of styles. I also took a local class in hand dyeing, which gave me more control over the look of the fabrics I was using.

At this stage, I was new and artistically gawky, so I floundered around a lot. It was really the following year, 2001, when I found my mature artistic voice.

I had a change of art

In 1998, I made a list of my best quilts, sorted by year. I was shocked to discover that I wasn't able to list a single thing from 1997. I had spent the entire year making sample projects for the beginning quilting classes I was teaching at a local quilt shop. I had always been happiest when I could push myself a little further with each project, but now I found myself sliding backwards. I did a lot of soul searching during the entire next year, because I knew that I couldn't move forward with my own work and still continue teaching traditional quilting.

Another problem was that my pictorial quilts were much more appropriate for traditional quilt shows, which are sometimes called pipe and drape shows because of the way the quilts are hung. However, I wanted to show my work primarily in art quilt shows, which are exhibited in gallery settings. I'd had tremendous success with my pictorial quilts and giving up that level of security was very difficult for me. In fact, I stewed about it for close to a year. I knew that art show jurors were looking for a lot more than my pictorial quilts were delivering, so I had to make some changes if I wanted to compete in that arena.

In 1998, I collaborated on a major project with two other quilters and won an international award for our work, called Breaking Free.  This is a picture of the front, but the back has an equally powerful design on it. In fact, the International Quilt Study Center, the current owner of the quilt, used the back to illustrate two of their biggest press releases. This quilt was one of the last pieces I made that was intended for pipe and drape shows.

A few months later, I made a conscious decision to break with the traditional quilting world and work on developing my art. I didn't make any more traditional quilts after that, I stopped going to quilt guild meetings and I stopped teaching. I was adrift on the turbulent sea of the art world and I had no idea how to paddle.

To fix that problem, I drove to Ohio in the summer of 1999 and attended a two day class taught by Caryl Bryer Fallert at the Quilt Surface Design Symposium. That class taught the business end of art, such as how to create a portfolio, record keeping and photography. It also introduced me to the world of juried shows and galleries. That class, in retrospect, was the turning point in my career. One day I was a traditional quilter and the next day I was an art quilter.

It was a whole new world.

How did I get here? And where is here?

Most people who have seen my current artwork don't realize that I started as a traditional quilter. In the early 1980s, my sister had her second child and I decided to make quilts for each of her kids. I knew how to sew, so of course I didn't think I needed to learn anything about quilting. I created a couple of simple four-patch quilt tops, each one made with two calico fabrics and constructed with one-inch seams. I put them aside for a while because I didn't know what to do next. The tops didn't look right and I hadn't heard about quilt borders yet. When her third child turned ten years old, I decided to finish the quilts. By the time I finished the first two plus the third one, a Rail Fence design, I was somehow calling myself a quilter.

This mauve ninepatch is the first quilt I made after that. It's dated March, 1993 and about 14" square. Yes, it's hand quilted and has quarter-inch seams.

A pinwheel quilt from 1994 is called Everything Old is New Again, because it was made from 1930s and 1940s fabrics. This was back in my "black border" period, when I rescued a lot of antique fabrics and thought it was cool to use them.

I finally took a few lessons at a quilt shop and a neighbor convinced me to attend the local quilt guild meetings. I was totally hooked! At one point, one of the guild members demonstrated a technique called foundation paper piecing and I began making very small quilts, while playing with fabric placement and design. My first art quilt, called First Morning at the Cabin, used this construction technique. I was still in my black border period, as you can see.

For several years, I taught traditional quilting at local shops and even taught nationally a couple of times. During this time, I started winning awards for my pictorial quilts, including an award in the Hoffman Challenge, a well known exhibit.

You can see my pictorial quilts at a hidden page on my website. Shhh! Don't tell anyone where you saw these. I don't normally show them to people anymore.

Fabric store clerks make me cringe... and vice versa

I don't go into fabric stores as often as I used to because my fabric stash is large enough to cover the entire  population of Rhode Island, although I'm trying to winnow it down to Delaware size. I still venture into the stores once in a while to buy things like thread and batting, but every time I go in, I dread the usual question, "What are you making?".

Around here, the clerks are used to hearing about costumes for school plays and baby quilts with duckies or bunnies. They are not used to customers who make conceptual fiber art. Here's an actual conversation.

Clerk- What are you making?
Me- I'm making a quilt.
Clerk- What size bed is it for?
Me- The quilt is an inch and a quarter wide by seventy yards long.
Clerk- Can you do that?
Me- It's for a supermodel.
Clerk- (Blank look)
Me- Actually,  I'm going to knit the quilt on giant knitting needles, like yarn.
Clerk- Where are you going to get giant knitting needles?
Me- I'm going to make them out of foam pool noodles and toilet flanges.
Clerk- How are you going to put all that on a bed?

I want to say one word to you. Plastics.

The last time I gave an organizing tip, I sang the praises of plastic storage boxes. This time, think about the ways you can use plastic bags. They are available in many sizes, from small, snack-size bags meant for lunchboxes to heavy duty, XXLarge bags that can store multiple blankets.

1. Gather the items to be stored and sort them into piles, then load each pile into an appropriately-sized plastic bag. On a small piece of paper, write down the contents and place the label in the bag before you seal it shut. You can fill a box to the top, yet the all contents will still be protected and easily accessible.

2. To store materials that are small or easily tangled, group smaller plastic bags inside of larger ones. I use this method with my box of trims.

3. Recycle plastic grocery sacks by using them for lightweight padding when shipping artwork.

4. Stock up on the 2-1/2 gallon size of bag, available in the foil and wrap section of most grocery stores. You will use them a lot more than you think and you can even store smaller framed artwork in them.

5. When traveling by air, store each day's clothes inside its own plastic bag. Place a label inside and squish the air out before sealing it shut. Your outfits will stay together and in good shape, plus the baggage inspectors will be able to see everything easily, so they won't disturb the contents of your suitcase any more than necessary. Use the empty bags for your laundry on the way home.

A simple piece of wood - Part 7

I'm in the process of quilting the dollar bills and it's going to take a while. I realized fairly quickly that there was no way to do a distinctive design in the green area without having it dominate the look of the bill, so I'm quilting everything so heavily that you can't tell what an unimaginative machine quilter I am. It actually works well for this project because the quilting becomes a subtle texture and a great anti-conterfeiting device for the U.S. Treasury.

Click on the picture to see a larger version. I bet my bottom dollar that you can see the quilting on the bottom dollar. It hasn't been ironed yet, so it looks a little rippled. I intend to do more quilting in the black areas, plus add some other painting to enhance the design.

Six bills are quilted. Eighteen more to go. I'm going to need to buy a lot more green thread before I'm done.

Top ten reasons for becoming an artist

10. You were planning to go on a starvation diet anyway.
9. You thought about being an actor, but wanted more rejection.
8. You look good in a beret.
7. You wouldn't be able to pass a pre-employment drug screening.
6. You've always dreamed of living in a rat-infested loft with no heat and a clogged toilet.
5. The only other career alternative was working for your mother-in-law cleaning up crime scenes.
4. You don't have to presort the laundry because all of your clothes are black.
3. You took three years of Artspeak in high school.
2. You can behave any way you want in public and call it performance art.
1. You can paint nudes. You can even paint on nudes.

Oh give me a home where the phone cables roam

It all started on a beautiful day in the middle of last summer. My husband had worked in the hot sun for many days, relandscaping the garden along the road. While he was working there, a representative from the phone company stopped by to say that they would be doing a little work on the small utility box in the corner of that garden, however they would be running the cables from the west and the disturbance to our property would be minor.

Soon after, a hundred colorful flags happily appeared in our front and side yards, waving in the wind and marking the utility lines that ran along the road. For months, we enjoyed mowing around those flags, watching them get rusty and gain character as they weathered. The kids next door would occasionally play with them or pull them up as they waited for the school bus. That was fine, because we knew we could grow more. We patiently waited for the recabling work to start.

Autumn came and a woman planted more flags in the same spot, perhaps as decorations for the upcoming holidays. By then, the leaves were falling and we had lots of fun raking around them,  playing "Avoid the Flag". We continued to wait.

By late November, when our flags were in various states of decay, a familiar looking woman let herself into our back yard, blessing us with a new crop of flags in front of our back fence. We sat and waited some more.

The whole region suffered through a terrible ice storm in January. The ice was a couple of inches thick and stuck around for weeks. Our dedicated phone company apparently intended to dig through the ice to lay the cables in the frozen ground because the lady returned to spray paint flourescent orange lines across the sheets of ice in the back yard. Unfortunately, the ice melted several days later and the lines disappeared.

In February, the work finally started. Our landscaping disappeared under the treads of a large dirt grader, then they prepared to pour several large concrete slabs. This was not the little recabling job that we'd been promised, obviously. My husband called the company and told them the concrete forms were incredibly crooked in comparison to the curb and fence, requiring an adjustment. After several lively discussions, the forms were rebuilt in May and the boxes installed. To this day, the work continues, as they clean up loose ends, fill in the deep holes they left, dig up the holes again to fix the pipes they broke, then fill the holes again.

It's been a long effort, but what wonderful results. We are now the proud guardians of three new utility boxes, a warning pole and an in-ground access panel, all now restored to their original environment on the Kansas prairie. Notice the flags, which have reseeded themselves and will grace the landscaping for years to come. We are also treated to the loud roaring of the cheap fan inside the largest and closest box, providing an aural ambience that can drown out the roaring of the Kansas wind.

On Wednesday, I plan to celebrate Independence Day by plucking the oldest, most beautiful utility flag from our yard and waving it proudly. In case freedom rings and we're not home, I hope it leaves a message on the answering machine.