Round Robin: Daisy part 3

Here is what Christine gave back to me:

This is what I will send back to her:

(I have to post one photo at a time, because I am still having posting issues, I will post the last one later today, I hope)

Here are 2 postcards I created, inspired by David Mack's work:
The first one is directly inspired by the Kabuki books,with a little Moody Blues and Cat Stevens added. The second is inspired by the sunshine and a hope that spring is on its way.

Recovering from the storm

I'm having problems uploading photos, so I have none to show you.

The sun is shining after 24 hours of snow! Still not as much snow as the big storm of 2006, but still we shovelled the driveway 3 times yesterday and we have to do it again today! Our property is pretty small and we have no room for the big piles of snow! Along one side of the driveway the pile of snow from the driveway is 5 feet high! We can no longer throw the snow that high! Am I ever stiff from all that work.

I received my Daisy round robin from Christine at our Quilt 'til you Wilt day and I've completed my row. I am quite pleased with it. I was very careful with the measuring and my points all match up.Yay me!

I am still on my David Mack kick. I've received more volumes in theKabuki series and just loving the way he integrates the art into storytelling. As a quilter I also love his use of shapes...liberal use of triangles, circles and squares. Kabuki is being held in a cell in isolation, but she receives messages from another prisoner scrawled on squares of toilet paper, folded into origami animals, falling from the vent above. "Every falling note...the shape of a different creature." "Piece by piece, square by square, her story unfolds." I love that, it could be a quilter's mantra! He acknowleges in the book that the idea about the toilet paper, came from the book The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, a true story about a Dutch prisoner of war. He never forgot that they were rationed 2 pieces of toilet paper each and that one prisoner saved hers to make a deck of 52 cards out of them. I, too, have read this book and have seen the movie. Corrie Ten Boom was from Haarlem, my mother's home town.

I also received a dvd about him called The Alchemy of Art: David Mack. Oh very interesting! His mother, a grade school teacher, was a very big influence on his art. They didn't have a TV (he was born in the 70's) growing up and didn't buy his first TV until he was in his 20's. Without TV he and his brother were able to use their imagination and make up, build, draw, create their own games.

I also just read for the first time A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Not bad, I enjoyed it, but was a little confused by so many mixed messages. In the book Meg defeats IT because of her love for her little brother...but it seemed to me that it was her individuality that defeated It, not love. They also make reference to Man shouldn't mess with things they don't understand, but if they didn't they wouldn't have been able to rescue her father in the first place, it is Man's nature, and specifically it was Meg's nature to do so. I suppose this was a reference to the atom bomb and what people felt about it at the time. Man can create so many problems but Man can create solutions too. I guess it is a book about Man's place in the world and with God and what kind of God, an all knowing and controlling God versus one that creates a"sonnet", Man just fills in what ever words it wants, as long as it doesn't break outside of the rules of a sonnet. I guess, it was a good book, if it made me ponder these questions! :) On a side note, let me mention a Simpsons moment! There is a Simpsons episode where Professor Frink is explaining the 3rd dimension to all these 2 dimensional cartoon character after Homer crosses into it. That scene is so lifted out of this book when one of the Whiches is explaining the 5th dimension to Meg!

I am going to try one more time to add photos to this post. Nope it didn't work.

Quilt 'til You Wilt

Our guild had our annual Quilt 'til You Wilt at the Stoneridge Inn; great time as usual! I didn't know what to bring with me. I brought my entire stash, minus Christmas fabrics; it fits into one laundry basket!

I ended up spending most of my day making this tote bag out of an old Kabuki (by David Mack) t-shirt I found. This shirt was from the baggy t-shirt days, not the clingy babydolls of today, so I hardly ever wear it anymore. The art was a little long, so I cut off the word Kabuki. David likes to use triangles in his sketches, so I thought I would fuse some random triangles on it to jazz it up. Luckily I had some great purple batik to use.




Then I cut the word Kabuki into individual letters and then fused them onto the batik, I then fused that onto the tote bag. I machine stitched the applique all into place and completed the bag.



When we finish a project, we have to show it off to everyone, and there is a lot oohing and aahing, and photo taking. The ladies are asking me who Kabuki is and I am nonchalantly telling them 'Oh, she's a Japanese government assassin" And then they all break out in laughter! These women think I am crazy!

Anyway, a great use of an old t-shirt, I think. You can see other projects I've made out of t-shirts here, a quilt here, and a postcard here.

Finding Inspiration from David Mack

I'm a little David Mack obsessed this past week. I just enjoyed my latest copy of David Mack's Reflections, #9. Mack is a comic artist that works in what I call a form of collage art or I guess mixed media. It's a combination of sketches, paintings, photos, and found objects. He currently works on a comic called Kabuki. I have not actually read Kabuki yet. It's a slow process, and it does not come out frequently. I know him more from all the cover art he's done for comic books. I love his covers! Reflections is a regular publication of his sketches, and his thoughts on the art process. Lately, I've been very interested in other people's sketchbooks; how somebody gets to the final product and this is not a disappointment.


Below is my favourite piece in this issue. He shows the steps to this final page, he writes "I used a deep dark green for the hair paint because the composition was giving me the sense of a tree. So I went with it & continued with earthy tones & let the hair branch out as it seemed to have a very elemental earth goddess effect."

Before I even read the description I was thinking "Mother Earth". I love how it is all strong at the top and so vulnerable below, especially the fact she is nude and covering herself in that way. I am so mesmerized by this piece.

Below, I pass this on to my quilting friends, it is Artistic License. I hope you can read it from this photo. It says "This ID certifies that_______is an activist in the Global (and internal) WAR OF ART.....copyright free. Duplicate and pass on to fertile minds."



I have now ordered my copies of Kabuki: Circle of Blood, The Alchemy of Art DVD, and The Shy Creatures, a children's book by David Mack (at first glance, influenced by Dr Suess).