Saturday, January 3, 2015

HEADING TO MAZ

It's chilly here in southern Oregon. My timing for a visit to Mazatlan couldn't be better. In two days I'll board the plane for the land of sun and good friends.
This little piece has inspiration from many angles. Our Oregon SAQA chapter has an open call for pieces "blending poetry and cloth". I've been playing with little samples to see which direction I'm going to take. This one is getting close. Textwork is right up my alley, and yes, the birds too. My birds have typically been more improvisational, on the wonky side, but lately I've been focusing on the work of Charley Harper and loving the simple shapes he has used to create them. In this case, I used fusible to attach the simple bird, then stitched over them in large, loose, swoopy circles. I love the illusion of movement. My "mini-haiku" works well with this design and these little guys...I was trying to match the patterning of the birds with the syllables... FUN! I free-motioned the letters and lines and filled them in with a black sharpie. So now I have three weeks IN THE SUN to ponder over my next step.
Here is another sample: