A few months after I retired I went to an art quilt conference where I scheduled a meeting with a mentor. I presented a group of 7 pieces I had completed over the course of a few years while still working. She told me that my portfolio of work lacked a clear focus and encouraged me to create a group of 10 compositions that shared common easily recognizable elements. It could be color, size, genre, or process.
I headed home to my studio ready to abandon almost everything I was doing in my previous studio practice. One element remained; incorporating a photographic image in my work.
My love of photographers and their ability to capture a moment in time that told a particular story began in art school. My favorite courses included World History of Photography, A History of Women Photographers, and The Cultural History of Photography. In those courses, I learned to appreciate how the camera in an artist's hands creates an image that goes far beyond simple documentation.
After the conference I began my first series focused on portraits. I used a collection of family photographs taken in Los Angeles between the depression and the early 1960’s by my Dad’s brother. Starting with these often small, sometimes damaged, printed images, and Photoshop; I taught myself to format them for commercial printing by the yard. The service created a large base portrait in grayscale.
I learned quickly that custom printing on fabric had drawbacks. First, these vintage images printed in black and white were lacking focus; literally blurry. As a composition they lacked any visual impact. As luck would have it, the beauty of these “impediments” lead me to finding a unique process and discovering the importance of finding my own voice.
So I began by painting over the figure and painting in the background. I used anything I had in my studio that was water soluble and could be thinned enough to be stitched. I did this not knowing the agreed upon standards in the quilt world. I was diving into a new community and taking with me the background in fine arts. Very quickly I understood I was a unicorn in this world.
One of the first portraits I made was my mentor in the world of not being like everyone else; Aunt Gin.
