For now, though, enjoy the aforementioned eye-candy from the Water shows.
Where you can find fiber arts eye-candy till June 3. Go now!“The Gorge/Water Cycle” by Judith Roderick. Hand-painted silk art quilt. The picture can never do this justice, but note how the bird is also part of the gorge.Close up of “Blue Water of the North/Feng Shui Series” by Donna Loraine Contractor. Wool on cotton tapestry.Oops! How did my own piece slip in there? 🙂 “Memory of Water” is hooked with plastic bags on monks’ cloth.
“Leaves and X’s in the Ice” by Nancy Wohlenberg was made using a discontinuous tapestry technique; four selvedge technique. Love this!Heidi Anderson felted alpaca and merino wool to create: “”Water is Life Seed Pot” on the right and “Olla” on the left. so cute!Part of “Germinating” by Linda Rael. Dyed fabric, stitching.
A close-up of Linda Rael’s “Water is Life.” Dyed, painted, stitched, and found objects.
“The Day Begins” by Linda Rael. Hand-dyed and recycled fabrics, found objects. This crane really “stood out.”
“Mayordomo” by Linda Rael. Mixed media. “Mayordomo” is the guardian of the acequias or the water ditch master.
A close-up of “Rain Dance” by Linda Rael. Stitched, beaded doll.“Mountain Snow,” a handmade felted coat created by Vicki Anne Evans. Lovely, but I put that on, ketchup will drop from the sky right onto my boob.
“Novena for Rain” by Catherine Kelly (and my friend and Adobe Wool Arts guild mate. Multi/fractured piece of traditional rug hooking, felted wool, yarn, and beads.
And lastly, though not the best shot, Cathy and myself in front of her piece. Perhaps we’re really the fiber arts eye-candy… Regardless, I still think that they should’ve had wine at the opening reception. Your thoughts concerning beverages at art receptions: wine versus ice water with stupid lemon slices. Let me know in the comments.
My “Memory of Water” piece – hooked from used plastic bags – is in this show. Hope to see you at tomorrow’s reception. If not, the show will be in place for just over a month.
I try not to do NEWS-based posts too often, you know, catching up with what’s been happening here at High on Hooking, but sometimes you just have to. Not only is the selling season coming on quickly, but there are a couple of shows right around the corner.
First up is the Spring Show put on every other year (even) by Albuquerque’s Fiber Arts Council. Many of you watched as I hooked and hooked my little fingers to the bone to have “Memory of Water” ready for the April 7 and 8 (Saturday and Sunday) exhibition. As I’m on one of the committees, I’ll be busy from Friday through the weekend. If you’re a local, please try to make it down and support the fiber artists of the greater Albuquerque area. It’s free; hours are 9-5 both days with an artists’ reception Saturday evening, 5-7.
And let the selling begin! A couple of weeks ago I received official word that I’d again been juried into Albuquerque’s Recycled Art Fair. This year it’s a little earlier: the weekend of April 14 and 15, 10-4, and it’s at the Open Space Visitors’ Center on Coors. If you remember my experience last year at the end of April, you might also recall the snow, rain, wind, and all-round cold temperatures we had. Not the usual weather here in Albuquerque at that time of year (except for the wind, of course), but not completely out of the ballpark. So, PLEASE PRAY that this year we get the nice weather I moved out here for, that we’ve enjoyed all winter! This is a fun festival: food, music, family activities, and good art – treasures that came from other folks’ trash. Hope we see you there too.
Just this weekend I received notice that “Memory of Water” had been accepted into
“Memory of Water.” Framed, she’s about 22.5″x18.5″ and plastic bag on monks’ cloth.
another show. Woohoo! This one’s also being held at the Open Space Visitors’ Center on Coors here in town, and it’s a fiber arts exhibit with the theme of WATER. It opens April 28 and runs through May 27. For New Mexican fiber buffs, it’s being put on in conjunction with the New Mexico Fiber Crawl happening May 18-20. Call me if you’re interested in this one. By chance it’s right down the street from my house; we can go together.
As many of you know, for the past two years, I’ve vended at the Albuquerque Rail Yards Market that takes place May – October, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I love it there; it’s a people-watchers delight plus you can pick up good food, produce, and well-priced art and listen to different music each weekend. It’s just an all-round fun place to spend a few hours, and booths are more than reasonable at $20/any given Sunday. Unfortunately, last year I didn’t do as well as I had the previous year. Other artists said the same thing. So, this year, I’ve decided to cut my days at the market to once per month. I’ll still get the exposure and have a chance to sell, but I won’t worry that I could’ve been somewhere else.Or force Tom to help me set up and break down for nothing. Dates I’ll be at the Rail Yards are: May 27; June 10; July 8; August 12; September 9; and October 14. Maybe we’ll see you there…
I think that’s it for all the big, official news. Keep checking back to our home page; we add events as they come up. Now for the weekly “What’s on the frame” segment. Actually, this week we’ve got two frames and two rugs! Check out the pics for the scoop.
The “BIG Boucherouite” begins! It’ll be slow progress, something I can work on between projects and to breakup any hooking monotony. I’ve been cutting strips like crazy and still have more to go. A lot of the color-planning will be made up as I go. (Upcycled bedsheet strips on monks’ cloth, Anderson frame.)As usual Tynan brings you “What’s on the Puritan frame” news. The sunflower table runner (or wall-hanging) continues. Should be done this week sometime. (Up-cycled t-shirt strips on monks’ cloth.)
For your sake, I hope that’s spring’s either arrived in your neck of the woods or is right around the corner. My sympathies yet again for New England and the fourth nor’easter in as many weeks or less. But spring will come; it always does.
What’s the news where you hail from? Plans for when it finally warms up?
“Memory of Water.” Framed, she’s about 22.5″x18.5″ and plastic bag on monks’ cloth.
So, the framer called that the mystery rug was ready to be picked up. Woohoo! And just in time, I might add, to get a couple of photographs of it to submit to Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center. They’re co-sponsoring “Recall-Recapture-Remember,” a fiber show on memory with Tansey Contemporary in Santa Fe. The show will open at Tansey’s gallery May 18th in conjunction with the New Mexico Fiber Crawl weekend. It’ll run four weeks then move to their Denver gallery for a July opening. Here’s hoping I get in.
I’m happy with the framing. It seems that I go in there with something simple (you know, and elegant AND NOT EXPENSIVE) in mind, but the lady with the German accent, she has great ideas. She gets me to trying new things I never would’ve thought on my own. This time we finally narrowed it down to a black frame with blue running through it. Perfect! I also have to hand it to another customer, an older woman, a painter there that same morning as me; her input was very good too. I especially like that she told me the boldly colored frame was best even though she prefers pastels. To “prove” that bit of info, she swore to me that she wore “fairy wings” for three years. Real freaking wings. Like some kind of New Mexican retiree angel. You can’t make that shit up, but, man, she was a hoot.
A close-up of the mystery rug “Memory of Water.”
The piece is called “Memory of Water.” The initial idea for it came to me one morning when I was walking in the Bosquewith Tynan. The ground was parched and cracked as we hadn’t had any precipitation since the last of September’s monsoon rains. I knew I needed to hook something that fell under the theme of “Earth, Wind, and Fiber” for the Albuquerque Fiber Arts Council Garden Show April 7 and 8. Hey, rain, water – or the lack thereof – fit the bill. I decided to kick the environmental thing up a notch and use plastic bags. It’s horrible how our oceans and sea-life are being so messed up given the vast amounts of pollution caused by our prodigious use of plastics. So, I tried to make something beautiful – or at least interesting – out of plastic bags.
Another close-up of the mystery rug. Flowers and trees and grasses can disappear during drought and climate change.
If you’ve been following the mystery rug’s hooking, you’ll know that it was easy enough to pull the loops, but not as satisfying as hooking with fibers like wool or t-shirt or bedsheet. Plus, there was the pain-in-the-assedness of the static electricity that reaches a zenith in the winter in an already humidity-free desert. I’m not sure what would’ve happened if I hadn’t had that can of Static Guard. And I’m still finding strips of plastic bags in my living room, never mind the clippings.Not sure I’ll run out and do another plastic rug, but it was a good experiment. And since I finished the rug I’ve purchased not just stainless steel straws and their very important straw cleaners. (I could never really clean my re-usable plastic straws; they were contributing to my recurring sinus infections, I realized.) I’ve also ordered washable produce bags that I can use at Sproutsand other grocery stores. It was really starting to go up my craw sideways that we were using a good 20 bags each week when we shopped. I kept thinking that I’d have to find hooking projects for all those bags. No!!!
Any-so-who, I’m back to working with my usual fibers, specifically t-shirt this week. Feeling a need to do something a little larger than the double mug rugs I recently finished (hooking only), I decided to make a table runner. The sunflowers are a trademark, if you will. I’ve made several similar rugs from them, but smaller. I’m really loving the bigger sunflowers. Hmmm, like the “Big Boucherouite,” I may have to go really BIG with the sunflowers on another rug. We’ll see…
Not to be forgotten, Tynan brings you this week’s “what’s on the frame.” Aren’t those cheery yellows? I’m having such fun with this one. I may even use it to make a new business card.
In the meantime, you peeps back east have my sincerest sympathy. All those nor’easters in a row. I’m having flashbacks to 2015 when the snow in New England just wouldn’t stop, and we were trying to get our house ready for sale so we could move out here to New Mexico. Ice dams like we’d never seen. Snow piles alongside the driveway wayyyyy over our heads. The poor crocuses that never really saw light. Yeah, winter in Albuquerque is NOTHING like that. And we like it that way.
How’s your winter been? What’s it done for your rug hooking or any other art you might practice? Let’s all hold our glasses high to toast spring when it (officially) arrives next week.
Special thanks to all those who saved their plastic bags for me, especially you, Mary Ramsey. Without your pinks and turquoises and oranges and purples, the drought would’ve been far worse. 🙂
We finally did it! After like eight hundred LONG years (okay, really it was only eight years, still really LONG), Tom and I were finally able to get away for a few nights of adventure. Our empty-nestedness still holding, last Monday we loaded up the car with bags, snacks, hiking boots, and, of course, Tynan and headed south towards Silver City.
Looking back to the east on our way to Silver City. Just outside of Hillsboro, NM. Make sure to pray for no car trouble because your cell phone is worthless here.
Anyone else see a rug hooking possibility in this photo?It’s spring and the cholla’s blooming!Mixed feelings alert! This pic was taking at the Chino Mine Vista Point. It’s the best place to attempt to take in the immensity of what we read is the third largest open pit mine in the world (!!!). The Chino Mine facilities clearly make a HUGE mess of the natural surroundings. On a scale that boggles the mind. That being said, they’ve been here since the 1800s. More importantly, I surmise that the employment they provide to locals is pretty important. I wish I had an answer…
Driving to Silver City is almost a “you can’t get there form here” experience. It certainly reminds us that we aren’t in New England any more. First you head down Interstate 25 for a few hours. After Truth or Consequences, you bang a right off an exit that puts the Rio Grande River to your backside, and you head east/southeast eventually into the far reaches of the Gila National Forest. You’re on a narrow road with lots of ups and downs and twisty-turnies. And fabulous views. More hours than you think later, you level out, the road straightens, and Silver City is almost within sight. If it weren’t for more mountains, mines, big sky, cows, and sweeping vistas. But you will make it; I promise.
Blistering on tree bark caused by a forest fire slooks like dragon scales. (Karen Miller of Karen D. Miller Studio, I was thinking of you!)
Despite being known as a tourist destination, Silver City is mostly a town filled with friendly working folks, artists, college students, and retirees going about their daily lives. It’s colorful, lots of art – galleries, shops, studios. Very shabby chic and a little on the edge what with a number of empty storefronts along the main drag. One hopes that summer’s activities and tourists
There be more dragons in these hills!
can change that, fill the place up a little more, provide some employment for the locals. There are plenty of restaurants, but be advised that a number are closed on Mondays – at least during shoulder season.
The supercilious attitude of these deer was palpable when I took the shot. “F-ing tourists…”
Mr. (or Mrs.?) Quail didn’t give a crap about me either.
Nope, our trip was about getting away, relaxing – when we weren’t driving, that is. The one full day we stayed in town was spent on a fairly leisurely hike, finding a great lunch, and poking in and out of little shops. I swam in the hotel pool and read my book. Later we headed into the tiny community of Piños Altos for dinner at the Buckhorn Saloon and Opera House. The historic bar was authentic though I doubt that back in the 1860s they were serving goat cheese and aioli with their burgers. Still, very yummy. Excellent fries and a good beverage list.
Somewhere north of Silver City in Big Sky Country. (I think you could fit Rhode Island in just this picture!)
Tynan contemplating the beginning of the Catwalk.
Wednesday we climbed back into the car and headed up north along the Arizona border. It’s a desolate and supremely beautiful ride. Lots of ranch land, not a lot of people or infrastructure. Gas up in Silver City, people! This is Big Valley for real! And big mountains too. We detoured to the Catwalk Recreation Area because I’d seen pictures that looked quite intriguing. (New Englanders, this is the Flume on steroids. With a lot less trees and humidity.) We even got to ford a river. Twice. In a Honda Accord, that can be rather…exciting. We made it, so it was okay. Just like I told Tom it would be. Even though I wasn’t driving…
The Catwalk trail built into the sides of the slot canyon and hanging over the river. Tynan really didn’t like walking on the catwalk. We tried to tell him it was just a name, that they could have just as easily named it the dogwalk.
Now that Tom and I remember how to do the get-away thing, we plan on making it the habit it was a couple of decades ago. And since the snow’s on its way out up north, it’s almost time to go that way. And west; there’s still plenty of west between us and the Pacific. We didn’t move all the way cross country to sit on our butts.
Someone installed this mosaic into the side of a Silver City building. To me it screams this is the southwest, a little rough, but filled with unexpected beauty.
Have any travel ideas for High on Hooking? List’em here in the comments ’cause we’re raring to roam everywhere now!
