i ask, you answer

Have you ever looked at a piece of your artwork and thought, "How in the hell did I come up with this?"

Remnants Collage 5

Lynn Krawczyk

Do you want to understand the creative force that works with you while you are working? Or are you content to relinquish control to it?

marked

A view of my print table's busy surface.

My most favorite place in the world.  :)

winter stretch

I've always been a winter girl. I prefer the cold weather to the hot, the dove grey skies to the blazing sun. It's my nature and I always find myself settling into the rhythm.

But this year I've been restless. Moving quickly between snow storms and thaws and incredible art projects that need to be held in reserve (you've no idea how much it's killing me to keep my mouth shut, that is not my nature) and in turn, I've gone quiet.

Reflective.

The sun was a bright incredible odd orange yesterday when I was leaving for work:

I tried to capture it with my camera but the closer I got to it, the farther it skittered away from me. It was like trying to trap a bubble between my hands, it just wouldn't be held.

It feels like the season. It can't get a grip. We're covered in snow one day and opening the windows to the house the next.

The studio seems to be in the same mode. One moment there is an incredible volume of work moving through it and the next? It is preparing for the next project.

I've never experienced this much growth in my art in such a compacted period of time.

It's left me thrilled and weary and turning my attention with expectation to the new thing waiting it's turn in line. Some things I can tell you about in a couple of weeks. The other Big Thing has a ways to go yet and I promise I won't harp on it because really, it's a little annoying to keep bringing up something that I can't discuss just yet. I have so much hope for it that you'll love it that I want to ask you what you think, to know for sure. But I'll be good and wait until it's time.

In the meantime, I'm going to share with you the photo that inspired my newest project:

I love typewriters. I dream of one day owning an ancient Underwood but the turquoise and grey bodies of these have their own kind of charm I find lovely.

I've not been happy about the void here. I feel rude, neglectful. Maybe now that the winter stretch seems to be breaking I'll find my voice again.

pondering the evolution

I love hand dyed fabric. I really do. But I rarely dye anymore for a variety of reasons. It leaves me with kind of a gap because there is nothing more soulful then that kind of coloring on fabric. It sounds a little bit odd but I often feel like it has a memory and that the hand of the dyer remains present.

Since my own hand dyes are few and far between now, I'm constantly on the look out for interesting pieces. Recently Susan Atwell of Fat Quarter Quilt Farm did some snow dyeing and I fell in love with one of her larger pieces (nearly three yards).

(photo by Susan Atwell)


The patterning really struck me and the tone of it is perfect. Not shockingly bright but colorful. It's in that sweet spot of saturation, just the right amount of moody. I immediately began covering it with printing and paint in my mind so I knew it needed to come to live with me.

And now it has:

It's sitting on the sofa next to me. I keep nudging it around, watching as the different colors shift as I move the fabric.

No doubt I'll sit with it for a while before working on it. Partly because I have deadlines that need to be met but also because I normally do that with fabric I haven't dyed myself.

I find that I step around it, studying it and trying to find my place with it. I want to respect the work that came before me but at the same time, I want to really dig into it and well, do what I do.

Think of everything that needed to happen for this fabric to come to where it is now with me. Fabric was made. Dye was made. Items were shipped to vendor. Susan bought them. The weather was just right so she had snow. She had time in her schedule to dye them. I happened upon it on her Facebook page. I bought it. And now it moves on to it's next stage.

So many steps. So many things that this fabric will go through before it finally settles into it's final state. Such an evolution, so much energy going into it.

Wonderful, isn't it? :)