Tracy McCabe Stewart - Contemporary Fiber

I am a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin.  She’s the author of the wonderful bestseller, “The Happiness Project” and the blog of the same name.

She has a great post on questions to ask yourself when making tough decisions.    It was the perfect advice for me right now as my family is considering some big changes.  Maybe it will be for you, too.

Enjoy!

 

I have been crazy busy traveling this summer and working on some personal projects.  I am also working on a piece for a large juried show next month, but can’t post any pictures of it.  It will negate it’s eligibility to the show.

In the meantime, I thought I would introduce you to a fabulous textile artist named Lorraine Roy.  She works out of Canada and I have been following her work for years.  I love Lorraine’s textiles.  Her focus is mainly on trees as subjects these days, but I first got hooked on her work when she was doing cloth representations of patinaed sheet metal.  Unfortunately, she no longer has these pieces on her site, but you can see her gorgeous tree compositions.    They are all a gorgeous mixtures of abstraction and realism; full of  beautiful colors and texture.  They are well work a look.  Enjoy!

I am off to Door County, Wisconsin for a long weekend of art galleries and biking with my husband.  I will have a quick stop home on Sunday and then I’m off to Asheville, NC next week.  I hope to post loads of pictures.

Here’s one from a previous trip:

Blue Ridge Parkway (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

In my current urge to travel, I have been visiting some interesting sites.  There’s a great site called Daily Bute featuring a daily picture of the Isle of Bute, Scotland as well as pictures from some other locations in Scotland.  I’ve posted about the Isle of Bute before (look at my Scotland posts);  it’s where I got married and one of my favorite places to visit.

Click on the link above to see some lovely shots.

Here’s one of mine:

Rothesay Castle (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

More Falls (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Hi all,

While Ashley and I were up around Mt. Fuji, we went to see Itchiku Kubota’s astounding kimono.  Fueled by Japanese fast food these things I call rice balls:

Behold, the Japanese Rice Ball Thingie. Yum!

I sure wish I could post pictures of the actual work, but no photos were allowed in the exhibit.  I did take lots of pictures of his lovely gardens and have posted them below.  There are more lovely photos of his gardens here.

Itchiku was inspired by a piece of 17th century textiles (tsujikahana)  and vowed he would figure out how it was created and reproduce the technique.  He did that and then some; creating an amazing body of work called the “Symphony of Light”.  Read more about it here.  Much of the series was inspired by the incredible sunsets he saw while he was a prisoner of war held in Siberia.  He talks about how the sunsets gave him something to live for.   He died before the series’ completion, but his apprentices still carry out his work today.  Here’s a link to a 3 minute video of his work.  It has lovely footage of the kimono and a few scenes of his museum, which is a work of art in itself. 

Each kimono represents a year’s work by numerous people.  I have many books of his work, including Kimono as Art which has exquisite photos of his work.  even with all these books, I was surprised at how textural his kimono are.  There is actually very little stitching on them.  All of the work is painstakingly created through the dye process.  when the kimono fabris is untied after many, many dyeings, many of the folds are left in place as texture on the piece.  All of the kimono stand alone as works of art, as well as being part of a larger landscape.

I know many artists who have a “big picture” feel to their work and many who excel at detail.  I have seen very few who have had to be so good at both.  He is the only living artist to ever be shown at the Smithsonian.  I had more than a few tears in my eye looking at this work and hearing about his life.   What an amazing artist.

Anyway, here are some shots of his lovely gardens:

Entry Gates to the Garden (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Detail of Entry Gate (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Garden Path (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Falls (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Garden Pond (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Funky Garden Seating (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Garden Falls in front of the museum (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Monkeys were on the loose! We only saw a tail.

Another Beautiful Gate (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

on another note, the train station had these creepy fairies guarding it.  No explanation anywhere:

Creepy train station fairies (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

and a close up:

Creepy Fairy Close Up (c) Tracy McCabe Stewart

Off to Kyoto tomorrow!

I am reducing prices on my work for the remainder of 2009-Read more here

I am featuring a piece of my work every day or so through the end of the year.  Here’s today’s piece:

"Crane Series I" 2008 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

“Crane Series I”

2008

By Tracy McCabe Stewart

20″x20″

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, digitally created fabric.  Machine quilted.

2010 price: $600

2009 price: $450

 

Rust Dyeing

 

Last week  my work group, the Free Motions went up to Nina’s to do some rust dyeing.  Participants included Shelley Brucar, Nina Edelman, Leah Rosenthal, Cathy Mendola and myself  They needed to cure for a week to give the rust time to transfer to the fabric.  Here’s the results:

Rust dyed fabric

Nina had some fabulous rusty shapes to play with.  I’ll probably over dye them.  too much white for me.

 

Here’s another:

More rust dyeing on cotton

 

the rust transfer is nudged along by adding salt or vinegar to the fabric and keeping it wet.  I used both on these.  Lots of direct transfer, but not much bleed to the rest of the fabric.

More cotton:

Rust dyed cotton

and finally, some cotton velvet:

Rust dye on cotton velvet

"Bark Series III" (c) 2008 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

 

 

"Bark Series IV" (c) 2008 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

 

Bark Series III and IV

(C) 2008 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, seed pods.  Machine quilted.

each 20″x20″

2010 price:  $600 each

2009 price:  $450 each

email me if you have questions or want higher resolution photos

"Thorn Series I" copyright 2006 by Tracy McCabe Stewart

“Thorn Series I”

2006

by Tracy McCabe Stewart

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, fabric paint.  Machine quilted.

2010 price: $1500

2009 price:  $1130

 

I have spent the last year in the art world with a pretty scattered focus.  Most of the year has been spent  making specific work for shows and events.  This hasn’t really set well with me; I want to make work that feel true to my artistic voice and worry about who is going to buy it later, rather than trying to make work that I think is “sellable” including matching the price point that my galleries tend to sell within.  The latter hasn’t worked well for me on an artistic level , or even, especially, in sales.

I have decided that I want to spend the next calendar year exploring some surface design techniques like vat dyeing,  and making a body of work based on winged creatures, primarily wading birds, and sharing those explorations through my website and blog.  At the end of the year I will reevaluate where  and how I want  to show my pieces.   I want my concentration on mastering new surface design techniques and more deeply exploring my artistic voice.  It’s a much narrower focus for me that really feels right.

As part of honing my focus, it feels like a good time for some of my older work to move on to new homes.  I want to pare down the pieces that I currently have stored here. 

To that end, I am going to reduce the prices on the majority of my work for the rest of 2009 by 25%.

I normally price my work at $1.50 per square inch.  For 2009, I will price my work at $1.12 per square inch.  All of my work is posted on my main website-click the gallery button on the left side of the page.   You can calculate from the measurements listed or email me about any work that you are interested in and I’ll do the math   I am open to payments, and may be open to an art swap as well.    

There are some pieces that are either traveling for long periods in exhibitions or are works that are the basis for larger series I’m planning in the future. 

Excluded pieces are:

“Herons”

Any Lascaux Series pieces

and Evening Meditation (it’s traveling for another year with SAQA@20)

I will feature a piece every day until the end of the year on my blog. 

Thanks and happy shopping

Hi all,

We had a fabulous speaker today at my guild meeting:  Chicago fiber artist, David L. Johnson.  David is a fiber arts whirlwind; his pieces combine tapestry, beading and digital image transfer, as well as traditional craft such as crochet.  Check out his website-Urban Wild  to see all of his beautiful pieces. 

 David is a wonderful speaker: informative, funny and immensely creative.  He did a great lecture.  If you get the chance to hear him or see his work, take advantage of it

He was mobbed after the guild meeting with people buying his pieces.  I purchased this amazing piece called, “Bryn Mawr Storm Drain”  It combines digtal priniting on canvas, and beading; including the homemade twig beads that are David’s signature.  It has already found a home on my breakfast area wall.

Bryn Mawr Storm Drain by David L. Johnson

 

Here’s a detail:

Bryn Mawr Storm Drain detail

I never did get pictures up from the fantastic workshop I did with the fabulous  Jeanne Beck in September.  Better late than never .  We played with a number of techniques, but one that I had lots of fun with was making string stamps and heat mold stamps.

String stamps are about as low tech as you can get; that’s part of what I like about them.   Armed with a ball of twine and a scrap piece of wood, you’re in business.  Here was my effort; inspired by endless games of cat’s cradle as a kid.

Tracy' fabulous string stamp

and that stamp in action:

stamp action!

here were some more from other participants and Jeanne’s own stash:

more string stamps

and more:

more stamps

when you use the stamps once, the paint dries and the seals the string:

string stamps continued

Then we played with heat and mold stamps.  You heat these up a bit and impress texture on them.   We had fun with Shelley’s shoe:

Shelley's shoe gets pressed into service

Here’s the stamp it made:

 

Shelley's shoe stamp

Shelley's shoe stamp in action

Someone made an impression of a wad of string

 

String wad stamp in action

I haven’t done much experimenting with these.  I’ve been so heavy on the wrokshops lately that I haven’t really had time to assimilate the new skills and tools.  I’ll post as I get to it.