Well, the first thing I had to do was overcome my dislike of dandelion yellow. I failed. I enjoy looking at it, but working with it was just too stifling. Besides that, I realised that my favourite stage of dandelions is when they have lost all of their seeds and are left green and alone.
While I was thinking about this project I went through a week of having an old favourite R.E.M. cd looping in my car and the words of the song "Wendell Gee" started to merge with the images of dandelions. Suddenly the seeds blowing away became symbolic of freedom, abandonment and even death. I'm not sure I can even articulate my feelings, but there is such a beauty in the concept of flying into the wind. It could even be seen as a metaphor for our lives (anyone who knows me and my husband knows that we are 50% gypsy and we move house A LOT)!!
ps apologies for the photo quality (it's blurry AND the darn thing doesn't even look square). I will try to replace this with a better one tonight, but I must get to work!
*Edited* with (hopefully) a slightly better photo - this one is stubbornly difficult to photograph! Thank you all SO much for the lovely, encouraging comments (Deborah, you sweetie!). The lyrics of "Wendell Gee" by R.E.M have me thinking of my son who died very suddenly at home four years ago. James had Down Syndrome and significant congenital heart defects, so we had known for most of his sixteen years that the time would come when he would move on. I must stress, this isn't a painful or sad memory (hard to explain really), more of a recollection of how quick and without warning a soul's departure can be, how fragile that little seed's anchorpoint on the dandelion head really is. Onward we fly, to other things...
PS Looking forward to Chocolate :)
OK, I promise this is the LAST time I will edit this! Just wanted to add that my blog post today has some construction details if you are interested in such things.
The presentation of all the dandelion quilts is so exciting. It's great to see all the visual interpretations of and techniques to portray this common plant.
ReplyDeleteKirsten, I love that you made a dandelion without the yellow and without the fluff. A totally different stage of life. I also like the colors you used and the layout.
ReplyDeleteOh a sad one! (No time....!) And one that will send me to sleep soon pondering: what if the air could speak...?! How did you get the words onto the quilt?
ReplyDeleteThis is delightful. I LOVE dandelion yellow, but it could be too much of a good thing. It is so good to see your own unique take on this theme. the addition of the words is lovely!
ReplyDeleteI really like that you put so much thought into this and went a little abstract, I wish I could do more of that
ReplyDeleteKirsty, I too am very drawn to this. It's not simplistic, but it has a spareness that is very elegant and suitable to the bare dandelion head. It feels very "airy" and appropriate for the great sentiment.
ReplyDeleteI love the sparsness. I too have a dislike for dandelion yellow. I took the opposite approach and tried to overcome my dislike by using nothing but yellow.
ReplyDeleteKirsten! I just love it. Not another word from you about feeling "over my head." You belong here. I love using words in art and you've done it beautifully. I wish I could read what it says on the side in the blue section. The background quilting looks lovely also -- echoing the blowing seeds. And the dramatic striped binding is a perfect frame.
ReplyDeleteIt's lovely. And the colours are beautiful, so soft. "Flying into the wind", I like this.
ReplyDeleteI love this, too. The words are wonderful and the blues and greens are so rich. It is a little melancholy and really beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe right side of your piece is cut off as I view it. The whole thing appears when I click on it and it comes up in Flickr. I've looked at it in both MSExplorer and Firefox. Both cut off the right side. I see that the photo is 500 pixels wide. That shouldn't matter--Blogger usually displays at 400, but maybe if you can reduce your image to 400 ppi it will display all of it. Is everyone seeing this with the side cut off?
I love your dandelion quilt, the typography, the lines you quoted from REM!
ReplyDeleteHi Kirsten - I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of resizing your image here so that we can see ALL of your beautiful quilt. I am particularly taken by the gradated background and associated quilting. It makes me want to float in the breeze too!
ReplyDeleteAh Brenda, you honey, thank you! I have tried three times to do that and failed each time!! (I do know how to do it in theory but I was trying to do the whole thing, post and photo, in ten minutes before work; so frustrating!)
ReplyDelete