SHINE! Illumination Update

The gallery pages of the Twelve by Twelve website have been updated to display our the illumination theme quilts. Don't they look good together in this collaborative quilt mosaic?!
Take a look at the individual artist gallery pages as well to see each member's collection of quilts.

Next Theme

Here is the next theme for the time period of August through September.


NOUN
shelter (plural shelters)
1. A refuge, haven or other cover or protection from something
2. An institution that provides temporary housing for homeless people, battered women etc.

VERB
to shelter
1. (transitive) To provide cover
2. (intransitive) To take cover

Meditation

I chose to work on the buddhist meaning of illumination.

My background fabric was shibori-dyed.
I drew a very simple shape of someone sitting and meditating, and with that shape, I made a stencil out of freezer paper. I used oil sticks to print the shapes, and their shadows, on my fabric.
I added a little yellow oil paint in some of the white spots of the dyed fabric and embroidered small stars.

Japanese Lanterns

Oh yeah, we're unlocked! It has been a long day of moving and no access to the computer so it was so exciting to see all the pieces that have been posted. And WHAT A SURPRISE to see Diane's lanterns! I could hardly believe my eyes! We were tuned into the same wavelength, for sure.

There are so many meanings for the word "illumination"—so many really thoughtful ideas. It was hard to finally get to something that worked for me. Illumination as light was always in my mind and somewhere along this process I saw a photograph in a blog of colorful Japanese lanterns in a garden that spoke to me. But I filed the thought away and later when I went looking for the photo couldn't find it again, so I had to rely on my memory, my impressions and my imagination.

I think light is most striking when it shines out of darkness. It draws us to it and speaks to us at a very basic level. One can imagine early men finding comfort and connection to the sight of a far off campfire. I think of turning onto my street, late at night and seeing my porch light glowing in the darkness. All is well. We are home. Right now, as we prepare to move to a new home it is very much on my mind whether this home will welcome us as the old one has and how it will feel in different lights. I long to sit out among the trees in the darkness, under the stars, and I can imagine glowing paper lanterns lighting our way through the shadows.

P.S. My computer is finally up and running at the new house. I have replaced my photo with a larger one. You should be able to click on it to see the piece in greater detail.

Illumination Celebration

Sorry to be so late with my post--we spent the house shopping and I'm only now getting to the computer.

I have to confess, I had so many ideas for this challenge, but just didn't have the time to execute them. If you have stopped by my personal blog you will know that we have spent the last two months getting our house ready to sell and it needed a lot of work. Just imagine four small children, flat paint and white carpet. It is finally done and I have a little time to myself. I took the sewing machine and the kids to my parents' house and got to work. (As a little aside, we sold the house today! Now I have to find a new house and get ready to move.)

My Illumination Celebration inspiration was from photos of fireworks I took on the Fourth of July and a wonderful photo of the sun rising through the trees in my back yard.

I loved the light bursting out from behind the trees. I tried to print the photo on fabric, but the colors just weren't as amazing as real thing. As I tried to paint the scene, the image came to look much more like the fireworks, another source of illumination.

To create my quilt, I painted the background with Dyn-a-flow paints. For the light burst, I used metallic paints. I then added thread painting with metallic thread. The edges I finished with a fuzzy yarn.

Happy Lanterns

I've always loved paper lanterns. Early on, after the "Illumination" theme was announced, I had this idea which had nothing to do with lanterns. I was going to use a photograph I'd taken, and make a quilt about the ongoing process of illumination/awarenesss/education that is parenting.

And then, one day, I stumbled onto a picture of some Chinese lanterns. The desire to translate that into fabric was so immediate and clear that I abandoned the original plan and lept right to this. It was one of those lightening bolts of illumination. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) There's no cosmic or deep philosophical meaning here ... just gaily colored lanterns illuminating the dark.

These lanterns are made of dupioni silk (I *knew* I'd bought those fat quarters of bright colors for a reason!) The spines and pleats of the lanterns are stitched with heavy-weight Sulky rayon thread. I made the lanterns glow with my favorite Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayons.

Maybe one of these days I'll get back to that photo and my original idea. But these lanterns made me so happy to work on and I smile every time I see this on my wall... hence, "Happy Lanterns."

Enlightenment

For the theme Illumination, I chose to go with an eastern religious idea of illumination signifying enlightenment. As refered to on my previous post on this subject (6/14/08), enlightenment includes the ideas of clarity, reflection, and serenity. This image of a buddha includes all of that to me. I happen to have a large collection of eastern indian fabrics, including saris that I have been purchasing over the years, and this seemed like the perfect oppurtunity to use some of them. This piece made itself with little help from me. I started with a hand dyed that I used under the Buddha image. I then added some beaded and sequined indian fabric I owned. The paisley dark blue and lavender piece on the left was a particular problem as I ironed it with a very hot iron and melted all the plastic pearls on it. I didn't have any more of this fabric so I ran to my local bead store, bought some more, and stitched them all on. As per my previos post, I also managed to melt my Buddha at one point. Since I had this idea very near the beginning of the challange, I had lots of time to correct mistakes. I'm working on that iron heat setting thing

Blackpool Rocks!

I suspect many of my quilts look better in the dark but in the case of this one - I am prepared to admit it.....



My design inspiration was 'The Illuminations' or 'Blackpool lights'. I confess that I struggled for a few weeks to think how I could get a sense of light into a quilt other than the hackneyed use of piecing lights and darks and I didn't think I had space in twelve inches to do a pieced rendition of The Lights.

I moved on to another theoretical idea - illumination as accademic clarifications. You know - Archimedes in the bath and all that. Jonathan Safran Foer's novel title Everything is Illuminated was rattling around in my head... but how to interpret it.... oh yeah, literally!
Initially I was thinking of something involving the technology you get in keyrings, white lights - may be a theatre makeup mirror.. off I went on a Google search. I found the Glow Company who make a simply amazing range of glow/light-up stuff. I wanted tack and here it was - I kept looking and kept coming back to the rainbow wand. There was time for thought while they measured it for me, in which I realised I wanted to have some kind of message with the quilt - some story or way of passing on a message - some illumination as to the realities of Blackpool.
The wand reminded me of the famous Blackpool tower and I enhanced that my lacing it up with embroidery thread to represent the lattice ironwork of the real thing, but also as a passing nod to the laced up Ann Summers type corsets often seen worn by drunken brides-to-be staggerng down the prom on their hen nights! It also refers to the windturbine brought in in 2007 to help power The Lights in a greener way than before.
The background has nine cross sections of Blackpool Rock but instead of the usual words running through the bar of sticky sweet stuff I have added some of the grimmer ( but true) statistics about Blackpool.
HIV cases rose 50% between 2001 and 2004
12th poorest area in the country
5th highest no. of drug deaths in the land
1 in 12 girls get pregnant before 18
2nd worst life expectancy in the country
Girls do worse at school than boys
Most alcohol linked deaths
4 more homeless children each month
Higher than average teen suicide rate

The circles are coloured in with textile markers ( the only ones I could get in my local art shop. I would have preferred ones with a thinner harder nib which might have negated the need to express the stats in rather truncated English!). I fused the top onto Fast2Fuse to give it a stiff base to support the tower and used a machine stitch to add gold rayon stars which made a mess of the back so it has a false back fused on with just the tower stitching showing ( but even they are not so good so I am not showing!) The edges are satin stitched.

The idea is that the glitz of the lights ( which were originally staged to attract tourists and extend the short 'season') cannot completely cover the grit of reality underneath. Oh, and I really, really needed an excuse to buy a rainbow wand!

PS It works in the light too, in case any of my collaborative colleagues were worried about future exhibitions! (although these videos both post with less light than they play straight from my laptop file)

Radiance

Despite selecting the theme and having a multitude of ideas, illumination remained elusive. Once again, I was attracted to exploring a theme in shibori and I ended up with some dramatic results as shown on my blog. I selected this piece because the motif serendipitously fitted in a 12x12 square and because of its zen feel. I need to work on my handstitching skills but am satisfied with the outcome.


A lantern in the darkness radiates the promise of life and sanctuary. From St Paul to the Beach Boys, the invocation to shine has been a powerful message throughout the ages. In the 21st century, to be the best person you can be and to let it show, seems just as relevant.

Gilded Pears

Shortly after receiving this challenge, I was leafing through an art and antiques magazine and was struck by still lifes that just seemed to glow. I decided then that this was what I wanted to represent in my challenge piece. I love pears, perhaps because I am shaped like one. They are so voluptuous. I learned that this technique is known as chiaroscuro.

Chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark) is a term in art for a contrast between light and dark. The term is usually applied to bold contrasts affecting a whole composition, but is also more technically used by artists and art historians or the use of effects representing contrasts of light, not necessarily strong, to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-dimensional objects such as the human body.

I had some wonderful hand-dyed silk that just screamed pears. On my blog you can see how they looked before I added gold foil. They looked illuminated, even then, but I had to add the foiling, just because I could!! The background is dupioni silk.

I enjoyed this challenge. There were many avenues that I thought of taking, but with my busy schedule, this one was the most executable. (Is that a word?)

Dappled.

A few months ago I watched a fascinating documentary on TV about Impressionism. I have always the loved the way in which Impressionists have depicted light. All those little dabs and pools of colour, combining to make a magical representation of light and movement. The documentary got me thinking again about this and then, shortly afterwards, our challenge theme of Illumination was revealed.

Many years ago I played around with a technique that I saw Yvonne Porcella using, burning the edges of silk to seal it and create little irregularly edged fragments. It seemed like a good way to make "paint dabs". First I used pigment inks to colour white silk and then I sat over a candle, being gassed with malodorous smoke for hours, burning all the cloth I had just coloured! Originally my idea was to build up layers of silk like the layers of paint and that it would become a rich field of colour.But it soon became clear that as I added more and more pieces it was just becoming a big mess of fabric with no cohesion and no clear purpose. The more planning I did, the more fabric I removed.

And eventually I ended up with this. I am surprised by how sparse it is.
And a little disarmed. I now think it looks too sparse and needs something more. I'm not sure what. The few sequins and beads added some life and I even toyed with the idea of glitter paint, which I have used successfully before (takes a very light hand and lots of self-control!). As has happened on other ocassions, I now regret not starting earlier and leaving myself time for more than one attempt.(By the way, it's IS square - not as wonky as it looks! Why does that happen in photos??)


This has been the hardest challenge for me so far and I really don't feel that I even came close to meeting it. I can't wait to see the Masterpieces everyone else will have created. My comments won't be here until next week. I am literally leaving right now to teach for a few days.

Click

This theme has been the hardest for me so far. For many of the other themes I almost immediately had my idea and ran with it. For illumination, I first thought of a lightning bug or firefly. I actually tried drawing some out but was never thrilled with my sketches.

Another idea I thought of was fireworks illuminating the night sky. But I quickly discarded that idea as I found the thought of trying to portray that gave me a headache.

My third idea is what I ended up making. While I don't have any light fixtures like this in my house, I can remember times when these were used often. I can still hear the chain clinking as you pulled on it and clicked the light on or off.

To portray the illuminated lightbulb, I lightly dry brushed yellow fabric paint. I kept applying the paint until I had the amount of coverage I was happy with. I dyed white fabric to create the skin for the hand and then added additional hand painted shading and highlights. I couched down a ball chain for the light's pull chain.

The Fourth Day

It was so interesting for me to create this quilt as a continuation on the themes I explored in our Water challenge. My water quilt is titled "Firmament" because the arches at the top of the quilt made me think of the firmament that God created to separate the waters from the waters in the creation story in the book of Genesis. I took additional inspiration from Genesis for our illumination theme.

One of the definitions of "illumination" is "The art or act of decorating a text, page, or initial letter with ornamental designs, miniatures, or lettering or (b) An example of this art." I knew I wanted to focus on this concept.

I browsed tons of examples online. My favorites come from the St. John's bible. I even traveled all the way to Los Angeles to look at actual illuminated pages at the Getty Museum. I made tons of sketches of compositions inspired by the grids and rectangles found in illuminations. And then I tried to transfer it to fabric. I chose text from Gen 1:14 to 19 in which God created two great lights -- an illuminated page about illumination!

I chose fabric and wrote some text. Foiled some letters. Tried some compositions that matched the pages I had been studying. I was totally frustrated. Eventually, I realized that I needed to do it in my own style. (Duh.)

I used elements from illuminated pages like the large metallic letter (or number), the stacking of blocks of text (or fabric), the bits of gold foil (or sequins) and the dynamic backgrounds (a monoprint, in my case). The process was quite labored and I auditioned about 800 pieces of fabric for the eight I ended up with.

I agonized over how obvious the symbolism should be. Since the passage is about two great lights, should I have only used two washers for embellishment? Will viewers wonder what the 4 means? Does it matter? I wrote the passage on that white fabric, but is a distraction to bury it under the other pieces? Maybe.

Ultimately, I focused only on the design of the piece and let the symbolism take a back seat and I'm thrilled with the results.

Night Light

What do you remember doing as a child (maybe even now) after the lights went out? And what does it have to do with quilting?




In the illumination of a flashlight under the covers, I think it's safe to say that we've all found some sort of enlightenment in favorite novels, pulp or comics.

Light at the end of the tunnel

We've been unlocked. Yay! Illumination quilts will start to appear online very soon.