RedBarn Studios

slowly but surely my need to create is returning and about darn time i say!  as i sat a my table this morning i glimpsed out of the corner of my eye a drawing that had been on my wall seems like ages.  it always mocked me every time i looked at it…“hey Grace…what ya waiting for girly girl…miz arteest….seems really you cannot finish me…nananananana“.

i heard the relentless taunting and, for the most part, chose to ignore it every time.  just couldn’t put my finger on what the sketch needed and why it wasn’t working.  but today i tamed the mish-mosh beast.

any thoughts?

what i think is that i was trying to include too many different designs in the one piece…ugg!…..simplify girl,  so i took it down…put it back on my light box to redraw the base, reworked the design and came away with 2 new drawings. nice! and of course they are circles…you can always find them in my work.

next step is to recolour both new drawings in PSE8 altho patience will not be with me as i try this.  i’m on a Mac now and have  a much older version of CorelDraw that i got for my old PC,  but didn’t want to purchase another copy of the software…funds are tight.

I asked around on one of the lists i belong to and someone suggested these incredibly inexpensive vector based programs, Intaglio and EasyDraw, both made for Macs. mmmh….(if anyone has used either of these, let me now how you like it).  sometimes a girl just wants to colour the point and click way.

before I got my mOjo back today (oh yeh) i forced myself to go into the studio, not to do anything mind you…just spend 10 or so minutes reacquainting myself with being there.  before long, i couldn’t help myself (she says with a giggle)…..i created….i started another grunge journal.  here’s the first one I made.

inside cover….stitched from front then painted in and grunged..the best part

love this new-for-me way of attaching the spine.  as always—-filled with lots of wonderful paper to write/draw on, some really cool bits and, of course inspirational thoughts & ideas throughout to get the muse juices flowing.

i’m calling her lillibird…..my first painted photgraph

i still have some more stuff” to add and will sew in the signatures and put the finishing touches on it tonight.  as soon it’s completed i will be making a video clip showcasing both journals so you can get an up close view my step into the grunge…dun…dun…dun!

Tags: fiber art, journals, mixed media by k grace howes
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For the last few weeks (in between doing Symposium stuff) I’ve been working on this one quilt that came to me as I was reading an article somewhere. I read so much in quilt magazines, blogs and online  that I can’t remember where I read it but the words resonated with me and Lightness of Being was born…in my mind at least.

Most of the time I work intuitively…..my abstract pieces are usually born through feeling and touch and intuition, picking up and auditioning fabrics and finding those that fit the piece.

Recently though, especially since the Orchid Show pieces (below), I been feeling the need to work in a representational manner. One of the tools I use to gather information and to have a starting off point for these pieces is to mind map words.

Part of the Orchids: Sensuality Stitched Show

I am not very good at drawing…..this is not a whine nor a complaint but a fact…..so instead of getting frustrated at not being able to draw images that I see in my minds eye, I mind map those images with words instead. These words turn into ideas for surface designs or stitching or the images themselves.

It still fascinates me what happens when you release control and just start writing without checking for content, grammatical errors, words that don’t fit or giving in to distracting thoughts. The flow, if allowed to continue, is almost cathartic. Images into words tumble out (most of the time that is).

Sometimes one of these words pops out at me and I take that one and run with it. Soon the page is filled with “images”. From this cacophony of words I pick out ones that resonate and start the quilt.

I haven’t finished this one I’m working on, still needs to be quilted, but I like where it’s going. Here’s a sneak peak.

What do you do to release control and let your work flow through you?

Tags: defining one's art, fiber art by k grace howes
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I got a large package the other day but was unsure what it was. I had not ordered anything online for a long while so wasn’t expecting anything.

As I walked back in the house the phone was ringing so I put the box down on the counter. One thing led to another and I forgot about it.

About 3 hours later my son comes in from school, sees the box on the counter and shrieks gleefully. Poor kid…..he thought I bought something for him. Sorry bub, it’s addressed to me. A few seconds later he’s looking at me strangely as I shriek!

“Mother Love” is back!!!

This quilt has been traveling for the last year and a half and had finally made it home!

“Mother Love” won Judges’s Choice Award (thanks Jamie Fingal) in the “My World in Black and White Revisted” exhibition by Fiber Arts Connection of Southern California.

This quilt is about the relationship between a mother and her child in transformation. In the midst of the turmoil and chaos that can permeate a teenagers life, a mother’s love, like a continuous circle, is enduring, never ending in helping her child transition.

I had a hard time with my eldest but we’ve come through the other side intact and actually friends.

May you and your teenager’s experience be less chaotic and much more about the love.

Tags: circle series, fiber art, juried quilts by k grace howes
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A question was posed on the SAQA list last week about what is the one thing (or 2 or 3) we quilt artists don’t particularly like to do when it comes to creating our art. The answers ran the gammet, from designing to quilting to labels and sleeves.

A few people, however, felt  that burying threads is right there at the top for them. Yucky, yucky, yucky! Once upon a time, I would have said that too.

I noticed a long time ago that no matter what workshop I take there is always one thing I can take away to help me in my work or help to work more effectively. In a class with Robbie Joy Eklow last year she showed us this neat trick to burying thread tails. It was like a gigantic light bulb when off in my head.

Ever since then I’ve done it her way and it’s no longer a hated chore for me. I can start and stop where ever the heck I like. It was one of the reasons I tried to start and finish the quilting in one go…hence earlier pieces of mine were filled with lots and lots of meandering stitches. lol.

So I thought I’d do a video tutorial about it (with Robbie’s permission of course).

I’ll be adding this video to my Tutorial Page. You can also access it on Youtube along with my other videos.

Tags: fiber art, tutorial by k grace howes
18 Comments »

ART BREAK:

Forgot to let you know about the other pieces I had hanging at Mint Hill Arts Annual Fiber Arts show last month. I chose 3 pieces, “Red Moon”, “At Odds” and “Stacked” to hang in their gallery.

I found out last week that each piece was also selected to be exhibited at the Gallery’s off site exhibition at Mint Hill Town Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the local BB&T Bank after the MHA Fiber Arts show was finished. They were chosen to hang at BB

Funnily enough, in my former life, I was an employee of that same bank in uptown Charlotte, oh so long ago. Full circle moment here.

Defining Work

My quest this year is to push my work out there a bit more and find more places to have my work juried and exhibited. I am so pleased that I’ve started off on the right foot, 2 straight months where my work is hanging.

Back in December I got a tip from Robbie Joy Eklow (on the Quiltart list I subscribe to) about submitting our work.

She suggested that we set our calenders up at least 6 mths in advance, noting all the exhibitions we want to enter, the entry deadline, acceptance and ship dates and remembering to update our websites and art records to reflect this.

This way we are not caught short trying to fill out paperwork, finish artwork or play catch up when the show/exhibition rolls around.

Just trying to keep my Word for the Year, D I L I G E N C E in the forefront.

Tags: community, fiber art by k grace howes
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Our Fiber Art group exhibit, Orchids: Sensuality Stitched opens tomorrow at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. Yesterday we gathered to hang our show and I must say it looks wonderful.
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Cindy Klemmer, Director of Education at Stowe, greeted us warmly, showed us the hanging space and helped us get started.
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First things first, we laid out\’a0 the pieces on the floor to we decide where they will hang.
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That’s my piece on the lower left, “Ode to Gene”. My first foray into whole cloth painting and I loved it!
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PJ Howard\’a0 “rose to the occasion” (I couldn’t help the pun) and was deemed our unofficial ladder climber. I did not volunteer for that job because the older I get the more I find that me and ladders just don’t get along.
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She came prepared with her own tool belt made out of fabric (what else for a fiber artist right?).
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The hanging system at the Stowe is the typical Walker System whereby long rods are hung from a picture rail running along the wall about 10″ down from the ceiling.
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Hanging clips are attached and the work is hung from these.
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Our one dilemma was how were were to hang fiber art that is usually hung using a rod/slat in a sleeve.
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For each of our pieces we each made a sleeve that would still hold a rod (so the pieces can still be exhibited in a quilt show) but made it long enough to cover the foam core we used.
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Wire was then twisted onto the foam core so that they could be hung gallery style.
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After having made 4 of these revised sleeves I will be creating a PDF tutorial that I’ll put in my sidebar for those that want to know how to make one.
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Let me just say there were few prototypes before I got to the one I eventually used for the backs of my artwork.
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Here’s Deb Langsam (left)\’a0 rehanging one of her pieces after adding the wire to the foam core earlier.
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Susan Knapp (right)\’a0 brought sewing supplies to finish adding a label to the back of one of her pieces.
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While we were hanging, staffers occasionally popped in to see what we were up to, admiring all the work we had done.
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The two ladies (below), on the way out of the Garden, walked in to have a gander.
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Most people are still a bit uninformed about art quilts or fiber art and curiosity got the better of them. They spent a few minutes asking questions.
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I love this part about exhibiting, answering questions about our work and the processes we employ and find it fascinating that people still marvel at the fact that these artworks are all made from fabric.
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Included in the larger works,\’a0 we each made one piece, 18 x 12, using the same photograph as inspiration.
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These pieces were hung in the Garden’s\’a0 atrium where we will also be doing our demonstrations (12-4pm) of some of the techniques we used in the artwork. Some of us will be available at different times to walk through the exhibition to answer questions.

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To find our more info about each artist check out our blog at www.fiberartoptions.blogspot.com.

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The Exhibition will run through March 14th and we’d love to have you view our show.

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Feb. 6 through March 14, 2010
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Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden
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Belmont, NC
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704.825.4490
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www.dsbg.org
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Tags: community, fiber art by k grace howes
5 Comments »

Finally finished quilting all four pieces for our Orchid Exhibition coming up next week. Since I’ll be snowed in today (crazy snow this way in NC) I’ll get to devote a lot of time to adding facings and preparing each of them for hanging.
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So in that vein, here’s another sneak peek at Orchid #3. Can you correctly guess what this orchid piece is about?
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Ha!

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~
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Toodles,
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Tags: Art, fiber art by k grace howes
2 Comments »

Last night, busy in my studio, I decided to take a computer break. As usual, I got caught up and before you know it, I had spent almost 25 minutes online (considering I just went there to refresh my memory on a photo I had taken…mmmph!).
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I stretch, after having sat there for so long, look over and see this red blob on my floor,
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and realize that there’s a barely perceptible whizzing noise coming from the blob as well.\’a0 Now what do you think this can be?
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Of course the first thing any sane person does in this type of situation is….grab\’a0 the camera, of course (duh!).
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First things first, earlier in the afternoon I was helping my son with his homework. We finished and he left the room to repack his book bag. I then began to wonder what little gift he set up for me.
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So with camera in hand I step closer to reveal my gift (can you see it yet??????).
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And what to her wondering eyes should appear (yeh I know, must still be in the mind for Christmas)…
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~
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…but a little boy – fast asleep.\’a0 Awww shucks…isn’t that the best gift?
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BTW, the big round thing under the blanket is my exercise ball.
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Don’t ask.
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ART BREAK:

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In a few weeks, the art group I belong to (fiberartoptions.blogspot.com)\’a0 will have a fiber art orchid exhibition at the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in Belmont, NC. We are so excited. So for the past few weeks I have been hard at work finishing all my pieces. Here’s a sneak peak at another one of them.
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I’ve tried something totally new for me and have hand painted this one using acrylic paint on Pimatex cotton, with Gac 900 as the textile medium (yah me!)
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Using Golden Gac 900 with their line of fluid acrylics (instead of regular textile medium) gives the fabric a softer hand than even using Jacquard textile paint, which is what I started with.\’a0 The area at the bottom right (painted with Jacquard and medium) is much harder, almost like paper, than the rest of the piece.
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I think I’m in love…with Golden products that is.
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~
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Tags: FAO, captured moments, fiber art, paintings by k grace howes
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Don’t know what happened but for some reason I am all over this WordPress “Art Store post today but I’ll take it (see, tags do work).
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Check it out and scroll down for me, me, me and more me. Weird!
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ART BREAK:
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Above pic is a fused piece I did of a bite of an apple, refreshingly called “Apple Bite” (ehh…what can I say, that’s what came to mind and the title stuck – so sue me!).
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Anyhoo, originally made to enter the Quitling Arts Calendar contest last year this time but never got around to quilting it. Cool looking dontcha think? It’s still sitting at the bottom of the design wall…..just begging me to finish it.
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Tags: Art, fiber art by k grace howes
2 Comments »

It’s HERE! Yippee!

My first zine is finished and on it’s way for the zine swap. Soon I will be swimming in zines…well..maybe only 10 of them but a happy day that will be. I’ll probably maul the mailman as he drives by.

I have followed Alma Stoller’s blog for about a year now and she kept talking bout this “zine” thing. This past July she put a call out to all zine-sters, new and old and I decided to just jump right in. How hard can it be…right? (famous last words indeed).

Let me go back and do wiki def for you. A zine (pronounced zeen) is a small self-published booklet. It’s an opportunity for the maker to explore a topic, express feelings, encourage, share, educate and, especially, connect with others.

So off I went to create. It took a while for me to come up with my topic but, in the end, I kept coming back to the same thing.

I call it “the Inner Eye”, that something deep inside of us that helps us bring forth our art.

So my zine is a little inspiration to propell you along your art-y way.

One of the things we were to include in the zine is an interview. Only problem was….I couldn’t choose just one person.

That when the idea for a series of interviews took hold. I asked a few of my quilt artist friends to answer a few questions and included some answers from each of them.

I chose to call them “Inner-views” (remember the name of my zine—”The Inner Eye”), because these words are the innermost thoughts and perspectives about how each artist soul manifest itself through her art and throughout her life.

Each page is created separately using the cut and paste method, then photocopied to make the 10 zines.

To paint the covers, I spritzed water on poster boards and then washed in two of my fav colours….red and golden yellow to create the 2-colour cover.

Included in each zine are bits of inspiration, articles, projects, exercises, the “inner-views” (of course) and a bag of yummy extra bits.

This zine was a labour (NO KIDDING!) of love. I so enjoyed writing the articles and designing the layout for each page. I made a few extra of them to put in my etsy shop so YOU too can have one to enjoy as well. When I get my parcel of zine goodyness, I’ll post the pics of them.

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See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, Paper, fiber art, mixed media by k grace howes
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