Searching for Quality Art Materials

  Supply shelves in my studio

I’ve discovered that good art supplies can make a huge difference in the quality of my finished works of art. Fortunately, I live in a town where art is very much alive and appreciated! I feel lucky to have access to a wonderful art supply store that is owned by a working artist with a great spirit, Scott Pope. Creativity and love of art is sensed when you walk into his store, The Loft.

Scott has been supplying Athens’ artists for over 30 years. I know, because I’ve been shopping (and dreaming, and finding inspiration) at his store for almost that long! I even featured The Loft’s Jackson Street storefront in an early exhibit, and you can still see the silk painting hanging in Scott’s store.

    The Loft #1 - 2002

At The Loft I can always find a) great supplies, b) great staff, c) an option to order what I need if they don’t have it in stock, and d) answers to my endless questions! The Loft can be found on the Web and on Facebook, but their real strength is in walking in the door, looking around and talking to a real (knowledgeable) human being. Leslie is especially helpful, she puts artistic signs all over the store, and I love seeing what she is up to with her own artwork. I can sense that she is a good manager, and that Scott can depend on her, but I also know that I can trust anyone they hire to provide good recommendations.

  Colors galore at The Loft     Canvas rolls at The Loft

For my web and mail-order needs, I use several different suppliers. I highly recommend each of them, and I have found that they are all very helpful if called upon with questions:

Dharma Trading Company has almost everything a fiber artist can use. Dyes, paints, blank clothing and fabrics - it’s your one-stop shopping place when you are beginning to dye.

At ProChemical and Dye, I buy Pro MX Reactive Dyes and the Pro Liquid Reactive Dyes; I use their chemicals, and sometimes I purchase their fabric. ProChemical and Dye has many other quality products and they are worth taking a look at.

Thai Silks has a great collection of silk scarves; they are often the first place I go for my scarves to dye.

TestFabrics is my preferred source of ready-to-dye material - their supplies are a little more expensive than some of the other places, but it is worth it when I am seeking quality. I first discovered them in 1979 when I bought white cotton batiste yardage to create my (white-on-white embroidered) wedding dress. TestFabrics sells a wonderful silk broadcloth that I am currently very in love with, and they also have a nice silk twill. Both are a little unusual, and have a nice weight and feel to them.

I am continuing to experiment with silkscreen, and silkscreen inks. I’m in the market for good inks, particularly sustainable/eco-friendly inks, and good screens. I am also struggling with the fixing process for silkscreening on textiles; I want to be sure my designs are not going to wash away. If anyone has suggestions or feedback, please let me know!

    Always a need for more supplies

A quick note: Tonight, the ATHICA Mystery exhibit opened. The reception was fun, and I saw quite a few of my friends there!  All artists submitted art in the same format, 8.5” x 5.5”, and the artist’s names were not revealed. The task of the viewers is to see how many artists can be recognize by their style. Over 100 Athens artists had been invited to participate in this exclusively Athens-artist event, and I was proud to have been part of it. See the exhibit before it ends on September 18, it’s quite a showcase of Athens talent!

Sources of Inspiration

Who inspires me? There are many people, artists and designers who inspire me; people that I know, and others whom I’ve never met. While looking around, I can find sources of inspiration everywhere I look - in my home town, in the big city, the media and of course, on the Web. But the person that inspires me the most is my daughter, Kate. She is talented, smart, creative - and I swear - it’s not just because she is part of my family! Most of all - she is patient with me and all of my crazy ideas and the many creative paths I continue to tumble down.

I’ve so enjoyed watching her as she embarks on her life independent of us. She’s the one who helps me blog, she answers my questions about websites, and she leads me to new creative ideas. You can see samples of her ideas and thought processes at her blog: love-and-reason.com and her sense of design at her etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/loveandreason

Her academic career has been in art history. I always knew she was terribly creative - even when she was a little girl and dressed quite - independently! Here is a photo of Kate in 1995 exhibiting her personal sense of style.

                                             

How does Kate inspire me?

She’s a natural teacher. She imparts knowledge willingly, she’s patient, and she explains things clearly. She has worked in the classrooms at the Montessori School here and I swear I can hear her patient teacher’s voice when she is explaining technological mysteries to me. Her apparent ease with new media helps me stay up to date with my communications.  

Kate is always sending me cool stuff that she finds on the Web: fashion, design, business advice, etc. She helps me sift through new ideas, and find new questions.

My designs come from me, but Kate is my sounding board. She’s the one I can share new directions with before I go public with them. We share our design explorations though digital images on email and pix messaging.

Now we are moving into a design partnership - we are working on a t-shirt line that will be Brooklyn-themed. We’ll both design; and we’ll silkscreen the t’s ourselves. 

This is Kate’s preliminary sketch for our first product - the three bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Isn’t it fun?

                                            

Kate is my muse, she is my inspiration, and she is my technological wizard. The world is changing, and she is helping me change gracefully along with it. 

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Why I Worry

Sometimes I find myself wondering why I seem to worry so much over my artwork. I don’t normally see myself as a worrier, but when I have an idea forming, an idea that I am nearly ready to put into action, I find that I have to… well… worry about it for a while. Whether I am considering writing a blog post, creating a new design, experimenting with a new technique, or designing a new product, I worry about it - I agitate, I ponder, I become a little uncommunicative! I focus all of my attention on that point I am trying to nurture - it’s like I cannot take action without having this storm in my head first.

Lately, I’ve come to see this process as a healthy one rather than a disruptive one. The worry-time is a gestation period for the thoughts that are swirling around in my head, a time for images to fly by, and for problems to be solved. I become quiet because I am seeing what is inside, what is to come, rather than what is plainly apparent on the exterior.   

I am finding that this blog is changing that process somewhat. It’s easy for me to talk to you about how I create - how I make things, how I am inspired, how I put hand-to-silk, and that helps me think though my ideas and plans, so thank you Dear Reader! Where would I be without you?

  

 House Wren silkscreen on paper

Revisiting Goals - Bird Cushions

Now is the time of the summer for me to get back to some of those longer-term goals I’ve been talking about here, like silk screening tea towels and other linens. I have been busy silk screening, and will share those results on the next post, but first I wanted to show what I did with the bird designs that I wrote about in my earlier post. I am pleased to announce that I just made my first Birds! cushion!

I ordered down & feather throw cushions online from Ballard Design. While the pillows were in transit, I hand-painted the Whip-poor-will design onto silk broadcloth. After much experimentation, the bird became a raspberry color with a tangerine background. In painting the back of the cover a matching tangerine, I loved the effect the dye created while not quite reaching the edges. - it was a mark that the cushion was hand-dyed rather than mass-produced. It also adds to the visual interest to the piece. I could imagine the new pillow owner fluffing up the pillow on the couch and tossing it with the back of the pillow facing forward. I hesitated to leave the dye looking ‘unfinished’, but I ultimately left the dye the way it spoke to me.

I am very pleased with the result, and after I make a few more prototypes, will be out marketing this product. Very exciting!