Saturday collage

(click image for details)

Reef

digital collage

In March I pictured some copper inlay motives at the airport of Miami. They are situated on the floor of the arrival or transit section and are really wonderful. Unfortunately we are mostly quite in a hurry to catch our luggage or connecting flight, so I only have pictures of a few of these sea-images. But I cherish them and combine them with other pictures, in this case a picture of an Australian island near the Great Barrier Reef, hence the name

Playing with silks

which is fun if you know how to work with this slippery fabric

my collection of silks, gathered over the years, supplies the stars that I am making for

Les Jardins de la Création

the Xmas art market in Marigot

Have fun today!

Recycling

My regular readers know, I think, that I live on a very small Caribbean island. Yes, we do (or did, it's crisis here too) have a lot of tourists in the cooler months of the year, but despite this our energy company can't keep up with the demands. So, especially at present, we experience a lot of power outages. This morning it was Bingo! again.

Alternatives came into my mind: I could put the still wet laundry in the dryer: nope...

Could finish the washing that I switched of yesterday night: nope...

Ironing my silks with Wonder Under? No electricity, alas

It is remarkable and scaring too how many of our daytime activities are electricity-bound.

Then I remembered this Indian bag that I bought a few years ago and never used.

When you live in a place where materials are scarce, especially materials in the fields of art and textiles, you develope a different way of looking at stuff. I don't buy beautiful stuff (hardly), but I do buy possibilities. So if I see a kaftan or a men's shirt that has possibilities, I buy it, just for the fabric, the material.

Demolition begins...

This morning's power outage started demolition time! With the recycling idea in mind, I thought the least I could do to make up with the undoubtedly many, many underpaid hours of the Indian ladies (childs?) was saving all the little paillettes and beads that had been sewn onto the bag.

Crazy? --> depends on where you live

Time consuming? --> for sure...

Broadening one's horizon? --> definitely!

Recycling fabrics and notions

On my latest visit to Curacao

(click images for details)

I walked the alleys ('hanchis' in Papiamentu) in Punda

never knowing what to encounter

on colorful surprises like this, Dutch influence in the Caribbean

... and visited a lovely art gallery in one of the island's country houses.
The restoration job is not finished yet, as it is a tedious and expensive process here in the Antilles, working in this hot climate and with prices of building materials sky high...

but already now it is a wonderful gallery. I loved it all, the ceramics, the paintings, sculptures and other art, the building itself !

The artistic battery has been charged again, so now I'm off to my fabrics and paper

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Off island

going to another one for the next few days...

Some museum (Kura Hulanda, the African part) and quiltshop visiting, and maybe one of the beaches. Absolutely no complaining here, will be back on Saturday.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your week!

New quilt - finished

made of remnants and some new fabric

a turquoise binding made of different fabrics

have a look inside, first time ever I used real white in a quilt

the back of the quilt

My latest one,

for some philosophical reason I decided to name it:

Love thy Neighbour

(which btw is not always easy, I know...)

New quilt

All my fabrics have been reorganized last weekend. It was a huge job, but I am glad that I know again what's in the house and especially where to find it! I realize that I have to speed up my quiltmaking in order to use at least a part of the fabrics, so once again I started a simple quilt. There is a good instruction on this site and it is a perfect design to combine many different colors of fabrics. The pattern is originally called Chinese coins. The top is finished and today I will baste the layers and I hope to quilt it this weekend, just wish me good luck with my sewing machine...

And then:

when visiting the funny hippy and art town of MAdrid on the New Mexico Turquoise Trail last summer, I spotted this poster along the road. It seems the perfect advice for this weekend:


Enjoy and slow down!

Bogolan continued

Bogolan

digital collage

(click for details)

Last week I posted about being inspired by bogolan fabric and my love for contrast, black and white, rhythm in pattern. You can find more about it here

One of my paper collages carries this beautiful font and here we meet another love of mine: fonts...

I think that's an heritage from my father; he was, as far as I can remember always reading, especially newspapers, very extensively. Being a child then myself, it sometimes seemed to me he was practising/checking his daytime job in the field of typographic mark up. Of course I could absolutely not understand let alone appreciate it then, but times have changed, it is also reading and letters for me now, lots of them please!

Back to this digital collage: it is composed of a detail of the paper collage, had to skip the first and last letter, but the word bogolan is still there for me. Then I put some bogolan details over the picture and completed and blended all this with a Mali map, since this is the main country where bogolan fabric is being made.

As you may see: inspiration is everywhere around...

Monday collage

The Synagogue

digital collage
(please click image for details)

Inspired by: bogolan

Since years, all the way from Europe where I bought it on one of the European Quilt Festivals, I have been in love with this fabric. Yes, indeed, in love! Fabric lovers like me will certainly know what I mean by that: not wanting to ever cut it apart, just cherishing it in your treasure chest and having a look at it every now and then and feeling instantly rich. You see? I'm soo easy to please :)

So yesterday I was putting away fabric remnants of my latest quilt and I saw it again.

It is a kind of fabric sampler, measuring about 2.5 m in length and 0.3 m in width, showing lots of patterns and motives. And to add to this happiness, also yesterday I was browsing through some magazines (tons of them, another treasure in the 'chest') and happened to read an article about Bogolan, or mudcloth that is being made in Mali since ages. You understand I had to come into action, with all these creative juices flowing...

fabric sampler

it contains much of what I love: contrast, repetition, neutrals, graphic patterns , and fabric!

Though regular readers of my blog may know my use of bold colours in my quilts and collages, that does not mean that I do not like black, white and neutral colors, in fact I love them also.

So I'm afraid I am a colour omnifore and thus change my colorscheme every now and then.

Inspired by the article I made these collages,

tore the pictures, rearranged them and pimped them with a little bit of acrylic bronze paint.

( images are clickable)

Look at those hands, aren't they beautiful?

Should you be interested in bogolan and how it is made, there is a wealth of information on the internet. Some sites I liked are this one, and this and finally this one.
Enjoy!

Oh, Happy Day

That is how I decided to name this quilt

(with a little wink and sweet memories of the Edwin Hawkins Singers' hit in the early seventies).

In the beginning of September I was inspired by a box of thread spools in my studio while I was trying to declutter all my fabrics. I have written about it in this post.

This is a quilt in its almost most simple form, only one of just plain squares might have been more basic. It was just what I needed at that moment, simple patchwork for a simple quilt, I even did not add a border, mainly because I just wanted to use fabric that was in the house already and for a border I would have had to shop online (and wait!)

Yesterday was quilting day. Nowadays I do all the quiltwork on my sewing machine and every time the big question seems to be: will it cooperate or not?

It did, yesterday, Oh Happy Day!

almost finished, adding the binding

you see? just using fabrics that were in 'da house'

I could tell a story with each of these fabrics, which is what still,
after all this time, makes quilting so wonderful!


here it is on a chair in our living

and on the vide, oh, it makes me feel good



Oh, Happy Day !

machine sewing and quilting, cotton, 43 x 51 "

Curaçao - the Mikve Israel - Emanuel Synagogue

High on my agenda last week in Curaçao was a visit to the Mikve Israel - Emanuel Synagogue.

During the years that we lived on this island, for some reason, it never happened and because I regretted it ever since, now was the time. What was most significant for me was the difference with prayer houses of other religions. Being originally Roman Catholic I am used to that; I clearly remember the display and splender of several of their famous churches like the Duomo in Florence and the never to be finished Sagrada Familla in Barcelona; later I also visited the more serious prayer houses of other christian religions, but until last week never a synagogue.

(please click the images for more details)

the entrance

Do you notice the fans? It's hot in here during the service. Not sure if this was the women compartment or the men's. During service both are being separated.

'keppels' (headcovers) for male visitors

Replica of a tombstone outside the synagogue

This has been a very interesting visit for me; and once again it seems that the more you learn, at the same time the less you know. After having read several books by Chaim Potok and now having visited this synagogue, I expect that the need to learn more about this subject will linger a while...

Feeling shakey..

Yesterday around 12.30 we had an earthquake here in the Caribbean. It was not the first time this year, but this one too was soo scary. Starting with a kind of grumbling sound you don'n know where it comes from, but strange and already scaring. Now I am not a person that is afraid very quickly, but this really is other stuff. For a hurricane one can prepare, as there is lots of information before the storm is there, but this... All of a sudden, out of the blue (ocean in this case!). And when I already cot scared by the strange sound that seemed to come out of the earth, it got worse when the shaking started. Last time it happened I was in our hammock, but this time taking pictures on the veranda. Boy, you don't know how quickly to get outside the house!!

And one can only be very, very thankful that it was not, as so often happens in other parts of our world, stronger. The earthquake's epicenter is said to have been about 29 km east from our island.

Now 4.5 on the Richter scale may not be much, but for me it was more than enough!!

And thank you universe that we suffered no damage..

Is it art?

(click image for details)

Porto Rico

digital collage

Yesterday I was surfing the internet and read Ian Foster's most recent blogpost, which had a very interesting topic: he is wondering whether 'real' artists (the ones that use glue, paper and paint) think that making digital collages is art, or is it 'cheating' a bit...

Ian is an abstract painter and also makes the most wonderful photographs and has now posted his first results in the field of digital collaging, using his own pictures.

Now isn't that art?

I have come across this discussion in the art world quite a few times. It is ever present in the quiltworld (is this still a quilt, is this not only pieces of fabric, too modern, too traditional etc?) More in general I see a similarity in the age old struggle between art and craft: Is it art or is it craft?

Being a digital collager myself I can totally understand Ian's question and his doubts whether 'real' artists take this work seriously. Of course it is true that without a digital camera and good photo editing program, digital collaging would be impossible, but I consider these the tools that every artist needs, albeit it more technical than a gluestick or brush e.g.

As for myself: I also use my own pictures, sometimes the collages go easy and build up quite quickly, but it is the combining that gets tricky now and then. I have destroyed many a collage that was already good, by just adding another layer and the whole thing was destroyed!

As with painting and other art forms, there is no recipe of how to get this or that result, it mostly depends what pictures you choose to work with and it is always, as with all art, a matter of composition, balance, rules of thirds, colour etc.

For me the answer is clear, I just try to make something beautiful and eye pleasing (now this is another discussion, I know, I know...)

And you, what do you think??

Curacao - green is beautiful also...

One of the things I love of the Caribbean is its richness in colours,

my oh my, they cheer you up instantly!

Sea and ocean: always blue, wherever you look, from the most brilliant turquoise to a greyish green, almost indigo sometimes. Then the houses: all colours, but contrary to Holland/Europe: never grey and dull. They may often look shabby due to the lack of funds to maintain them properly, but grey and dull? Never!

I am sure this abundance in colours reflects in my quilts and collages, though I am not particularly fond of green. But today I invite you to walk with me through Punda again and discover: green...

in this lovely little restaurant

where I found this funny painting

and this creature on one of the walls inside

iguanas 'sculptured' against a wall on a lovely little square

and finally this dutch looking (the design) historical house.

Punda in Curacao: busy, vibrant and so very colourful!

Curacao - a 'yellow' walk in Punda

Hi, I'm back!

This time during my visit to Curacao, I spent a morning walking in Punda. It is the island's oldest shopping centre and especially in the morning it is very busy and full of activity along the harbourside and in the narrow, historical streets and alleys.

Just walking, and taking it all in...

The 'Fortkerk' (church) in Fort Amsterdam

old colonial influences galore

everywhere you look...

Fort Amsterdam - the entrance

even old architecture in one of the alleys

That is it for today, going to celebrate my husbands birthday now,

will be back shortly, have a wonderful weekend!