portraits

Today in photo class we took portraits of each other - super fun!

Here's one I did of Carrie.

and me.

and me being goofy!

I am setting up a photo studio in my basement so maybe I'll do more of these.

Band Aids & White Privilege

This semester I co-taught an undergraduate class at UW Madison's School of Business called Diversity & Business: S.E.E.D. The class explores various social justice issues such as racism, sexism, and homophobia.

One of the articles we read in the class is by Peggy McIntosh called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, where she identifies 50 aspects of unearned white privilege.
For example,

"46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin".

This morning I went to coffee with one of my students and had a great conversation about the topics we discuss in class. Then afterwards I stopped into Walgreen's to buy a few things, including Band Aids. Well finally in 2006 there are clear Band Aids with the middle cotton part in light, medium, and dark to match various skin tones. Even though I am white, I was so excited I bought the medium box (they didn't stock the dark). To me this is just a small example of how a company can show more equity and be less focused on whiteness.

Thank you J & J, it's about time.

tear.glue.paint.stitch.nap update

The opening last weekend was great! There were definitely over 100 people there throughout the night and Julie and I each sold several pieces. Here are a few that I sold. I took these photos at the gallery so they are pretty poor quality and a bit too yellow (should be more turquoise blue), but I thought I would just get them up here. They are all part of the Blue Swirl Series. They are all made with acrylic paint on duck cloth, then quilted with a thin batting and matted & framed.

tear.glue.paint.stitch.nap

Julie Koenke and I are having an art show together.

The postcard is below, but here are the details...

Location: Sculptures, 1988 Atwood Ave. Madison, WI 53704
Dates: now until January 8, 2007
Reception: December 1, 5-9pm - come join us for food, art, and fun!

Recent Work

Last week I was sooo busy creating work for the Madison area Open Art Studio tour (see previous post) and I am so glad I did, because it was a huge success for me. I barely had a break either day with people coming by including many friends and many people I had not met yet. I sold quite a few things and was very encouraged. Here are some photos from the day and of a couple pieces I made last week. The photos are a little blurry since I hand-held the camera and the lighting wasn't great.

My living room with a table of art - what do you think of my new blue wall?!

6" x 6" piece framed in a 12" x 12" frame
acrylic paint and machine quilted
$50

from left to right: Sunrise Swirl, Soda Pop Fizz, Sunset Swirl

wine charms, book strings and some framed pieces

a small piece that sold, 11" x 11"
acrylic paint, pastels, machine quilted

It was a great day! I hope to do it again next year. I am also excited about doing more painting and sewing. Life is good!

Madison area Open Art Studios

I am participating in the Madison area Open Art Studio in Madison, WI next weekend. If you are in the area stop by. My studio will be open from 11-5 on Saturday, Oct. 7 & Sunday, Oct. 8. Additionally, there is an opening reception at the Overture Center on Friday, Oct. 6 from 5-9pm and all the artists will have a piece displayed and some of us have pieces in a raffle (a great way to buy art!). I'll be there from 5-7pm so stop by the reception or swing by my studio if you have time.

Studio located at 2526 Coolidge St. Madison, WI

My artwork at No Rules Gallery

My art work was recently welcomed at a gallery in Spring Green, WI called No Rules Gallery! They have several small quilts of mine, some framed paintings, and quilted postcards. I'm very excited. If you are in the area stop in - its a great shop.

Gorgeous Ladies of Rock Climbing (GLORC)

Let me introduce to you the Gorgeous Ladies of Rock Climbing (GLORC), not to be confused with GLOW – the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, although there are some similarities. Sunday was the first gathering of GLORC and included Smokey River, Daisy Dirtroad, Onyx 53, Clammy, and me – Daffin El Prado.

On Sunday we had our first GLORC gathering and went to Devil’s Lake State Park and set out to find the elusive Porkchop Buttress on the West Bluff. After wandering around over rocks, dense vegetation, and thorns and continually consulting the guidebook for three hours we finally gave up and settled on another location. We weren’t sure what it was called, but it was a great spot and worked well for us.

The neverending search for Porkchop Buttress

Smokey learning to belay, me helping her, Onyx chilling and Daisy tied-in ready to climb

Onyx 53 climbing and Smokey belaying

That's me climbing

Wow - look at those muscles!
Onyx 53, Clammy, Smokey River, Daisy Dirtroad, Daffin El Prado

More GLORC adventures to come in a couple of weeks!

spine doodle

Here is a small quilt I did last week. It started as a doodle, I think inspired by my spine. The doodle was done a while ago so I can’t be sure. However, I am very aware of my back since I have a fair bit of lower back pain on a regular basis. Even though the spine was the inspiration this piece is not about pain. It’s happy, colorful, vibrant! It was fun to make. I don’t have a name for it yet. I dread naming my quilts. I'm not much of a word person. I made a deal with my girlfriend that I’ll hem her pants if she’ll come up with names for my quilts. She is a poet and more of a wordsmith than me so was quite pleased with the deal. More quilts are on the way, so soon I’ll have a stack of ‘em for her to name. Fortunately, I won’t have to hem many pants since she’s tall.

11" X 17"

Detail

This quilt is made with my hand-dyed fabrics, fused, and machine quilted.

Vented Dye Mixing Box

i haven't been blogging for a while due to being crazy busy, but great. Hopefully, I'll be a regular now.

I made a little fume hood/dye mising box like they have in chemistry classes and industrial dye studios because I am worried about the carcinogenic affects of the dye powders or at the very least developing allergies to them like other dyers I know. When the dye is in powder form it isn’t good to breathe and of course the more you dye the more exposure you get. Once it’s mixed with the water it’s fine. So, I made this box with a bathroom exhaust fan in it and vented it out the wall. A friend of mine drilled the whole and installed the vent and also helped me with some of the electrical wiring on the box. I am not sure how affective it is, but I think it helps some. I still wear my respirator mask. It would be cool to be able to test it somehow, but I don’t know how to do that. Anyone else know how to test where powder is going in the air, to determine if it goes out the fan or not?

The fume hood in my dye studio.

A closer view

It has a plexiglas door that goes 3/4 down of the way. I just stick my hands in the opening when mixing.

Saturday Night Date

Saturday night I had a date, with me that is, and 17 bottles of dye and 51 yards of white fabric. It was intense! A great artist’s date. It was the first time I dyed fabric in my new house and the first time I’ve ever dyed inside a house. Before I bought this house I always dyed outside on the back porch of my apartment. If I dyed at night I had to get out this big utility light and extension cord and then had to endure the bugs or the cold. Sometimes I would put on my long underwear, fleece hat, and glove liners under my rubber gloves and dye until I was too cold. Sometimes I would last up to an hour, depending on the weather, but it wasn’t near as much fun as my new basement. I love it! I can drip everywhere and no one cares!

My dye studio

Since it was sunny outside today and sorta warm (40-ish degrees) I went out to mix the dye. I know the neighbors thought I was crazy. I was sitting in the grass with two large buckets, lots of squirt bottles, little containers, measuring spoons and an industrial strength mask. They just stared and didn't say anything and it's hard to strike up a conversation when you are breathing through filters. Just wait until this summer when I have yards of fabric spread all over the backyard!

Once I got started with the dyeing I decided to do 50 yards, but after 38 yards I had to scrounge around the house for more buckets or containers to put the fabric in. I transferred the yogurt into a Tupperware, emptied two trashcans, and retired a couple Tupperwares I didn’t like anyway. Finally, at 11:30pm I got to 50 or 51 yards; I threw in an extra yard in case my counting was off. Here are some photos. Now tomorrow I get to do a lot of laundry and then a lot of ironing. It’ll be worth it! 50 yards of beautiful fabric! Oh, I can’t wait!

Dyeing Table



Rainbow gradations



The streaky, twist method

More buckets, each with two yards of fabric

Spouse Beater

Last Thursday, an hour after my last post, my brother called me at work after getting two emails about his wife beater shirt and he said, “Amy, what did you do?” How quickly he assumes it’s me! I innocently said, “Greg, what’s the matter? What are you talking about?” while trying to stifle my laughter. I told him to look at my blog. He thought the whole thing was funny and his partner fell off his chair laughing when he heard what I did and then said that Greg and I were cut from the same cloth. See, a few months ago there was this email that went around from this lady who was appalled that the US Postal Service would print a stamp depicting an Islamic holiday; since all Muslims are terrorists and all (very heavy sarcasm here). So, my brother decided to email everyone he knew and have them send her a postcard with the stamp and a nice note or smiley face (who knows why her mailing address was on the email). Of course, I thought this was great and sent off several. So, see we think a bit alike. Although, in the case of our views about how language affects people we see things differently.

By the end of the day on Thursday Greg wasn’t laughing as much anymore since he had been inundated with emails (nice job everyone!). For some reason he felt compelled to answer them all and he signed them “give my love to Amy” which I, and my office mates, found hilarious. Being a stubborn soul he emailed me and said he was definitely not changing the name of his shirt now. Although on his website it is now called “spouse beater” instead of “wife beater” so we can have equal opportunity abuse. Wouldn’t want to favor the wives now would we?

Fortunately, my bro and I have a good enough relationship that we can tease and even be mad at each other and it’s all still good. I feel very fortunate about that. However, this has really made me think about how even though we grew up in the same house we had very different experiences that have probably shaped how we view things. For one, we went to very different colleges (Me – medium-sized, diverse public school in NC, Greg – small, private, yuppie college in FL). I’ve also lived all over the country and probably grown more aware of racism, sexism, and other oppressions than he has and I’ve tried to educate myself and read about it and talk about it with people. I’ve even facilitated groups on social justice issues. There is just a lot of crap out there and I feel like the people in the best position to make a difference are those in the majority (i.e. white, male, heterosexual). I don’t want to get on a soap box because there is so much more I could do to make this world better.

Another thing about Greg and I is that even though we are only four years apart we are in different generations. He is in The Millennials and I am a Gen Xer, which means that different events shaped our lives when we were growing up. I won’t bore you with all the details of our lives growing up, but I think that our experiences have shaped our perceptions of life and that’s partly why he doesn’t get the “wife beater” complaint. Hopefully one of his buyers will complain about it and that will carry a lot more weight than me, his lowly sister. Until then - there are worse problems to worry about.

That’s all for now. Adios!

wife beater

My brother is a super talented, intelligent, courageous man who has his own business selling beautiful high-end men's clothing. He recently released his Fall line and posted it to his website. Being his proud older sister I checked out the new line beaming with delight at the great designs until I got to the shirt titled Black "wife beater" shirt. What! Wife beater! Of course I knew immediately why he named it that because it has white stitching simulating an outline of a man's ribbed undershirt which has been dubbed the terrible name of a "wife beater" shirt.

Photo of model wearing Black "wife beater" shirt

I sent my bro, Greg, an email kindly suggesting that he change the name of the shirt to something less offensive. He responded to me saying that since that is what those undershirts are called and everyone will be calling the shirt that anyway he just named it that, but that the name doesn't matter anyway. Well I disagree. Personally, I think language is huge.

Meanwhile, unbeknowst to me, my sister sent Greg an email suggesting he change the name as well. His response was, "did Amy put you up to this?" That gave us both a chuckle, but sparked the idea that maybe I should put some people up to emailing him and calling him on his insensitivity to domestic violence langauge.

So, here's where I need your help...first, check out Greg's website at: http://www.godspeedthewelldressedman.com/Menu.htm click on Fall 06 and scroll through until you find the Black "wife beater" shirt so you'll see what I am talking about. Then, email Greg at: thewelldressedman@gmail.com and tell him he should change the name of this shirt and be more sensitive towards the serious issue of domestic violence. And, if you have additional, more appropriate suggestions that'll great.

Eventually he'll figure out that I started all this and then I'll just tease him and tell him he should have listened to me in the first place. In the meantime, my sister and I can enjoy our joke on our little brother. hee-hee.

p.s. I should add that my brother is not violent at all and certainly doesn't condone domestic violence, but he just doesn't yet see why this shirt name is inappropriate. Of course, part of it is male privilege, but that's for another post.

Photo of model wearing Black "Wife beater" shirt