art history

AI Ick: How Do We Handle the AI Conundrum

| ellenanneeddy

Let’s start this by saying, it’s just one woman’s opinion. I mean no disrespect to anyone.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I had to change web hosts. It was an ungodly mess and I did almost nothing except try to fix it. I wrote that the dog had eaten my homework which is why I didn’t have a new blog up.

This week I can almost honestly say that dinosaurs broke into my computer room, pooped in my computer, packaged me up in a box and sent me to California where I kept hearing a cat near by. That bad.

We got it straightened out. It’s three weeks of my life I’ll never get back, so I am deeply grateful for the guy at FixRunner who found me an answer within an hour.

And I don’t have much work to show. So I thought I’d talk about something a lot of us are finding distressing.

I have some problems with AI. I have not, in fairness, tried it. I may never. It offends me in a baseline way. But that’s not the real reason. I think perfectified art really misses the point.

There’s no getting around the fact that it’s theft. I wish that were new. One cave man copied another woman’s art they found in a cave 3 miles up the road. Art has always been derivative. We learn art skills by copying other people’s work. It’s how you learn art in college, largely. You copy the masters, not because your copy has value, but so that you can build your skills for your own work.

We are still always influenced. If I see a quilt with a heron, and I make a heron quilt, it will have a lot of things in common. Like the heron. And the water. I can’t tell you how many heron quilts I’ve seen over years that mimicked Lady Blue. It’s a compliment, I think. Or it may have nothing to do with anything except their interest in beautiful birds. I’ll never know.

That’s the benign kind of theft. We influence eachother with what we do. Art speaks to art. We respond to other people’s work by working with either their imagery or their materials. If we’re good, it’s enough ours that no one notices.

It’s usually hopeless to ask someone why they copied you. They’ll either say they didn’t beause they don’t recognize that they did, or they’ll tell you it’s all completely originally theirs. Either way, it’s not a worthy conversation. Nor is it strictly the truth. But strict truth is a bad fitting shoe. It hurts more than it helps sometime.

The real thieves are the ones who want to use your design commercially. I had someone offer my quilt, Dancing in the Light as a fleecy blanket you could own for $90. When I was over being furious, I realized none of the blankets they offered were produced. It was strict sham. I was torn between being appalled and wanting one. I told them not to do that in an official manner and they stopped listing my piece. I don’t think they stopped. It appears to be a Chinese thing. I found a number of listings on Temu and Etsy.

Part of this is a change in technology. There’s technology out there that we have the ability to use, and no sense about why you shouldn’t. We have the technology to make those blankets. Had they paid me millions of dollars for that blanket’s rights, I might have gone on to join Van Gogh and Degas in the world where people print your work on blankets. We all have our weaknesses.

But technology breaks down all kinds of limits. I can see that cave woman wishing for a world where she didn’t have to paint with her fingers. Imagine her joy when she realized that she could apply paint by blowing through a tube. Or by using a brush.

When I started quilting in the seventies, it was quickly clear that I was wretched at hand quilting. I started to quilt by machine. I would have people come up to my piece, sometimes touch it and say, “Oh, that’s just machined.” It was. Unabashedly. The technology allowed me to do something more than was possible before. Both Harriet Hardgrave and Caryl Bryer Fallert changed the quilt world with magificent machine quilting. It took us a while to accept that different technologies give us different possibilities. I still have people who somehow think what I do is computer generated. I disillusion them when I can. One color at a time, one thread per layer of stitching. Don’t tell me it’s not art.

I somehow hear that when I hear someone say, that’s just AI. It’s an interesting technique that may lead to all kinds of things.

The real reason I dislike the idea of AI is that it tends towards perfection. A perfect picture plucked from someone elses work. At some time, I suspect we’ll have an upstanding collection of AI work set up legally to use, like clip art. I suspect it will look very much like that.

I have a deep fondness for oriental art. I like the aesthetics. This come from the Impressionists who embraced Japanese art. Chinese art tends to be perfect. Japanese art celebrates imperfections. I am much more moved by the imperfections of art, than sleek perfection. People are not perfect. Perfect art doesn’t show the value of of our humanity. I don’t think AI has a way to offer us that.

Waterlilies Vs. Lotus: Purple Heron

| ellenanneeddy

Whenever you do any kind of representative art, you end up needing to do your research. Does the frog have three toes or two? Does it matter?

Sometimes it really does. Sometimes it really doesn’t. But it’s always more impressive to get your details right.

I do water lilies a lot. Lotus, not so much. And I’m really not sure why. But for this quilt. I want lotus, with their big stand-up pads and their flowers standing proudly on their stems. I need the vertical motion of them.

So I went looking for pictures. When I did, I found lotuses and waterlilies side by side in the search for lotuses. So what is the difference?

I decided it was in the way the petals curved inward, Instead of having a petal shaded differently on each side, I shaded them so that the shadow was in the middle of the curve.

Each quilt gives me an opportunity to explore the shapes, colors, and shadings.. We look as artists for formulas that we can use. But in the end, it’s all observation set in the colors we play with. And a dance of choices, individual but built on all the choices before.

Documenting a Quilt: What You Need to Know

| ellenanneeddy
147 Breaking the Ice

Years ago, someone stole seven quilts from me. I was insured. I do know who but there’s no proving it. I’m resigned that I will never see them again.

It happens, sometimes. In 1,107 quilts, it’s not surprising that I don’t know where all those quilts went. Sometimes I remember. Sometimes I kept good records. Sometimes I didn’t.

Which is why I believe in documenting quilts.

I believe in telling the stories behind quilts. They are ours. We grow and change through them as the work grows. And I believe in good photographs and documenting techniques. Those of us who have built this art form. If we document those things, someone later on can take our journeys as a starting point for their own art

When you sell a quilt, you lose touch with the piece. It’s in someone else’s hands. Mostly that’s wonderful. But if something goes wrong, the records you keep can be the only thing that survives. Good documentation gives you information that may help you find the piece, perhaps, or proof that it existed.

What You Need to Document a Quilt

Pictures

Good pictures, full and detail. Take the best pictures you can of just the quilt itself. If you have a photo wall, use it. When I work on a quilt, I photo my progress almost every day. When I’m finished I have a record of what I’ve done. Here is a blog about putting up a design wall/photo wall. Your phone will work if you don’t have a better camera. But take of your work, as you are working and when it’s done.

Measure your work and keep size records. Write down the techniques you use. Note the materials in your piece. It will help to identify your quilt. Keep records in a journal or in some kind or file. This is the file I give my owners about their quilt.

Label

Label your quilt. Your quilt is a non-verbal child on a bus without an accompanying adult. Name, inventory number, and contact information for the studio are all good information to put on the back of the quilt. Or the name of the person you made the quilt for, and their contact information. Or simply that you made it with love. It’s a great place to put that info in there. The Art of Documenting You Work has information about how to make computer-generated labels.

Sales document

What does this piece of paper tell us? This quilt was made in 2011( last 2 numbers on the inventory number). We have the techniques used and the materials in it. We have a picture of the quilt and the name of the owner. We have contact information for the studio in case they need help. And we have care instructions. It’s a lot of information in one place.

Lately, I’ve started making documentation with each quilt I’ve sold. I put in pictures, blog articles about the quilt, process shots, a page about the size of the piece and its inventory number, and the receipt for the sale. All of that is good information that the owner might enjoy. But it’s also information they can use should something happen and they lose their quilt. It’s a record of it’s making and proof of it’s existence.

Why should we document? This quilt is a case in point. The Graveyard Quilt is one of the great mystery quilts. There was one found of it in Kentucky and a copy of it in Oregon. It’s not a common pattern or theme.. We wouldn’t know the story if the people involved hadn’t documented it. The quilt was made to show where their family members were buried after the family left the area. They lost the quilt and made another quilt as a way of documenting their lives. Knowing their story enriches us all. Every quilt has a story of some kind. They need to be told.

Breaking the Ice was in four quilt magazines, including the back cover of Threads Magazine. I have pictures. It was published in Thread Magic. Even if I never get to see it again, I have proof of what it looked like, what techniques were used, and its dimensions. It exists because it’s documented. If it’s ever found, I can prove it was mine. If it isn’t, it still can be seen in the documentation.

So, don’t make a mystery someone needs to solve in a hundred years. Document your work. Keep records. If your critics don’t want to know, your grandkids will.

Have you Heard This One? What happens if you add Water to a Matisse?

| ellenanneeddy

I get caught in themes. I get excited by birds or fish or bugs, which I do for a while. That’s fun, and it lets me explore different stitchery. But every so often, something new lures me elsewhere.

I’ve been mesmerized by octopui lately. About their wonderful movements and their textures. I’ve been reading a book called Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. It’s a delightful tale largely of an octopus and a cleaning lady.

I’ve lived almost all of my life with my creatures as my closest companions. Can an octopus and a 70-year-old lady be friends? I’m jealous. I’d love an octopus as a friend.

And Matisse. How do octopi and Matisse mix together?

Matisse did a lot of work that centered on movent and patterns. I deeply love his paintings for their rhythms and movements. Can you see how this starts to mix together? The alien grace of an octopus reminds me of these ladies in their dance.

I’ve always loved these dancers. Now imagine them as octopi. I know. It’s kind of an art joke. But I’ve been wanting to do this for months.

These are the octopus I have planned for the quilt. I think they should all join tentacles and dance. Again, it’s about movement together.

Both the quilt and the painting are about fluid motion, the dance between us as a group. So that must be what I’m working on. I rarely understand a piece until it’s finished, sometimes much after that.

Why do art jokes? Because they make us think differently. And that is largely what art is for. And things need to lighten up a bit right now.

I’ll be showing you more of these octopi as I go along. Next week we’ll talk about garnet stitch zigzag and straight and how to shade with it. Right now I’ve been doing sucker.

Tune in next week for tentacles!

The Standard Size: Letting Art Be Art

| ellenanneeddy
Dancing in the Dark

I was talking with a dear friend this week, over the holidays and we discussed all of our new work. I’ve been unable to leave the visual/vertical paths alone this year. She told me she had been working on smaller things. We’re both of an age. Wailing a huge quilt through a sewing machine is past aerobic. But it occurred to me: We only make bed size art quilts because we still think of them as quilts. Shows define them as bed coverings/ linens. We make them as art. But we are still restrained when we show them to think in terms of bed sizes.

That’s simply awkward. What I make warms from the wall visually. It’s not made to be lain on. Metallic thread will vigorously defend itself from anyone who wants to use it on a blanket. So will organza, or stabilizer, or angelina fiber. When I make a quilt, it’s made for someone to snuggle into. It’s pretty. But it’s made to be a bed linen. When I make a tapestry, it’s made to glorify the wall.

Just practically, it’s sort of hard to find a queen size wall to hang an art quilt on. The standard bed sizes are made for beds. I see nothing wrong with that. But I look forward to the day when we understand that excellence is not measured in size, that standard size only works for some things, and that a piece of art always is measured by it’s impact, not by following size requirements. And that normal is a setting strictly on the drier.

We may have come to that, one by one as art quilters , fiber artists, and contemporary quilters. I’ve always skirted the world as a quilter. I work in, three layers ( at least) sewn together, so I fit under that description.

Art is not about practicality. It is about seeing and building the beauty in our lives. Sometimes our lives are our art. We build our lives in ways that make us whole, make us sound, make others happy, make us strong, whole, and joyous. Sometimes our art is our life: those moments where we live and breathe in what we can make visual out of imagination and the things around us. But either way, they are our birthright. We are artists just by way of being human. We do art, as we can when we can. But we are artists because we live and breathe in a world we impact with what we see, what we dream and what we do.

For this next year, I wish your art to kindle the fire of hope, creation, joy, passion and warmth. Without needing to fit any standard size or expected purpose. I hope you art shines just as it is, just as you are. Just as we all are. In Imagine Dei.

Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Fabric: With Apologies to Samuel R. Delany

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve worked on cleaning up the studio over the last two days. Finishing The Garth left me done in a lot of ways. It’s hard to change gears and start something new. Usually I fish around for what’s left over from something else to make something new. It’s kind of like stone soup. You start something out of pretty much nothing and throw things in. It works for me. It isn’t often I start something out of complete nothing. There’s something left over, and it needs it’s own place.

You can really measure time in objects. Certainly you can measure time in work you’ve done. I was thinking about how my work has changed over the years. I’ve been quilting since I was 21. I’m 68. I have had time to see the art quilt movement start, grow, boom, explode, and retreat a bit . But if I’m honest about it, much of what I did was about the fabrics that were available to me. So I thought I’d look back at some of my work, and show where it shifted for me. Please forgive some of these photos for their size and detail. Some of them are quite old and out of my hands.

Solid colors:

I made my first quilts as bed quilts. I made them. We used them. They died, as most bed quilts do.

After that I fell in love with Amish quilts. That kind of stitching can only show up on solids. They arrived on the quilt scene around in the beginning 1980’s . Of course I couldn’t hand stitch them either. I was a dreadful hand quilter always. I worked with a walking foot and quilting by counting four stitches over for each row.

Hand Dyed Cotton

I’d been dyeing fabric since I was ten. But it was a game changer when I started treating dyed fabric with sponge painting. It gave me a light source within the quilt that I didn’t need to piece.

Sheer Fabrics:

I discovered sheers and laces as applique for translucent things like water, air, fire and flower petals. It gave me a way of layering things objects. It’s a cool trick and I still use it.

Weird brocades:

I first came into fancy brocades at the textile discount outlet in Chicago. But I’ve hunted them ever since. They make magnificent bugs.

Hand Dyed Cheesecloth:

Hand dyed cheesecloth makes a marvelous sheer. And It acts just like cotton because it is cotton. Here I used it to make mountains, but I’ve used it for flowers, mushrooms, rocks, and all kinds of things. The texture is cool too.

Oil Stick Rubbed Fabric

Oil Rubbed Fabric.

For as much as I avoided prints and textures, I’ve now fallen in love with the textures I can create with paint stick rubbed fabrics.

As I was cleaning out my studio I found all of these things. Some of them I use constantly. Some of them I see as a thing I outgrew a while ago. But art is not measured by our products. It’s measured by learned skill, new ideas and inspiration in use.

Designing Ways: East Meets West

| ellenanneeddy
972 Shelter from the Storm

This is another modified blog from almost ten years ago. It’s still an interesting story. And an interesting way to think about how we design our art.

It’ss almost impossible to talk about our art without talking about the art that comes before us. Before we talk about design, it’s worth saying that there are many different design aesthetics. It’s not that a design is good or bad necessarily. It’s designed to be part of the statement. The notions that fuel our art choices are a statement loud and clear past subject matter and past our technical handling of fabric and thread.

As quilters, a lot of us have backed into art by accident. We started with squares and one day found ourselves with an odd quilt that somehow was an art quilt. Maybe it had too much orange in it or you found yourself like me, embroidering frogs and bugs into the borders. There’s a tender soft spot in most quilter’s artistic persona. The part that said that you should have gone to art school or studied water color. So our first designs spring out of a personal view. Later, as we become more facile, we realize that the choices in design are a huge statement all their own.

My first artistic love was the impressionists. I grew up near Chicago, and there was a pilgrimage every year to the Art Institute. I strolled through the halls looking for paintings like old friends. Since they were my first real introduction to art, they felt bland to me. Safe. Something soft and soothing out of my childhood.You know it’s become mainstream when you see it on a birthday cake. This astonishing cake is by Megpi, a pastry chef in Silver Lake. California. You can see her work if you follow the link to Flickr. 

impressionist cake by megpi

impressionist cake, a photo by megpi on Flickr Since you can buy Van Gogh’s work on umbrellas and coffee cups, it’s easy to miss the point that he was a raving revolutionary in his time. His work nauseated the current critics, got him hospitalized, was refused for all the important salon shows, and the subject of ridicule in the press. Time and familiarity have made him a lionized artist, but that was not who he was when he began.

I was immediately in love when I discovered Japanese prints. It was a while before I realized why. The Impressionists took much of their new artistic vision from the prints out of Japan. The first prints that came out of Japan hugely influenced them as beginning artists.

In contrast, this is a painting  called Nocturne from around 1825 by Turner. Turner would have represented the design aesthetics from the early 19th century, that Van Gogh and the other impressionists and Post Expressionists blew out of the water.

Early 19th Century Western art was about permanence. It honored stability. It was a world of people in their proper places, forever and ever. It used Greek and Roman scenes  and portraits of nobility as an way of saying we had an eternal understanding of a changeless world.


Japanese art was about the moment. It moved. It created a path for the eye to follow. It went off the page. The impressionists saw it, fell in love with the concept and incorporated it into the designing of their art. The movement is called Japanisme. It was in my humble opinion, the beginning of modern art. And changed us all.


Myself, I cherish movement. I plot my quilts to travel from one side to another, taking the eye on a journey across the surface. The visual path and vertical path quilts I’ve been exploring are all about the traveling eye.

The decisions behind design are the most telling. Without a word they say so much about what we create, what we find important, and what we value. The way we structure our art is at least half the story we have to tell.

971 Waterlily Pond