You saw something fabulous. And you want to use the idea of it in a piece of work. How do you do that?
I have an obsession with praying mantises. It’s not about their social structure. It’s about how they look and move. I’ve always found them fascinating.
Lady Mantis 2
It’s really true that if you can’t see something, you can’t really draw it. Or design around it. So my first steps is to find a bunch of pictures. I’m not looking for something to copy. I’m looking for how they hold their arms and legs, and what angle the head is at. It’s research.
I love the leaf mantises. Some are green leaf, some are dead leaf. They made me want to scurry over to my leaf collection.
I’ve collected silk leaves for years. They come from craft stores, the Dollar Tree and rummage sales. So, could I make a leaf mantis from silk leaves? It turned out to be a pretty easy trick.
I sat down with my leaves and arranged them into a bug. They stitched down nicely. It was an experiment, but I’m thinking I’m on to something here.
So, more pictures, more research, and maybe several of them dancing in the woods. One of oak leaves, and maple leaves, and who knows what else.
This is the story of two quilts that got made. I made the components of both of them at theame time, so they aren’t the same quilt, but their process is connected.
A large part of how quilts get made is that there are components. They’re made separately so they can go anywhere, and they do.
I had two pieces of fabric, left over from my teaching days, They both had that glowing pink red thing going on. I had fallen in love with the little lacy praying mantises and I wanted to put it into one of those pieces. And I always love sapsucker bugs.
But which piece? They were both beautiful. They were already backed and ready to be worked on for design. As I often do, I worked as if it could be either. I made my bug components.
Did I make extras? I always do! It’s like left overs in the kitchen. It’s something yummy you don’t have to work on now, because you have it right there, in your kitchen, ready to eat. I think I made 6 sapsucker bugs, thinking they would all go on one quilt. That didn’t work out that way, for which I am glad.
But why bugs? I often have people who want to know why I do nature quilts. Actually, technically I don’t, always. I’m never a slave to reality. Why are there all those bugs? There’s a couple of answers to those questions, but people aren’t always comfortable with those answers.
Gaham Wilson wrote an hysterical book of comics called I Paint What I See. For all the viewer can see there’s nothing there. But the artist sees what they see. What else can they paint?
It’s true. Every artist paints what they see. All of my life I’ve seen people as animals. Often as bugs. Not in a negative way. I love my bugs. But it’s what I see. I quilt what I see.
The other uncomfortable truth is that I am in no way in charge of my art. It demands things of me and I try to comply. But once I understand something, I can see that the quilt is about something that is about to happen in my life. They are predictive.
So when I found myself wrangling with the bank later that week, I thought of my very confident praying mantis, standing tall among the flowers, able to take on all comers. That’s the other uncomfortable truth. My quilts tell me who I am, what is coming, and that I am brave enough.
Then again, as an artist, am I in charge of people’s comfort? Art changes how we see things. If we are faithful to our work, art changes our perceptions of ourselves. I’m not about to do sad-eye puppy quilts, so everyone will have to get used to that.
