Taking stock

I spent today stitching a new piece that has yet to be revealed here. It tracks with other pieces that focus on one line traveling across a surface of mystery. The work satisfies my need to be present and not distracted. It allows me to be playful and calm. It tracks my mood and challenges my sense of balance. Here’s a detail:

And, while I have been stitching, I have been thinking about other pieces I have finished in the past year. They range from narrative to expressive, 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional, abstract to figurative. I have cut up pieces and stitched them back together. In some pieces I have scurried over random textures in a frenzy of stitch. In other pieces I have calmly and sedately thought about balance and composition with an analytical focus.

Overseer, 45” x 54”, Paula Kovarik. Repurposed quilt pieces over-stitched and re-assembled.

You Don’t Know Me, work in progress, 3-dimensional assemblage, Paula Kovarik

In 2021, I will have a solo show that will hang at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego, California. I think the pieces I include should have a common thread —an integrated collection that speaks to my current work as an artist.

The question I keep asking myself is: “which self?”


Pieced and Pieces

Two sides, same person. I often work on more than one piece at a time. This month I have been working on two pieces. One is contained and precisely pieced, the other looks like Dr. Frankenstein took out his needle during a side show.

She didn’t have the password started as an abstract composition of black and white fabrics laying about the studio. I always have black and white “units” to play with. They are off-cuts of other work or random shapes put together when I can’t figure out what I want to work on. In fact, I have a whole drawer full of them that I vaguely think about putting together in one huge piece but I never get around to actually doing it. So a piece like this takes the place of that grand plan.

Here’s a detail of the piecing and stitching. Each unit of black and white pieced fabrics is put together to form a landscape that can tell a story. This story has to do with feeling like you aren’t part of the cool kids. Like you don’t know the secret word and everyone else does.

Working on this piece is analytical, planned, light-hearted and precise. I wait for the work to tell me what it needs. It’s a quiet dialog that builds with each detail.

She didn’t have the password - detail, 2019, Paula Kovarik

The original title for this piece was “It looked like fun in there but she didn’t have the password.” The piece measures about 35” x 29”

Dark Heart is an assemblage of cut up quilts. Using traditional quilt patterns, in this case an eight-pointed star, I cut up quilts that are already stitched and reassemble them with Frankenstein-like sutures. I wanted to make fractured crowns, but then it morphed into this bird-like creature overseeing chaos.

Here are some detail shots of the stitching.

Dark Heart, work in progress, detail, Paula Kovarik

Dark Heart, work in progress, detail, Paula Kovarik

Dark Heart, work in progress, detail, Paula Kovarik

Working on this piece is emotional, unplanned, dark and messy. I wait for the work to tell me what it needs. it’s a greedy piece clamoring for more each time I look at it.

Dark Heart, work in progress. Approximately 54” x 46”, Paula Kovarik

So, yes, sometimes I feel like a nut and sometimes I don’t. Two sides, same person.

Better Not Said

I’ve been thinking about what we don’t say.

When asked how we are doing we say “fine.” Not “I’m anxious as hell and I don’t want to take it anymore.“ When we are in a group of strangers it’s difficult to talk about abortion, racism, immigration or politics because it might step on some peoples beliefs. We send out little hints in polite company, feeling out which side of the great divides they are on before revealing our position. We use code words to express our dislike. In the South it is “bless her heart” for someone who is hopelessly wrong or clueless.

So I started thinking about how a language that doesn’t say anything would look. Kind of a secret language we keep to ourselves as we navigate these non-conversations. It’s a language only we understand. You know how it sounds right? It’s that voice inside that calls out your truth but in a whispering tone that only you can hear.

These hieroglyphic shapes could mean anything to the passing stranger. Or nothing.

And then I started thinking about what holding back does to our consciousness. How does NOT saying something affect what I believe to be true? How does NOT saying something create a tacit understanding among community members of where I stand? How does NOT saying something affect my inner peace? Does saying my truth out loud create barriers or bridges?

I’m all over the place with this. It’s hard to even write what I mean here.

Does polite conversation have a place in the dialog of change? Certainly ambassadors must use it when they are negotiating deals with despots. They seed their conversations with objectives while avoiding hot spots. Our president seems to think that name calling and dramatics will result in him getting his way. But will it? Or does the abandonment of polite conversation give us chaos instead?

Keeping my truth to myself results in little reservoirs of doubt and anxiety.

Keeping my truth to myself results in little reservoirs of doubt and anxiety.

So here is Better Not Said. A study of inner thoughts and outer NON dialog.

Better Not Said, 41” x 26.5”, linen, cotton, thread and batting. Paula Kovarik

Enough time to just think. And stitch.

I spent the past week sewing like a madwoman, hours and hours in joy and contemplation. Thinking about influences. And inspirations. The Stitched festival at Crosstown Concourse that I organized and facilitated is over. So now I have time to think.

The work started with these three pieces that did not resolve well. So I cut them up into 5” equilateral triangles.

Though I am jazzed about the work and feel that I really have no choice in the matter—I have to do it— I still have that consistent question hanging over the work at all times: I make art—so what? Some people see it—so what? So what now?

I experimented with a lot of different configurations of these triangles with the underlying thought of what the hive mind can do to ideas. Here they became a beast.

It’s not a self doubting thing. On the contrary I believe the artist mind is critical to society. Its more like I am conscious of other things that seem so much more important. There are people shooting people down in the streets in this country. Lots of them. The government is relaxing standards for environmental stewardship and doubling down on fossil fuels. Our newspapers are failing and fake news is everywhere. Racism, bigotry, nationalism, terrorism, etc. etc. etc. The chaos of all these threats brings a foreboding reality.

Since the precut quilt pieces already have stitching on them the challenge I faced was how to connect the diverse patterns. I was thinking that ideas and communications can be like viruses, floating through space. But also how we suture together a narrative based on our own biases. Standing alone in the midst of forces that are hard to define.

I channel these worries into the art but feel like a micro blip when it comes to reaching an audience. Is it just therapy for my unsettled mind? Do I obsess over stitch to treat the anxiety I feel with regards to the future?  How do you process these thoughts? Do you have them?

Hive mind, Paula Kovarik, 40” x 43.5”, 2019

My act of making art is cerebral, logical and also intuitive. The sense of play is important to me. Seeking meaning through pattern and stitch allows for connections that are not always apparent at first glance. Letting the medium tell me what to do feels spiritual and mysterious. But am I acting in a vacuum? Does art become important only after it is released to the public? Or does the act itself activate an individual wholeness that the artist seeks and therefore adds to the cosmic underlayment of society?