Travel Plans

By the time you read this I will be soaring across the midwestern plains to land in Denver. Hurricane Francine notwithstanding. Though I love to travel and meet new people, see new things, breathe new air, I hate the insanity that flying is in these times. Long lines (usually at 5am if you’re from Memphis), cramped quarters, sneezing and coughing passengers. I wear a mask from the moment I get into the airport to the minute I leave the baggage claim.

I’m leaving this unfinished experiment in pattern and color on my design board. It is made from pieces of found fabrics and a discarded quilt top from an unknown artist. It reminds me of the way my mind collects flotsam while walking.

Nonetheless, I persist. This time in a marathon. First stop the Front Range Contemporary Quilters in Denver, then a side trip to Santa Fe, NM, then a week in Taos teaching with Diane Ericson at the Design Outside the Lines retreat, then home for a day to prepare for the next flight. To Japan for an artist residency at Studio:Kura in the Fukuoka Prefecture’s Itoshima Municipality. For five weeks.

I am leaving a beautiful season in Memphis. Fall, with its colors, crisp air and shortening days is an inspiring time of the year. I will witness this autumn in three different places this year. I wonder how they will differ.

Stay tuned for updates on this marathon. I will try to post pics as I travel on.

This is the first sort for my retreat in Japan. When I am at an artist residency my challenge is to bring less and respond to my surroundings with simple tools. I may edit some of this out.

A work in progress

I watch the road beneath my feet for inspiration as I walk. Asphalt cracks mended with black tarlike paint strokes, crabgrass breaking the surface of sidewalks, crumbling edges being eaten by the undergrowth, worms crawling across the surface in search of water and safety. My phone pics have an endless catalog of the earth pushing back and the impermanence of our effect on nature. Here’s a couple of pics I took on my morning walk of some roadway paint wearing away. The forms and line were the inspiration behind this month’s experiments.

Starting with a blank piece of cotton canvas I stitched in some of those lines I saw on the street. The wool batting beneath that top layer of canvas gave me a billowing effect. It seemed to swell the fabric. I emphasized the swelling with tight parallel lines of stitching in thread that matched the fabric color. Then I added a strong double thick line of stitching around the billowing forms.

The tightly stitched surface gave me space to add active linework, color and cartoon. I used watered down India ink to emphasize the red and yellow dotted elements. The contrast between the tight stitching and the billowing foreground added depth. This shows the ink in a wet stage. It dried lighter overall.

Several stages of layered stitch later I have detailed, complicated patterning. When I added the pale blue boxes as a new layer of information they didn’t stand out enough so I added fill and a black outline to reinforce them.

Below is a progression series showing the layering of stitch that transformed the surface of the cloth.

At this stage I am wondering just how much more I can add before the needle won’t go through the cloth properly. I may have to wait a bit to decide. I may stuff the billowing parts even more. I may do more hand stitching. All in all it was a good experiment and I may do this again on a larger piece.

It’s a study in what lies beneath.

On Travel and Nakedness

Some of my work is traveling. Quilts going out, quilts coming back. I say often that my art isn’t done until it goes out on its own to be seen. I threaten to embed a video camera in the work so that I can track its journey and see the reactions of those who attend the shows.

Imagine being thrust into a box, rolled up with some of your pals, moving along conveyor belts in the darkness and into trucks to be thrown onto the porch of the museum or gallery. The curator unwraps you to new light and then you are on display, naked to the public. Saying what you must say, being who you must be. Out loud.

A selection of my work will join others on Martha’s Vineyard at the Featherstone Center for the Arts. It’s a group show including fiber artists Alice Beasley, ​Michele Beasley Maloney, Earamichia Brown, Shin-hee Chin, Chiaki Dosho, Pamela Flam, L'Merchie Frazier, Sharon Havelka, Natalya Khorover, Karol Kusmaul, Susan Lenz, Caroline MacMoran, Wen Redmond, Linda Syverson Guild, and Jaleeca Yancy. What a roster! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be part of a round table discussion with all of these artists?

Scrap column-detail, Paula Kovarik

I spent last week working again on the scrap piece that is taking over my studio. These will travel to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska in January as part of a solo exhibition in one of their galleries. The pieces are a sort of retrospective of the works I have created in the past 20 years. Morphing them into a column has been revealing. I have more black scraps than colorful scraps. I see repetition in the stitching from one to the next. I like them the most when they move as if alive (I wonder if I could install a small motor that would activate that jittery motion?). Frayed edges add life.

Some of my beasts will travel to the Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, NC as part of the Common Thread exhibit they will mount in September. I’ll need to name them and figure out what it means when a herd member is separated from its herd.

This collage piece is in Little Rock, Arkansas as part of the Delta Triennial exhibition. The Arkansas Museum of Fine Art has been completely renovated and enlarged recently (and it was formidable before this) so I am really looking forward to visiting this piece myself. I can’t wait to see what the other artists have contributed to this great show. What are they saying out loud?

Everything seemed fine until the earth pushed back, 29” x 25”, PAULA KOVARIK

The whole world’s watching, detail, Paula Kovarik

Edward Hopper once said “If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”

Art speaks. Out loud and naked. Go see some. You can talk back to it.

Done

Five months ago I started an experiment. I took two of my finished quilts and cut them up into pieces to merge them into one. Through the process I felt excitement, despair, confidence and doubt. I had to put it aside a few times to take the time to look at it sideways, upside down and cut in half. I stitched over it, under it and through it. Then I cut it up some more. And stitched again.

And now I am done. Here is the final result. A piece I am calling Brood (65” x 65”).

Brood, Paula Kovarik, 65” x 65”, collaged quilted pieces.

There are more stories about this process here and here.

“Such things become the hatch and brood of time.” - William Shakespeare, Henry IV