Influences

It’s impossible to process

I hesitate to post these thoughts. Watching the horror on the news is too big, too evil, too dark. I feel the weight of Ukraine. I feel the weight of our dysfunctional political system and now…Israel and Palestine.

It’s dark. Overwhelming. I can fall into despair with each news segment.

While working on this piece for the past three weeks I started with the idea of those invisible things that happen in biological systems. Blood cells, bacteria, infection, growth, coded genomes, and bodily structures. And also the way soil has populations of organic matter full of life and motion. I wanted the detail and texture to represent the complicated environments within and without.

But then the news got more dire. A congress that can’t get their act together. People banning books. War in Ukraine continuing and winter coming. And then Israel and Palestine.

The piece got darker. and darker.

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Incursion, 30” x 46”, canvas, ink, batting. Paula Kovarik

Breathe, breathe.

A little respite

This year has been a whirlwind. I traveled more. Taught more. Made more art. Had more questions and found few answers. I am in a state of transition I think. So much of making this art is about questioning why and for whom and for what?

I spent the past couple of days creating a catalog of the HERD show in Clarksville, Tennessee. It was a good exercise. One that summarizes the statement I was making. The show was a lot of work. As I explored the medium and the 3D forms they took on a life of their own. Even headless they spoke to me. The folks at Austin Peay State University made it even better by supporting my vision. I especially loved talking to the students at the university. Many saw fiber art for the first time. I felt good about the result and didn’t really question why I made this art until it all came back to me and invaded the studio. Making it was a natural result of being in process. Thoughtful explorations resulted in work that was bigger than I thought it would be. And now it goes in storage.

The work ahead is to find other venues to which I might send this menagerie of thought and process. That’s the busy work of being a non-represented artist. There are few opportunities to take over a gallery with stuffed headless creatures.

And that’s why I am asking why and for whom and for what.

Click on the image to see the entire catalog in pdf format.

Share your thoughts:

Puzzles

I love puzzles. It’s a treasure hunt with rewards. Something about that quiet contemplation of shape, color and texture soothes me.

I guess that’s why I am drawn to this art form. Piecing together disparate elements to create a whole is a challenge that never ends. This particular piece grew from scraps of quilts gone by — those pieces that didn’t quite make the cut in other quilts have a new life here. I stitched the scraps together using my free motion foot or a decorative stitch that added to the level of detail. As I was piecing together these scraps characters appeared, shapes repeated and textures multiplied. I used the base composition as a stage for other characters that I added in with overstitching.

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Things we might not notice without closer inspection. 2021, Paula Kovarik

The following are detail shots that might give you an idea of what started to appear as I was working on the whole. I started to run out of scraps toward the end. Which gave me a choice: cut up another quilt or finish the composition. I decided to end the composition here so that I could focus on other ideas that are floating in my studio. I may come back to it if other scraps become available.

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Let’s stitch together

I’ll be teaching stitch techniques in San Diego in September. Click on the image to learn more.

Let the fun begin

I’m getting ready to leave my studio for a week to attend a workshop on collage. There is so much to do before I leave that my attention wanders while I make lists, clean up the space and plan for my return. That part called “cleaning up my space” always leads to new ideas for work. So I abandoned all the chores I didn’t want to do while concentrating on what I did want to do.

I cut up another quilt.

This quilt hung in the hallway of our house for about 7 years. I finally took it down and substituted a different piece. It is called File Sharing and I think I made it back in 2010. I like the color palette, I like some of the stitching, but I’m not too fond of the composition. So it became a candidate for recycling.

I’ve been thinking about how pieces linger in the studio. Repurposing them gives them new life and me a new challenge. This time I wanted to cut this quilt up into a traditional pattern called Storm at Sea. I have been playing with that pattern in an illustration program and wanted to see what would happen if I used quilted pieces to create it in a different way.

I made a set of templates with a stiff matte board. After cutting out the template pieces I am left with windows that I can position over the quilt to preview what I will cut. I simply use a pencil to draw the outline on the quilt and then cut the piece with scissors.

I think there is a song with the lyrics “the first cut is the deepest…” I was humming that while cutting into the quilt. It is a point of no return for this process. No amount of stitching or glueing will bring this quilt back to its original form. You have to just trust the process.

Here is the result of that day’s work.

Putting the pieces together into a layout is like playing with puzzles—one of my favorite things to do.

I attached the pieces to a backing fabric with small pieces of Misty Fuse.

Then started stitching them together onto the cloth background with a decorative stitch.

That’s when my sewing machine started acting up. And then it finally froze. I think it was reminding me that I had a lot of chores to do. So I guess I will have to come back to this piece once I return from the workshop. I have ideas on how I will add even more stitching to this beginning.

Watch this space.

Transformation

I am reading Annals of the Former World by John McPhee. It’s not an easy book to read. It focuses on geological formations and geologists and time. Geologists read rock like we read books. McPhee travels across the United States with five different geologists who decipher the terrain as they travel. Many of the sentences begin with the words billions or millions of years ago. Deep time.

When I read books like this I have to slow down. I admit that I skim past words that are unfamiliar hoping that the author will let me in on the secret in future sentences. I also acquire new words. Like lithic and Eocene and physiographic and down wasting, folded-and-faulted, fatigued rock, incompetent rock and inequigranular fabric.

I love rocks.

Morph started with scraps of other quilts.

Thinking about the beginning of time and forces beyond our control I started working on Morph. The bag of scraps came out and I stitched them together.

The piece grew to metamorphic blob. Metamorphism, as I understand it, is actually a process by which minerals are formed through heat and pressure.

Morph, hand-stitching detail, Paula Kovarik

Geological processes take time. Lots of time. The details in a substrate can tell the story of millennium.

Morph, machine-stitching detail, Paula Kovarik

Morph, 3-dimensional form detail, Paula Kovarik

As I added details to the melange of fabrics I also added seams that molded the fabric into hills.

Morph, 50” x 46” x 6”, 2021, Paula Kovarik

Billions of years ago this little patch of land I sit on would be at the bottom of a shallow ocean in a different continent altogether. Only one thing is constant: change. Morph can morph. Turn it 90 degrees and the sags sag in a different way. Hang it upside down and the terrain folds to a new narrative.

The final piece speaks to the ideas I had while reading McPhee’s book but also to how I feel about emergence, transformation, bulging body parts and sagging sentiments.

This past year built a tower of insights for me. How about you? Tell me about your stories of transformation.