ends and beginnings

I emptied my thread ends box today. It held the threads that didn't get used on a piece this year. These threads were active players without a field to play in. They came into existence at the end of thoughts rather than the beginnings. They got snipped off and thrown to the side after trying hard to be part of the team. There are a lot of them.

I've grown used to not being satisfied with each and every work that I create. Like these thread ends some work just doesn't work. The process of creating has become more important to me than the finishing up. For each work that gets finished I estimate that there are two or three pieces that get thrown under the table. Thus, I have fallen in love with my rotary cutter, it facilitates my cut-up-and-rework frame of mind. I am beginning to see a signature style in all of the work. I am drawn to black. I like surprises and there is an undertow of anxiety in all of them.

Cut-up-and-rework pieces

I named the work I finished: Aquifer, Beast, Chaos Ensues, Focus on Something Else, Glyphs, I Need a Third Eye, Ladder to Elsewhere, Looking for the Pattern that Connects, Signals, Thugs, Unglued, and Unmapped.

Some finished pieces

And now I am working on a piece called Ship of Fools.

Ship of Fools work in progress

2018 will be filled with new challenges: a one man show at a local art museum, a proposal to a local venue for a juried show in Memphis, several teaching positions and days and days of continuing my work. It's those last items that I look forward to the most. They provide a silence and thoughtfulness that fills me up.

Happy New Year everyone. Hope to meet some of you this year in workshops. Check out the listings at the right for dates and locations.

May your studio be filled with inspiration and your days full of mystery and wonder.

rushing toward stimuli

Preparing chicken soup today I was chopping onions with the inevitable result of teary eyes. I mentioned this to my grandsons and they both rushed over, one with the scientific explanation of why that was happening and the other eager to chop onions so that he could cry too. We all ended up with wet cheeks and sniffling noses.

cloud_tree_PaulaKovarik.jpg

Rushing toward stimuli.

It's a trait that is tempered with age. Caution sets in. Doubt and preconceived ideas define our comfort map. We stop, look and listen. We teach our kids about the incautious moments of our lives so that they won't have to sustain the shock, hurt or disappointments that we did. We put up fences, set up passwords and require more IDs. We box in the acceptable and fence out the challenging.

I'm glad that kids often dismiss what adults say, preferring to experience the thrill of discovery themselves. I once read that to stay young you must remain curious. You must let the onions make you cry.

I will learn from these boys. Oh yes, I will. Pass me some tissue.

It's process not product.

Repeat after me. It's process not product. It's process not product. It's process not product. Each day that mantra challenges me to let go and dive in without expectations, without end goals, without success or failure.

So this past week has been all about play. I have been slicing, dicing, scribbling and tossing things around without much success but with a whole mountain of possibilities.

It started with the rotary cutter.

Pieces of past projects.

After sorting through all of my finished and unfinished work last month in preparation for a couple of exhibitions in 2018 I realized that not only do I hoard work but I also experiment a lot. Which means I would have to make another trip to the local Depot store for yet another plastic bin to stack up under the (already overloaded) table. Which brought me to the realization that I do not really need new materials. I already have a excess of fabric and stitches to start new pieces. So, I have a new law: nothing is sacred. Well maybe I should qualify that: some things are sacred, but not all, no matter how many hours I had put into it.

It's process not product, it's process not product...

So I cut things up. Sometimes it was random (2" squares) and other times it was fussy cutting (I really like that little spiral of thread on that piece so maybe I can combine it with another little spiral I have over here.)

I combined a lot of the pieces into a scrap explosion.

Blech! I hate this. I really hate this. Where is my rotary cutter?

More cutting

After cutting up the cut up pieces I started with new fabric to create a composition that would included the textured pieces.

Maybe sideways is better?

Then I got this wonderful piece of striped fabric from a second hand store and couldn't resist taking the composition one step farther. Same color palette, new texture...what could go wrong?  Ok, maybe 2 or 20 steps further. I am removing fabric pieces in the original composition  to let the stripes bleed through.

Ship of fools, work in progress

It's been a full week of deconstructing and reconstructing. I had a few little AHA! moments, but mostly it was about play and process and risk. A satisfying journey that gave me these little pieces:

Scraps that talk

It's process not product. It's process not product. It's process not product....

I sneezed

Redwood, Johann Feilacher at Laumier Sculpture park in St. Louis is 34 feet tall and standing in a wooded area waiting to be discovered by trail walkers.

Redwood, Johann Feilacher at Laumier Sculpture park in St. Louis is 34 feet tall and standing in a wooded area waiting to be discovered by trail walkers.

In the presence of the master. The Man of Confusion, Paul Klee at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Tony Tasset, Eye (detail). Tasset's eye stood as a sculpture at the Laumier Sculpture park in St. Louis. This detail reminds me of those scans the eye doctor does for my pre-glaucoma condition. Such a nest of data at the central point. A good map fo…

Tony Tasset, Eye (detail). Tasset's eye stood as a sculpture at the Laumier Sculpture park in St. Louis. This detail reminds me of those scans the eye doctor does for my pre-glaucoma condition. Such a nest of data at the central point. A good map for stitching.

For now, I will nurse this back, drink plenty of fluids and dream the day away.

I just don't feel like myself.

A sneeze, That's all it took to turn things upside down. My lower back went to a lower dimension forcing me to the ground and making my thigh muscles the engine for reversal. Prone is best, no sitting, no stretching, no moving toward new delights. Ibuprofen is my friend. Hot water bottle strapped to my back like a turtle shell.

We were on the road enjoying museums in Kansas City, and St. Louis. Luckily the sneeze was after the meetings with Miro, Picasso, Klee, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Bronzino, Paine, Moore, et al. Fuel for the next time zone. Sustenance and wonder for my next explorations.

Women at Sunrise, Miro, need I say more?

Women at Sunrise, Miro, need I say more?

We also visited the World War I museum in Kansas City where we saw this disturbing display of hand grenades hanging like Christmas ornaments in a case.

We also visited the World War I museum in Kansas City where we saw this disturbing display of hand grenades hanging like Christmas ornaments in a case.

Unmapped, Paula Kovarik

growing a vocabulary

I spent the week making little marks. obsessively. They were small imprints that wanted out of my head. It felt like an unknown language, one that had deeper beginnings.

Listening to interviews of world leaders, analysts, pundits and disruptors it came to me that we are all speaking in code. No one seems ready to find a common language to solve the chaos. There is only cacophony.

So here are my little marks. standing on their own.

I wanted to see how small I could actually make them. These measure about 1-1.5 inches. I used a cotton canvas cloth with extra batting for dimension.

The challenge of making each one different slowed me down. I couldn't do more that 20 at a time without finding myself repeating marks. Some look like things, some look like letter characters. I let the thread tell me their character.

I added density with hand-stitched detail.

Glyphs. 27"x 18". So many dialogs, so little listening. The piece is almost finished.