Inspirations and year end insights

Inspirations all around. The spells generated by books, politics, nature, artists and musicians fuel my journey as I create my art. Here are some of my favorites for your end-of-year browsing pleasure.

Beastie Boy and His Pals will be part of the Stitched Dissent show at Christian Brothers University Beverly + Sam Ross Gallery in Memphis, TN January 10 - February 12

Theo Jansen creates spectacular strandbeasts of wood and plastic that come to life when exposed to the wind. I could watch them for hours. He says that he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches so that they can live their own lives. I think about my artwork as it travels into the world, living its own life. Check out his video explanations of how these beasts work. Fascinating.

Leo Ray gives us joy and play and commentary and history and calligraphy and dreamscapes in his Infinite Painting. His canvases are all the same size and each one abuts the previous one to add to the inner dialog he is translating for us. There is a wonderful slide show of the painting you can visit with this link. The work ranges from abstract to cubist to surreal to realistic, freely combining texture, rhythm and color over the surfaces. There are over 100 canvases to date. He calls it a “public-access diary”. And isn’t that what all artists do when creating their work — releasing the inner to the outer?

Ragnar Kjartansson’s, The Visitors, left me spellbound when I saw his nine-screen performance at the Columbus Art Museum in Ohio. The performance combines video, music and poetry in a way that I have never before experienced. I floated through the space with a longing, a sadness, and a joy that stays with me to this day. This video link doesn’t really do justice to the experience in person. If you can imagine walking into a room with nine huge screens each showing one of the musicians and their instruments in separate rooms of a historic mansion you might get an inkling of the experience. The music builds and ebbs. The musicians move in and out of the rooms. I am still humming this evocative tune 2 years later.

As for me? I put together this little movie of the work I have done this year. It was a great year. I finished 14 pieces and I’m in process on three more. I led a 3-month festival (Stitched: Celebrating the ART of Quilting) in Memphis, taught three week-long workshops (Quilting By the Lake, Focus on Fiber and Art Quilt Tahoe), and took a brilliant workshop by Michael Brennand-Wood at the Shakerag Workshops in Sewanee, TN. I had a solo show at the Rockland Art Center in West Nyack, NY and created a proposal for a show devoted to our political realities (Stitched Dissent) that will travel to two different venues in 2020. Just in time for the vote.

Please vote in 2020.

Here’s a little summary slideshow that highlights some of my favorite moments.

Insights?

I know that I am inspired by reading. Reading feeds my inner voice and gives my artwork ballast. I know that I need to find beauty in everything to keep myself grounded. I know that sometimes my mind will not rest until I have worked things out in stitch. I know that the challenges ahead in our government, our environment and our health will affect the way I think and work. I feel like time is condensing and I am breathless and restless with the ticking sound of not enough hours in the day. I know that I need to learn to rest.

Best in stitches to you all. Thank you for taking the time to read thoughts .

All the Usual Suspects

Cutting quilts up to create new ones is an intuitive and challenging enterprise. It lends a sense of danger to the workspace. I am constantly reminding myself to let it go. In other words, no matter how many hours it took me to create a piece if it doesn’t please me any more then it is a candidate for the rotary cutter. I just have to let it go and move into the realm of the unfinished.

Let me introduce you to The Usual Suspects. They are named Presto-chango, Caught Red-Handed, Empty Rhetoric and Sideshow. They are a compilation of many scraps of stitching-gone-wrong, stitching-gone-right-but-in-the-wrong-place, or, stitching-for-the-hell-of-it-and-now-what-do-I-do-with-it bins. Those bins supply just the raw materials I need when nothing else suits. They make me feel good about that re-use, re-cycle and re-do mentality I try to foster.

The Usual Suspects.: Presto-chango, Caught Red-Handed, Empty Rhetoric and Sideshow. Each panel measures 40” x 13”, Paula Kovarik

And here are some detail shots.

Using units like squares, triangles and diamonds reminds me of traditional quilts and mosaic tile work. In this second piece I cut up a quilt into 2” squares and rearranged it into a new configuration. It doesn’t have a name. I’ll have to study it a bit before I commit to it.

I'm thinking about working up a lesson plan for this cutting up practice. Perhaps a 4 or 5-day workshop? If you are interested drop me a note and I'll try to figure out how I can get us all together.

Pattern work, 50.5” x 9”, canvas, batting and thread. Paula Kovarik

Ups and downs

Every so often I wake up with a word list in my mind. It happened a month ago at 3 am. It happened last week at midnight and it happened this morning at 5 am. The list is a series of verbs that contrast each other. I have a note pad at the side of my bed so that I can write down my dreams. Sometimes I have enough consciousness to do that. Other times I lay there and try to memorize the thoughts so that I can write them down when I wake up. It never works. My dreaming mind is a white board with an automatic eraser.

Here’s a list from that 3 am wake up call a month ago:

  • shake up/shake down

  • let up/let down

  • write up/write down

  • bring up/bring down

  • lock up/lock down

  • dress up/dress down

  • play up/play down

  • stand up/stand down

  • step up/step down

The thing I notice about this list is how different the meaning of the primary verb is when using the up modifier as opposed to the down modifier. No surprise there. Up is the opposite of down right? But here’s the thing: both can be negative. For example, shake up can imply agitation and anxiety while shake down implies an illegal act. On the other hand using the word up is often positive as in dress up, let up and stand up while using the word down almost always connotes a negative spin. Obviously, I am no linguist. But it intrigues me that my brain is listing these phrases for contemplation.

Why do I dream these things? I think it is a sorting of synapses to process the negative and positive things in life. My work reflects these dichotomies. I will start an “up” stitching and inevitably the “down” sneaks in. Monsters, snakes and cynical grins sit side by side with Seuss-like trees and decorative leaf patterns. Juggling the positive with the negative is part of my exploration as an artist.

What I really wonder about is: Can I do art that is beautiful and uplifting without adding the spice of the down stroke? Do my doubts, worries and anxieties always have to show up?

On another note

I had a great time at Art Quilt Tahoe this month. The setting was spectacular and my students left me awestruck with their work. Thank you Roxanne, Linda, Ileana, Carol, Gay, Nancy, Sandra, Terry, Jacquie, Diane and Marion for making my job so easy. And, thank you Judy, for inviting me.

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.