Second thoughts bring primary focus

December 8, 2021

I’m not known for my color expertise. I look fondly on work that bursts with saturated color and sigh most of the time. Rousseau, Gaugin, Pauly, Hilma af Klint, Butler and Kusama all stun and amaze me. As a designer I tend toward khaki, gray, muted pastels and black and white. As an artist black thread on light cloth just makes sense to me. If you are drawing lines you need to see them right?

Settling back into a daily practice after five weeks away turned out to be harder than I expected. My mind was so filled with inspirations that it was hard to sort through what my next step would be. I decided to just put colored pieces together. Primaries first.

Starting a piece without a specific idea is all about process. The underlying meaning doesn’t exist so I am only cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing and cutting again. I trust that at some point the compositions will tell me more than I think I know. There was a lot of cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing in these pieces. So much so that I thought that I might instead focus on this wonderful pile of scraps instead of the structured pieces that were being created.

As I started to put the scraps together nothing worked. The compositions were uncomfortable and the light yellow patchwork squares were distracting. It just made me feel weary. Though I wanted the piece to have a joyous exuberant burst it started looking like a carnival gone wrong. Blech! The next day I stitched the pieces together into random rectangles and then cut those into seven inch squares.

There is just something about cutting things up that clarifies things for me. New beginnings restart my thought process.

At all times I know that I am willing to throw it all into a bin if it doesn’t work out. It focuses me on the process rather than the product. And, sometimes, the pieces make more sense than the whole.

After reassembling the seven inch squares into a new composition I ended up with a stronger composition and a playground for stitch.

Second Thoughts, 32” x 25.5”, 2021, Paula Kovarik

There is color. There is energy and there is meaning in it (for me). I call it Second Thoughts for the way it made me doubt my direction. Second Thoughts for the way doubt can play havoc with progress. Second Thoughts for that moment in time that allows me to let go and start over.

Where do your second thoughts lead you?

Drop me a line

Returning from a long journey

November 18, 2021

Right before leaving for this five week journey I was invited to the Visions Art Museum for a solo show. Here I am talking to my audience.

I’ve unpacked, sorted through the gifts we purchased, did the laundry, read the mail, paid the bills, and reopened the studio. After five weeks and over 3,000 miles across six states, home looks foreign.

I taught an amazing class at Arrowmont with five of the most talented experimenters in the Midsouth. Then my husband and I traveled through Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Massachusetts and Maine on two lane highways and in the air. We visited six art museums, several arboretums, an aquarium and three magnificent beaches. We ate seafood.

I keep looking for ways to avoid the studio so I made yogurt, started a slow cooker meal, washed the dishes, made granola and sat stunned in front of the morning news.

I am not myself.

I am not even close to reprocessing what I saw—the colors, the art, the textures, the sounds, the details, the grandeur, the squalor, the light, the dark, the uncanny.

How can I possibly organize my thoughts when I have witnessed so much great beauty, sad destruction and limitless water and sky?

Here’s a sampling of what we saw. A glorious fall. The sound of wind and surf.

How do you process what you see when away from your studio?

I'm a little worried

October 2, 2021

Being away from the studio can disrupt the momentum I have in my work. Having just returned from teaching in San Diego and about to leave again for the East Coast, its hard to think about big projects. So I have been doing little things in preparation of the upcoming trip—experimenting with texture, stitching a series of mandala shaped studies (see my previous post here), organizing paperwork, scheduling next year and doing some research. It all feels very minimal.

These lovely bubbles animated the coast while I was in San Diego.

I’ll be driving around the Eastern seaboard in the next 5 weeks. Breathing in sea air and exploring new spaces. I get to teach again in the mountains of Tennessee for a week. That always brings inspiration and ideas. I have decided to bring a sketchbook this time. I don’t normally work in a sketchbook. I have several laying around with the first few pages filled and then nothing. Maybe I can build that practice during this trip.

I’m still a little worried. Breaking momentum tends to loosen the strings of ideas. I flounder, get inpatient and ping pong around the studio. I like being isolated in my studio for hours. And, I like traveling too. Both contribute to my stream of consciousness. Both bring insight and energy to my work.

I think worry is a baseline in my personality. High expectations, subliminal doubt and a sense that I can’t control everything contribute to it. I’m saying it out loud here so that I don’t dwell too much on it during my absence from the studio. Maybe that will work.

Click on the book cover for a link to Alibris booksellers.

Thank you to all of you who have purchased my book. I’ve had so many people comment that they have enjoyed reading it. It’s a real boost to me to think that I can inspire people to try new ways to stitch. I love teaching these techniques. If you are interested in checking it out you can purchase it online or order it from your local independent bookstore. At Play in the Garden of Stitch provides new ways to think about using stitch in artwork and includes exercises, sewing tips and quilt stories.

Ping Ponging

September 8, 2021

I have spent a month in my studio ping-ponging from one thing to another with an itchy feeling of missing the ball every time. No focus, no inspiration, nothing. I did the usual exercises to jump start my ideas: cleaned the studio, organized my thread drawer, read about other artists, and walked aimlessly through the neighborhood with my phone camera.

Nothing.

This often happens after finishing a piece that consumes my imagination. I had just finished Encounter, a piece that really birthed itself made up of pieces of canvas on which I had dribbled paint and ink. After that cathartic experience I wasn’t sure where to turn for the next inspiration.

Encounter, 34x41, 2021, Paula Kovarik — *Encounter*, 34x41, 2021, Paula Kovarik

I needed to move into a new headspace. A friend of mine gifted me yards of Silk Noil. The fabric is luscious, soft and raw looking. I decided to use it to revisit an idea I have worked on before: exploring marks that could illustrate words not spoken. Inspired by hieroglyphs, runes and Arabic script this visual language can be a way to communicate broader concepts.

Glyphs, 27x18, Paula Kovarik, 2017 — *Glyphs*, 27x18, Paula Kovarik, 2017

Better Not Said, 41x26, Paula Kovarik, 2019

I started with a drawing to remind myself how these marks can be put together. Generally I try not to have a preconceived notion about how they should look. Instead I draw each mark in a random way then start to fill in the spaces that become available. I have noticed that I naturally follow an implied north/south east/west underpinning. I wonder why that is? I also like connecting the disparate shapes with unexpected lines.

Once satisfied with the density of the marks and the feel of making them I was ready to try it with stitch. I set up three 21”x21” silk noil sandwiches with some wool batting, drew a chalk circle onto each one and started stitching. Here are the results.

Glyphs, reservoirs, detail

Glyphs, reservoirs

Glyphs, blackouts, detail

Glyphs, blackouts

Glyphs, abundance, detail

Glyphs, abundance

I don’t spend a lot of time on these exercises. Each square takes about two days to come alive. Using a neutral thread that matches the fabric to create the outer texture defines the circle a bit more and adds an element of energy to the composition. I don’t bury the threads on those end points preferring instead to use my machine’s automatic cutter that knots the threads on the underside. The back is not pretty.

I’m not sure I have broken the cycle of ping ponging. I am about to travel and teach so that might bring more inspiration when I return. Hope so.

How do you break the cycle? Drop me a note!

Books on my side table

August 23, 2021

What are you reading?

Recently I did a presentation for the California and Nevada Studio Art Quilt Associates chapter in which I mentioned that I read a lot in order to be inspired in my work. I am an eclectic reader and it shows in my work. Non fiction and fiction both have pride of place on my reading chair end table. I often have more than one book going at a time—which can be challenging I admit, especially if it is two novels. Characters can seem to float from one story to the next if I don’t pay attention.

I schedule my reading. Every day at around 4 pm I stop what I am doing and crawl into that chair to start another journey of contemplation. If I am lucky at the end of the evening I can squeeze in another half hour before bed.

Several of my pieces were directly influenced by books. Knowledge has Raw Edges was made in response to Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas is a constant inspiration for all the details within my quilts: ant trails, embryos, insects and roots.

In response to an inquiry during the presentation I am listing some of the more recent books that I have read as well as some all time favorites in no particular order:

The Overstory by Richard Powers, Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel, The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester, 1491, New revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann, A Column of Fire by Ken Follett. Mink River by Brian Doyle, Late Migrations, A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl, The Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin, Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol, The Man Who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins.

And mysteries, too numerous to list. I like Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, Brenda Chapman and Louise Penny for this escapist grouping. Give me a mystery any day to while away the too hot days of summer or the too cold days of winter.