Coincidence of Shapes: Cactus or Pod

.cactus valley.
Originally uploaded by emadivine

I'm back to thinking about cactus today. I have a painted glass tile that has been sitting with my metal clay for months. I've made several attempts at designing a piece to go with it, none of which suit me. So today I'm searching images of cactus for ideas.

This photo is fascinating to me because it ties my cactus ideas of today with the porcupine bead of yesterday.

Cactus

More crossover -- I've been painting fabric to work on another cactus quilt and found myself last night making cactus beads.

Here's the fabric in progress: starting to paint, same area after the salt has been in place for an hour or so, and the entire (almost 2 yd) piece after it dried but before washing out.
What, you've never seen pink, blue and purple cactus? Here you go (yes, they are real!):

Quilts or Beads or ????

Fiber.Art.Glass is a strange name for a blog. It makes you wonder if I'm making things out of fiberglass. I tried to choose a name that mixed fiber art and art glass, but that may not be apparent.

In reality, I have a decade plus background as a contemporary fiber artist, making quilts meant for the wall (not your grandmother's quilts!) with lots of exhibitions, publications and collections out there to prove it. The quilt here, Enlightenment, is 84" x 84" and resides permanently in the Museum of the American Quilters' Society in Paducah, KY.

Glass has always been a love (I did a lot of stained glass before my son was born), and I started buying a lot of beads and cabochons to embellish some of my quilts. That, of course, led to the notion that it would be better to make my own because then I could have exactly what I wanted. Oh, such innocent ideas! Lately I've made a lot more glass than fiber. And we won't even mention the metal stuff that calls as well.

I've been wondering who visits this blog -- are they fiber art people or are they glass people -- and what the heck do they think when there's none of "their" favorite stuff in sight on the top page. And what do they think of the "other?"

This got me to thinking about the commonalities in the work -- where are the connections between the fiber and the glass? So I thought I'd show a few pieces of each, side by side, to point out some common themes.

Cactus comes to mind. I never understood what people saw in them until the prickly pears bloomed profusely one year and I saw my first Santa Rita prickly (which has pink, blue and purple pads!). Then I got obsessed with the things. I loved the idea of soft, quilted fabric pads with hard metal prickles. So I made a couple of quilted pieces, including a panel for a group piece called "Fauna" with my quilting buddies, which was recently published in Quilting Arts Magazine (see back posts). And when I made beads and vessels, the cactus would sometimes pop up there, often with fauna.


































































Leaves got a lot of my quilting attention for a period of time. Among many others, there were a group of small, mounted Leaf Mosaic works that remind me of some recent leaf beads. And there were definitely ginkgos in both fiber and glass.
































































It's interesting to think about the overlap. I'll have to give it more time to percolate.

Cactus Wren

The first of many, I hope, enamel painted bird vessels.

Process:
1) Make glass bird vessel at torch (~1 hour).
2) Anneal overnight in kiln.
3) Etch.
4) Handpaint with colored vitreous enamels, both sides (~1 hour).
5) Outline with tracing black enamel.
6) Warm from room temperature to ~1000 degrees in kiln (~1 hour).
7) SLOWLY, reintroduce to flame and heat enamels until they gloss slightly.
8) Anneal overnight again.

Prickles #1

15" square

Handpainted Pellon with copper wire spines.

Prickles

A group of quilt friends and I traditionally make a group quilt about once a year. The most recent quilt was Fauna, where each person made a strip approximately 12"w x 48"h. All started as white fabric and were variously painted and stitched and then assembled.

My strip, shown here, includes a lot of different cacti as well as desert fauna. I added copper wire spines to the prickly pear cactus. Those spines were deemed "dangerous" and resulted in the quilt being eliminated at the judging stage from the International Quilt Association show in Houston in October.

As I'm feeling rather prickly about that, I've decided to pursue the concept of dangerous quilts. It's such an interesting oxymoronic concept. But first, another cactus quilt for a friend's benefit gala silent auction. Photos coming soon.