New Beginnings

Summer Palimpsest, detail, ©2011, H.Hunter, 28" x 27"

Every day, like most everyone, I find a flock of e-mails waiting in my in-box. Yesterday, one of them stood out, catching my notice, the words evoked a turning, an awareness that something new might be on the way.

My friend Sara had written a description for a class she calls "Art Makers," a class for people who are curious about the process of being and becoming an artist. The class has been going on for a couple years now and each season, she changes the theme to correspond with her observations on the previous class.

She noted that this fall class would focus on process, "--on taking apart our work and putting it back together, on looking and seeing with "art" awareness, on re-affirming how we work best."

I'm taking those 5 little words "re-affirming how we work best," to heart.

All summer, I've climbed the stairs to my studio, a space where I cocoon myself and spin out my threads, watching them acrete until a small but perfect quilt emerges on the wall.

I like to cut quirky rectangles which can be only be matched up with persistence. When I finish, the last thing I want to do is to quilt the layers together.  I decided to take the pieces to a professional quilter whose work I admire. After they were quilted, I showed them to an artist friend. As I laid them out, she cleared her throat. "Hmm...I think I should just say that I really like to exercise total artistic control. " That small pebble of feedback caused a landslide of insight.

Rather than seeing the quilting as a necessary step that needs to be added to properly finish the process (and God knows why I thought that since I'd already broken a slew of quilter's rules.)--I began to see the stitches on the top as a layer of drawing. That in fact there were four layers: the backing, the batting, the quilted pieces of fabric and the thread quilting on top. I saw it like an architect's model in which layers of drawings were placed on top of each other to convey the finished building.

Artmaking involves skills that can be learned.  The conventional wisdom here is that while "craft" can be taught, "art" remains a magical gift bestowed only by the Gods.  Not so. In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. --Art and Fear

While I can't say that I became a sudden convert to this notion of quilting as drawing (in fact I even took the last two quilts, Miss August and Miss September, right back to the pro), I've tucked the knowledge away for a time that doesn't have a limit on it, a time when I can ponder these layers and find a way to connect them in a way that leaves my own mark, one of acceptance.

Where Inspiration Grows

I was reading one of my favorite blogs by Donna Watson, a post called The Search For Meaning: Self Awareness. The title alone called out to the mystic, the artist and the art therapist in me. As I read, I came to this question:

I eventually realized that there is more to a work of art. I wanted to find meaning in my work... I started making lists as I went deeper and identified my likes, my interests, and my strengths...Have you figured out your list? 

As I read and looked at her images, it struck me that images themselves are a form of sanctuary for many of us--not only the creating of images, but the consequent viewing of our own and those of other artists.

Donna's words spoke to me. I've made plenty of To Do lists, mapping out my day, but never an accounting of where I find visual meaning.  I wanted my list to include things that have inspired me through the years, things that fuel my work and which, I've discovered, help form my own inner strengths.

To that end, I'm making my list. I invite you to make your own and share it with us.

1. Quilts:

How I start to make a quilt, all I do is start sewing and it just comes to me. My daughter asked me the other day what I was making, and I said, "I don't know yet; I'm just sewing pieces together," and the quilt looked pretty good. No pattern. I usually don't use a pattern, only my mind.  Lorraine Pettway, quilter

Dancing Rings, ©2007, Hannah Hunter, 48" x 60," Cloth

2. Sheer, unbridaled color:

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites. Mark Chagall

3. Mandalas:

When I began drawing the mandalas, however, I saw that everything, all the paths I had been following, all the steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point-namely, to the midpoint...It is the path to the center, to individuation.  C. G. Jung from Memories, Dreams and Reflections

Thangka painting of Vajradhatu Mandala

4. Tree of Life:

Oh, I who long to grow
I look outside myself, and the tree
inside me grows.  Ranier Marie Rilke

5. Indian gouache paintings:

The Goddess Shakti taking the form of a triangle brings forth the three worlds. Jnarnava, Chapter X

Rajasthan, c. 17th century, Gouache on paper

6. Ancient Manuscripts:

Without traditional wisdom, the language would be but a skeleton without flesh, a body without a soul.   Zulu proverb from South Africa

Hebrew manuscript from the Bodleian Library, Oxford University

Color: STAT!

Thinking in Stripes (before quilting) ©2011, Hannah K. Hunter

About this time of year, I begin to get a bit squirrelly, especially with the tule fog of January (and February and March).

This dense fog, named for the tule grass wetlands of the California Central Valley, makes me feel cozy at the beginning of the season, all tucked into whatever world I happen to be occupying. But like snow in colder climes, the pleasure soon begins to gray.

I long for big splashes of color, wide skies of brilliant blue and the glowing yellow sunflowers of summer. Looking out the window this morning, I knew it would be awhile.

Of course, there is a cure for this: the studio. I go in and I want to inhale great gulps of color: carmine, fuchsia, tangerine, chartreuse, coral, jade and emerald green.

I've been working on a full size quilt for an upcoming exhibit. As I tried to work out the pattern for it, I began a smaller piece that could capture my color hunger and satiate it at the same time. I wanted the quilt to be irregular, with large "bites" of color, color that could explode inside me when I look at it; the same sensation that a child might have when she pops a Starbursts into her mouth and savors the eruption of harmonic sweetness that follows.

How are you coping with winter in your domain?

Quilt Road or, Taking the Long Way 'Round



Untitled (as of yet), ©2010, Hannah Hunter, Collage

 I'm setting out on a year long journey. In November of 2011, I'll be participating in a group art quilt exhibit at the Davis Art Center along with seven other wonderful women artists and quilters. It's been awhile since I've been part of a group exhibit in which there is such a long lead time. While short notice provides the challenge of creating under a deadline, this longer advance notice affords an opportunity for a luxurious thought process.

My first reaction to being invited was me, "Me? I know how to quilt, but I've never been one for large scale pieces." One of the seven other quilters, Diana Connolly, creates lively geometric works and doubles as an ER social worker at our hospital. She's used to much tougher cases than my soft skepticism. When I voiced my doubts, she looked at me with an expression which could only mean something like: "Get over it and get on with it!"

So I have, backing into it in my own way. I'm connecting 12" x 12" Ampersand panels (which happen to have gone on sale today at Daniel Smith) and creating large collage pieces with allover patterning and funky quilted borders (I'm having fun stitching together border pieces which play on the idea of the traditional quilt border).  Quilts often tell stories and one of the works in process is an homage to a patient, whom I became close to before she died last year. I spent a lot of time learning her family history, a classic story of immigration from the Far East to America. 

                                

         Composition V11, Deidre Adams, ©2007, Cotton fabrics, rayon and polyester thread, acrylic paint

I also decided to immerse myself in another way. Opening tomorrow at the Pence Gallery in Davis, Ca is a fabulous show entitled: 12 Voices, a collection of art quilts traveling the country and organized by the Studio Art Quilter's Associates. I volunteered to lead some docent tours so that I could learn about the quilts in detail. What a great decision! I was treated to a tour by Pence director, Natalie Nelson, and found my way into pieces that would have remained strangers, without her well informed descriptions of process and extensive information about the artists.

 Truth and Fiction, Joan Schulz ©2008, (48" x 98") Glue transfer process. Pieced, machine quilted

Over the next year, I'll be writing posts about my progress with my "quilts", their inspirations and mediums as well as descriptions of the artists' work (sneak peeks from our monthly meetings...) Hopefully, in the process, we'll be able to engage in a dialogue celebrating creativity of all kinds.

Fresh Impressions: An Interview in 3 Parts

Lessons From Things, postcard front on the "fridge" gallery

I've been working on a series of still lifes for a group exhibit entitled "Lessons from Things" at the Davis Art Center, in Davis, CA, 
August 2 - September 3.


Last week I was approached by Lea Murillo, a reporter from our University paper The California Aggie. Lea asked me if she could interview me for the exhibit curated by Sara Post.

I embraced the invitation, knowing it was one of those opportunities that Alyson Stanfield, in her book, "I'd Rather Be in the Studio," recommends for those of us who prefer to hang out with our paint, paper and brushes rather than write about them.

I'm reprinting the questions and my replies in the next three posts, because most of the time, I don't get the chance to read what an artist has said as he or she said it--simply because another person, the journalist, is doing the writing.

Lea asked me to answer the questions according to how they apply to me, the exhibit, and the connection between the two. Hence the segue between myself and the exhibit.

 1.) How long have you been an artist and, what does your artistic background consist of?

I've thought of myself as an artist since the age of 21, 33 years ago now. I received a B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Iowa (where I spent most of my time in the weaving studio) and an M.F.A. in Textiles and Sculpture from the California College of the Arts (where I spent much of my time crossing the campus between the Textile and the Sculpture studios).

Tempting Fate, ©2004, multimedia

I've always been interested in the intersection between media so that in both undergraduate and graduate school, I focused on textiles, painting, writing and sculpture.

Throughout my career as an artist, I've tried to blur the lines between the disciplines, or, another way to say it is that I try to find the liminal zone where two or more media come together.


When Sara curates an exhibit at the Davis Art Center, she engages in a similar quest; she becomes interested in a particular area, such as collage, and offers artists an open range for exploration.

In the current exhibit, "Lessons from Things," the title immediately produces a cornucopia of ideas. According to Sara, the title "refers to what was once a part of the French primary school curriculum—the study of things or objects and how they came to be what they are—their history, their evolution, their uses. It is a way of looking deeply into an object and seeing what is there."

That same title takes me back to first grade when I learned that a noun is a person, place or thing. From there, I begin to think about how I want to document some "thing," which leads me to thinking about which "things" in my environment inspire me.

2.) What inspires you?

Baby pomegranate

I spend a lot of time studying the natural world around me: ripening fruits, flowering oleanders, rows of sunflowers, furrows of rice fields off the causeway. 

Oleander on the way to work

                  I also love to study patterns in architecture, quilts and words.
      

Dancing Ring, ©2009, quilt

                   I distill all of these observations into the form of a collage.

Twins, 1 ©2009, collage

I also draw inspiration from my work as an art therapist at the UC Davis Children's Hospital. Much of my recent work (although not in this exhibit) is a response to my involvement with various children and their effects on my life.

More to come tomorrow. I'll be posting about my experience of working on the still lifes.