A Lifeline

A year and a half ago, soon after I turned 40, I gifted myself a sabbatical to explore a new direction in my work. One of the first projects I tackled was to fabricate a sculpture out of an antique quilt top that I'd been holding onto for years with this purpose in mind. The slow evolution of this unfinished quilt has been a learning process for me with many stops and starts.

First, I created a simple drop pattern and proceeded to cut up the entire quilt. The drops were stitched together and stuffed inside-out so the hand-pieced, textured surface would be visible. Ironically the quilt lent me 42 drops--the age I will be turning in a few months.

In order to unify the forms and emphasize their texture without the distraction of a country craft palette each one was painted with black gesso. The gesso transformed the drops from a soft pillow form into a calcified cocoon. After painting, I sanded and stitched the pods to re-emphasize the lines and textures of the original quilted surface. The final surface was fused with a layer of wax lending a skin-like smoothness to these seemingly rough forms.

Through each step this work has pushed and pulled me along. The process was much more involved than I could have predicted at the outset. Nevertheless, I'm glad I keep pulling it back out to puzzle out each step of its transformation. It is a quilt no longer. The 42 drops have been bound tightly to a spine of sorts. I arranged them onto an old lead rope using the measurements of my own torso. For whatever this is, I call it a Lifeline.

Pink Palette

In need of a wider variety of peachy-pink material for my series of Fiber Forms and other studio experiments, I've turned to an unlikely source--avocado pits. After searching online for what natural dyes would lend my desired palette I came across this recipe and proceeded to buy/eat avocados for weeks. Unfortunately I'm the only one in the family who likes them so I collected them in the freezer til I had enough to make a full dye pot. I boiled eight pits for this batch of old linen scraps, stained cotton doilies and cheese cloth. The aged whites and creams were transformed into a subtle palette of the fleshy pink textures. I was more than pleased with the outcome and have already started stitching with my new stash.

A video posted by Suzanna Scott (@suzanna_scott) on Aug 16, 2016 at 9:11am PDT

We've Moved

Cocooned sculpture waiting to be loaded onto the moving truck.

Our family has moved from Springfield, Missouri. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of packing, cleaning, and unpacking. Not to mention the better half of a day spent at the DMV getting our driver's licenses and most importantly registering to vote! Patrick is joining the Department of Economics & Finance at Louisiana Tech University this Fall--thus the reason for our relocation. We are excited to get acquainted with our new city of Ruston, Louisiana--aka The Peach City.

My two favorite movers. Lizzie was a trooper & earned her triple-allowance.

 

Boxes piled in my new studio. Now it's time to get back to making!

Mailing List

There has been an influx of traffic here recently and I'd like to say thank you for your interest in my work and for following my endeavors in the studio. If you haven't done so I invite you to sign up for my mailing list to receive my quarterly newsletter and other studio updates. I'll be sending out my Summer newsletter in the next week. Other places around the web you can find me are on my website, Instagram and Twitter.

Crazy Quilts

Last summer I picked up a pile of unfinished crazy quilt squares at the flea market. A bit musty and stained, they'd definitely seen a few idle decades. I decided to emphasize the aged backsides of these patchwork squares by carefully slicing into them to expose their insides. The coloring on the reverse is subtle; stains are visible, and you can trace the map-like stitches where each piece has been quilted. Each scar that I add is carefully marked, cut and stitched into place with black thread. Fresh wounds are now scattered among the hints of stitches left by another pair of laboring hands years ago.

Cut & Paste Drawings

As I work one train of thought informs the next, and my actions tend to propagate. In this instance, drawings for sculpture become fodder for collage series I'm referring to as 'cut & paste drawings'. I keep a small notebook to collect ideas (I love Field Notes!) but also keep a loose-leaf sketchbook which entails a pile of random papers pulled from the mail and old books. I prefer to draw on paper with less than perfect edges and maybe a wrinkle or two. This makes the empty page more inviting and gives the sketch character before a mark is made. I photograph work at various stages in the process, not only so I can share with you but also as a point of reference for myself. It's an invaluable tool to be able to look back from a finished work and see its evolution.