Northern Lights, a vintage linen napkin (maker unknown), has been painstakingly folded, stitched, and hand-dyed in a mandala-type design.
Northern Lights
Category: Portfolio
TEXTILE & MIXED MEDIA WORKS
All works are shipped ready to hang. Satisfaction is guaranteed, with a full refund, less shipping costs, if returned within one week of receipt. For information on availability of existing works and current prices or to discuss site specific commissions for corporate, healthcare, public and/or residential interiors please contact the artist at mary@maryvaneecke.com.
A Mind of Winter
A Mind of Winter
This small art quilt (12” x 12”) is my submission for the Studio Art Quilt Associates auction, which starts online in September. All proceeds go to SAQA, which works to promote the art quilt. SAQA supports what I do, so I like to reciprocate!
The small work is made of layered, sheer fabrics, including hand-dyed silk organzas and lace scraps from a wedding dress, layered on felt and commercial cotton fabric and machine stitched. The title comes from a Wallace Stevens poem, The Snowman. I think about the opening line of the poem–One must have a mind of winter–often as temperatures get into the 100s here at home. I grew up in Michigan, where winters are long, and I wonder about the Nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is. Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?
I am considering making a larger version, so perhaps I will call this Mind of Winter I.
Below is the complete text of the poem.
The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Poisoning Flint
Elegy for the Beautiful Son
Dark Desert Skies
Abuela Reads the Headlines
Abuela Reads the Headlines , 2015
Abuela is Spanish for grandmother. I imagine her in her barrio (neighborhood) garden in my hometown, Tucson, surrounded by an ocotillo (a living, cactus-type) fence. She has her handwork and the blessed Virgin of Guadalupe nearby, with a grandchild at her knee. Abuela scans the headlines about America’s current immigration policy, and weeps.
Materials: vintage handworked textiles (makers unknown), felted wool, embellishing (480 jewelry spikes), cotton and cotton-silk fabric, dyeing, discharging, silk sari ‘yarn,’ window screen, acrylic felt, embellishments (milagros and crystal rosary), synthetic organza.
Techniques: dyeing, heat and chemical burning, wet felting, hand stitching, couching, machine stitch, discharging, devore, dyeing, cutting.
We Came to America
We Came to America
My paternal grandparents, Firmin and Lucie VanEecke, lived the great American Dream. I have long let a quilt in their honor ‘percolate’ in the back of my mind. They met and married in Belgium between the World Wars and came here in 1923 by ship, as millions of immigrants have done throughout our history. World War I decimated Belgium, and they sought a better life here while feeling the separation and loss of loved ones left behind, most of whom they never saw again. Lucie and Firmin flourished in the US, had five children, nine grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. This work features hand-dyed vintage lace textiles, copies of their last letters home (in Flemish), and their wedding portrait. The piece is quilted with the phrase We Came to America in the languages of many other immigrants who came to America. In a private collection.
Abuela’s Garden – SOLD
Abuela’s Garden, 2015
The Barrio Viejo (old neighborhood) of my hometown is home to many Mexican immigrants. Their distinctive gardens are often surrounded by an ocotillo fence, a living fence made of a cactus-like plant. The gardens will contain flowers like marigolds and sunflowers, and foods that remind residents of home. Neighbors share seeds and cuttings, and other fruits of their labor. What a lovely metaphor for migration and transplantation.
Materials include hand-dyed and painted handmade textiles (makers unknown), felted wool ropes, new fabrics, silk sari ‘yarn,’ window screen, felt, and machine stitch. In a private collection.
Weaving Traditions
This piece is inspired by the basket weaving patterns of the indigenous peoples along the Santa Cruz river, where I live in Arizona. Techniques include katano shibori, discharge, dyeing, burning, trapunto, and machine stitch.
Chopsticks and Udon
Another improvisationally pieced ‘modern quilt’ to go with a dining theme. Its sister quilt, Chopsticks and Edamame is here. The digitized quilting design is based on a traditional sachiko design called steam or fishing net.
Coin Toss
This quilt is inspired by the wonderful fabrics (a shot cotton in burnt orange, and a navy New Aged Muslin by Marcus Brothers) and the traditional quilt pattern Chinese Coins. A link to a 1940s Amish version is here. I call it Coin Toss, and every time I think of the name, I want to ask, What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?
The use of negative space and plain fabrics just begs for fabulous quilting, and I tried to keep the tension of the perilously stacked coins going with the navy-on-navy background quilting.
Sonaran Arts Network reviews ‘Journeys’ show and my piece, ‘Modern Love’
A link to the thoughtful and perceptive review of the SAQA-AZ Journeys show by CJ Shane is here. The show runs through December 10 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center.
New Wave
This piece features stitched shibori dyeing technique on silk fabrics, multiple 3-D quilt layers, and is embellished with found plastic objects.
Dining Destinations: Chopsticks and Edamame
This piece is another of my ‘Modern’ quilts. It features commercial fabrics and improvisational piecing. The digitized quilt design in the black areas is based on a traditional Japanese sachiko pattern called ‘steam.’ Edamame are steamed fresh soybeans. I think there is a Pad Thai quilt in my future!
Chopsticks and Edamame will be part of the Studio Art Quilt Assciates’ Food for Thought exhibition. The show will debut at the National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, in April 2015 and will then travel to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England, in August, 2015.
Southwest Vistas
Here an elegant southwest sunset fabric is the focal point, with a cactus flowers print providing the 3-D affect. Learn about this technique in my book, Wild and Wonderful 3-D Quilts.
Wisteria Dreams
I used my 3-D technique on this elegant Asian panel and coordinating fabric to create wisteria vines draping off the quilt. Find out how in my book, Wild and Wonderful 3-D Quilts.
Mini Monkey
This quilt is a smaller version of It’s a Jungle Out There, a finalist at the Quilt Festival in Houston. Learn how to make it in my book, Wild and Wonderful 3-D Quilts.
Sea Spirits
This quilt, using a panel fabric designed by Laurel Burch, is included in the gallery of my book, Wild and Wonderful 3-D Quilts.
It’s a Jungle Out There
This whimsical piece uses my 3-D art quilt technique with commercial fabrics. I call it It’s a Jungle Out There. See this art quilt in IQA’s show in Houston in Fall 2015 as part of the SAQA travelling ‘Wild Fabrications’exhibition . You can learn these techniques in one of my classes, or in my upcoming book, Wild and Wonderful 3-D Quilts.
Modern Love
I love the so-called ‘Modern Quilt’ aesthetic: clean design lines, simple fabrics, negative space (=quilting space, IMHO). This is my first attempt at such a piece. It is raw-edge fusible applique on a field of gray muslin. Yes, I cut a hole in it. I call it Modern Love.
The Big Reveal….
The Radical Elements show is in Washington D.C. today at the National Academy of Sciences. A link to information on the current venue is here. Since the embargo on publishing photos of the works has been lifted, I can post a full view of the piece now. Drum roll please….
Painted archival Tyvek embedded with silk fibers and medical gloves, layered with window screen with acrylic paint and medium screened into it. The piece features cutouts and a 3D element, an S curve composition, and is quilted with magnets. Embellished with electric guitar strings.
Untitled
Let Freedom Ring
This small work has been dyed, discharged, overdyed, discharged, overdyed, screen printed, hand-painted, layered and stitched. It was exhibited as part of a show with the theme “Words” at the local library. It is a commentary on the impact of money on public discourse.
Samarium 62: No Relation
Samarium 62: No Relation. This piece is part of the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ Radical Elements invitational exhibition. A photo of the entire work is embargoed until its debut exhibition in May 2014. It is made from materials other than fabric and thread, and ‘quilted’ with magnets. The piece overlaps two series: Samaras and Circlesss.