Dear art cloth friends,
Like most of you, I get into drawing with thread.
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| Some embroidered dream bugs I'm working on. |
What appeals to me the most as a textile artist is the way that even the most abstract ideas that I have translate to cloth. The most delicate stitches and violent machine works appeal to me visually.
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| Free Lunch. Silk screen and stitch on silk. K. Crane |
Layers and layers of cloth and embellishment speak to my sense of well being and help me feel connected to what is going on around me.
That is why I first began translating images on to cloth with a needle and thread and screen printing.
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| Venetian Night on Lake Michigan - Work In Progress Custom screen print on hand-dyed cloth. K. Crane |
Sometimes, I would like to convey an idea, but when I sit down to work it out it's not as clear as I thought. I used to spend hours sketching and sketching, trying to filter images down to their most base form so that I could then translate them to a screen print. Did I say hours and hours? Then one day I remembered a technique that I use in my practice as an art therapist. It's called Pursuit of the Image.
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Maple leaf, falling down, showing front, showing back.
Haiku and silk screen on handpainted cotton. K. Crane 2009. |
Once I applied this way of focusing toward my own work, I literally had more ideas than I could keep up with. All of a sudden I found myself embroidering haikus, and finding ways to create layers on my art cloths to represent my ideas, and even my dreams. I used another technique to remember my dreams better, which I'm happy to share with you below. For example, I had a dream that the sky turned greenish brown and all of my beloved sunflowers at my home in Kentucky wilted and began glowing violet. I know, it sounds kind of creepy but it was an awesome visual. After perfecting my dream recall, one morning I woke up and remembered a dream within a dream where I looked inside my brain and actually saw my dreams and they looked like bugs, but kind of like snowflakes too. Now it really sounds creepy, but the point is I was so excited that I could not wait to get in to the studio and get to work.
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| Closeup of I Saw My Dreams and They Looked Like Bugs. K. Crane |
You can do it too. I don't mean that you can have creepy dreams too; I mean you can hone in on some astounding, radical, and awe inspiring images too. The first weekend of October I will be at Lill offering a workshop on Pursuit of the Image. We will work through some mind exercises, pull some images out of the inner vaults of our thoughts, and start creating art cloth after art cloth after art cloth until we run out of time. I'm excited. Most fellow art cloth addicts like myself leave this workshop ready to start new projects or move on with the ones that got them stuck. I encourage you to sign up, if you haven't already.
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| Silk screened and transferred images on vintage cotton. K. Crane |
In the meantime, I'll leave you with a small exercise you can do in the privacy of your own home to help you remember your dreams. First of all, try to do this on a night when you can get at least seven and a half hours of sleep. That is to say, give yourself plenty of time to complete 2-3 cycles of sleep. Get a glass of water, your journal, and a pen. After you get into bed, just before you turn the light out, drink half of the glass of water. While you are drinking the water, tell yourself to remember your dreams. When you wake up in the morning, before you do anything, drink the other half of the glass of water and ask yourself to remember what you dreamt. Then write it down immediately.
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| An antique bunny sculpture on my historic property in Kentucky. There are also two rather large rabbit holes out back, but not large enough to fall into like Alice, unfortunately. |
After a while, you should train yourself to wake up and remember without needing to drink the water. You may even get to the point where you can set the intention to remember without needing the glass of water at all. Lastly, you don't need a big glass of water! I've had students come to me upset because they guzzled a vat of water before bed and then interrupted their sleep waking up to use the loo. Just a cup of water will do, really. Don't be upset if it doesn't work the first night. Some people are more apt to remember than others. No matter how disjointed your dreams seem write them down. Go back and circle the objects in your dreams. Did you dream about color? Probably you didn't dream "in" color, but you can dream about color.
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| Click to enlarge this photo and tell me the leaves of this black walnut tree don't look psychedelic when you look up through them. Go on - try it. I know it's not just me. |
Use this exercise to get started pursuing your images. Let me know how it goes! Contact me here or over at
Big Fat Art Cloth. I really am excited to hear what surfaces. See you in the Textiles Department.
