Artistic Inspiration

For this month's challenge, we made pieces inspired by a favorite artist.

Kandinsky's Circles: Melanie
I love abstract art and Kandinsky's circle color studies really appealed to me and seemed to lend themselves to a quilted project. I used fabric paint to paint the circles and background on pfd fabric. After heat setting the paint, I quilted the circle rings using the appopriate color thread for each color.

Escher: Pat Ferguson
Last spring, I attended an Escher exhibit and really fell in love with the way he uses dimension and perspective. I try to incorporate these techniques in my zentangles and zen quilting. I hope you can see it in my sketchbook pages and in the design I used on this wooden snowflake.

Kandinsky: Joan
I also chose Kandinsky. I almost did the circles but decided instead on this gradient color study.  I used some of my hand dyed indigo shibori fabric, some other hand dyes and a variety of  additional fabrics I had in my stash. If you study the painting, part of it looks a little muted. I used white tulle to simulate that muted effect. Here are pictures of the original, my piece in progress and my piece with the tulle overlay.

Sadler: Cathey
My artist was Sean Sadler. His piece, "Magic I" grabbed me because it had my favorite fall color palette. I changed some of the colors and bumped up the saturation. I started with a yellow silk base and used a wide variety of fabrics including organza, painted wonder under, ribbon, cottons and added foil and pearl-ex. I used misty fuse to tack down the fabrics. I did not quilt it *yet* because I was worried that it might detract from the sheer qualities of some of the fabrics. I am still thinking about this. Below is Sadler's original and my fabric interpretation.

Impressionism: Marcia
My love the impressionistic style. I used Claude Monet's art work as inspiration to create the apple tree near water. I used "snippets" from some old scraps I saved and my hand dyed indigo shibori. Chenile yarn was used for the tree trunk and more yarns for the haystacks. I put a layer of tulle over the entire piece to secure all the smaller pieces and add to the impressionistic feel.

I also brought along a zen quilt I recently completed. I stared it in one of Pat's classes. I added some red beads to contrast with the black & white. Can you see my initial  "K" in the piece?

Jackson Pollock: Linda
When I think of Jackson Pollock, I think random, bold color! I had a lot of fabrics with bold colors and prints ala Pollock and wanted to try a new technique, "jelly roll race." In this technique, you sew strips end to end then connect and seam till you end up with an interesting pattern. I like to make things that are useful so I made a black and white one into a pad pouch and embroidered it with my initials. I am still deciding what to do with my colorful Jackson Pollack piece.