About Thankfulness

Bye, Bye Daddy: putting together the pieces of an idea

It was Black Friday, 1992, though I don't think we called the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" back then, or, if we did, it wasn't such a crazy big deal as it is now. In any case, my family celebrated Thanksgiving day with my in-laws when they were still hosting the family feast. We had done this since we were first married. It was the one holiday in my husband's family where everyone, no matter where they were and what they were doing, made a huge effort to travel to Ohio to join the Thanksgiving day feast. Our family stories for years were measured in yearly Thanksgiving day beats.
As was also usual, I called my Dad on Friday to see how his holiday went, to touch base, to chat, to hear his voice. It was evening time, and when he picked up the phone, his voice sounded funny. We had a short and sweet conversation, and when I said goodbye, he replied with an uncharacteristic "bye, bye." I hadn't told him I loved him. By the next morning he was dead; Saturday, November 28, 1992. I am thankful we had spoken the night before.

Fast-forward twenty-six years, another Thanksgiving weekend, and here I sit, like I do every post-Thanksgiving weekend, remembering and still loving and missing my Dad. That part never goes away. I had lost my mom the year before Daddy died, in 1991. Her death was sudden, too, and shocked me to the core, because I had never experienced a loss like that before. Dad's sudden death numbed me somewhere deep inside, where a part of me would move forward permanently broken.

Part of my dad's shirt holds together the other bits
and pieces pulled together to tell the story.

Luckily for me, I am an artist. I have a place to put those feelings, to let them birth out of me into the world where I (and other viewers) can contemplate the expression. It wasn't long after Dad died that I started this piece using bits of his clothing, a photo-transfer I made of an old Army picture, rubbings made in Mexico, hand dyed fabrics, and Depression-era ration tickets for food and gas transferred onto fabric. I got to tell my story and begin to heal my soul.
I have made several artworks about my Dad over the decades since he died, each time reprocessing my thoughts and feelings onto another surface, something I can hold up and examine. I call this group of artwork  my Hero Series. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to show the pieces in numerous venues, and thankful for the chance to touch and connect with a new audience each time.
I became obsessed with genealogy research after my Dad died. On a shelf in his bedroom closet, there was a stack of photographs that I had never seen. Dad's sister Carole, the genealogist on that side of the family, had sent them. He hadn't shown them to me or my siblings. That was a the beginning of a new way to heal for me. Instead of feeling like an orphan, I could literally connect myself to a larger family.

Hero 4: Bye Bye, Daddy by Gayle Pritchard. An ancient Tibetan prayer box anchors the top,
and my story is written in on the fabric as well as hung onto embellishments that hang down
or are stitched onto the surface. Over dad's Army picture, juxtaposed in strips with the
statue of David, there is a sheer veil, my representation of death.

With a chance to do some lazy-day, Thanksgiving holiday digging around on my computer, a moment of serendipity occurred. I was adding photos and scanned documents to my Ancestry family tree, when I ran across a 1949 clipping my sister had found online during a newspaper search. It had the simple heading: Airport News.

Neil Vickery, my dad, landed at this airport.
At that time, 1949, he was a barnstormer,
doing air shows around the area. 

"Hmmm, interesting", I thought. I have vivid memories of barnstormers who flew into my small hometown. We would stand in our backyard and watch in amazement as they performed tricks in the sky. I could now put my dad's face on those brave flyers.
Then I ran across a picture of dad from 1949. It is actually a photocopy of a picture of dad, and I wish I knew who has the original. In the photograph, he is standing next to his biplane. He's wearing a flight suit and, instead of his flashy Army aviation sunglasses, he has flight goggles pushed up onto his leather flying cap.
For a moment in time, I am connected to my dad in the year 1949, eight years before I was born. Two moments in time, a newspaper clipping and a photograph taken of the young flyer, fell into my lap as a gift. Both had been sitting in my computer, but I had never put them together before. Now, a little piece of my dad had been returned to me. I am so thankful.

My dad, the flyer, the barnstormer, in a picture dated 1949.

Showing Up and Working

Sometimes you just have to go into your studio, close the door and get to work. I used to have a studio, the one in the picture, outside of my home. When the kids left home, I didn't really need outside space, since I had extra bedrooms I could fill up. The only drawback is the carpeting in the rooms, which I hesitate to get too dirty with dripped paint, and the like.

That said, even at home, I don't get into my studio every day. Right now, though, I am preparing for an exhibition at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve curated by Mary Urbas, and entitled In the Details. It opens next month, several months earlier than initially planned, and I am really slamming it right now to finish up the new pieces I want to show.

What I'm working on right now? I can't even tell you the titles. For me, I never know exactly what the work is until it reaches a tipping point, and I understand what it is about. I continue working through the uncertainty until the piece reveals its intent to me. I have a number of those in progress right now. One is a political piece that is constructed with my dad's old flag and zippers. More on that another day. I just finished painting the top piece for this one, a construction with several stitched panels and a book at the bottom.

This large wooden protractor, given to me recently by a friend, is going to hold the components together and also serve as a hanging mechanism for the piece, shown here before this part was painted:

You can't really tell from this picture that the very bottom panel is actually a fabric book, hanging open in the photograph. It will be folded up and attached to the middle panel when it is all assembled.

Here is one of the side panels, almost finished. The back is a luscious purple silk and the front is my hand dyed shibori. I love the lines in this fabric!

Building a Composition

Turtle Spirit II, in progress
by Gayle Pritchard

In my previous post, the central panel  of Turtle Spirit II was finished. By showing you the piece on my working wall here, I hope you can get a sense of how the finished composition was built, piece by piece, literally.

As I mentioned before, I sew my compositions in sections on a tear-away backing. This makes it easier to work with the sections on my sewing machine, and it allows me to join unusually shaped edges to each other with ease.

To the base composition, I have added two side panels of African fabric, each of which features one of my hand-made cyanotype prints appliqued in place. I already envision how I want to quilt these side panels with long, broad stitches in perle cotton, and can hardly wait to begin sewing them! Along the bottom of the original panel is a single piece of unusual striped fabric, to which I have pinned various fabric remnants to be appliqued in place. I like this method of working. It is the same process as when I create a paper collage. The elements are auditioned by placing them on the main composition where it is very easy to immediately see what does or doesn't work. The finished art quilt will also have an additional layer of design, which is the quilting stitch itself. Unless you make quilts, it's hard to describe how much adding that line to the surface of the piece can change the surface, directing the eye in unexpected directions. I can also later add additional layers of fabrics and surfaces, such as stitched and printed attachments, to further enhance and complete the composition. I can respond to the composition throughout each stage of the process, adding and taking away until the piece is finished. All of these potential features are in my mind as I place the elements for this layer of the finished work.

The base layer of Turtle Spirit II, almost done!

To the striped bottom edge of the top's center panel, I added a narrow strip of fabric to create a visual edge. Underneath, a section of African fabric matching the top central panel is repeated, edged on either side with an exciting fabric that has a directional design, and more snippets laid on the surface to consider for applique.

Considering future structural problems, I decide that the two bottom side edges need a fabric underneath them to make it easier to bind the finished quilt when the layers are assembled. (Trying to bind those shaped side edges is a problem I definitely wish to avoid!) I don't want the fabric I use to jump out visually, though, because I like the illusion of the sides being slightly shorter than the bottom central panel. My solution is in the next picture. Ignoring the purple and blue backing fabric, which will not show on the front when the piece is finished, can you tell what I added or changed?

Grounded Like a Turtle

Detail, Turtle Spirit, ca. 1995

I mentioned in my last post that I was finishing up some odds and ends around my studio. One of those pieces is a Turtle Spirit quilt. I had made one as a commission for a wedding 20 years ago, and a detail of it is shown at left. Turtle is a symbol of mother earth, fertility and feminine wisdom. You can see on the detail shot that I included embellishments representing rabbits as a wish for the new couple to produce the children they desired. Sure enough, two beauties came from the union!

In our family, we have long enjoyed Sams and Carson's Medicine Card deck. At our get-togethers, the spiritually inclined women gather around a spread, and take turns reading the interpretation to the seeker, spending hours discussing the wisdom uncovered to guide our paths. Since turtle is considered to be the personification of goddess energy, I find her to be a powerful symbol. She protects and invites us to go inside ourselves to connect and be grounded. I wanted my own Turtle Spirit quilt. After I finished the commission, I started one for myself and never got around to finishing it. Ah, but Turtle has reappeared in my life this year, and I am driven to finish the new piece and hang it on my wall.

Turtle Spirit by Gayle Pritchard

ca. 1995. This is the original

commissioned artwork.

For my Turtle Spirit, I began with essentially the same central panel, a turtle form cut from hand made shibori fabric, hand appliqued in place on a remnant of one of my favorite African fabrics. I then cut and pinned additional design elements in place on my studio wall until I was pleased with what was happening. If you look closely, you will see cut-out snippets of fabric as well as border strips used to make the design larger. 

The central portion of the new Turtle Spirit, shown above left, measures about 25" wide x 30" high, to give you an idea of the scale. If you examine the edges, you will notice the tear-away backing showing. I create all of my fiber collages on top of a non-fusible medium weight tear-away backing. It not only provides body while sewing, it also allows me to create shaped pieces that fit together like a jig-saw puzzle without making any patterns.

In my next post, I will show you how I built my final composition, beginning with this little panel. The piece is almost finished now, and I can't wait for you to see it! I can't wait to hang it up on the wall.

Spirit of Summer's End

Turtle Spirit by Gayle Pritchard
A Commissioned Quilt for a Wedding

Today is my sister's birthday, which means August is right around the corner, which means, in my mind, that summer's end is beginning. Have you noticed that the days are becoming gradually shorter, that the flowers in bloom have changed, that the gardening season is slowly winding down? For me, this is the spirit of summer's end.

As summer winds down, the still-flickering childhood memories of relishing the remaining month of summer, and of preparing for going back to school in the fall remain impressed in my psyche. While I strive to live "in the moment" each day, the busyness of fall looms, as the events and deadlines on my ever-present calendar remind me to get ready.

I am working on a new piece, a companion piece to the one shown here, Turtle Spirit. The artwork at left was commissioned for a couple's wedding, and I have always loved it. The companion piece will be larger, but still focused on the turtle in the central panel.



Turtle,  a native american animal symbol

is the central focus of the piece.

In Native American symbolism, which is where this turtle symbol comes from, turtle is sacred, and contains fetish properties. Among other things, turtle is a symbol for fertility, truth, and long life. It seemed the perfect wish for a couple entering into a marriage.

Meanwhile, I have been invited to create some new work for a wearable art exhibition at the Valley Art Center. Art Strikes a Pose opens September 10 and runs through October 13, 2011.

Turtle Spirit II by Gayle Pritchard, in progress:

Handmadeology Top 10 Vote: I'm nominated, so vote today

Just a quick note to those of you who read my blog, like my work, and have time to vote for me.

My art quilt, Prayers for the Dead, is nominated in the Handmadeology Top 10 list for Art on etsy today. Click the link to vote for me today, and thanks : )

I love this piece; it was a very meaningful one for me in a meaningful series:

Hanging a Rug and other stuff to figure out

Magic Baby booth at a recent event.

Now that the Artist as Quiltmaker exhibition I curate has opened, and my daughter's wedding is over (I know, I never finished posting the pictures of the dress and jacket made for her...soon, soon, I promise!), I am back at work on my Magic Baby line and other artwork on my etsy store. I recently finished up several things I had cut out before the wedding. (Have you noticed my life has been defined by "pre-wedding" and "post-wedding?")

Although I had made several prototypes of this adorable little jacket for my granddaughters, I wanted to make one for little boys. This one is made out of snuggly flannel, is hooded, has adjustable sleeve lengths, and is completely reversible, part of my signature style. The first picture shows both sides of the jacket completed and ready to be measured for buttons before sewing it together.

One new thing I wanted to do on this jacket was to perfect my previous attempts to make completely handmade and baby-soft buttons. I have tried several different ideas previously, but wasn't completely happy with the results. This time, I used recycled plastic bottle cap rings covered with layers of quilt batting and flannel to create matching buttons. They turned out wonderfully!


I used the same style of handmade buttons on the inside. Since they are soft, they won't chafe the skin!



I also just finished a prototype for a new design, but will post about the separately. Suffice it to say that, each time I create a new pattern prototype, the goals are to a) have fun with it b) to solve some new problems and c) to try something new.


More on that later.



The other project that came my way in the past few weeks was designing a hanging sleeve. Because I have made art quilts for exhibition for the past 25 years, making a hanging sleeve isn't anything new. The twist for this project was that I needed to create an appropriate hanging sleeve for a very large needlepoint rug. Not only is the rug heavier than a quilt of the same size would be, but there is not backing layer of fabric to stitch into, and the entire large piece is stiff. I couldn't exactly curl up with it on my couch to work.



So, here you see my tools gathered, and the top sleeve pinned in place. Because of the weight of the rug, I opted to use unprimed, pre-washed and pre-shrunk canvas for the sleeves, both top and bottom. I needed very long, thin pins to be able to just graze the needlepoint canvas to hold the sleeves in place while stitching. I used glazed quilting thread that matches the canvas in a single strand to attach the sleeves.

In my next post, I will detail the logistics!