Fiber artist #2 - Esterita Austin

Continuing my #5femaleartists posts about fiber artists who have influenced me with Esterita Austin.  Esterita teaches nationally (mostly at quilt stores) and I was fortunate enough to take her class about using paint on fused applique compositions.  The class I took is no longer listed on her page as she's developed new and more interesting classes. 

For me, that class was an eye opener.  It was in the early 2000's and I had not yet discovered silkscreening or even painting on quilts.  I was doing everything with fabric and thread.  The class used a composition she had developed with rocks in the foreground and a couple of tree trunks on the right.  The fabric requirements specified multi tone and color fabric.  And I learned an amazing amount about letting the fabric carry the values of shadow and highlight and adding emphasis through paint. She was originally trained as a painter and all of her classes use that training skillfully to teach quilters to use an artist's eye. Clearly this workshop was important to me since I'm remembering so much detail 15 years later.

Workshop result with some additions

After the workshop, I was in complete love with the tree trunks.  Most of the texture on them was added by some delicate painting which really popped them as 3D.  I later added the sunset sky by printing on sheer fabric from a nice photo I had.  And there was some other experimentation with shiva paint sticks and rubbing plates done that added visual texture to the water. 

Several years later (2013/2014)  I took a second workshop from her on doing fabric self-portraits.  The piece that came out of that workshop (see below) is the only piece ever displayed in my Georgetown studio that had someone walk into the studio, make a beeline to the piece, and ask loudly "Whose is this?  How much does it cost?"  That was a thrilling moment for me but I told him it wasn't for sale. 

I found the emphasis on tone rather than color freeing and have used things I learned from her regularly in my work.  I haven't browsed her class list in a while but looking at it for this blog is making me think it's time for another workshop.  This time I'll go for the paint on sheer fabric one as I already had using sheers on my experimentation list for this year.

I heartily recommend browsing her gallery and her students gallery for some other samples of this type of colorful work.

Fiber artists who influenced me - Deidre Scherer

It's Women's History Month and the National Museum of Women in the Arts is doing a  #5femaleartists  thing on social media.  So, this is me joining in while I am in the final week of assembling work and finishing the papers for Norwescon.

I'm going to post about one artist a day from a list of 5 fiber artists who had a big influence on me.  Today's female fiber artist is Deidre Scherer whose name I can never spell right the first time. 

In Thought

It's not even that her work inspired me altho her use of thread to create line and shadow on fabric opened up possibilities for me.   I was at my in-laws house for Thanksgiving and Dr. Doug was talking about a trip to the east coast and a museum.  He started describing these amazing detailed stitched portraits but couldn't remember the artists' name.  I looked at him and said "Deidre Scherer".  And he was amazed I knew of her.  This was in the late 90's when I was just starting to exhibit so it really made me feel like I was truly an artist.  Because even if I wasn't producing lots or exhibiting lots, I knew my field and the fellow artists.

She's added paper and lino prints to her work since then and you can see all of her work at her webpage, dscherer.com.  The work displayed is still focused on elder portraits regardless of the technique and I find both her woven paper pieces and lino-cuts intriguing.  Looking at the variations she has done gives me some ideas about ways to vary my dancer pieces while I experiment this year.

destashing my studio

"Money doesn't buy happiness, but money buys fabric."  And here's your chance.  Or at least, your chance is coming later this week.

I'm in the final, I swear, really truly LAST,  bit of decluttering my studio and this time I'm ditching lots of patterns and fabric.  It will all be posted on my etsy store, link here.  I thought it only right to let the people who follow my blog get advance notice, so that's what this is.  Here's the current stack of stuff that needs to go.  Patterns will go first, Folkwear patterns first of all.

And here's the closeup of the Folkwear patterns that I have left and that I don't plan to use in the next 12 months.  (That's my ruthless criteria for this final purge.  Will I use it in the next year?  If the answer isn't an absolute Yes, it goes.  Because I get ideas faster than I can do them.) 

Last time, I sold these for $9 a piece and that still seems reasonable for the uncut ones. (Brand new from the webpage prices are $15-20.)  The cut ones may be somewhat less.  I plan to have them up today but we're off to an Oscar party at 4pm so I'll have to hurry.

I'd really love to finish the purging by the ides of March so please send good thoughts, energy, etc my way that I don't have yet another bout of the flu before then.  And may your projects go well too.