Lisa Call

Artful Home

The Artful Home Studio Sale started today or maybe it was yesterday.

Either case you can peruse some of my older artwork that I don’t think I’ve ever shown online before. When I moved I came across some older work from my embellishing days. Lots of beads and buttons on these. I’ve also added in a few of the older pieced artworks also.

It’s a fun trip down memory lane for me to look at this work so I’ve decided to show them on the blog as a group as it’s fun to see our history.

Space Donuts

My preschool aged son wanted help with this quilt, so I let him name it. I love what he came up with.

This quilt is collage appliqued, machine quilted with rayon and metallic threads and hand beaded.

Space Donuts
© 1998 Lisa Call
25.5" x 21.5"
Quilt (fabric, beads, trim, threads, batting)
$1590 $795 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

Chicken Quartet #1

A singing chicken! A group of 4 embroidered cocktail napkins found at a garage sale were the inspiration for this fun wall art.

The quilt is composed of commercial cotton fabric over dyed fabric by the artist and a selection of vintage fabrics to compliment the chickens. The piece is heavily embellished with beads and buttons for an updated folk art look.
 

Chicken Quartet #1
© 2004 Lisa Call
12.5" x 13.5"
Quilt (fabric, buttons, beads, batting, thread)
$700 $350 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

El Niño

In 1997 they predicted would be a wet year for the western part of the United States due to the warming El Nino currents in the Pacific Ocean. In October my home in Colorado was buried beneath 3 feet of snow overnight. This quilt is the result of being snowed in that weekend.

Collage appliqued, heavily embellished with machine quilted with rayon and metallic threads and hand beaded.

El Niño
© 1997 Lisa Call
34" x 31"
Quilt (fabric, buttons, paint, batting, thread)
$990 $495 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

Chairs #6

Chairs No. 6 is part of a series of work that was inspired by the shape of my kids’ highchair. They spent a lot of time there and I spent a lot of time washing it. So it was bound to inspire my artwork. Bright colors combined with black and white result in a very graphic and cheerful composition

Free hand cut, pieced and quilted with swirling quilting patterns in multiple complimenting colors on a home sewing machine.
 

Chairs #6
©2000 Lisa Call
18" x 18"
Quilt (fabric, batting, thread)
$390 $195 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

Blossoms II

Japanese style cherry blossoms embellished with button centers. The irregular shape was fun to work with.

Raw edge applique, machine quilted, painted, embellished.
 

Blossoms II
©1997 Lisa Call
34" x 31"
Quilt (fabric, buttons, paint, batting, thread)
$300 $150 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

Insalada Caprese

Fresh Mozzarella and Tomato Salad - a summer garden inspired artwork. A simple recipe that requires little effort (cut up cheese and tomatoes and drizzle with olive oil) and it sounds so yummy in Italian. The green is for a bit of fresh basil to make the dish (and art) more interesting. And of course I don’t grow just red tomatoes in my garden but also orange and yellow ones also.

Hand dyed fabric by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread. Free hand cut. Pieced and Quilted on a home sewing machine.
 

Insalada Caprese
©2002 Lisa Call
34" x 31"
Quilt (fabric, buttons, paint, batting, thread)
$1190 $595 - on artfulhome

 
Detail Image:

Structures #95
©2008 Lisa Call
52" x 34"
Textile Painting (hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)

Music

Many (most? all?) artists are happy to talk about the music they listen to in their studio while creating art. I’m certainly no exception and have written about it before. Today’s post is a bit of a stream of consciousness and my music listening.

So now the confession - I’m not a big music person. It’s not that I don’t like music, it’s just I can’t be bothered to learn very much about it and there are days and weeks that go by when I forget to listen to it.

I like silence. I like the meditative quiet as I stitch parallel lines back and forth on my textile paintings for hours on end. Much self coaching and problem solving happens during this time.

But this post is about music, so back to that.

Music History

I have a nice sized CD collection, mostly the rock I listened to in high school and in my 20s - cause it’s what I know, I like it, it’s obvious, it’s easy. Stuff like The Beetles, The Gogos, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Leonard Skynard, Blondie. Pretty main stream stuff or at least it was in the 70s and 80s.

I listen to this music on the stereo I bought in graduate school with the student loan I took out to go on a ski trip and buy a stereo.

I actually have a pretty nice stereo because I was dating a guy (who I eventually married) that vacuumed his records with a nitty gritty record machine (if you don’t know what that is - it’s fine - just imagine a vacuum cleaner for records and people rather obsessive about sound quality from a piece of black plastic).

Music was a big thing for him. Listening to, playing, watching performances. A crappy stereo was not an option (hence the need for a loan).

We attended a lot music events in college and then in New York City when we were working at IBM Research. Almost weekly we’d head down to Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center from Westchester County to listen to folks like Yo-Yo Ma and The Berlin Philharmonic. I learned to love opera during these 2 years.

He grew up with music and his family is packed with musical talent. He inherited that talent and love for music.

I don’t remember a lot of music in our house growing up until my sister conned me into paying for half or her stereo (with an 8-track player - we were on top of the trends). When she left for college she took the stereo with her. I don’t recall being unhappy about it.

About the same time my mom moved out and my dad started listening to music. Even bought a nice stereo as I recall. I enjoyed the likes of Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers with him. And PDQ Bach.

I owned a few albums so I listened to them over and over as it was all I had. Lots of repetition.

In the Studio

So now - back to the studio. As a result of having been married to a guy that was into music I have alot of CDs. Mostly rock - he kept the classical.

But what I listen to is extremely limited. For the last 18 months it’s been almost exclusively Christine Kane’s music.

The above textile painting was designed while I listened to She Don’t Like Roses on repeat over and over and over again for hours and hours.

Turns out I love repetition. Not surprising as I’ve created 111 textile paintings in the Structures series over the years. Could be how my brain is wired.

In the past a few other artists have captured my attention and I’ve listened to them repeatedly - just before Christine it was Johnny Cash.

The music I do remember as a kid was my brother listening to Johnny Cash over and over and over again. He was apparently into repetition also. My sister and I used to tease him mercilessly about it and he was smart enough to ignore us (or maybe he didn’t, but he didn’t stop listening to it).

After seeing the movie Walk the Line (about Johnny Cash) I bought a few of his CDs on my way home from the theater. Listened to them repeatedly for months and months. Bought my sister a CD as a gift, which she also liked.

We decided we should probably apologize to my brother for teasing him so much - he apparently had pretty good taste in music as a kid.

I try to remind myself of that when my kids are playing music in my studio (they bring their ipods and plug them into my stereo). Last night my son was programming (my 16 year old is writing an game for the iphone this summer) and came up to spend the evening in my studio while I worked.

We listened to Velvet Underground and The Horror from his MP3 player. Not bad but more on the noise side than I usually listen to.

 
PS - this blog post is also my entry into Vinyl Art’s contest: Storied Past. Barely squeaking in by the deadline.

 
What are you listening to in the studio?

Stitching, stitching, stitching

This is where I am spending 20-30 hours a week - in front of the sewing machining getting the surface stitching on the 2 pieces for an invitational show in 2010.

I can’t show the artwork as we’ve been asked not to. So instead here are the tools I use for this process.

Lots and lots of thread. Mostly oranges and grays but plenty of other colors tossed in also. I’ve used all of these colors in the current piece. On the right are all the empties that have piled up as I’ve worked through this very large piece. I’ll mark them off my inventory sheet when I finish the textile painting.

The tools:

• a seam ripper, which dates back to middle school home ec class, which I would be seriously sad if I ever lost it. I can’t find another like it - instead of the tip being sharp it’s blunt, so it doesn’t catch on the fabric and is perfect for hooking under thread that is in the wrong place.
• scissors, can’t be at a sewing machine without them.
• needle to pull the threads into the sandwich of the quilt
• brush and oil to keep the machine clean
• lint roller to remove fuzz from the batting and other lint that doesn’t below on the quilt

I have another 10 hours on the first quilt and then will start in on the second. Deadline for having these completed is July 15th. I think I’ll be able to finished but it might require a few days of vacation from the day job.

In the Dye Studio

 
Today I spent 5 1/2 hours teaching a friend how to dye fabric (Ayn is a print maker and budding textile artist and will soon have a website). I think I dyed about 40 yards of fabric and tomorrow I’ll wash it out and see how it looks.

Five hours on my feet usually exhausts me so I’m doing computer work this evening instead of working in the studio.

Resting

I’ve put in a huge number of hours in the studio and on the art business the last few weeks. I’m nearing 1/2 way done on the big deadline coming up in July so my brain took a vacation.

Last night I watched a movie with my daughter that on a scale of 1-10 was maybe a 1. Tonight I watched Mall Cop, which maybe doesn’t even make it to 1 on that scale. This is serious “lisa needs a break” time.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to making art and dyeing fabric cause this deadline isn’t going to go away.

Living with Art

In the meantime here are some images of more ways to display small art and a small sampling of the art in my house:

My bulletin board - the aceo in the lower left hand corner was made by Jessica Torrant. Around it are my journey blessings from Journey Juju. The card to the right is from Sandy Woock (a brilliant textile artist who has a new blog). The postcard is of art by Charles Waller. The dream catcher was made by my mom (who is very talented but has no website).

There are also fortunes from fortune cookies on there, some photos of rocks (one sent to me by my sister), a card from a hospital with 101 ways to praise a child, and a few quotes I like: “You can be right or you can be free” and “I won’t let anything into my life I don’t absolutely love”.

I have a bulletin board above this one that ends up with the more practical things that people put on bulletin boards - like the recycling pick up schedule. Although it seems to have more art than life management stuff on it also.
 

This is Lines #28, a small 3″x3″ textile painting stitched to canvas, posing in front of some old glass insulators, which came from Kansas from my grandparents - they are way cool. These little artworks on stretched canvas are great cause they can stand up on their own or be hung on a wall.

Lines #28 is available here: Lines #28.
 

This is Lines #23, another piece mounted on stretched canvas. The plant in this photo is a favorite meal for my cats so adding a bit of color to the scene maybe hides the bit marks.

These glass bottles are from my sister and the lava rocks (which probably have a more technical name) are from New Zealand. I brought a lot of rocks home from New Zealand - they’ve got really good ones.

Lines #23 is available for purchase here: Lines #23.

Two small pieces by Tina Mammoser, a purple aceo and an orange 5″ horizons. I love them both and see them daily as they sit next to my clock in my bedroom.
 

This is a larger context for where they live. That is Structures #44 on the wall. To the right is a howling coyote my mom’s husband made for me many years ago (Fred was also very talented) sitting next to a pinecone I long since forgot where it came from but I’ve had it forever so it must mean something.

And here is Lines #31 hanging out with some plants on top of my piano. I love having little spots of color about my house. (these aloe plants are babies from my big aloe that seems to generate more new plants than I know what to do with - like zucchini it seems - want some?).Lines #31 is available here: Lines #31.

ACEO #19 and ACEO #21
©2008 Lisa Call
photo by NIkki Jackson

Displaying in Style

I’ve recently started asking a few of my collectors* if they could send me images of how they are displaying their artwork and Nikki very wonderfully sent me the above image of the 2 aceos she purchased recently.

[* if I haven't asked you it just means I haven't had time yet - but I'd love an image if you could send me one - I love seeing how you are displaying my art.]

Her comments on the framing (note they were photographed without the perspex box due to reflection):

I used velcro to mount the pieces, in part because I love the way it makes them sit slightly out from the surface, and cast shadows. It may be only 1/4″ clearance but it makes a difference! The perspex box slides over the frame and meets that small black ledge, with about 1/2″ clearance to the art work.

I like the sense of unity, in terms of presentation, for these small works of art, especially as they are all in the same room.

Jane Davila recently posted an image on her blog of her recent art work purchases. That’s ACEO #28 in the top frame in this post: Art in The Studio.

They look great - thank you Nikki and Jane for your support and purchase of my artwork!

Little Pieces of Art

I knew about aceos for a few years before I bought one or started making them. I thought “what could one possibly do with artwork so small?”. Course I make big stuff, 4 or 7 feet wide, and 2.5 inches is almost microscopic in comparision.

Then I bought some. And made some. And it became clear.

These small pieces of art brighten up the little corners of our homes and can have an even larger presence once they are framed either alone or in groups.

I’ve got aceo’s tucked into corners of my house that add wonderful color and interest to areas that can’t fit larger artwork.

Take it With You

I think one of my most favorite ways a collector uses one of my ACEOs is Kit Vincent, the very first person to buy one of my ACEOs and the owner of aceo #1.

She carries her around with her in her wallet so she has art with her all the time. What a great idea.

She posted a photo of this here: Art In the Mail

And You?

How do you display your aceo collection?

 
PS: My aceos available for purchase are here: aceos

ACEO #33
©2009 Lisa Call
3.5" x 2.5"
Textile Painting (hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)
Sold

It’s Here

Woohoo! It’s official - makebigart.com is now live.

The first blog post, Do I Need a Facebook Fan Page, can help you decide if a fan page is right for you.

The website is far from polished and it’s in what might be called a pre-launch state. There are no pretty graphics or pictures and there isn’t much more content than the blog at this point, but I decided to not wait for all of that to catch up with my ideas.

This blog started out a bit on the unpolished side 4 years ago, heck, it’s still pretty ugly and that doesn’t seem to have stopped it from being successful. So I’m not too worried. I know the prettiness will catch up as it needs to.

I’d love to hire a web designer to do both of my websites and I plan to, just waiting for the bank account to refill after the big studio construction project.

[On complete tangent - I find it disconcerting to put a link to the images for my construction project - not because it's weird to link - but because I probably have new readers that weren't around during the very long project and don't know I just turned 900 sq fixer upper into my dream house/studio - if you are one of those folks - check out the link if you love construction photos. Everyone else - yes - I know - I still don't have "after" photos. I hope to get to those in July.]

What is it?

I have often posted tips and information for other artists on this blog. I love helping artists. Problem is it always felt it didn’t quite fit into the purpose of this blog, which is to talk about my art and my life as an artist.

So now I have a place to put that stuff that feels right.

I’m pretty excited and have a whole bunch of plans and ideas for makebigart.com so I hope you make the journey over to makebigart.com and join me.

(I also have a facebook fan page: MakeBigArt.com Fanpage)

Weekend Review

As long as I’m here I thought I’d give an update on how my weekend went.

This was the todo list:

• Studio time: surface stitching/quilting on Structures #111 so it is 3/4 complete (estimate ~18 hrs)
• Dye fabric: for back of my next large piece + a few yards cause it’s fun (estimate ~3 hrs)
• makebigart.com: get the initial pages of the website done and first blog post written & launch (estimate ~6 hrs)

This was how it went:

• Studio time: I spent 14 hours working on Structures #111 - I’m about 5 hours short of having it 3/4 complete.
• Dye fabric: Done as planned - took 3 hours
• makebigart.com: woohoo - yes! And it too 6 1/2 hours so that was a pretty good estimate also

I’m not sure where those other 4 hours of planned time went but I suspect part of it was spent on my porch swing relaxing. I love my porch swing and am looking forward to some landscaping to go with it.

Structures #91
©2007 Lisa Call
12" x 12"
Textile Painting (hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)
$700
Purchase Here

Weekend Plans

The kids are celebrating father’s day this weekend with their dad (and will be giving him the art they bought him). Which means I have the weekend to get lots of stuff done.

My todo list:

• Studio time: surface stitching/quilting on Structures #111 so it is 3/4 complete (estimate ~18 hrs)
• Dye fabric: for back of my next large piece + a few yards cause it’s fun (estimate ~3 hrs)
• makebigart.com: get the initial pages of the website done and first blog post written & launch (estimate ~6 hrs)

I’m exited - making lots of forward progress.

By my math that’s about 14 hours of stuff to do each day - which means it’s time to get moving.

Energy

The number one question I am asked is how I have the energy to do this stuff. So I wrote a series of blog posts on the subject and now seems like a good time to summarize them:

• Energy - Physical Health
• Energy - Organization and Clutter
• Energy - Attitude
• Energy - Personality Type
• Energy - Making Decisions

I think I could write more posts in this series as there is probably more to say. Hm…

But right now it’s time to get to the studio and get to work.

 
PS. I think Structures #91, above, has amazing energy - I think it’s probably that saturated red.

Radioactive Cats
©1980 Sandy Skoglund
cibachrome color photograph; approx. image area 25 1/2″ X 33″
Sculpted plaster cats and live models

Logan Lecture Series

Wednesday evening Last month, I attended an artist talk by Sandy Skoglund, the 4th talk in the Spring 2009 Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum. Sandy’s talk was the by far my favorite.

The general format for these talks has been for the artist to cover their art career in chronological order, pretty much from start to present day, while flipping through an online slide presentation. Sandy’s talk was no exception.

While all of them have been interesting, Sandy’s in particular was was thoughtful, articulate and packed full of great content.

As with all the other speakers, the Denver Art Museum was the first museum to purchase a piece of Sandy’s artwork. The installation for Fox Games is currently on display and is definitely worth a visit to see it in person.

In the installation the foxes are gray and everything else is red, which is reversed from the photo below. She painted the foxes after the photos and redid all of the props in red and exhibited the photos and the installation together.

These are my vague memories of her talk as I’ve lost my notes and it’s been a while since the talk.

Making Money and Things

When Sandy finished her MFA in the early 70’s there was a definite bias against making money from art (has that changed?). It didn’t take long for Sandy to reject this notion and the feeling of her photography was intentionally pushed to look like the commercial photography of the time. Bright colors that really popped.

For those not familiar with her work, generally she sets up installations and photographs them. Prior to the piece above, Radioactive Cats, the installations were made with commodity items, like plastic hangers.

With Radioactive Cats she started making the things that went into the installations, such as all the very cool green cats. She said at these time she felt her work was no longer conceptual and was about making things, which was also not the mainstream direction of the art world.

For Sandy, creating the items she photographs was very important to her and she enjoys the hours and hours of time crafting the objects. She loves crafts and specifically mentioned Fiberarts Magazine (yay - go fiber).

She had a whole lot more to say and share and I was captivated by her speaking. I definitely recommend looking into her work and if you can hear her speak, most definitely do. And apologies for anything I might have gotten wrong in this bit.

In Print

I looked for books with Sandy’s work and only came up with these out of print ones:

Reality Under Siege ( There’s an image of the book here: Reality Under Siege. Those are cheese doodles on everything)

Focus: Five Women Photographers

Sandy’s Website is here: Sandy Skoglund. I’m bummed the flash player refused to work in either of my browsers, but still some interesting content, including some interviews.

Fox Games
© 1989 Sandy Skoglund
cibachrome color photograph; approx. image area 46 1/4″ X 63″
Sculpted epoxy resin foxes and live models

Structures #59
©2006 Lisa Call
70" x 56"
Textile Painting
 

The Brain

I’m currently reading A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink and am finding it quite interesting.

I’m not too far into it yet but being a software engineer I can definitely relate to the outsourcing of the left brain software jobs. The people remaining in the US doing software tend to be more right brain software architect types. And managers.

There was a discussion in the book about chess and why computers do it better than humans and it made me think of my textile painting Structures #59 above (a definite right brain association). This quilt has always looked like a chess board to me. In a rather abstract kind of way.

Busy

With the new position as scrum master at work (ie project manager kinda) and the 160 hours slated for my studio work over the next month, and driving kids about town I’ve had really busy. Little time for chatting or focusing on the art business.

I figure that’s okay as it’s all an ebb and flow. I’ll come around to super busy art business stuff again here soon.

Tonight was the final lecture at the Denver Art Museum in this series of the Logan lecture series. Beverly Semmes gave an interesting talk about her work. The big purple robes in Denver were her first sale to a museum, and in fact her first sale of any kind of her art. What an awesome piece of news that must have been to receive.

Structures #57
©2006 Lisa Call
33" x 66"
Textile Painting (hand dyed fabric, batting, thread)

Art For Dad

Today I took my son (a teenager - but really any age will work) to the Denver Art Student’s League annual Summer Art Fair. We had 2 purposes - first was to
enjoy the art and the second was to buy his dad a father’s day present. My daughter had previous pool party plans so was excused from the outing.

All around it was a successful event and we had a great time, saw a bunch of art and my son picked a nice abstract painting for his dad. At first he just wanted to go home but once he got into it he wanted to walk by all the booths to make sure he saw all his options first. Very cool he got into it eventually.

I bought a little ceramic house to add to my collection of houses. It’s now a collection because this is the second one I’ve bought.

Collectors in the Making

My goal, besides spending time with my son and seeing art, is to create a future art collector. As an artist I have a vested interest in there being a lot of these out there.

In addition to taking the kids to museums, art shows, galleries and other art events I also occasionally buy them art for their rooms. And of course we make art together.

I’ve now added in the element of having them buy art. Unless wildly inappropriate, I believe we will focus on purchasing art for all our future gift giving needs this year.

Support an artist - buy art for your friends and family!

Hm. That just might be a bumper sticker I need.

Progress

In addition to the art fair, I also had my second photo lesson today. The above image is another attempt at photographing Structures #57. This version is too dark because it’s now too dark in my house to process photos appropriately. But I’m on the right track as think it looks better than this version: Previous post with Structures #57.

Ironically that post is also about progress in my art career and it’s great advice based on a blog post by Seth Godin. I really recommend you click that link above and read my old post if you feel like you are never making forward progress. Seth is a smart guy.

Here’s one of his quotes from my article:

Add up enough urgencies and you don’t get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.

It’s about making sure the things we are doing move us forward.

Today I put out a slow smoldering fire that has been blocking me for at least 6 months. I turned the website work I have done over to my builder and can now refocus on my career.

To that end look for the very first bit of content to come from makebigart.com later this week. I’m excited. Moving forward!

 
PS - If you are looking for some art to buy as a gift, I group together small pieces here: Affordable Art for Sale.