Lisa Call

Structures #104
©2008
6"x 6" - Mounted on stretched canvas
$85

Confession

Time for a confession. When I listed the textile paintings for sale on my small art for sale webpage a few weeks ago I said 6 of the pieces (Lines #1-#5 and Structures #104) were mounted on painted canvas. Truth was I had painted the canvases and I was pretty sure I could figure out how to attach them, but I didn’t think they would sell right away and I was going to take them with me to North Carolina to figure it out.

Er - nope - Lines #1, #3, #4 and #5 sold via twitter within a few minutes of tweeting about it. I hadn’t even announced the sale on my blog. I was leaving town in a couple days and had to figure out how to do this asap so I could get the work in the mail.

Turns out the little 3" square textile paintings are easy as the stretcher bars are small and I can stitch from the backside of the canvas and it went fairly quickly. And looked really nice. Like this:

Lines #2
3" x 3" - mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

I had a few minutes before leaving on my trip to tackle Structures #104 and wasn’t quite as successful. The stretcher bars are much larger on these larger 6" canvases and stitching next to them is not an option. The stitching has to go under the bars to hold the textile painting correctly and I was having a really really hard time figuring out how to do it. Oops!

Success

I ran out of the 3" canvases and wanted to make some more work this week so I decided to go for the 4" canvases and I bought and made a few new textile paintings in that size: Home #6, Home #7 and Lines #7.

Today was the day to tackle attaching these things on to canvases with 1 1/2" wide stretchers. Turned out that it isn’t all that hard. It’s not exactly easy but other than the one I got on upside down (never sign the back of the canvas before getting the textile painting in place) it went pretty smoothly. The trick is to sew from the front - in between textile painting and canvas. It’s a bit funky but works out great.

Here are my results:

Home #7 and #6
4" x 4" each - mounted on stretched canvas
$45 each

 

Lines #7
4" x 4" - mounted on stretched canvas
$45

Even Bigger

That accomplished I went back to Structures #104 and it’s 6" canvas, shown at the top of the post and mastered it. It’s just more stitching than the 4" canvases but same size stretcher bars.

Structures #104 and Structures #103 (not on canvas but also a small work for sale) were informed by Structures #45. I had it on the wall in my studio because it recently came back from an art consultant so it became the object of inspiration.

Here’s a quick look at these (it’s picture day on the blog tonight):

Structures #103
©2008
6"x 17.5"
$190

 
 

Structures #45
©2005
28" x 28"
$1200

For Sale

Yes - I know - as I talk about affordable art the subject of sales seems to be brought up a lot. Probably because that is the point. I’ll finish this up soon and be back to my normal posts, but I have a few more things to say.

I’m working on a post for Christine Kane’s blog about my word of the year, courage. Talking about my artwork being for sale on my blog requires courage. Art and money are a bit weird sometimes and commerce on a blog is also a bit touchy, but forge ahead I am, knowing that my art does add much value to the world and unless I make it clear it is for sale it tends to just hang out at my place with me.

So, all the pieces in this post are available for sale on the Small Art for Sale webpage, except Lines #2, which sold in the middle of preparing for this post.

Most of these shown today are new so I did a bit of clean up and moved the sold pieces off that page and onto a sold page. In addition to the work shown here there are a few other new Lines piece (#6 and #8) and a couple of new ACEOs (#28 and #29).

I also did this because rumor has it a blogger with a huge readership is going to mention the 2 group artists websites I’m a part of so we might be getting a lot of traffic tomorrow. That would be great! (A reminder they are Fine Art Department and Small Art Showcase - I will get these into my sidebar soon so I don’t mention them so much in the blog).

And one last photo of all these guys on canvas at more of an angle so you can see how cool they look on there. I ordered some 2.5" x 3.5" canvases and will be putting some of my ACEOs on them cause I’m loving how this looks.

Lines #1 - Lines #5

On Canvas

I am happy to report that I really like how these small 3" x 3" small textile paintings look on canvas. It gives them nice substance. I’m also very happy to report that 4 of them sold yesterday. Only Lines #2 is still available (my art for sale page).

I painted the canvases with acrylic paint to coordinate with the textile paintings then I stitched the paintings onto the canvas along the edge of the wood stretches of the canvas. I makes for a really nice flat surface. I only ordered 5 of these little 3" x 3" canvases from Dick Blick but will be buying more.

I bought some other sizes and have a 6" square piece also mounted on a canvas which I’ll show next week.

I put a label on the back of the textile painting itself, similar to the labels I attached to my aceos, but it doesn’t show. So I’ve also signed and labeled the back of the canvases. So if anyone every removes the little guys from their canvas they are complete works of art as is also.

Remodel Update

I now have a laundry room floor. See photos here: Nov 12 Construction Photos.

As I head out the door this morning for my retreat with Christine Kane my furniture is in the middle of all the rooms. They start demolition inside the house while I’m gone. I’m creating one big open room for my dining room/living room/kitchen so walls have to come down. Monday I should have some fun new photos to share.

Markings #25
©2006
8"x 10"
Sold

Selling Directly From My Website

I’m excited to introduce my page of (mostly) new small affordable artwork available for sale directly on my website with paypal "Buy Now" buttons: Affordable Art for Sale.

Paypal inventory control will ensure that if they let you buy it, it’s available for sale. So you don’t have to email first and ask if something is still available. I’m not super fond of the big yellow buttons but they have become some what of a standard on the web so for now I’m sticking with them for now.

If you have any problems with the system please let me know. You will be charged shipping when you check out (if it doesn’t seem right let me know and I can fix it). Also those in Colorado will be charged sales tax now. Woohoo - I’m official.

The Inspiration

Markings #25 above (along with ACEOs #23 and #24 and Lines #3 - Lines #5 on the art for sale page) were inspired by Markings #3. I love this color combination of minty greens and purple.

Markings #3    ©2006    74"x66"

Great Big Dreams

I have much to say about why I’m making small affordable art and how I feel about it and how it might effect the image of my larger artwork but no time to write about that today as I’m leaving tomorrow for another of Christine Kane’s Great Big Dreams Retreats and need to pack. I went last December and believe it was the start of a new path for me. I’m really looking forward to spending another weekend in North Carolina looking at where I’m going next.

Remodel Update

Things haven’t been all that exciting yet this week so not many pictures. I put up a few from monday and tuesday here: Construction Photos Nov 10 and 11.

The excitement in framing will start today and continue the 4 days I’ll be gone. In addition to starting the framing out back and putting in the new sewer they will be starting the work inside my house. I’m tearing down a few walls to create 1 big room for my livingroom/kitchen. They will also frame the location for the new door, which will be at the front of the house instead of the side.

I have to move all my furniture 4 feet away from the walls that are being removed and reframed before I leave. This could be a trick - there really isn’t room in here for all this stuff. Stay tuned for photos upon my return!

New Work

This is a collection of the new small textile paintings I’ve complete the last few months. I’ve never had so many small pieces around at the same time and thought it would be fun to take a family portrait.

I’ll be processing these images tonight and get them on my new ”art for sale’ webpage’. They are all under $500 and most are under $50. Time for holiday shopping.

I will be mounting 6 of these pieces onto stretched canvas tonight also. I painted the canvases this morning. Pretty fun that painting thing.

Construction Update

The remodel has been at a slow point the last few days as things like waterproofing the foundation are being done. This morning the wood arrived and they are in the back yard figuring out where stuff is supposed to go. I expect some framing to begin tomorrow. The last of the asbestos siding will be taken off today also. So there will be things to take pictures of again soon.

Structures #99    ©2008    33" x 39"
 

A Studio Day

Hurray! There is no construction and no teeth to distract me this weekend so I’ve been making art most of today.

I completed 5 ACEOs that I started last week that are inspired by Structures #99, shown above. I really love this piece and wrote about it in my October studio newsletter. It’s inspired by a painting of buffalo at the Denver Art Museum. My textile painting isn’t about buffalo, it’s about the colors, and my usual fences and barriers.

Potholders?

The new ACEOs will appear soon on a webpage for an upcoming holiday sale I’ve decided to participate in, along with several other artists. Look for a posting on that in a few weeks.

I also worked on 5 small 3″ square pieces that I will be mounting onto these very cute little 3″ square stretched canvases. I’m going to play around with ways of presenting my smaller work on canvases and even with frames.

I like my larger work to be unmounted/framed as I really like how the work hangs on the wall, ie not perfectly flat, but pretty close. It’s fiber, it drapes, it has movement. For me this is a part of the artwork.

For these smaller pieces they are very stiff as a result of the extensive stitching I do on them so they aren’t effected when mounted and framed. Nothing is lost and maybe much is gained as they no longer look like a potholder. Course I don’t think they ever looked like a potholder but that’s the common phrase we textile artists tend to say about why we frame smaller pieces.

This is the first time I’ve gone down this path. Not sure how this will go but you’ll see it here first I suspect.

November Planning

After 5 1/2 hours in the studio I’m now taking a break to get November off to a good start by paying bills and setting art and art business goals for the month. I share this list with my mastermind art partners and we help keep each other on track every day. I’ve also decided to share this list with my blog readers so you can see the type of goals I set for a month.

I’m not sure how construction will go on my house this month so I made a list of goals on the assumption they will be working outside the majority of the month. If that changes and they do work inside the house I’ll just have to be flexible and see what I can get finished.

I will take the items on this list and break them down into tasks and put them on my taskboard. Then I’ll track how I’m doing via that method. At the end of the month I’ll review how I did.

My November Goals

General

• Work in studio daily
• Work on my art business daily
• Track time on business (# of hours per day) as I already do for studio time
• Blog 3 times a week or more

Studio Goals

• Complete Structures #73
• Complete Home #5
• Design Structures #100
• Complete 4 or more small works (8” square or smaller)
• Complete 4 or more aceos
• Investigate mounting small work on stretched canvases
• Investigate framing of small work

Art Business Goals

• Go live with new website design
• Website for holiday art sale
• Create postcard and mail to mailing list for small art sale/museum shows
• Send list of available work for Danforth Museum Show
• Send info those that have requested artwork info
• Complete 3 requested interviews/featured artist blog posts
• Visit galleries in town at least 1 day
• Read/Review Personal Development for Smart People
• Write article for Christine’s blog for word of the year

The big big goal is the new website design. I started this many months ago (too many too count) and the move and remodel have distracted me. Time to get this finished as it’s holding me back for many other things. Instead of aiming for perfection I’m going to get up and running and I’ll worry about perfecting it later.

I’m sure that I get in my way much too often with my need for everything to be perfect. So when the website goes live, please excuse anything that is broken about it cause it’s just me trying to get over myself.

More Construction

They did a bunch of digging around and messing with my sewer on thursday and on friday they poured the footings for my basement on friday. I’m so bummed to have missed the cement pumper truck but I had to actually go to work and do that thing I get paid for. They pour the basement walls on tuesday and you can be sure I will be home for that event.

The photos for Thursday and Friday are now on smugmug:
Thursday Construction
Friday Construction

In addition I got all of my "before photos online" and they are here:
Before Construction

I’m not done with the captions on for thursday and friday and I’m sure I’ll rearrange them a bit. See that perfectionist thing. But in a effort to avoid that, and to not be late to dinner and a movie with a friend, I leave it like this for now.

Home #2
©2008
10" x 9"
sold

The Economy

A portion of yesterday’s lack of confident, as related in my post Shaking Self Doubt, was related to doing a major home renovation project in rather shaky economic environment. It help trigger all sorts of negative self talk.

I think most everyone’s natural tendency in times like this is to contract. Time to pull back, withhold, grab on and hold tight. Doing otherwise is considered foolish, risky and gambling. I’m doing the opposite of the herd and when I listen the news I can get spooked and start thinking I’m foolish.

Then I remind myself that I bought this house knowing full well it had to be remodeled. Half of the windows don’t close properly, the bathroom is less than pristine (as in it’s pretty gross) and I have a washing machine next to my stove and the dryer is in a shed with serious mold problems due to a roof leak. I can’t do laundry when it is raining cause I’ll get electrocuted.

So when I think about what a home is I realize I am extremely lucky because many many people would consider such problems a luxury. If I want to live small I would suck it up cause other people have worse. Sure I could just live with the house as is until all was "safe". I’m not going to do that.

Instead it’s time to get out my word of the year, courage, and live the life I envision for myself.

Courage

I planned on this remodel. I budgeted it for it. So I’m doing it. And I’m not going to let fear stop me. I think a large part of what is going on out there is fear. It’s so easy to get hooked. I love Christine Kane’s post about the subject a few weeks back titled How to Stop a Recession in its Tracks.

Next time I get hooked I’ll just reread this article instead of doubting my art. Courage. I will survive no matter what happens. So best to do so with a nice big studio cause making art can get me through anything.

What is a Home

My definition of home includes some amount of comfort. I’m replacing the broken windows, putting insulation in the walls and getting a new heater so I don’t freeze. I’m building a laundry room that opens to my garage so I can get out of my car and walk into my house and not have to go outside. This luxury was near top of my list of nice to haves.

The cost of adding a second story under my studio in the backyard addition was fairly minimal so in addition to a new studio I’m also getting a new master bedroom suite, complete with big bathtub. There is even room for a small study so my computer doesn’t have to be in my studio or in my bedroom. This was something I didn’t realized was important until I lost it. Now I feel it is essential to my well being.

Art For Sale

It’s interesting the things we take for granted in our homes. I’ve learned a lot about what my home means to me living in such a small house the last 3 months. These thoughts are what inform my new series: Home. The first in this series was posted here: Home #1 with my initial thoughts on the houses and homes.

The second textile painting, Home #2 shown above, was completed this morning and is available for sale for $165. Please send me email if you are interested in purchasing the piece. Shipping is $5 in the US and $10 elsewhere. I accept payment via paypal or checks in US dollars. The piece has sold.

Coming Soon

I’ve already started Home #3 and today I photographed a lot of the artwork I made the last few months (took me a while to figure out the logistics in this place) so some photos of art will soon adorn this blog again. All the aspens and Colorado mountain photos are nice but time to show art also.

The big plan is to complete my studio newsletter and get it in fired off in email by morning. I figure if I say it here that will make it happen. So watch your email for the 3rd edition of my newsletter. Not subscribed? You can do it here: Lisa Call’s Studio Newletter.

Home #1

©2008
7.75" x 6"
Sold

A New Series

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was working on a new series. I’ve been doodling a lot of stick house pictures at work inspired by my move to a new home and now my immersion into the world of remodeling and putting an addition on to the new house.

I’ve wanted to try out some of my ideas in fabric and the above piece is the first textile painting in what I plan to be my newest series. This piece was really fun to make. As this is the first time out with these designs it took a few tries to get the look I was after and I’m very happy with the results. For a while I’ll be concentrating on smaller pieces in this series. I have ideas for some larger works, which will probably wait until I have a larger studio in which to work.

I’m excited to be doing something more representational alongside my very abstract series Structures and Markings, both of which I will be continuing.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the title for this series and finally settled on something simple: Home.

What’s in a Name

I wrote the following in my sketchbook the other day when thinking about this series:

Home

House and Home

House as Home

Home as House

What role does a house play in making a home? Why do we put so much focus on making our houses nice? Why do we want them to be big? Is this energy misplaced or is it a necessary and valid part of what makes a house a home?

I have many more thoughts along these lines and will get into them in more detail as I explore this new series.

Art For Sale

In addition to giving me the chance to explore some thoughts I have around putting an addition on my little 900 sq ft home, this series will also help finance the new studio. There is something about that I find rather satisfying. Acknowledging that, yes, my art is an important part of my income stream and it is indeed necessary to build the studio I desire to make my art. The big dream is to have the art pay for the entire studio. It might take some years but I am sure it will happen. This is the start.

This piece is available for sale for $85. Please send me email if you are interested in purchasing it (I accept checks and paypal). Shipping is $5 in the US and $10 elsewhere. The piece is sold.

What’s Next

Really - I will get back to the Scrum posts. Haven’t had the time to really think through the order of what I will be posting yet. I am planning my art business goals for September using some of the ideas of scrum so want to give this a try then I’ll post about how it went.

I’ve been doing a lot of artwork lately so have much to post on that also. Structures #97 is essentially done and Structures #98 is now designed and ready to be constructed. So lots of art also coming up soon. I didn’t post much the past 3 or 4 months so I’m excited to be back and focused on my art and to have so many things I want to write about. Feels great to be an artist!

Markings #24    ©2008    24"x 24"

Sunrise

A few days after posting sunrise photos on my blog in Janurary I was inspired to take some more. Watching the color arise and then recede from the sky is a magical thing to witness.

Markings 24

The idea of making a piece inspired by these photos popped into my head at some point soon after taking them and I needed another small piece for my show. In one of the very few occasions in my art career, I set out to make a piece directly inspired by something I was consciously thinking about. Usually I just create without preplanning the object informing the work.

It felt a bit weird at times trying to represent the layers of the clouds in fabric. It might have helped had I actually looked at the photos, instead I just worked from my memory and feelings of the even. I got stuck for a while, but since I started the piece only 48 hours before the work was due to be delivered to be hung I didn’t stay stuck for long.

 
So that is the end of new work in my show, Markings: Repetition and Pattern, hanging in Boulder through March 23rd. Next I’ll post some installation photos. Probably not tomorrow, my kids didn’t make it home tonight due to weather but they should be here by noon tomorrow.

Detail Image:
 

Markings #22    ©2008    58"x 49"

Lemon Sponge Cake

I think I mentioned that the reason my show is only open to the public on wednesdays (from 9am-4pm) is that the gallery is in the lobby of the Macky Auditorium. It makes for a large captive audience for my artwork, which is very nice.

One of the performances at the auditorium during my show will be Choreographic Fusion on March 22 at 7:30pm.

According to the Boulder Philharmonic website:

Music and movement come together in fascinating ways in Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet’s interpretations of modern masterpieces by Arto Pärt. Then the full Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra takes the stage for Rachmoninoff’s orchestral tour-de-force, the Symphonic Dances.

I will be there with my kids in tow (currently unbeknownst to them as they return home from their 3 month trip to Europe with their dad tomorrow night - we’ll see if they picked up any culture).

If you attend the performance let me know as I’d love to say hello. You can buy tickets here and kid/student tickets are only $5.

Markings #22

Yet another of my favorites in this series as I love working with yellow and gray. My piece, Structures #31, in Quilt National 2005 was also yellow and gray. I liked the 9 square configuration of Markings #12 so I decided to revisit it in this piece, which is quite a bit larger. Markings #22 has more organic lines and it doesn’t have as much asymmetry as #12 but there is some.

I finished this piece at 9am on the day I had to deliver the work to the gallery, a full 3 hours ahead of the delivery time.

And no, it’s not really an accident I decided to write about the ballet along with this piece, kind of fitting.

Detail:

Markings #19    ©2008    56" x 58"

Beta Bloglines

For the last year I’ve let my blogroll mostly stagnate - not just on my blog but also in my feedreader. There is a proliferation of excellent blogs out there and I just couldn’t keep up. The dual maintenance of adding a blog to both my feedreader and my blogroll was too much to think about.

I want to catch up to some of the great blogs I’ve run across out in the wild and also by many of you that comment on my blog. The first step was to make this a manageable process and find a feed reader that would do these things:

• Keep track of my read vs. unread articles for me as I travel between home and work. This pretty much required it be webbased
• Have a simple mechanism for organizing the feeds, preferably drag and drop organization.
• Provide a mechanism to share my list of feeds so I could avoid dual maintenance.
• Provide an efficient mechanism for reading through my unread articles quickly.

Beta Bloglines is the only reader (out of the entire two I thought about) that fulfilled those requirements. Google reader is nice but it doesn’t provide that type of sharing I am after. If it had, I would have selected it.

This morning I finished moving my current blogroll over to bloglines and I’ve updated my sidebar.

My Blogroll

What I’ve left on my website are just a handful of my most favorite links (I wasn’t ready to nuke the entire blogroll!) That’s not to say I don’t love and read tons of other blogs and I recommend all of the blogs on my list.

I feel my blogroll is out of date. I know I ran across some really great blogs the last year and I failed to subscribe to them. So as I find them again, I will add them. Consider this a work in progress.

I’m not so sure about my organization of the folders. I had too many people in the ‘artist’ category so I broke it in 2 parts - it’s not very intuitive. So I suspect that will be changing when something strikes me as more useful.

What am I Talking About

If you have no idea what a feed reader is or how you might use one. Or even more importantly, how to make sure your blog can be read by a feed reader, check out Katherine Tyrrell’s, as usual, excellent post on how to do this. And don’t worry - by default blogger and wordpress.com blogs have feeds so you are probably fine.

Full or Short Content

My only caveat about her post, as I mentioned in her comments. I really don’t recommend posting only a short summary of your posts in your feeds. Interestingly I was planning to post on this exact topic as soon as I finished my blogroll update.

People are lazy. We spend inordinate amounts of time at my day job thinking about how to reduce the number of clicks needed to do anything in our products because people don’t like to click. They tend to stop doing things that require too much effort. In my opinion having to click an article and leave a feed reader to see the content counts as too much hassle.

I don’t share Katherine’s concern about the dangers or risks of content scraping. She has valid points for her - I just view it differently. Yes - people steal my content - but I do not believe it harms me. My images are hotlink protected so it’s just my words floating around out there on splogs and I just can’t get excited or worried enough about it to care. I don’t track them down and I don’t see it being a big deal. Maybe I’m blissfully ignorant, but blissful is the keyword and it’s working for me.

The big names I read, such as Seth Godin and Gapingvoid, all publish their full content. So I figure I’m in good company.

So as a reader that is lazy - I request and recommended your feed always be the full content of your site.

Markings #19

This is one of the 3 pieces completed in 2008 included in my show Markings: Repetition and Pattern, which closes on March 19th in Boulder.

I love this piece. I know, I’ve said that about many of the pieces in this show. Once I got the show hung my fear that this series was not so good evaporated. I’m pretty excited about many of these pieces and have ideas for more.

I love the red here. I love the small piece of blue-gray interrupting the pattern and making it more interesting. I love how I moved beyond straight horizontal lines between rows. It was a trick to construct this piece but it made for a fun challenging puzzle, part of why I love working with the construction processes I use.

 
Detail image: