Lisa Call

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

This article is part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork for the exhibit as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt.

The Pattern

Last thursday I woke up not feeling so well and after an hour in the studio decided going back to bed was the best option for the day.

I was better on friday although I didn’t work in the studio I did show up for the day job (virtually as working from home is a wonderful option).

I took it easy on the weekend and this week all was better.

Last week, the middle week of a 7 week plan to create all new artwork for my solo show, I had planned to put in 39 hours in the studio (based on my detailed plan). I ended up only getting in 23.

And it turns out the previous 3 weeks I was behind schedule also. So yesterday I sat down and replanned the remaining 3 weeks of time and am fired up to get everything finished. I have to put in a bunch of hours over the next 3 weeks to make my goal but it’s still doable.

This is pretty much my pattern. About half way through a project I tend to need a break so figured it would happen. Taking a break is good and it was fun to hang out and watch a bunch of mindless shows on my laptop (mostly the TV show Bones).

And while it’s a stretch, I’ll still get everything done one time, which means back to the studio for me for the rest of the evening.

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

This article is part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork for the exhibit as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt.

Writing an Exhibit Statement

This past weekend I completed my artist statement for the exhibit. It takes me a few weeks to write my statements as they go through several iterations before I finally settle on the final wording.

Words are much harder for me than images, probably why I’m a visual artist and not a poet or writer, but over the past 5 years I’ve gotten a lot better at writing. I attribute the majority of that improvement on my blogging. The more one writes the better one gets.

Kinda like making art also. Just keep doing it.

The Statement

Dwelling

Recently life has revolved around houses, starting with a move into the city after selling my large suburban home two years ago.

During an extensive remodel of my new abode, turning the small fixer-upper into a dream home and studio, I began creating the stick figure structures that became the Home series, as houses had permeated my thoughts.

Shortly after construction ended, I spent a month traveling in South Africa where I was captured by beauty and simplicity of the dwellings, which inspired the box like buildings in the Dream series.

The desire for a place to call home feels nearly universal. Most often it is linked to words such as security, comfort, happiness and belonging. A home is a container for our possessions, our love, our hopes and our dreams. It’s also where we feel safe to share our vulnerabilities, fear and disappointments.

The past few years I found myself contemplating these concepts of house and home often. What exactly defines a home? When does a house become a home? If four sheets of tin can become a home why do I desire a larger space to inhabit?

What makes your house your home?

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

Part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt. Images of Home #10, in progress, were posted over the last few days.

If you become a fan (click the ‘become a fan button’) you’ll see these updates in your newsfeed. If you aren’t on facebook you can still check out the page every once in a while as it is public and you don’t have to be on facebook to see the images. So I can focus on creating the artwork I’m posting the images on facebook as it is quicker than posting them on my blog.

You’ve Got Mail

This morning I designed and ordered postcard invitations for my upcoming exhibit (front show above, back shown below). I have a mailing list of collectors, supporters, fans, family, acquaintances, etc that will receive the card.

My longer term goal with this mailing list is to send out a hard copy announcement 2-4 times a year. I’m getting fewer and fewer of these cards from artists and galleries as it is quite expensive in comparison to email so I think I will continue to send them, as they are a rare treat and will stand out more as fewer people are sending them.

[If you'd like to be added to my mailing list please email me.]

Creating the Invitation

I haven’t yet shared all the details of the office work entailed with the preparation for the exhibit and will soon. Today I’ll just touch on the creation of the postcard as it takes a fairly good chunk of time.

Yesterday I photographed the artwork and prepared the image for the front of the card. Earlier this week I worked with the gallery director to get approval of the text I was using on the back of the card.

With the content determined this morning I started work on the layout. I have no training in graphic design but I still find it great fun to play around with layouts. I used photoshop to do the work.

I decided on using a detail image for the front of the card as the textile painting was long and skinny and left too much white space at the bottom if used in it’s entirety. I find layout of the text most difficult as I know very little about what is supposed to work so I wing it and go with what looks okay to me.

I order my cards from Vistaprint so I use their template when designing the card. I’ve found that to get the file size small enough I have to save it as .pdf and so far the printing has turned out great. I always order the oversized card as I like the impact of the larger image.

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

Part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt. Images of Home #10, in progress, were posted over the last few days.

If you become a fan (click the ‘become a fan button’) you’ll see these updates in your newsfeed. If you aren’t on facebook you can still check out the page every once in a while as it is public and you don’t have to be on facebook to see the images. So I can focus on creating the artwork I’m posting the images on facebook as it is quicker than posting them on my blog.

Project Planning

In my last post I said I’d check in next with my progress. Decided I first wanted share my detailed project plan for the 7 weeks.

A quick recap – I estimate I have 273 hours of studio time to prepare for my solo show.

I have 7 weeks to do the work so I estimated how many hours I could work each of the weeks based on vacations/holidays/etc.

Tracking how many hours I worked each week wasn’t going to be enough to make sure I was on track for my show. If the art took longer than estimated to create, I could work the number of hours allocated for each week and still not finish on time.

I do project planning type stuff at the software engineering day job so so decided to do some detailed planning for my solo show to ensure I really do stay on track.

Based on the number of hours for each week I divided up all the work that needed to be done. With my estimates for how long each of the tasks will take this was pretty straight forward.

Below is my detailed project plan. And next post I’ll talk about my progress and what it’s like to work with such a detailed plan in place.

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

Part of a series of posts on the preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit, Dwelling, at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork as I’m creating it, check out my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt. Images of Home #10, in progress, were posted over the last few days.

If you become a fan (click the ‘become a fan button’) you’ll see these updates in your newsfeed. If you aren’t on facebook you can still check out the page every once in a while as it is public and you don’t have to be on facebook to see the images. So I can focus on creating the artwork I’m posting the images on facebook as it is quicker than posting them on my blog.

Is There Time?

In the last post I estimated it would take 273 hours to complete the artwork for this show.

With 7 weeks to do this work I came up with the following schedule at the beginning of the project. The time estimates for each week are based on work holidays.

In general I estimated I can work in my studio an average on 3 hours on work days (my day job takes up most of the time) and 8-12 hours per day on weekends and holidays depending on other activities I have planned for the weekend. To make it to 273 hours, I tossed in a few vacation days from work.

With the chart below I was able to convince myself there was time to get everything done and jumped in on Dec 27 to make it happen.

 
Tomorrow I’ll post how I’m doing as I’m 2 1/2 weeks into the project.

Upcoming Solo Exhibit

This is one of several posts about my preparation for my upcoming solo exhibit at Macky Gallery, Feb 17-March 17 with an opening reception Sunday, Feb 21 from 1-4 and artist talk at 2pm.

To see photos of the artwork as I’m creating it you can see my page on facebook: www.facebook.com/LisaCallFineArt. You don’t have to be on facebook to see this page, but if you are you can become a fan and see updates in your newsfeed.

Tasks

Last post was how much artwork I need. I will revisit this topic again and and write about how much art is needed to fill a gallery and how one figures this out – for now I’m going with this list:

1 quilt 3′ x 8′
2 quilts 4′ x 4′
4 quilts 3′ x 4′
2 quilts 3′ x 3′
18 quilts 12″ x 12″ (mounted on stretched canvas)

From this I needed to figure out how long it would take to make this artwork.

To make this simple I broke the work down into the the different tasks I do when making my textile paintings. These are:

• Compose - design of the quilt top and sewing it together.
• Baste - creating the traditional quilt layer (described in more detail here). I also cut the binding and sleeve and label at this time as I have the fabric out that matches the composition.
• Quilt - the stitching that holds the 3 layers together and gives the artwork texture. This phase generally takes the longest for me.
• Binding/Canvas – how I finish off the artwork. Larger work I put on a facing that is pulled to the back, much like a traditional quilt binding. For the smaller pieces I stitch them to stretched canvas.
• Hanging Device – the mechanism used the hang the art on the wall. For the larger pieces I put a long fabric tube on the back into which a board is place and the board is then hung on the wall. For the canvases I’ll add wires.

Time

From the tasks and artwork list I calculated the time it would take to do that task for each size. Fortunately I track my time in my studio so this was a pretty simple task.

My estimates:

 
Multiplying by the number for each size to reach a total time to create all of the artwork:

Finally adding in 5 hours for misc tasks such as painting the canvases and cutting the boards for hanging the total comes to 273 hours.

Next post I’ll talk about how I figured if I’d have time to put in this much time in my studio over 7 weeks (an average of 39 hours per week) while also working full time. Not to spoil the punch line, but good thing I have a bit of vacation time.

Dream #13
©2009 Lisa Call
6″ x 6″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$275 $170 + shipping
Purchase Here

Project Completed

I’m very happy to announce that the South African Impressions project is completed. I love making this artwork and now I’m enjoying sharing it and very much appreciate everyone positive comments about the series.

You can see all 35 pieces of the artwork on this page: South African Impressions.

Everyone that prepurchased artwork has selected their their piece (except Karin – I seem to be unable to get ahold of you – please email me if you see this) and I’m in the process of shipping out the last pieces.

The remaining work (of which there are some of my favorite pieces in this group, like the Dream #13 above) is now available for purchase.

I’ve decided to keep them at their pre-purchase price until January 2nd so if you are interested in owning one of textile paintings in the Dream series now is an excellent time to purchase one.

The remaining 16 textile paintings:

Six Inches Square – Mounted on Stretched Canvas

Dream #2
©2009 Lisa Call
6″ x 6″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$275 $170 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #24
©2009 Lisa Call
6″ x 6″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$275 $170 + shipping
Purchase Here

Four Inches Square – Mounted on Stretched Canvas

Dream #3
©2009 Lisa Call
4″ x 4″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$125 $78 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #5
©2009 Lisa Call
4″ x 4″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$125 $78 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #15
©2009 Lisa Call
4″ x 4″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$125 $78 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #16
©2009 Lisa Call
4″ x 4″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$125 $78 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #26
©2009 Lisa Call
4″ x 4″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
SOLD

Three Inches Square – Mounted on Stretched Canvas

Dream #7
©2009 Lisa Call
3″ x 3″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$75 $46 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #18
©2009 Lisa Call
3″ x 3″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$75 $46 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #28
©2009 Lisa Call
3″ x 3″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$75 $46 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #30
©2009 Lisa Call
3″ x 3″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
Mounted on stretched canvas
$75 $46 + shipping
Purchase Here

ACEOS (Art Cards)

Dream #9
©2009 Lisa Call
3.5″ x 2.5″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
$40 $28 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #10
©2009 Lisa Call
3.5″ x 2.5″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
$40 $28 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #20
©2009 Lisa Call
3.5″ x 2.5″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
$40 $28 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #22
©2009 Lisa Call
3.5″ x 2.5″
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
$40 $28 + shipping
Purchase Here

Dream #1 – Dream #35
©2009 Lisa Call
Textile Paintings (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)

Done!

This morning I finished uploading the images for the South African Impressions project and created a webpage to display them: South African Impressions.

Feels GREAT to have accomplished this task and now comes a very fun part of the project – contacting the folks that pre-purchased some of the artwork so they can select the textile painting they’d like to own. I’m contacting folks in the order they purchased the art so if you bought a piece of art and haven’t heard from me yet, you will soon, so start thinking about which piece you’d like.

If you didn’t prepurchase one and now would like one there will be several available and I’ll let everyone know when prices are posted and paypal buttons are up. I’ve had several inquires – so thank you!

What’s Next

I have a bit of work left attaching the textile paintings to the canvases and anticipate I’ll complete that task in the next day or so. Then there is the shipping and paperwork that goes along with the creation of new artwork.

I have a few hanging sleeves to get on artwork headed to shows soon that I’ll tackle this weekend also.

Then the big studio clean up. I’m going to get the last design walls up, finish up some painting and in 2009 I will declare my new studio COMPELTE (for new readers – I built a new studio this year and the last 6 months I’ve stalled on the last 1% of the work – time to remedy that).

By middle of next week I will have things dusted off and the studio in great shape it’ll be time to start the new artwork for my solo show – which opens in February. Seriously tight deadline but I’m excited to get started.

PS – I’ll also be sending out my studio newsletter saturday or sunday as promised. If you aren’t already on the list you can join here: Studio Newsletter Signup

Dream #23 and Dream #24 (in progress)
6″ x 6″ each
Textile Paintings in South African Impressions Project

The Art That Had to Be

This weekend as I was putting labels on the South African Impressions textile paintings I became overwhelmed with the need to make 2 additional pieces in the series. I had been trying to ignore this desire for a few days but as things were wrapping up it didn’t feel right without a 2 of the house themes in the 6″ size. I had these in my head and they had to be made.

Sometimes art is like that, it simply insists on being made and I can’t ignore it until I’ve created the image that keeps appearing in my head.

I have about an hour of stitching left on these 2 final art quilts and then I’m back to the plan of photographing and up on the website so they can find their new owners.

Newsletter

As I’ve worked in my studio on a fairly consistent basis this past week I have noticed a profound change in my attitude. Much more positive and forward thinking. Things are definitely shifting back to the positive place where I was sitting 6 months ago.

After I get this artwork published on my website and and start contacting the buyers, I’m going to write and email out my final studio newsletter for the year.

If you aren’t a subscriber but would like to be you can subscribe here .

South African Impressions – The Discount

About half of the new Dream textile paintings were prepurchased prior to my trip to South Africa.

I am still offering the discount on prepurchased South African Impressions textile paintings for about another week. The timing of my newsletter will determine the final end date of the sale.

This is a chance to own my artwork at lower prices and with payments spread out over 2 months if desired. For example: my ACEOs (2.5″ x 3.5″ art cards) normally sell for $40. The ACEOs in the Dream series are currently priced at $28. The 6″x6″ paintings (like the 2 above), normally priced at $275 are available for just 2 payments of $85 each.

Details here: South African Impressions Project

Textile Paintings in South African Impressions Project

A Name

I’ve been pondering what I will name the series of textile paintings that I’m doing for the South African Impressions project for months. I’ve wanted a name that captured my feelings about my month long vacation in South Africa but also captured my thoughts about the country.

The word that finally came to me as appropriate is Dream.

The overwhelming feeling that struck me about South Africa was the spirit of the country. Yes, there are some serious challenges ahead, but the what I mostly felt was hope and opportunity. It appeared to me the people in South Africa are dreaming about a future while also healing from a difficult past.

On a more personal level, the trip to South Africa was a dream come true to be able to travel for a month and enjoy the people, cultures and landscapes of South Africa. And it was more than that, when I think back on my trip I think about my future and the amazing things that I can plan and do next.

So each of the 30+ textile paintings in this series will be named Dream #__.

Progress

I’m making steady progress on the work and by the end of today I will have the stitching done. Tomorrow I’ll paint the stretched canvases and start mounting the little textiles to the canvas. Saturday will be photography and website update day.

Above is the last grouping of little quilts that I’m stitching. I love them all grouped together.