Tales of Tila

Domitila 

Detail of face before glazing background, etc.

Many years ago, when I was about the age of fifteen, my sister Sonia and I went to a Youth Conference presented by our Church. It was held up in the mountains, near Platoro, Colorado. We made friends with some young people from Taos, Susan and Pat, and Susan's brother Lynn. We ended up having Susan and Pat stay at our house overnight, and became fast friends. When we were able to go down to Taos for a weekend, we had a wonderful time browsing through some of the art galleries, and learning more about that wonderful place. Susan and Pat were marvelous hosts, and the trip became a highlight of our lives. 

Susan had several other siblings, among them a young sister named Carolyn. Carolyn and her husband live in our area, and we gradually became better acquainted during the last several years. Carolyn told me about a one-woman play she had written, produced by Wilford Brimley, in which she tells the stories of her grandmother, Tila. Carolyn asked me to create some paintings to be placed in the foyer during the time it will be presented, and I told her I would love to do it! I decided I would create one painting for each of the seven scenes, and later was asked to paint this painting for the poster which advertises the play. 

Carolyn had a copy of a photographic portrait of Tila, and although the features were not completely clear, the color was beautiful, and went a long way to help me create this painting. It was as if Tila herself was helping me. I love this project, and feel so honored to be a part of helping this wonderful play move forward. Carolyn is so clever and talented, and her songs are full of personality and love. It is sure to be entertaining and successful!

Carolyn's Reverie in the South of France

 Carol, who is the champion ‘moo-er’ in Washington County Utah, has decided to go to the South of France, so she can listen to Charolais cattle.  Here she sits listening to the distant mooing sounds of those beautiful white cattle.

Here is the real story: I met Carol at Swiss Days in Santa Clara, where I live. She was a volunteer at one of the events, and I stopped to take her picture. How could I resist? Over two years later, I started the painting which features Carol in her charming hat. In the meantime, I lost her contact information.   So, I contacted my neighbor who I knew was very involved in the city events. She didn't know Carolyn, but found someone who did. Long story short, I was able to get a phone number.

When I called Carolyn, she told me that she was switching to a cell phone, and hadn't gotten around to cancelling the land line (which is what was linked to the number I had). If she had cancelled the land line any sooner, I may not have found her.

So, now she has seen the portrait, and loves the shoes I gave her! Carolyn was wearing some white running shoes--much too boring for this scenery--and I gave her some that were inspired by the wonderful apparel of Gudrun Sjoden. In fact, the background for this painting was inspired by the the Summer 2017 catalogue of Gudrun's. I so admire the clothing in the catalogue, and the shoes, and the the designer herself. Such great fun!

The painting is done on smooth board in gallery-wrap format, purchased in Santa Fe at their wonderful art shop, Artisan, at 2601 Cerillos Road. Wonderful place!

"Missy's Sheep" to debut at Springville Community Center

"Missy's Sheep" was inspired by a wonderful drive through the woods near Gresham, Wisconsin, where my son and I happened upon a neighbor's sheep. It was getting dark, so we asked the farmer and his wife if we could come back in the morning and photograph. They asked if we would like their teen-age daughter to come out and feed them while I took the photograph--and of course, I said yes. The morning was just right--sunshine without the heat. The old stone barn was a charming backdrop. Missy told us that she was entering one of her sheep in the County Fair. It was great fun to tromp around in the sheep pen while they were anxiously awaiting their turns to have a snack.

It took me almost five months to get this painting underway. First, I wanted to try painting on some specially-prepared aluminum sheets, for a smooth effect. In the beginning of my return to painting, back in 2009, I used masonite. Once I started to feel some improvement, I decided that I would purchase canvases. I graduated to creating my own stretcher bars, and attaching the canvas myself, so I could make special sizes. But I never liked the texture....

When McGarren Flack (one of my instructors at Dixie State University) showed the class the aluminum sheets he works on, I waited until I could get down to Santa Fe, to the art store there, to pick up the items I wanted to try.

I really love painting on the absolutely smooth surface. I think I have found a new way!

Hope you like the sheep. And Missy.

The Fairy Doll Mothers

About thirty-or-so years ago, I attended my first Quilt Market. At that time, Quilt Market was not an international event--it was held in the Shamrock Hotel ballroom, in Houston Texas, right around Halloween each year. Even though it was small in comparison to what it now is, it was a magical event for me. As I walked each aisle, I was awed by the variety and sheer talent of the quilters and doll makers, pattern companies, thread and fabric companies who exhibited there. It made a huge impact on the direction I would take in that industry. During one of those early years, I saw the Victorian Doll by elinor peace bailey (she prefers lower case). It was the most wonderful thing I ever saw. And when I met elinor, she lived up to everything I had supposed. This dazzling woman not only defied 'rules' of sewing and making things, but became the world leader of cloth doll making. Her attire included dolls who ornamented her clothing, hats, and her life!

elinor at Quilt Market, dressed up as a nurse on Halloween

Virginia Robertson's outer appearance wasn't as colorful as elinor's, but she was equally accomplished--she held a Masters in Art and had taught at university, and was a well-known quilter--AND she had business savvy, which is something that many artists lack.

Her own quilt shop was housed in an old church in Kansas, and was a thriving business. Virginia designed doll patterns, wrote books about how to give dolls life-like faces, and gave her Aunt Cora eternal life as a wonderful cloth doll. Her 'arthritis' dolls and spirit dolls were colorful and mystical. She also created several wonderful lines of her own fabric.

One of Virginia's many publications

Aunt Cora

These two women formed a great friendship, and I was lucky to call them both friends. When I came across this old photo from the 'good old days,' I knew I had to make a painting of these dear women. So, that's how this all came to be.

Virginia Robertson and elinor peace bailey

My painting mentor, Del Parson once told us that we should 'never use a bad photo.' Bad was defined as a photograph that didn't have good contrast, lighting, shadows, etc. This old photo was as bad as it gets, and I should have steered clear. It was a difficult journey trying to create depth and proper detail of faces and bodies, but I stubbornly kept working on it until I was happy with it.

The painting itself shows my two friends with fairy wings, and a clothesline of dolls in the background. The dolls are based on an 'Eve' doll elinor created for her book, 'Mother Plays With Dolls.' The black and white doll is one of the 'Arthritis' dolls made by Virginia. The third little doll is one I made up, as a symbol of the many things I learned from these two artists.

Mother Plays With Dolls

Later on, I was able to curate a wonderful exhibition of one-of-a-kind cloth dolls, called Dollmakers Magic.  Each year, I invited fifty doll artists to create a cloth doll using VIP Fabrics (Cranston) and Fairfield Processing stuffing products. The show premiered at fall Quilt Market each October. Each summer, the Museum of American Folk Art, in New York City, sponsored the show at Rockefeller Center in the Cafe. I was bombarded by doll makers who wanted to participate. The show ran for five years, before I decided to move on to other projects. I talked to a publisher--Quilt Digest Press--at Quilt Market, and we decided to do a book on doll making; thus, my first book was 'born.'

This was the beginning of a whole new thing for me. I loved this experience, and was heartbroken when Michael Kile, the owner died of AIDS. The publishing company was never the same after his death, and several years later became a subsidiary of The Chicago Tribune. Other owners, including the present owner, McGraw-Hill worked with me, and I was contracted to do another doll making book:

(I also wrote a book for C&T Publishing called "Whimsical Animals.") I also tackled other subjects, including paper crafts, quilting, wedding decor, and then another doll book, with Jo Packham (publisher of Where Women Create), for Sterling Publishing:

These books were a great joy to write--and create the projects within. I always knew, however, that a painter was lurking inside me, waiting for the right moment to pop out. While I was raising children, I knew I already had too many projects and clients, but once they were raised and out the door, I started yearning to paint. In about 2008, I went out with my cousin Mary and we painted some of the local scenery at Snow Canyon (near St George, Utah). I was simply terrible, but it unleashed the painter inside me, and I kept at it, doggedly trying to learn technique. I hadn't painted canvases since college--a good many years ago. Not to say I hadn't been painting things, for one of the many hats I wore was doing display at a local arts and crafts store. That included window display, Christmas trees, home decor, and fabric crafts. It was like playing for a living. Loved it, and still go a little mad around Christmas!

Close-up of the three dolls on the clothesline

"Go Out and Play!" Exhibit at Sears Gallery, Dixie University

YOUNG QUILTERS

I have been trying to get into the Sears Gallery Invitational shows, at DSU, for several years. To my great surprise, they invited me to participate in the Fall 2016 show entitled, "Go Out and Play."  Before my acceptance, I had to call the curator to let her know what my theme was--to eliminate duplication of the same ideas. When I told her I was doing a painting about children sewing, the response was, "Great! We haven't had that idea yet. " 

Of course this idea comes from my own love of making things with fabric, and living in the quilt and doll design world for so many years. The little girls are my own little grandchild, Olive and her good friend Italia. I thought that having them sitting near the old Featherweight Singer would be a great touch, since it's more 'child-size' than my big old Bernina.

I started with a good photograph, then made this charcoal sketch. After I had it almost the way I wanted, I traced it onto my canvas, which had been previously painted with acrylic layers, then sanded smooth. 

The next thing was to add more background color, then start putting in the flesh color....

The shadows were added, and the black machine....and the beginnings of a button jar!

I went back into the background, and added some of my favorite green tones.... and fabric backgrounds, and clothing colors....

Then layers and layers of colors and shadows and highlights, then altering the background, adding a window on the back wall.... This is really the fun part!

Adding details on the clothing and fabrics is something I really love to do! It makes the painting come alive! Hope you like it!

Mixed Media Experimentation--the Class

Earth Mother Madonna

This is the latest in my creative efforts in Dennis Martinez's wonderful Media Experimentation class at Dixie State University. Dennis always gives his students permission to be whatever kind of artist they want to be, and the results are amazing! Right now, most of us are thinking about what pieces we want to submit to the student art show.

The criteria for this piece--as instructed by Dennis--was to make a 3-dimensional piece of art. He showed us a few samples of things--a series of wooden boxes with bas-relief artwork on the exterior, a wooden chair, painted and embellished...all good inspiration! I decided to start with a plastic bottle found in the grocery store. It held almond milk, which I drank, and I added a wire armature to make a head and arms from paper clay. There is no picture of this attempt. I threw it away, after feeling that it was going nowhere. Instead, I came back to my favorite medium, which is cloth! I put together a fabric doll from several wonderful prints, stuffed them with pipe cleaners (for fingers), bamboo stuffing (from Fairfield Processing, maker of all sorts of stuffings and battings), then sculpted a nose on the face of both the mother and child. The child fits nicely into a pocket attached to the mother figure. 

Once I painted the faces of the figures, I wired them to a canvas base. First, though, I adhered a fabric with a printed series of little houses--very primitive and cute! After the fabric dried, I painted over most of it, leaving just a few of the houses sticking out. I made a cardboard cottage, and gave it a little thin roof, a quilted fabric door, painted it, and attached it to the backdrop. I painted some of the fabric on the figure as well, just to make it my own.

Last month, I used more quilting to make a 'painting.' It was great fun. The tree trunk is corrugated cardboard, with some of the paper removed to expose the inside. The bushes are pieces of a burlap bag that used to hold Anasazi beans. The leaves are made by mixing paint with  vinyl spackle compound, applied with a stiff brush through a commercial stencil. I stitched little abalone-shell buttons onto a strip of silk ribbon which I glued across the bottom edge. It seemed right. 

The indigo fabrics made a perfect and dramatic background to the white stitching and acrylic paints. The figure was made using a trapunto technique--making slits in the back of the quilted piece and inserting additional stuffing (bamboo, again). This piece is called Mama Washes Away The Blues, and celebrates the wonderful solitude of a soaking tub. Water is calming; The time of night in the piece is twilight, which is a very magical time, just as the first stars are starting to appear. If I could build the kind of soaking tub I'd like, it would be outdoors, screened by a high wall and the leaves of trees for the roof. Perfect place to hide away!

At the Beach

You haven't heard from me for a long time.....and this is the reason for that! I have been working on this for months, and months, and months! It started out as an idea for a living room re-do. Carly (my daughter-in-law) told me she was wanting to change her living room. She was tired of the old 'look' and wanted something new. We talked about the colors she wanted to incorporate--pale blues, sea-foam green, pale teal, tan, white--and she said she wanted a painting to put in the alcove that had been designed for a television set. She and I are of the same mind there. Living rooms are no place for a television set, unless there is no other place! The space was quite massive, so we figured a painting that was about 40" square would be a good fit. I have never painted something that large, but wanted to give it a try! She said that just a contemporary bunch of colors--abstract would be fine, but I knew I didn't want to do what we term 'couch art,' so I told her I would come up with something.

It started with a photograph of Carly, Carson and Jace in the local water park. There is a wonderful splash pad and 'lazy river' in the downtown St. George park, so we went down and let the kids play. I took the picture. Tom and Talia were elsewhere. In fact, I'm thinking that Talia wasn't even born at that time. I started with a sketch of the original three, then added something that I had taken of my other son, Clint, who was holding his baby boy. Later, I had to have Tom pose with Talia, to get the picture to look more like him.

Now a true professional portrait painter would never do what I did. They would take a picture of the whole group, and pay strict attention to the lighting, and go from there. So, this has been madness from the inception of this idea. It was fun, though, to start with the background, and do something that had the feel of a day at the beach. I was careful to use the colors we picked in the fabrics for the new pillows.....

So, on and on I went, adding more paint, layer after layer, and then it came time for the people. Now, that was the really difficult thing. You must have every nuance right, if it is to look like the person, and I am not quite as skilled as I would like. So, I began with Carly, and ended with Tom and the baby. I have decided that I know why 'folk art' has such weird-looking babies and children. The painters made them look like they were dwarves, instead of babies and children. It's difficult not to. I can't tell you how many times I have painted, and re-painted Talia. Endless.

So, like any good artist, I am going to give it a rest. It is as complete as I can make it right now, so it is going to Las Vegas to live in Tom and Carly's house, to cover the space in their television alcove, until I decide how I can make it better, and take it home for a weekend to make the change! You realize, of course, that it may be like this for posterity. Sorry Talia. I tried. I really did. Your granny is just not a portrait painter! The most I can hope for is that you will know that it is made with a great deal of love!

So, I'm off to Quilt Market for the week--where I will surround myself with artists of a different kind. Once I am back from Pittsburgh, I will decide on a new painting. Hopefully it will be one that won't take years to complete. Forty inches square is a lot of canvas to cover, and I have always liked to do layers of paint. Gives more depth. So, the next one won't be quite this big. Don't think I'll do any people I want to be recognizable for a while! Ha ha. Still hasn't killed the joy of painting! If anything, it has deepened the desire to be a good painter!

Detail of Carson and Jace....

And Carly. I love these people!