thelmasmith

My friend, the Spider, has been working for months with me. He has created Planet Textile Threads. With his help and a lot of Google work and hot links followed, we have peopled PTT with some of the most fascinating people from around the world in the field of textile arts.

Planet.textilethreads is a privately owned, invitational restricted, RSS feed. The members are requested to post to their blogs a few times a week. It is limited to a total of twenty four artists.

Here are a few figures to help visualize the traffic. The figures are not exact for April as we had server crash last week of April. In January, 2007, we had 129 unique visitors and 990 hits. February had 241 unique visitors and 898 hits. March had 501 unique visitors and 5232 hits. April, in spite of some lost data has grown spectacularly: 1800 unique visitors and 15,400 hits. Bandwidth usage has grown from less than twenty mega bytes to more than 720 mega bytes.

All this growth has happened without any notices on the lists on the net. Word of mouth referrals tell us that this sort of growth will continue.

Since PTT is about at it’s limit we have created a more broad based blog aggregation service.

Quilt Voices is a new, subscription based, blog aggregation service. Various other textile artists and people who have businesses who support our work will be included. Both people who provide web based supplies and those who run brick and mortar stores are welcome to membership in Quilt Voices.

You can see the beginnings of Quilt Voices at the hotlink above. Selling directly on these blogs is not allowed. There are no restrictions on post content so long as they are in good taste. We expect quiltvoices to bring you the sort of interested volume, and growth of volume, to your own websites that we are experiencing on PTT.

Subscriptions will be $1US per month, payable annually via PayPal. Those people who have textile related web only businesses (less than $50,000 gross, annually) may subscribe at $7 per month, payable annually. Large volume businesses and those in physical locations may subscribe at $15 per month.

This notice on thelmasmith.com and on planet.textilethreads is the first public notice. I expect to develop Quilt Voices over the summer. When everyone is settled in by the time school starts in the northern hemisphere I will begin marketing Quilt Voices internationally.

Like Planet.textilethreads, now, with it’s increasing readership and volume, quiltvoices.com will become known as THE place to get your textile fix with one click with your morning coffee.

To get your blog featured on Quilt Voices please
send and email to Spider AT quiltvoices DOT com with the following information:
Name = ……….
Blog Address = http:// …….
Status = Hobbyist or Small Business or Business

Only Paypal is accepted as a method of annual pre-payment.

Valarie James is both an artist and an activist. She takes no verbal stand. She just shows you, with her art, what she sees.

Her work is progressing far beyond this La Madre, which was shown in 2006 in the exhibition Changing the World One Thread at a Time. She speaks of secrets we will never know. She collects precious, heirloom quality, hand work on textiles in the Spanish language.

A documentary, called The Trail of Thread is in process.

Remember, the other week I told you that I had read Art Is a Way of Knowing? It was particularly challenging for me. The minute I was done I took Women Who Run With the Wolves off the shelf.

I have finished reading the book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D. The hotlink will take you to one of the 225,000 Google references on Dr. Estés. The book was originally published in 1992. The image and copyright quotes used here are under the fair use for educational purposes clause of the copyright law. I encourage you to find a used copy of the book.

Remember the day I posted about Baba Yaga? She is probably the most pantheistic archetype spoken about in this book. I guess I know her because she is someone I know. It’s not a typo; just a contradiction in terms. Here are some of the quotations that have been important enough for me to note inside the fly cover.

“It is true, I will not lie to you; it is easier to throw away the light and go to sleep. It is true, It is hard to hold the skull-light out before us sometimes. For with it, we see all sides of ourselves and others, both the disfigured and the divine and all conditions in between.”

“. . . . we throw a burst of fire into the darkness of psyche so we can see what we’re doing . . . what we’re truly doing, not what we wish to think we’re doing.”

“Ignorance s not knowing anything and being attracted to the good. Innocence if knowing everything, and still being attracted to the good.”

I’ve been working on this red, matka silk, on ivory Thai silk ground a little every day. The acute, inside corners are challenging.

You can see my basting thread; it’s ivory silk so I don’t lose it on the red. I’m working with red silk thread in a size 11 straw needle.

I have no idea whether my needle work is good, bad, or indifferent. Here’s the back of the Thai silk. It is a joy to work with. The smaller sample I had made, disassembled part way, and repinned was worked with fine fuse on the acute angles; I didn’t like it. So on this big one I’m just toughing it out.

Here you have the cat covers that go on when I think I am tired enough to make mistakes.  You can see the debian test pattern on white muslin.  I laid in the “d” with an embellishing machine and black wool roving.  I doubt I will use the resulting felted letters on the quilt itself.

You can also see, in the lower left corner, my test pattern for the Debian swirl on white muslin.  I had  all sorts of plots, plans, and foolish fancies.  In the end I decided the best thing to do was to take up a needle and thread it.

“Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.”  © Bruce Mau Design

I’ve finally finished reading Art is a Way of Knowing by Pat B. Allen. It was published in and copyright 1995 by Shambhala Publications. IBSN 1-57062-078-4 No doubt you can find it second hand.  The cover image is provided here under the fair use for education clause of the copyright law.

It is a book for reading but more importantly I find that it is a book that should be a book for doing.  It is in five parts.  The first three parts are  designed for you to  actually do the exercises as you read.   I found them very challenging.  That probably comes from growing up in a very non standard family.

I will be reading it a second time.  However at the end of the first reading it has prompted me to take the first edition of Women Who Run With the Wolves off the bookshelf.  I find, looking just inside the end papers that my penciled notes stop at page 152.  I think this time I ought to read the whole book.  Fifteen years is enough seasoning.  It’s time.

I buy Tshirts and bumper stickers from Donnellycolt. The last time I got an order this was sent to me. Please send your copies of George Orwell’s 1984 to the address provided.

I have subscribed to the announcements provided by ArtScene. They appear in my email several times a day. Almost always they are accompanied by images that provoke thinking. Again, another source of images and information that are geographically inaccessible. I tend to think of the work of artists as work belonging to a very broad universe. ArtScene and magazines help me keep in touch with all sorts of things that are not within arm’s reach.

Recently, they have invented a radio – I don’t know whether to call it a station or a system as I think it is internet only – ArtScene Visual Radio.

The image is copyright ArtScene Visual Radio and is provided here for educational purposes under the fair use clause of the copyright law.

PS, my server has been acting up.  I have lost the thumbnail setting on my WordPress.  It will be fixed in the next few days.  Thank you for your forbearance.

The textile arts are a varied lot. They show up in the most unexpected places. The image below is copyright by two entities and the artist; it is published here according to the fair use for educational purposes section of that law.

Notice that Untitled, by Joyce Melander-Dayton, is of acrylic, cotton, wool and beads on linen. The very definition of textile art. This advertizing popped up on page nine, more or less, of the May 2007 issue of art & antiques. Copyrights are held by Melander-Dayton, the June Kelly Gallery in New York City, and by arts & antiques.

I like the fact that textiles are popping up in unexpected places. These places that are geographically removed. Those of us who practice the textile arts should be an encouraged.

I read arts & antiques monthly; quite honestly it’s more wallowing in the luscious glossy printing of high quality photographs. This magazine gives me a window on all sorts of visual art from many centuries. I find it is a very pleasant way to add to my knowledge. I see things I would never see in a venue restricted to textiles. I think that is important.

Gerrie Congdon’s blog today has an important and thoughtful message. I encourage you to read and participate.

While wandering around on the net avoiding honest work I stumbled across another website.

This one is called Another Day in the Empire.