Mary Lee Eischen: Quilting Artist

Part of a cosmic reality . . .

I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve been thinking about my being a part of something bigger.  Bigger than living in Winona, or Minnesota or the United States; bigger than being of a specific cultural descent, bigger than race, gender, ability, thoughts, words, likes, or dislikes.  When I reduce all of the components that make me who I am, is there still a greater essence that makes me part of a whole of humanity?  Are we all connected?  This bit of philosophical pondering resulted in my being invited to be part of a Chinese New Year and Multicultural Celebration at SE Technical College on the Redwing, Minnesota campus earlier this month.

 

Yanmei Jiang, professor of Chinese Culture organized the Chinese New Year Celebration.   This celebration, in its second annual year is a way to share Chinese culture with students, professors and other staff along with community members.   There was a sampling of delicious Chinese food, music, dance, entertainment, and red fortune envelopes for the children.

In addition this year, people from around the world were invited to represent their cultural roots.  They shared their talents and cultural traditions. This is where my quilts fit in:  I was the American Quilting Artist.  I displayed some of my quilts and talked with people about my cultural heritage of being Austrian, Bohemian, German, Luxembourger, and Irish through my quilts. I talked with people about quilting techniques too.

 

All of the photographs were reproduced from antique pictures scanned to my computer and transferred to treated paper and ironed on to fabric.  The photos on Stars of My Life are the people made up of my family. Stars of my Life was my first mixed media quilt.

Anna Windschitl at haying time, my mother’s great grandmother

 

Mary Rose (Windschitl) and Robert Eischen, wedding 1957, my parents

 Mary Catherine Windschitl, my Grandmother

 Mary Lee & Amaliya Eischen,  I'm holding my daughter

  Amaliya's first year, my daughter

 

As people watched the entertainment and enjoyed their Chinese food, I had the opportunity to get some pictures of this amazing celebration. 

The Carleton College Chinese Silk and Bamboo Music Ensemble preformed with interesting musical instruments such as the pipa, Chinese flute; the Erhu and gaohu, Chinese violins; guzheng, Chinese table harp; Bawu, clarinet-like instrument; and the dizi and hulus, Chinese Mahinese flutes.

Gao Hong is a masterful pipa musician who graduated with honors from China’s premier music school, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she studied with  great pipa master Lin Shicheng.  Hong has performed throughout Europe, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, China and the United States in solo concerts and with symphony orchestras, jazz musicians and musicians from all around the world.  She is currently teaching Chinese musical instruments at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Mongolian Dancer Galloping on the Prairie

The dancers from the Chinese American Association of Minnesota, CAAM, Chinese Dance Theater serve families and delighted audiences.  The Chinese Dance Theater performs before 17,000 live audience members each year.  With its dance school, annual concerts and outreach performances, the Chinese Dance Theater is the largest Chinese dance organization in the Midwest.

 Young dancers performing Cheerful Girls

 Bob Stuber, Sound Guy making all the musicians and performers sound great

I am very grateful to Yanmei Jiang, right, and all who helped make this celebration so wonderful and successful.  With a feeling of inclusion of all cultures, I took a moment to pause and think about all of our interconnectedness.

 Mary Lee Eischen: Quilting Artist

Soul Collage® Understanding My Wise Woman Within

Collage according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is:  

a : an artistic composition made of various materials (as paper, cloth, or wood) glued on a surface. 

I create collage with my mixed media quilts in which I use cloth, words, paper, beads, buttons, and decorative trims.  In Soul Collage® one works with images in a similar way to create a personal deck of cards that can be used for insights into a person’s wise inner self.  The developer of Soul Collage® is Seena B. Frost.  I learned about this wonderful technique on the retreat that I took on Orcas Island with Vicky B. White last October 2011.  

 

I decided that I wanted to create a card or two on Nurturing Myself: Physically, Emotionally, Mentally, and Spiritually.  I began by gathering images that represented being nurtured in all of these four ways.  I collect magazines, postcards, junk mail, free brochures, cards that I receive and anything that may have images that I don’t mind cutting or ripping for collage.  When I do this work, I don’t worry about what it all means.  I enjoy the process of using colors and images that are beautiful to me and I choose interesting ways to put them together.  Sometimes I listen to music; sometimes I allow silence to wash over me.  This creating is very fun.  This past weekend, I made some cards.  Here are a few of the cards that I created:

Nurturing myself emotionally:

 

Nurturing myself mentally:

Nurturing myself physically:

 Additional information available at Soul Collage® to learn more.

Artist Spotlight: Kim Evenson

 A 2D memory palace, underline, highlight, illustrate, alter texts, juxtapose image with text, find a word, a line, a verse to start the mind on an inner journey.  Wonder at something.  Invite others to wonder with you.

 

Kim Evenson creates mixed media art work from inspiration of poetry.

 She is a scientist by day, an artist by moonlight.

 

I remember making my own books when I was a kid.

 

Her first love is nature.  She likes to take walks in nature; one of her first interests—plants, biology.  As a child the nature books were not beautiful and interesting to her.  Poetry connects science and draws together her interests from childhood and her fascination as an adult with science.  With science she enjoys learning the names of fungus or plants; it opens the landscape for Kim to have more meaning.

 

She has an interest in going to explore the Grand Canyon.   Workshops that she has attended through her work at the University, take her to intriguing places.   One bog in particular had her fascinated.  Cedarburg Bog is near Saukville Wisconsin - North of Milwaukee. It was a surreal environment– especially on that rainy day in May when we walked the boardwalks looking at Mosses & Liverworts. It was located in an area not frequented by humans.  As a result, she said that it felt like she was seeing plants from 1,000,000 years ago.  She saw horsetail, sun dews, and pitcher plants.  She expected to see a dinosaur raise its head at any moment.  

She is fascinated by the spontaneity of little children in their artwork.   As children grow up, they seem to lose that spontaneity.  Everyone wants to find the joy of their youth.  How do we guide children to grow up and nurture the deep truths within?

Kim may start with an embroidery piece and then place it in a box to continue with it later.   She may work on 5-6 things at the same time, adding color, words, stitching until it clicks.

Details of Heart Bag

 

When she adds words, she may paint over the words to give a ghost like image to the thoughts on the page.  Sometimes she adds a little door to open or a window to look under.

 

This black watercolor was painted during the time of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

French saying translated to English, “In my reflection of the details, I find myself asking if it was real or in my dreams.” 

Her room has space with a small desk, a weaving loom, some small tables for things that she collects and an enclosed book shelf.

 

The fabric lives in a red box on the floor.  It comes out when Kim wants to begin some stitching.  Files, and pencils and artwork share the space this afternoon.

She really likes her students.  She likes to see how smart they are.  Some are just brilliant.  She is interested in students for who they are and what interests them.  Students show their appreciation for her work with them through sending her articles that they think she may be interested in.  Kim says that her first interest is putting together materials and articles that bring her teaching alive.  When I talked with her, she was in the midst of the beginning of the second semester.  It’s a busy time getting everything set up and going after winter break.  Soon there will be more of an even time and she will take time to work on her art again.  Mornings are her best time.  She gives herself time to work on her art Saturday or Sunday mornings. 

Kim thinks that people need to write or paint to stay fresh in their day to day work.  Her inspiration is poetry.  Poetry fits into a frame of time of a moment of life.

4am to station

Boarding 5:45

Please listen for any changes

And mystical cities I remember

but have lost now to dreams.

When I asked her if she has favorite piece/s, she said that each is a reflection of a moment in time.  Each tells a story about the time that she made them.

 Soon!

Creating a Vision Board

Creating a Vision Board of my hopes and dreams for 2012 with help from my friends


A vision board is a creation of images that express what a person wants in her/his life, or what makes one feel happy, passionate about life. I create mine on a bulletin board so that it can be a growing, shifting, set of images that reflects the changes happening in my life.
 

Last fall, I had taken my Vision Board apart during a massive clearing and reorganization of my studio.  I have wanted to create a new one for many months but it felt like too big a project to take on.  When I got invited to a small gathering of women to create one on New Year’s Day, I was thrilled at the thought.  I spent some time before we gathered locating images that appealed to me—for their meaning?  No, because they were interesting, beautiful, or had some appeal that I could not give meaning to yet. 

In preparation for this Vision Board making, we smudged each other with sage. Dried sage is burned and the smoke created is fanned over and around a person by another. This is a Native American tradition that helps a person focus her intention and it clears away confusion. 

Making a collage is one of my most favorite activities.  It’s an art form that involves images, and words, and colors and design and movement and unity and balance and space.  I like to layer the images to give the artwork depth.  The Vision Board feels successful when I am pleased with how the end result looks.  This often takes moving images or adjusting how they are put together to get the look that works for me.  If I find another image has to become part of the Vision Board, I can add it easily by removing some pins and shifting images around.

Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project 2011

 A collection of more than 20,000 Sketchbooks including mine traveled around the country to museums in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and more throughout 2011.  Now the Sketchbooks live in the Brooklyn Art Library. The  sketchbook text paper is high quality 100% recycled. Each sketchbook has a bar code attached to the outside back cover. Specs 5.25 W x 7.25 H, 32 pages, 70lb text stock, 100% recycled paper.  

The theme that I played with was called Jackets, Blankets, and Sheets.  You can check out my collage sketch book in the digital library: Arthouse Coop 

And if you want to see more, go to Brooklyn Art Library website and look under the tab Digital Library:    
http://www.arthousecoop.com/brooklynartlibrary

Enjoy getting inspired!

Artist Spotlight: Julia Crozier

The Blue Heron Gallery and Studio is home to the artwork of Julia Crozier and a number of artists fine work.  In the front is the gallery showcasing oil paintings, chalk and oil pastels, linoleum prints, ink wash artworks, along with jewelry, cards, silk scarves, and other smaller gift items.  She shared with me some of her thoughts about her art.

Julia likes to paint abstractly because the story of the artwork unfolds as she works.  In viewing the painting some parts may not be as noticeable at first, but as the viewer continues looking more parts of the painting unfold.  She said that is what is so fascinating with abstract art, you see more and more as you look at it.

South Dakota, a primitive part of the Badlands.  As a child, her family traveled to the Western United States.  Those wide open spaces call to Julia.  She has traveled there often with her parents, sister, husband, and daughters.

Julia uses sketching to remember a landscape.  She takes many photographs to remind her of the images of a landscape as well.  Sometimes, Julia does not have art materials with her or the time to devote to a sketch is not available. Instead of relying on sketches or her camera, she is working with her memory to recreate the feeling and the look of a landscape. She takes those essences of the land and paints from her memory.  It is a skill; she practices often.

This painting started as a drawing created on site at Woodlawn Cemetery.  Its tonal quality of black and grey gives it a moonlight feeling.  However, there is no black in the painting.

These two oil paintings were reworked by the artist.  Julia likes the result of these two very much.  "They look like new paintings," she says.

 Two other oil paintings are Tree Roots and the Flicker.  She created drawings of the flicker from a real bird that had been found dead and kept in her freezer until she was ready to create it into a painting.

The painting to the far right on the wall is called Subterranean River.  It is a multi-layered painting using encaustic, oil paints, and fabric to create the look of an underground river.  This painting was the result of reading that she has done on geology, water, and underground rivers.

This pomegranate tree was seen on a trip that they took into the Grand Canyon.  You can learn more about one of her Grand Canyon adventures on Julia’s website, blueheronstudio.net.  Another trip like this is planned for May 2012 with her sister and her parents.  It’ll be a rafting trip that is designed for artists with stops along the way to sketch and photograph the beauty of the canyon.

This is a small ink wash drawing of the Mill Ruins near the Guthrie Theatre and St Anthony Falls in Minneapolis.

  She likes to work large to create what looks like a science chart.

Here’s Julia and Sadie in the gallery.  Sadie is a loving companion and a good gallery dog.

This is an abstract painting on the wall behind Julia and Sadie. The painting gives the viewer a visceral feeling of space and time.

The Blue Heron Gallery and Studio has become Midwest Music Store.  It has wonderful art along with featuring performing artists, 168 E. 3^rd St., Winona, MN 55987. 




 

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