Colorful Kaffe

 I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see Kaffe Fassett speak when he visited his exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilt and Textiles. I went with friend Jaye, and we got a chance to walk around the SOFA area and have coffee.




















The purple jacaranda (I think?) lining the streets were in bloom and just gorgeous against the blue sky.  I noticed an old Art Deco era movie theater had been converted over to a gym and took some pictures of the floor and ticket booth glass. Aren't those the loveliest, most luscious curves?

Kaffe was a great speaker, very charming and witty as you'd expect, and he was very inspiring of course. I loved seeing so many process pictures from him, the ones you don't normally see in his quilt books. There were a lot of travel photos too, which showed where he gets so much of inspiration for new fabric designs.  He talked a lot about inspiration and making a space to let it come in and dwell for a while, to let serendipity and oddments that attract your notice lead you to new places.  He encouraged us to stop the flow of negativity that's making you not believe in yourself.

He also had one great comment about white design walls and how they're like staring into a blinding snowstorm, and thus he uses a mid-grey one with a grid which is more neutral. Gosh that makes so much sense! When it's time to replace the white felt on mine, I'm definitely going for grey. I used to have a giant piece of grey polar fleece that I used as a background for quilt photography and that always worked so well. 

Several other artists' work from around the world were mentioned or shown in his slide show, one of which was an artist from Ghana, El Anatsui who makes amazing works out of bottles, wire, aluminum cans, and other found objects.

Two quotes that I wrote down during his talk that I'll leave you with: 

"Don't worry about how it looks on the back, you're not wearing it inside out."

"If you're worried about being "too creative" you're too grown-up"

Posted To Inspire

The two bulletin boards that I have in my work room are used for different purposes.  This first one is larger, more easily accessible and requires no thumbtacks to put something up.  So it gets changed more often, has more current, topical, things like show advertisements, birth announcements.  I have things hanging off the bottom too, a green silk scarf I'm supposed to do something with, and a cool black/white/green zipper I want to use for a bag or jacket.  This is mostly just a hodgepodge of stuff I want to look at more than once or an image I want to revisit.

The second one is smaller, much harder to reach as it hangs over my wide cutting/work table and requires a new thumbtack to be hunted up to hang something new on it.  I have inspirational images,things with color combinations or patterns that I enjoy, quotes and words and a few objects hanging on here, a collage of myself in a way.  It doesn't change as much, but it gets update occasionally, usually when I clean off the other bulletin board.

The coolest artist bulletin board I ever got to see in person was probably Judith Content's, it took up almost a whole wall above her desk I think.  And if I recall correctly she takes everything down on a yearly basis and puts it in a book, then starts over again filling up the blank wall.

Do you have something similar in your work space?

The Story of Chuck

Earlier this summer, we had an animal attack, and only one of our 3 chickens survived.  Either raccoon or fox made a hole in the chicken wire big enough to get in the coop enclosure. She was really badly injured (half her face is missing, including the eye) and in shock.  We didn't think she'd live long and considered putting her out of her misery, but we didn't have the guts to.  But what do you know, she pulled through and is fine now.  So we named her Chuck (as in Chuck Norris) because she is a pretty badass chicken.  She lived in our upstairs bathroom for a couple months, and eventually learned how to run up and down the stairs.  Guess she doesn't miss having depth perception because birds don't really have it to start with.

Chuck quickly figured out where the cat food was and always made a beeline for the kitchen to steal some (much to the dismay of the very disgruntled cats).  We reinforced the giant homemade rabbit hutch with new welded wire, so she safely sleeps out there at night, but has the run of the backyard during the day.  Now I have company as I garden, she follows me around and eats bugs and weeds and digs little holes to scootch around in the dry dirt.  She seems pretty happy, who knows, she's a chicken after all.  She's a pet all of a sudden though, with her own individual friendly personality. I'm glad that the cats are scared of her and give her a lot of room, but they really keep an eye on her.  We have to make sure to close the door to the backyard or she sneaks in and tries to get to the catfood, guess it tastes good compared to her usual  feed.

































It's hard to believe that Chuck can just get along like that, figuring out how to cope with only one eye all of a sudden. But animals are resilient and do what they need to in order to keep living.  Pretty inspirational to me really.  Especially because she just started laying eggs once again.  After all that trauma and almost dying, she's back to normal, a new normal.  Just with a little time and a bit of extra care from her clueless owners.

Museum Inspiration

I am finding inspiration in strange places these days. Can you guess what this is?

Yes, it is the back of a massive computer, a big mass of wires. I took these photos at the Computer History Museum last weekend. We were there for a birthday bash for a friend of my husband's and got to go around and look at the exhibits. They have everything there from abacuses to Atari's to super computers. Really interesting and fun to see things I've either used (Atari tape drive and Pong!) or that I've read about (Eniac). I'm glad someone thought to save all this stuff and put it on exhibit.

This terminal looked so much like a face to me.

But this was my favorite of all. It looks like Japanese art to me, or just an artfully arranged pile of hanks of sashiko threads.