I am pleased that the New Year has just begun, and my first contemporary beaded art quilt, “Garden for a Sky Warrior” is completed. Of course I was working on it in 2012, but here it is, the first completed for the new year. This series of Meditation Art Quilts are some of my new visionary art series, in which I tap into a person’s energy field and “see” the image that is perfect for that person to use to meditate and play energetically. On the page found at the above link are the Gaia commands or mantras that you can use to safely “borrow” that person’s energy field and play in their garden, too. It’s nice to have friends to play with!
Having just come back from the desert in southern California, I am struck at how well I was able to suggest the night sky I this piece. Here on the east coast of the USA, there is so much light pollution, that I often forget just how many stars there really are in the sky until I’m away from cities like I was out in the desert. There seemed to be an endless pool of stars to dive into if you just looked upwards, and I feel that I did a good job of portraying that in this art quilt.
The garden in this piece ended up being inhabited by small. short grasses and ferns, for after all, the key part of the composition, I felt, was the sky. While most of the fabric leaves that were part of the original composition ended up being covered with beads, the tall grass like motifs that show up the best in this view are actually pieces I cut from antique ribbon. Years ago, I bought all there was to be had in a ribbon store that was going out of business of a 1.5″ ( 3.5 cm) wide, green taffeta ribbon that had small picots on the edges. Those loops are great places to tuck beads, which give an iridescent glow to the “grasses” which was exactly what I was looking for in this “other worldly” garden.
Here’s a close-up view of the portal that opens into the garden. (If you go to the page that is linked at the beginning of the article, and scroll to the end, you can get the commands and instructions on how to come through the portal.) As I spoke about in the last posting on this piece, the tie-dye circle behind the portal ended up becoming totally covered by beads (It’s hard for me to leave surfaces un-beaded!) Around the portal, you can see some of the metal feathers that I added. They were cut from a necklace I found in a craft store, and gave the perfect shamanic look to this piece. Besides, feathers have a special meaning to the man whose energy that I borrowed to create this art quilt. In this view, you can also see more of the countless iridescent blue beads that I used to suggest constellations and galaxies in this night sky I tried to simulate.
I’m having great, good fun with this series, and people have responded more to these quilts than perhaps any of the others that I have done. I’d like to think that it’s their response to the energy fields that are actually a part of each piece, as in the past I haven’t added that aspect to my work. Always before, the piece I was working on, I would bond and merge with it as we worked together to complete it. These new pieces have the added benefit of drawing on the energy of The Grid, The Matrix, The Stream of Universal Consciousness (pick a phrase), and that’s why I think that people are responding more.
What aspects of your own medium do you feel that you get the most responses? Is it what you want to be known for, or if not, why not?
Why not leave a comment as to your thoughts on this posting. Please take a minute, fill out the form below or by clicking on the “comments/no comments link” at the top of the posting, and then share your ideas with the rest of us. We all grow when we share our thoughts and impressions, so why not join our growing community of those who appreciate art quilts and textile arts. We’d love to hear from you!… and PLEASE tell like minded souls about this blog! The more readers and contributors, the more I write.
You can see more of my art work on my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com (be patient as it loads; it’s worth it), my healing work at www.hearthealing.net and can find me on Google + , Facebook (for Transition Portals) Facebook (for Fiber Fantasies), and Twitter.
To find out how to buy my art work, please check out “How to Buy my Art Work” in the “Pages” section to the right of this blog.
