Tag Archive for art work based on an energy field

“A Garden for a Sky Warrior” Progresses

Work in progress of a Meditation Art quilt, "A Garden for a Sky Warrior"Nancy Smeltzer, MFA

Last week, I posted about auditioning fabrics for this contemporary, beaded art quilt, “A Garden for a Sky Warrior”. Visionary art can be so much fun to do, because I tap into a person’s energy field and “see” where would be the perfect place for this person to meditate and energetically play. The man who was the inspiration for this piece was in the military this lifetime, but in past lifetimes, I see him as more of a Jedi Knight. In my vision, he traveled across galaxies to fight for Universal Good, swashbuckling from one adventure to the next and defending those who needed it.

One time, he explained how he had learned in the service to sight by the stars, so I know that that’s why the grid pattern and crossed bands appear in this piece. We had a discussion once about how the South Sea Islanders had lashed sticks to sight through at night. I once got to see one of these early navigational maps that a friend’s mother had gotten when she lived in Guam. I also saw some when I visited the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway. Thor Heyerdahl used these stick maps to sail across oceans in reed boats. I imagine that my friend whose energy field that I used for this piece had his own navigational system to use when his equipment would go down when he was out in the galaxies.

Detail of work in progress art quilt, "A Garden for a Sky Warrior"The area behind the portal was the tie dye circle that I talked about last week. It had a multitude of rays coming out from it, and beading it with lavender, blue, and gold beads was quite fun. I wanted to suggest perhaps a super nova that the Sky Warrior was escaping as he came through the gold portal window into the garden. Another possibility for that elaborate view is perhaps that it’s his individual energy signature that he used to propel him through the portal.  In this concept, he would use his own electromagnetic field to quickly move from one galaxy to another through his personal worm hole. Surrounding the window are three brass colored, star shaped, metal stampings that I had picked up somewhere in the distant past. They were one of those purchases that I didn’t know exactly how they would be used, but that I HAD to have them.

Detail of work in progress of the art quilt, "A Garden for a Sky Warrior"The actual garden in this art quilt is more like a marsh. I have a large number of Iris pseudocorus , a yellow iris that lives in shallow water and damp ground after which the fleur-de-lis is patterned. That 3 petaled design of French royalty is also sometimes used in a compass rose to indicate directions on a map, and this links this piece to not only a garden but a sky map for my friend’s energy. In the dark blue sky, you can also see some of the web-like patterning that was on the original fabric. I enhanced it with light blue seed beads to give a twinkle to this night sky.

Maps, the night sky, gardens, travel, and lots of adventures are some of the things that I know about my friend’s interests, so it’s not surprising that they would show up energetically in this piece. My take is that we each have a unique colorful field of energy around us, and can’t help ourselves when it comes to creating our personal spaces. MY gift is that I can tap into that field and see the perfect place for that person to p;ay and meditate. I’m grateful that my friend let me “borrow” his energy for this piece.

If you were going to make a drawing or map of your energy field. what motifs and designs would you choose that are already a part of your life? Given that as an artist, you have full “artistic license”, what elements would you like to include in a map of your energy?

“A Garden for a Sky Warrior” – Auditioning Fabrics

Fabric as seen on the web site where I bought it When auditioning fabrics to choose from when creating an art quilt, I start with a large pile of pieces to consider. My fabric is my paint that I’m going to use, and since I revel in the use of color, I like to have lots of possibilities. This new Meditation Garden piece that I’m working on is called “A Garden for a Sky Warrior”. The man whose energy that I tapped into for its image, I’ve seen as fighting for the greater good across the galaxies many lifetimes, so of course, I had lots of celestial theme fabrics in my stack. The problem with blue and purple is that they’re probably the hardest colors to get true color accuracy when photographing. This photo shown is from the web site where I bought the piece and is actually much lighter in color than the actual fabric that arrived. There were also a lot more purple dots on the fabric than what show up here in the photo, but I didn’t feel that those would pose a problem, as I could always cover them up with beads. This was one of the first fabrics to be chosen and was actually used in the piece.

A web like concentration of galaxies as a motif on a fabricThis next fabric I bought because I knew that I wanted to have the illusion of a sky map in the piece. The photo is pretty accurate with regard to the actual color of the piece. I originally thought that the fabric shown above would be the base fabric, but this one on the left ended up as the main material. Given that the at work is only 16″ x 20″ ( 40.5 cm x 50.5 cm), each swatch of fabric has to work harder to have the composition work than when I have a larger area and lots of room in which to spread out fabrics and embellishments.

Tie dye circles on a blue batik backgroundThe tie dye center of the circle on this batik fabric I thought looked like a big star or could be made into a super nova when I bought it on-line. The motifs are spaced pretty far apart, and so in a yard of fabric, I only got five motifs which came out to about $1.50 US for each motif. They were also too big to use in quantity on such a small scale art quilt, but one was the perfect circle to put behind the portal entrance. The circle ended up being extensively beaded, and detailed shots will appear in future postings about this piece of art. The rest of the fabric is a beautiful hazy design, but while I’ll save it for something, nothing immediately comes to mind, as there are none of the distinct delineations between colors that I like to use to keep one area separate from another when I’m doing extensive beading.

Star circles on a blue background fabricFinally, this last piece of fabric that was ordered specifically for my concept of what this piece was going to look like ended up not being used at all. The circles I thought would be a great way to show a concentration of stars in part of the night sky in the scene, but they were really too small to use any but the smallest size 15 seed beads. While I love the details you can get with those itty, bitty beads, the needles that will go easily through the 3 layers of a quilt sandwich, are too large to go through the beads. While I have found some hand sewing needles, John James milner needles from England, it often takes too many pokes with my fingers and strain on my aging eyes to get the stiff quilting thread that I like to go through the eye. I’m sure that I will use this fabric on something else.

For me, when beginning an art quilt, I pull out way more than I know that I’ll actually use, as I like to have choices…. LOTS of choices! After all, as I said, my fabrics and embellishments are my paints, and while I don’t like to the mess of creating my own fabrics, I do like playing with commerical ones. I probably have several lifetimes worth of fabric in my tiny studio, yet I still get seduced by just one more addition to my stash. The trouble is that I rarely discipline myself to just one new acquisition.

 How do you go about choosing what will appear in your art work. Is there a particular type of supply materials that you just can’t resist when you’re on-line or in a store. Now that I’m not married, I can purchase with wild abandon and admit to my weaknesses, so we’re all wondering what’s yours?

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