More Purple

I try to stay open to working with colors and shapes that do not immediately appeal to me. If I worked only with my favorite colors, I would be surrounded by (and wearing only) a panoply of shades and patterns of purple, red, turquoise, and indigo with black highlights. Instead, I occasionally allow beige, green, white, grey, yellow, gold, brown, and (ugh!) pink to enter the workshop. The challenge then is to transform these into something I can enjoy. Slivers of pink may transform a turquoise and indigo print into a vibrant spectacle. A boring rectangle of gold and grey flying geese can be sliced into segments that join seams with a purple and red stripe for greatly enhanced flights of fancy. Surprisingly (to me), yellow does have occasional beneficent effects in a dark red landscape. I was surprised by the bold (and pleasing) effect of a white and black mosaic, with red contrast of course. Somehow, I think that there is a life lesson in this, as there is in almost everything that happens in the workshop: accept experiences that don’t immediately meet my preferences. This could be as simple as the choice of a movie or trying an item of cuisine outside my usual color palette. Or it could mean traveling off itinerary or even cultivating love when my first reaction is to shy away and seek more purple.

Broken Box Spilling Insides Out

This "Fabricated for Delight" piece is called "Broken Box Spilling Insides Out." There is a phrase by Emily Dickinson embedded in the fabric design: dazzle gradually.

Here is the story I wrote to go with the piece:


Purely out of habit, Rennie plucked a plastic cup of carrot juice from the symmetrical display of juices chilling in crushed ice outside the corner store.

He crossed 71st Street and then neatly crossed Broadway toward the small brick cube. In step with decades and dozens, he clicked through a turnstile and descended to travel through windy tubes toward travail.

AT the center of his desk downtown was a literal textual tower. Every day, a new tower. Every day, the same texture.

At noon, Rennie split.

Out the door, spilling coins and cough drops from several pockets, he budded into commotion.

Zigzaggy thoughts burst him astray: a park, a portrait, a pita, a pal. Gliding diagonally across streets and sidewalks, Rennie felt loose and looser, and finally, lost.

The long longing and fast tether snapped as he darted through a parade and let the dazzling rainbow fish
GO.


“In-Visible Short Stories” Series
Fabricated for Delight. © jo.carubia 2014

Meaning Among the Stars

A crazy thing has happened recently; I have been writing short, short stories to accompany the small abstract fabric pieces coming off my sewing table! I've always said that I don't write fiction, that it isn't in me. I did discover, however, when I wrote Becoming the Blues for the Barber family that I enjoy composing a scene with dialog and character. It felt at times like dramatizing (and revealing more nuances of) real life. Anyway, after constructing these fabric set-pieces and having whimsical titles pop into my head, it occurred to me that I could write a story as another version of the visible image. The fictional narrative and the abstract fabrication are BOTH stories!

They are also both shorter than expected in their worlds. I recently received the orange brick of Lydia Davis's collected short (short) stories. I've known of her work before, but in this collection, I appreciated the form more fully. I might not write fiction in the traditional sense, but this I can do.

Here is one pair from my new and emerging "In-Visible Short Stories" Series. It is called "Meaning Among the Stars."

Meaning Among the Stars

On the surface of the earth, a woman named Será waited in uneasy comfort for a nearly indiscernible, yet quite inevitable disruption that was not unwelcome.

She was a beloved queen with all the accoutrements of entitlement: a royal flush of family, finance, and quotidian purpose.

Still, she wandered.

By day, she wandered through stories seasoned with piquant spices from the Far and the Flung. By night, she wandered the fields and woods, calling out pioneers from beyond the galaxy. (Her calls were answered only by a small and curious fox.) She slept lightly under the stars, forever aware of the nocturnal flurry and stir.

A mist of euphoria, night’s most intimate breath, drifted across the tips of fingers, fronds, and eyelashes.

At first light, Será rose from the tall grass, damp with mettle and consequence, to don her thousand-league boots; to plod; to tred lightly; and, finally,
to fly.


“In-Visible Short Stories” Series
Fabricated for Delight. © jo.carubia 2014

Smuggled by Emily

In 2013 a facsimile edition of Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems was published by New Directions. The title of the book is The Gorgeous Nothings. Scholars Jen Bervin, Marta Werner, and Susan Howe describe the small scraps of paper with scribbled words in the context of Dickinson’s life and other writing. The book itself is stunningly beautiful with clear and exact reproductions of the flattened envelope pieces on high quality paper alongside a transcription of each word into legible typeface. The fragments are intriguing! These fiber art pieces are inspired by Emily Dickinson. I have created hand-guided, thread script of particularly resonant phrases from the fragments. The fabrics and shapes are reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s own style of dress AND of the envelope sections on which she wrote.
Smuggled . . .Spry Arms . . . Emily
Gleam and Understand . . . Profound by Accident . . . Emily.
The three sections are ribboned together and hung from a child’s whimsical magic wand or a wooden spoon. ($118. each)

Smuggled by Emily (3 attached pieces, approx. 6” by 8” each) and

Gleam and Understand (3 attached pieces, approx.. 6” by 8” each)

Making

What are you making?
Making a home. Making friends. Making community. Making art. Making poetry. Making sentences. Making time. Making peace. Making rainbow. Making love. Making breakfast, lunch, dinner. Making meaning. Making connections. Making a life. Making cookies. Making space. Making sense. Making balance, more or less. Making possible. Making harmony. Making delight. Making memories. Making surprise. Making whole.

Persnickety Pockets

Persnickety Pockets (Varied: approx.. 5” by 8”)

About two years ago, my friends Rose and Jackie drove several hours to visit and take me out for lunch. I wanted to give them each a small gift I had purchased on a recent trip to China. I didn’t like any of the wrapping options I had at home, so I turned to my sewing table and improvised a cloth gift sack that I could tie at the top with a piece of ribbon. They enjoyed the wrappings as much as the gifts, and I found that once I started, I couldn’t stop! It was like eating potato chips! The colors, shapes, and sizes are the crunch, flavor, and salt that add up to an addiction! I don’t much care for the word bag, so I decided to name these, Persnickety Pockets, a more whimsical tag that hints at the scissors and scraps that snip and swop in the process. Here’s what my own Persnickety Pockets carry: my Kindle e-reader, my favorite silk scarf, small gift loaves of zucchini bread for Thanksgiving, and many other small gifts for friends and family. ($15 to $20)

Hurricane Sandy

“Hurricane Sandy: Broken Glass” (25 inches by 40 inches)



I wanted to express feelings about the sharp, broken edges of everything destroyed by the storm. The different areas of thread quilting on the piece represent the strong winds and shearing force. It seems a contradiction to create art about horrific experiences. I’ve wondered about this since first encountering Guernica by Pablo Picasso and Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf. I find the piece pleasing to look at, even though I meant it to express devastation. There is nothing symmetrical in the piece. The colors could be more jarring to convey excruciating sounds and sights, for example, the dark blue background could have been a sickly greyish green instead of this rich cruise-ship midnight blue. (In private collection; not for sale)