in other news

Artwork by Erwin Wurm. Love his name.

Wouldn't this make an awesome Halloween costume? I am in love with this idea. I mean, I don't know how you would actually see out of it, or how you would get anywhere in it, but still!

philly

Last week I went to Philadelphia for two days. In the past I've flown into it and driven past it, but never really seen it as a proper visitor. I'm not sure that two days constitutes a proper visit, but I was still able to see some interesting stuff while I was there.

We stayed in the city center, at the Loews Hotel, which was quite nice. The first morning I even roused my lazy butt sufficiently to use the lap pool. In the afternoon I walked a couple blocks over to the Fabric Workshop and Museum.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect at FWM. I suppose I thought it would be like going to the Cooper Hewitt. Fabric swatches or samples on walls, a lot of explanatory text, some archival photos. There was definitely an element of that, but a lot more and overall, one of the more memorable museum experiences I've had in a while.

The entrance is marked by a bright pink, orange and red sign (so awesome). Upon entering you are greeted by an attendant at a desk who asks for your name and zip code. No admission fee, only a donation jar. I assumed I would be able to roam the museum at will, but was informed that no, I would be given a guide. There wasn't a guide immediately available (this seemed crazy to me - that each visitor had an individual guide - I could only assume that they didn't have so very many visitors?) so instead I joined a tour in progress (consisting of two women).

The first two rooms held a video installation about a master indigo dyer (maybe someday this sort of thing will interest me, but as of right now, snore) and a series of blueprint renderings of Japanese furniture with tiny, spotlit reproductions of them on a shelf. And by tiny, I mean thumbnail scale. I wasn't able to linger long enough to figure out what that was all about though, because we were moving on to the next exhibition. We exited the entrance I had just entered and walked down the block to the next storefront. Our guide unlocked a door and we were in a new exhibition. This was a room with a "Shaker-inspired" exhibit. Paintings were cradled in these odd hook things that hung off pegs in the wall. A very cool braided rug dominated the front area, and, if one was so inclined, one could crawl through the fireplace opening to a second room, which had a configuration of branches hanging from the ceiling and strobe lights going off. It was like a tiny, weird, woodland disco.

Pretty sure Shakers didn't really decorate their walls, but, interesting.

Look at that rug! Love it.

This is when the other ladies departed, having seen the rest of the museum's offerings, and I had our guide to myself. Unfortunately my guide had only started working there 3 days prior, so she hadn't much to share in terms of insights about the work. I collected the printed info on display as we made our rounds thinking I'd read it later (still haven't, ahem).

We returned to the part of the building where we had started and took the elevator up several floors. The first stop was on a floor featuring the work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. There were a couple fabric designs I really loved - the first was a reproduction of a tablecloth fabric used by somebody's grandmother with a double black line overprinted in a tossed pattern on top. It was the quintessential 1980's MTV looking sort of thing. The second was a riff on those old black and white composition school book covers.

These 2 images are not mine, for the record.

The next floor displayed fabric screen printed by student apprentices at the Museum (thus, the workshop portion of the name) and a video documentary of them in action. The final exhibit was a video installation exploring Black male identity. Oh yeah, there were also a couple rooms somewhere in there with work by Philadelphia photographers. So, yeah, not nearly what I had anticipated in terms of, you know, looking at fabric. But, still, cool overall. Would recommend.

fostering

Dying Cat is making me sad. She's here by my elbow as I type this on my laptop in bed. Dying cat has a lot of problems, though they all pale in comparison, of course, to the fact that she's dying. She has anemia and ringworm at present, having recovered from the upper respiratory and eye infections she arrived with. But mostly what she has is FIP, an incurable, always fatal sickness.

She's been here about 6 weeks. She arrived while I was on a road trip with my sister. I was only gone for 2 weeks on that trip, but a lot happened on the foster cat front in my absence. One whole cat came and went. This cat was a Russian Blue, the same as our very first beloved cat, Milos (rest in peace). My husband felt a little sad to let her go, so Eva (the woman from the rescue group we work with) pulled another gray cat from the Animal Control kill list to replace her. Steve bonded with this new gray cat as well. New gray cat (aka Dying Cat, aka Violet) initially seemed mostly just very underfed. Skinny as hell, and with the already mentioned health problems, but not anything that love, devotion and food couldn't fix.

But after a couple weeks she wasn't putting on any weight. She seemed, in fact, to actually be losing weight. Petting her was like stroking a steel folding chair. All sharp angles and hard edges.

I took her to the vet. Then I took her to another vet. Long story short: Feline infectious peritonitis.

According to her shelter record, she was owner surrendered. My guess is that her owner knew she was sick and couldn't or wouldn't deal with it.

When we first decided to foster cats, I knew that practicing detachment would be key. Providing affection and care, of course, but with a constant understanding that they would be temporary boarders. That we would function as a conduit - a happy in-between place. And understanding, as well, that there would always be more. Always more. As soon as one cat went out the door, another could come in.

But Violet will stay, for however long she has left. And I try not to be sad, because being sad is useless.

It is rainy and gray today, truly chilly for the first time this season. The sun is setting earlier and earlier and I try not to take it personally.

Violet.

paper quilts

Much earlier this year (February or March) I visited the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in Chelsea. They were showing work by an artist named Stephen Sollins. He makes paper "quilts" from used envelopes. They were really lovely. I've had these pictures kicking around on my desktop for months now - time to post and share, even if the exhibition is long over.

From an interview he did last year describing his work: “I am interested in using the geometry, grids, and systematic approaches of high modern, minimal, and conceptual art, in part to show how they do and do not relate to more popular and sentimental forms.”

Initially my thinking was that it must be far easier to get precise corner matches using cut paper and glue than it is using fabric and thread. But he evidently "seams" all the pieces together on the backside with tape, not glue on a substrate. That doesn't strike me as a great deal of fun to do. I can imagine my fingers all sticky with bits of cut tape and the tape sticking to everything and having teeny pieces of paper sticking everywhere and so on. Ugh. Doubtless he has worked out some process that I can't quite imagine that enables him to craft these things without losing his mind. I should probably do a little more research on him. He's pretty cute, I think, in that tattooed greying hipster sort of way. Photo snagged from Bard College website.

lily's quilt: done and done

I would do some things differently were I to do it over - I would run long strips of the polka dot fabric vertically beside the geese blocks rather than in little chunks here and there. I would also add more of the linen and black fabric geese to better balance all of the pink/red and white. But it is what it is. I learned a lot making it, and I'm sure it will look plenty cute on Lily's bed. Also: done is better than perfect. Hopefully it will fit in my carry-on for our October trip to Iowa.

I'm even far enough away from it now to be tempted to make more flying geese. When I'm making a quilt with blocks, by the time I finish I am always like - "Okay, never gonna make a half-square triangle ever again." But that never lasts. I'm sure I can't be alone in that.

Speaking of half-square triangles, here is the quilt I was making earlier this summer for my sister's 50th birthday. Which was September 7. Obviously that didn't happen. I actually started it in a pretty timely manner but got stuck at this point when I spread it out on my bed and decided that the pinwheels were too big. Gah. Why is my quilt confidence so elusive lately? Part of me wants to rip it all apart and trim down the pinwheel square by an inch or so and then sew it all back together again. Which is crazypants. I've folded it up and stashed in my closet for now, hoping absence will make the heart grow fonder. Maybe when I dig it back out in a month I will look at it and wonder what my problem was. Fingers crossed.

love and squalor

A couple years ago my stepson, his wife, and their toddler came to visit us in Brooklyn. The visit consisted of doing many of the usual things you do in NYC with first-timers. It was interesting to experience the city through fresh eyes - a sentiment I know many New Yorkers express when they have out-of-towners to stay. I was surprised (a little) by how unprepared they were in some ways for the city's harshness. They had only packed flip-flops so their feet were pretty well destroyed after a day's walking. Hauling Hunter's stroller up and down the subway stairs multiple times a day wore on everyone, of course, and there were no easy places to change his diaper - Starbuck's bathrooms (of questionable cleanliness) being the default option.

Still, when we took them on a driving tour of the city, starting somewhere around Central Park West and winding down into the bowels of the Lower East Side, I was a little surprised by their reaction to (what I've always felt to be) the gritty charm of downtown. I believe the conversation in the car went something like this:
"So, is this area cheaper to live in, at least?"
"Nope. Even the Bowery's expensive."
"Oh my god, why would people pay to live here?"

Now, in surveying the view from the car window, any sensible person would likely agree. The streets are filthy, mountains of black trash bags lay heaped along the sidewalks, building facades are crumbly with age, graffiti and stickers adhere to every flat surface, it's noisy and crowded.

But all I see is glamour. Visiting the Bowery and the Lower East Side always leaves me all fizzy with excitement.

I've given this a fair amount of thought and I can only think it is the product of coming of age in the 1980's. Or not, I don't know. I started college in 1984. Though plenty of people attending RISD had plenty of cash, it wasn't cool to look like it. I remember one classmate returned after our freshman year driving a cute red Rabbit convertible. Within a month she had traded it for a shabby, grey Datsun beater. Everyone's clothing was ripped, stained, torn, vintage, thrifted. Clunky black combat boots, badly dyed black hair, oversized sweaters (with sleeves hanging a foot past your fingertips), asymmetrical haircuts were de rigueur. Sid and Nancy was a huge hit - remember that scene where they're making out in some disgusting back alley while garbage rains down on their heads from the tenement windows? That was romance, baby! And Nan Goldin! Nan Goldin was Everything. The first time I got an eyeful of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was like being hit by lightning. I suppose it was all a reaction to Reagan's America, Thatcher's England. Not that I had any sense of politics at the time. It was just the sheer effrontery to respectability that thrilled.

Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen

Trixie on the cot, NYC - Nan Goldin

I guess, as a result, I've always assumed that all young people have a moment of infatuation with some version of that hedonistic, self-absorbed nihilism? I mean hello, La bohème
dates from when - ? (the 1840's - thank you Wikipedia). The cliche of the starving artist in the Parisian garret is at least as old, yes?

But my very sensible daughter-in-law proved entirely impervious to the derelict charms of lower Manhattan. To her credit, really, I think, my surprise not withstanding. It's gross. Dirty. Hard. Even studded, as it is now, with luxury condos. Still.

Still. I'd move there in a heartbeat. Even knowing the inevitable 5 flights of tenement stairs I'd have to ascend and descend daily might just kill me at my age, now.

heavy heart, busy hands

This is a quilt top I made well over a year ago. I made it during Hurricane Sandy. Expecting our electricity to go out at any moment, I decided I would just keep busy sewing until it did. Well, it never did (we were lucky) so I was able to get a hefty chunk of sewing done during the storm.

This kind of patchwork is a deeply satisfying sort - once I had decided on pink and brown, all the thinking it required of me was over. I find myself returning to this style of quilt-making whenever I am feeling sad or lost or frustrated. It is pleasantly distracting to sit and sort through my bins of scraps, to piece together similar lengths, to sew up chunky bits and then piece those together - it's not unlike doing a jigsaw puzzle.

I was tempted to begin another one this evening but resisted. It's a way of working that is maybe a little too easy (maybe a crutch?). I want to start something new and challenging, something that I could possibly submit to this year's QuiltCon. But I'm also currently smarting from a gigantic fight I had with a friend earlier today, and I find I can't concentrate on much challenging.

Which is also why, of course, I want so much to be sewing something mindlessly right now - I want the distraction and feel of productivity that comes with keeping your hands busy.
Sigh.