Once all the stitching on the twenty quilt blocks for Sue's Environmental To Do List were finished, it was time to turn my attention to the heart of my art residency proposal: to fashion a creative clothesline from vintage and found materials that focuses on the benefits of line drying, conserving household energy, and doing things (like using a clothesline!) BY HAND.
Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure how this project was going to work. I only had a "foggy vision" for the way it might look, but I knew I would need at least two tubs of vintage fabric. I don't always know what is inside these tubs. There's no real organization to them. The contents came from thrift stores, yard sales, Bill Mishoe's auction, and from generous friends. So first, I sorted the stuff into piles in the residency duplex's living room. Having space for such a task is one of the top reasons I seek out residency opportunities. Like most artists, I've already filled almost all the available space in my home and studio! It was fun to spread out and really look at what I brought.
I also knew that my concept included the visual use of a fabric hand print on the vintage linens. Hands automatically symbolize a sense of touch, an act of doing, and the suggestion of "hand made/hand done." So, I ironed Wonder Under, a heat activated adhesive, to the reverse of several pieces of fabric including some 1950s-60s era plaid picnic clothes. I traced my hand on the adhesive's facing paper and cut along the outline.
I cut just a few hand prints out and used them on five items. These are the five pieces in this blog post's top image. I zigzag stitched around each hand print and hung the five on my inside clothesline. I liked what I saw! Thank goodness! I now consider these five "the prototypes" for The Clothesline. What will come won't be different. Yet, it was important to make these first ones in order to figure out how to proceed.
As soon as these five pieces were hanging, the "fog" in my former vision began to lift. I formed an action place! First, I counted the pillowcases I once legally salvaged from the former South Carolina State Mental Hospital's laundry building. Including the one in the prototypes, there is a total of sixty-one. The pillowcase in the group of prototypes used four hand prints, two on each side.
It doesn't take higher mathematics to realize that sixty pillowcases, each with four fabric hand prints, will require a total of 240! That's a lot of fusing and cutting. I fused lengths of Wonder Under onto several pieces of found fabric. Carefully, I pulled up half the facing paper and inserted some of the facing-paper hand prints cut for the prototypes. I then pulled up the other side, inserted more hand prints, and ironed the top facing paper back down. Then, I cut the fabric around the hand prints.
The more I fused and cut, the more facing-paper hand prints came into existence. For a moment, I thought about how I might use all these pieces. Then reality hit! I can't use EVERYTHING ...
... especially when I also ended up with a large bowl of fabric cut away from the fabric hand prints. All this fabric has Wonder Under ironed to the reverse. I threw out the facing-paper hand prints and am trying to figure out something to do with these scraps.
By the end of the weekend, I had all these fabric hand prints cut and ready to be used. I've started in earnest and will update the progress of this installation soon! Check back!
Now as much ironing and fusing as I've been doing, one might think I've done little else ... but that is hardly the case! Recently I toured Edwards Place ... which is part of the Springfield Arts Association and has been since 1913. This mansion was once the home of attorney Benjamin Edwards, youngest son of Governor Ninian Edwards and brother-in-law of Mary Lincoln’s sister Elizabeth. In 1913 Alice Edwards Ferguson was approached by members of the Springfield Amateur Art Study Club for permission to rent rooms in Edwards Place as meeting place but she surprised them by offering to donate the entire house to serve as meeting, gallery, and classroom space.
I didn't have to go far! The residency duplex is on the grounds. My van is literally parked beside a brick wall that extends from the Springfield Arts Association office. Edwards Place was used as an art gallery until 1937. Art classes were being held in the upstairs bedrooms as late as the 1960s. Today Edwards Place is a historic house museum interpreting the social and domestic life of Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois. A full-scale restoration in 2014-2105 restored the first floor and much of the second floor to its c. 1857 appearance. So ... below are some of the photos I took while touring the mansion. It is a wonderful place!
As much as I love the rooms, I often find myself focusing on the small details!
Upstairs. Several of the rooms include places or patches of original wallpaper or, in this case, the painted plaster.
This is a view to through the second floor's ceiling skylight.