Exploration has been a core theme in my art, especially when it comes to exploring the outside world and all it has to offer in inspiring my next creation.  Since I have been in school, exploration is taking me to look on creating art through the lens of technique, feelings, storyline and imagination.

As I shared in my last newsletter, I decided to go to school for a semester to take a fiber course.  I choose to do this because it was an opportunity to explore art in a deeper way, and it was a great opportunity not to be missed, since Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is ten minutes from my home, and they have a great textile program.

It is going on two months since I been in school, and the first project has been to learn how to create Shibori fabrics using indigo dyes, and rusted fabrics using rust dying.  I had never created Shibori fabrics before, but I had played around with rust dying.  I learned to put these two very different techniques to make a cohesive project representing both a non-objective (abstract art) and objective art (representational art.)  The pictures below are the projects I accomplished with the fabrics I created.

Non Objective Shibori and Rust Dying Art

Objective Shibori and Rust Dying Art

Exploring different ways to create art is a wonderful challenge, and it allows me to expand how I see through my inner lens of thought, feelings and imagination. This exploration is about an internal way of seeing, and so different from actually seeing an object and then creating it.  It it’s about using my artistic tools to describe what I see and feel internally, and bringing it into reality through art.

As I explore seeing both inward and outward, the challenge was to bring them together to create art that represents both what I see and what I imagined, and in trying, I created “A Place to Ponder” (the featured art above.) I began with a visual picture of a row boat in a dock, and then I imagined the rest of the landscape, lake, trees and a horizon of abstract trees.   This is the beauty of what is possible as you go deep into exploration.