Remember this grim view of my new studio, upon moving in to the new house?

In the beginning, it was dark and yucky. At least the wall separating the (!!!! in a basement?) dark brown room from the white room is down in this photo.

It was at least an improvement from this, before the wall went down:

My studio. Ahem. Clearly, this is the "before" picture. The camera flash makes the room appear much brighter than it actually was. Erg.

By late March, things were improving.  The wall was down, the lights were IN…nine 2-bulb fixtures with maximum lumens (the amount of light—-aging eyes  always want MORE) with daylight colored bulbs.

French doors went in... this is before they were painted so the primer is covering up the plastic that is covering up the glass in the center of the doors. Not only do the doors keep the cats for shedding and urping on stuff -- and the dog from leaving "presents"--but closing the doors helps funnel the heat from the woodstove in the center of the basement up the stairs to the main part of the house.

Those towels you see are wet — to help lift the HORRID paint on the old floors.  I think the previous owners used some leftover wall latex on the floor, and clearly you needed a different paint formula for it to adhere to the floor.  If you got water on it, it turned to paint-mush-muck-mud-soup.  Mostly.  Then there were the stuck on bits that would mostly (but not all) come up if you got down on your knees (on the COLD cement floor) and scraped with a metal flat-edged scraper.  Oh whee.  Having fun are we?

This is painting the part of the room that had been white and was the previous owner's son's painting studio. WIth that jade/aqua on the floor--with many assorted drips and drops of other colors of unkown paints..

And painted:

one half done....waiting for the paint to cure up hard so I can move the furniture to the other side and paint the second half.

You’ll notice the number of boxes is down, the amount of stuff hither and yon is up……

The other half of the room while the first half is painted. That wall on the left will end up being a closet. We will have hanging doors upholstered into design walls to cover up all that visual clutter. And notice...the TV works--the DirecTV is hooked up!

THIS is why you always want to schlep a camera with you….. was heading from Hope to Camden to pick up the teenager at his girlfriend’s.  This is what I saw as I went down the driveway:

And this slightly zoomed view:

Then, as I went down the last hill on Route 105 into Camden, the most enormous moon I’ve ever seen (even larger than that huge one a month or two ago) loomed up over a rooftop.  I promptly called the teen and said I would be a couple minutes late, I needed to drive down to the harbor and take some pics….here’s the best of the bunch:

And going back UP the driveway at home, this breathtaking moon and clouds!  Be still my beating heart!  How did I get to be so lucky as to live here?

Just pictures today, to show that spring really IS coming to Maine, despite the fact that snow is on the ground on April 13 (but melting!!!!).

At the bottom of the driveway this tree has silvery fuzzy buds (no, not a willow)

Catkins from last fall still hang, but the knobby bits are swelling

Near the "elbow" in the driveway are six large shrubs of pussy willows. Must cut some to bring in to the house! Daddy always had a vase of pussy willows (dried) in a vase on the old phonograph

On the eastern side of the propery, this tree is looking crunchy...yes! Don't you just love the delicate tracery in the twigs and branches?

This tree is trying so hard to flush into green....soon! by mid-May we'll be about halfway leafed out.

As I promised on Friday, more pictures!   A while back, Kris C. asked in a comment for more detail photos in general…of  course we ALL want more pictures, so here you go–ask and it shall be given!  And I’ll try to include more close-ups in the future.

Here's the overall quilt

The detail photos are large–you should (in theory) be able to click on them to see them a bit larger and therefore see more of the quilting.  All of the color on this quilt comes from either the cloth or the thread–no paint or pencils on this one!

Clothed in Color, detail 1

and another:

Clothed in Color, Detail 2

And a few more…these are cropped sections so I’m not sure how well they will display on the internet at internet resolution….

This feather is in the background to the left of the figure. Thanks to Photoshop Elements I lightened the color a bit so you can better (I hope) see the stitching. The background quilting is a checkerboard in some areas (you can still see the chalk mark guidelines) and freeform small vine in others.

Another feather in the border, along with words facing both forwards and backwards. The words include the things that are the good and the not so good that make me the one caught in the space between: mother, daughter, wife, quilter, tired, artist....

And a close up of the hand:

Hand by the shoulder in yellow, orange and green

Once again, great comments from my readers lead me to add a PS:

Kris…believe it or not, the “nested “V” is really easy…..  think of it as free-motion multi-stitch zigzags…..   I’ll do a row or two of nested Vs in one color on the edge of the arm (darkest), ditto on the opposite side in the next-to-lightest (or whatever color is suitable for the way the light falls).

For example, on the arm I’ll use maybe 4 or 5 colors….depends on the value (light-light medium-medium-medium dark-darkest tones) on that part of the arm.  The trick is learning to see what is there and then break it down into colors.

Sometimes, I use my thread stash as a guide.  If I have four colors that blend well but not five, then the color shift must be done in four colors.  You’d think with the gazillion threads I’ve got I’d have plenty, but when you really start sorting out tones, it’s amazing what you DON’T have LOL!  I’ll sometimes alternate a row or three of two colors to try to blend it, letting the eye “moosh” the colors into a seemingly smooth transition.

I can’t recommend “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards highly enough, or a drawing class in general.  Learning to actually SEE what is there, as opposed to what you think is there, is wonderful.  Also fiddling around with the filters in Photoshop Elements (just the cheapie version is unbelievably robust) can teach you to figure out where the lights, mediums, darks and deepest darks are.   I was surprised when in a drawing class 20 years ago someone said the darkest part of the face is the line between the lips.  It actually is, but I’d never noticed, and now I believe nostrils aren’t far behind!

Thanks to all who take the time to comment on my blog… I learn so much from all of you and your questions and comments!

Once again I have been fortunate to be invited to submit a piece for a show curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison and even luckier to be included in “The Space Between.”  You can read more about the show itself here, at their Dinner at 8 blog.  I’m in some rather heady company, so thrilled that my quilt, Clothed in Color, made it in! The show will debut at the International Quilt Festival held this summer in Long Beach, then we hope it will travel to Houston as did its predecessor, Beneath the Surface.

Clothed in Color, 36x48 inches

Jamie and Leslie have asked each of the participants to answer a set of questions, and I have LOVED reading the responses, here.  I encourage you to go visit the Dinner at 8 blog and see how our answers are similar and different—when I read my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp’s I had to write and tell her I had NOT read hers before I wrote and submitted mine!  We’re like twins separated by geography!  Anyway….here are  the questions and answers.

1.  What do you call yourself – art wise?

Quilter.  Art quilter.  Textile artist.  Interrupted by life!

2.  How do you jump start your creativity when you are in a slump?

Don’t know that I’ve had a slump per se.  Usually I am just too busy with life interfering with art or too tired.  That means I have a surplus of ideas and never enough time, so I just pick whatever quilt is hollering most loudly inside my head and let that one out next.

3.  If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do with your art?

Make more!   Give some of it away… I would love to do a “quilt mural” project for the local middle school (first panel is done), the continuation of “Be Inspired, No. 1” into a series of six quilts with people and places from around the world.

4.  Do you keep a sketchbook, journal, etc.?

Yes.  I’m not as diligent as I would like—it’s that lack of time thing.  But I have learned how useful they can be, am constantly inspired by my friend Kathy Daniels’ journals, so am trying to develop my own better “noodling around” habits.

5.  Where can people see your other work this year?  shows, books, magazines, etc

My book (ThreadWork Unraveled), my blog (www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog) and website, in my classes, the 2010-11 Quilting Arts Gifts issue, and whatever shows I get in (as long as I remember to apply in time).

6.  Do you teach?  where?

Have paycheck will travel–yes, I definitely teach!  I prefer to teach places where I don’t have to fly—detest airports–will gladly drive 2-3 days each way instead!  But I’ve been all over, and would love to go more places even if it involves an airplane.  Australia or Hawaii anyone?  My current bookings are on my website at https://www.sarahannsmith.com/schedule.php.

7.  Is there a particular artist who had influenced you in your art life? and why?

Vincent Van Gogh:  COLOR!
Henri Matisse:  exuberance and line
Auguste Rodin:  passion and form
The artisans of the Sutton Hoo burial grounds (UK–in the British Museum): design and ornament
Edward Steichen:  The Family of Man book/exhibit; grew up poring over the photographs and still do
The 8th grade neighbor girl who made the apron for my Barbie when I was 6–that got me started with sewing!

8. Where or what show do you hope your work will be in someday?

IQA-Houston, again I hope…
And if I ever make work I think suitable, Visions and Quilts=Art=Quilts, or if I can afford shipping the UK’s Festival of quilts and the Tokyo show.

9.  Describe your studio workspace

In progress.  We moved in February 2011, so at the moment most of the boxes are unpacked, but I still need to paint the floor (I have a large semi-unfinished space in the basement) and get some closet doors made before I can really settle in.  Despite only having four small windows near the ceiling joists (space is semi-finished, we spray painted the joists and under-floor white so it would look more ceiling-like), I installed good lights with daylight bulbs so it is bright and cheery.  I’ll have a 22 foot closet made by putting up design-wall-panels-as-sliding-doors on one wall for the detritus of art and teaching (file cabinet, teaching items, books for sale, art supplies and stored quilts  inside–don’t like working with too much visual clutter).  I hope to have a reading area, and my beloved Hoosier will be my desk.  I may even get to add a sit-down mid-arm machine this year….

10.  What 3 tools could you not live without?

MistyFuse.  Is MF a tool?
My Janome 7700 sewing machine.
Digital camera!
[and if they had allowed a fourth, my computer…my lifeline to the art quilty world and friends!]

11.  What drives you to make the work that you do?

I can’t NOT make my quilts–it would be like asking me to stop loving my kids and hubby or do without oxygen.  Just can’t be done!  I love to make things with my hands…to make something from inside my head become real.  There are so many things I want to learn how to do in terms of creating the image, both conceiving it and then physically making it.

12.  How do you balance your life?

Balance?  does *any*one have balance? (Picture Sarah ready to teeter off a rope while tossing a thousand items up in the air.)  I seem to lurch from one urgent thing to another, hoping I haven’t forgotten something important.  I know the insanity will slow down eventually, but right now I just try to make sure the family gets everything they need, and that I can still make enough art to keep myself sane!

I look forward to seeing all the quilts in the exhibit and reading all the artist interviews!  Well done, Jamie and Leslie and artists!

P.S.:  Since this post is long, I’ll do another tomorrow with some detail shots of the quilting.