"Shelter from the Storm: King of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Shelter from the Storm: King of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2016. 60"h x 86.5"w. inventory #486. Peace Cozy #66.
Began 11-19-15. Finished 1-9-16. Many large detail images follow this long artist's statement.
Materials: White kona cotton, airbrush paint, fabric paint, Aurifil cotton machine thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread, one Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Various commercial batiks and prints in backing/border, including some original Lunn Fabrics batiks.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Black line drawing and color areas painted with Aztek double action airbrush. Small, black writing and drawing lines made with Silkpaint.com’s Airpen, using black fabric paint. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching with perle cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
Statement: When I heard that some people don't trust Muslim Americans now and that some extreme reactionaries want to even ban Muslim refugees from coming to the US, to live here or even to visit here, I decided to make a piece about the situation, about the Syrian refugees of the Civil War going on in Syria since 2011, and about my own feelings on this and how America is historically a refuge for assylum seekers from all over the world. I know we got very un-generous during WW2, putting our own Japanese American citizens into detention camps and taking in very, very few Jewish refugees from Europe. Sinc then we've been semi-ungenerous about giving shelter to refugees, but never this angry and hateful about a whole religious group. So here is my piece. In my Kitchen Tarot project, this is the King of Wooden Spoons (wands), and I decided that is President Obama, who truly wants to support bringing well-vetted refugees assylum here. Wands are the fiery energy of creativity and moving ahead with bravery. Obama, as our President, is definitely the leader figure represented by this card.
I began making sketches on Nov 19, chose the Tarot card at random on Nov 20, and by the 23rd, I was painting with my airbrush on a huge piece of white cotton cloth up on my painting wall. In my composition, the Statue of Liberty is at the center of this wide piece, holding up her torch and looking at a huge flock of bluebirds, who are flying in from the right side of the piece. The birds are arching over the US Capitol (whose dome I call The American Pie) and flying into a big open door, which President Obama is in front of. He is greeting those lovely birds, who symbolize the Syrian refugees, over 4 million of whom are trying to find homes now. A group of refugees and Latino immigrants stand and sit in front of the Capitol, while my family and I stand behind the Statue of Liberty.
You can read Emma Lazarus' sonnet that's on a plaque inside the base of the Statue, as it's written here on her skirt. Under President Obama is a huge Melting Pot, which I put there to remind us that all of us, except the Native Americans, came here from other countries at some time in our history. The big door that Obama stands in is the Golden Door in the Statue of Liberty's poem. This is all my way of saying that we need to open our country as a safe home space for the refugees, and for immigrants who are living here now, whom our government might make leave.
Shelter from the Storm is the main title of this piece, and it's also a Bob Dylan song title. Give Me Shelter, or Gimme Shelter, is a Rolling Stones song, and both of these titles are written on the Capitol here. So here are some of the process dates and diary entries I put into this piece, when I was writing on it with my airpen, using black fabric paint, pushed with a little air, through a syringe and a small surgical needle (the airpen.):
From 11-22 to 29, over Thanksgiving and Jimmy's 62nd birthday the same day - Nov 26 - I was airbrush painting this piece, heatsetting it on 11-29. On 11-30 I started airpen writing:
11-28 and 29: Climate Change marches around the world, documented by 350.org, the huge Climate advocacy group.785,000 marchers around the world, in 2,300+ events in two days, in over 175 countries!
11-30: Today the Paris Climate Change talks begin. The COP21 (Conference of the Parties - of the Kyoto Protocol of 1992, 21st meeting) has almost 200 countries represented. The huge Climate March has been outlawed, because of the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov 13. The goal of the meeting is to figure out an agreement on whether to keep global warming under 2ºC over world temps before industrialization. We are at just under 1ºC rise now. This must be done by controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Can we agree?
12-2: On my Golden Door (the big open door in this painting) I wrote the names of all the countries who have taken in Syrian refugees since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, and how many they've allowed to gain assylum in these countries. These statistics filled the whole door and its big opening.
12-3: A mass killing of 14 people and serious wounding of 21 more, happened in San Bernadino, CA, at a county employees' holiday party, when one of the employees and his wife came with guns and attacked the party. The husband, Syed Farook, 28, born in the US, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, a Pakistani, who came to the US on a fiance visa and married Farook, both were killed by police later in a shootout. Much later it was discovered that they had met online, supporting each other's beliefs in jihad against the US, so they were militant Muslims. This incident, on top of the Paris terrorist attacks on Nov 13, created a firestorm of hatred of Muslims in our country, with 27 governors pledging to refuse to allow resettled Syrian refugees into their states. Some republican presidential candidates also railed against Muslims being resettled here.
12-7-15: Great news: President Jimmy Carter announced today that the stage 4 brain cancer he was diagnosed with in August is now all gone. Just amazing, and done with immune-system strengthening, not with chemo and radiation. Yesterday was Eva's Nutcracker Jazzed Up performance at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood, OH, and she was a swirling wind in gray ballet costume. I drew 19 double pages in a small sketchbook, very gestural works, sitting in the front row of the auditorium, and I was able to really enjoy the performance, seeing it so closely, thanks to my daughter Gretchen pouncing on those front row tickets for us! It came out that the woman killer in San Bernadino last week, had pledged allegiance to ISOL, the Islamic State, the very harsh terrorist group that came out of the Syrian Civil War and is very, very anti-West. She did this right before she and her husband murdered all those people in San Bernadino. Today is my 3rd and final post-op exam by Dr Kilmo at Omni Orthopaedic in N Canton. I showed him this big painting in progress, with Jimmy helping me hold it up in the little examination room. Big thanks to Dr Klimo and his staff, and to Mary Gentry and the friendly staff at Health Point here in town, where I take my hand therapy.
12-3: Bomb threast shut down The College of Wooster here in town yesterday, putting us on the national news, I hear. Today Donald Trump says that he won't let ANY Muslims into the US, if he becomes our President. I say if Jesus were here today, he'd vote for Bernie Sanders and love Pope Francis, because both of them are really working to help the poor.
12-9-15: Germany's President Angela Merkel is TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. I wrote a lot of her story from the BBC news website, on my piece today.
12-12: President Obama spoke at the Capitol, about the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, which freed the slaves on Dec 6, 1865, 150 years ago. I wrote on Obama's face, about how 196 countries signed the Paris Climate Accord today, after they had to extend the meetings a day or two, to get something they could all agree on. Now to get it enforced!
12-13: I wrote about the US as a big melting pot, and that we need to keep it this wonderful and rich mix of cultures and religions, etc.
12-14: It's the 3rd anniversary of the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. 20 first graders, 6 teachers, and the shooter's mother were all killed by a mentally ill young man, who then killed himself. No improvements in US gun laws have taken place in those 3 years.
12-16: New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees on Dec 10. My student Fern and her sister Susan visited us, while they were in town, doing business with horses and the Amish yesterday.
12-17: On the US Capitol pillars I wrote about Berlin turning an old Stasi Secret Police building into temporary living spaces for 500-900 Syrian refugees, letting them stay there for 3 months each. On Dec 10, Larycia Hawkins, a prof at Wheaton College in Illinois, got suspended today, for telling her students that Christians and Musims worship the same god. She also started wearing a hijab in solidarity with Muslim women, even though she is herself a Christian. I had this idea earlier that month and told some girlfriends we could all help the Muslim women by doing that, to shelter them. (I haven't done it yet though, and Larycia has!) (I heard today, Jan 12, that Larycia may be dismissed at Wheaton. I hope she gets a better job at a school where she is respected.)
12-22: Mohamed (Nazim) Nasheed, President of the Maldives, 2008-2012, is 48 years old and a real champion for healing the climate. His country is going underwater the fastest of any country in the world, and he's in prison, because a military coup framed him and jailed him for 13 years. Therefore he was unable to attend the Paris Climate talks, and therefore, they had to muddle through without this charismatic leader, who really was getting a lot of sympathy for stopping Climate Change, in earlier Climate meetings he attended. His sentence would keep him in prison until March, 2028!!! Sandra Bland died in jail in Texas, after being arrested for changing lanes without signaling, and after being attacked by her police arresting officer. Her death was called a suicide by hanging. She was a VERY active Black Lives Matter advocate, and she was on her way to a new job in Texas at her college alma mater. Now a police investigation found everyone innocent of her death in the Waller County Jail. How long will this kind of police brutality go on in our country? How can anyone expect black people to trust white poiice anymore??
12-30: Eva helped me start layering my cloth painting, heatset and with more room to write on it. I had made the backing layer of many fabrics before Eva came to stay with us, so we layered that and the batting and the painting, and it made the work much easier with her help! Thank you, Eva.
12-31: I began qiulting and listening to "All the Light We Cannot See," by Anthony Doerr, and I love this book!!!
1-7-16: Happy New Year! I'm now listening to "Big Magic," by Elizabeth Gilbert, recommended to me by my cousin Tony Snyder. Thanks, Tony! I agree totally with her attitudes about making art!!!!. I'm done quilting and am sewing the casing together now, and have sewn Peace Cozy #66 onto the hijab of one of the refugees at the Capitol on the front of my piece. I pulled a paper fortune for this art quilt, and have written it on the Melting Pot: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." I really like this onem and it's the fortune Eva got, when we had Chinese food, when we took her hoome on Dec 30. On the borders of the quilt, I've been writing about Obama and his executive orders on gun control, finally! And about the book I'm reading.
1-8: I'm still writing on the borders. I put some of my New Year's Resolutions on the right side border. i gave NYRs as my Assignment #1 for my Lucky Drawing 109 class, so I've got to get mine figured out and drawn this week, too. 570,000 UK people have signed a petition to Parliament, to ban Donald Trump from entering the UK, but now he's threatened to not spend $2B on improving his two resorts in Scotland, if they ban him. You'd think he'd care about making so many people so angry at him. I made a dedication on this quilt, by my signature: "To all people and the world, to forgive and help and be our brother and sister's keepers and to listen to Pope Francis and Obama and other wise people. Love is all there is." The US has taken only 2,184 Syrian refugees in since 2011. Obama plans to take in 10,000 more this year, but 27 governors say they won't accept them into their states. This includes Ohio, my state. I wrote on President Obama's shoulders and shirt here, about his life.
1-9-16: I wrote on Obama's head, just before doing my photo shoot: "My Fave President." And I had to heat set that, after the long photo shoot! We took this piece and 2 others to the art center today, for the WAGE (Wayne Artists Group Effort) exhibition "Storms" that will open on Jan 15 and end on Feb 13, 2016.
You can view my album about this piece in progress about this artwork, on Facebook, And there's another album there,of it as a finished piece.
Many thanks for actually reading all this way! There are a lot of detail shots below here, so keep scrolling down!
Susan Shie, Wooster, Ohio, 1-12-16
If you are interested in studying with me, please check out my Turtle Art Camps, which I teach here at my home and studios, as well as my online drawing classes, my private art lessons in my home, and the classes that I teach around the US and sometimes in other countries, as all are listed on the main page of my website, Turtle Moon Studios
Read all about my Turtle Art Camp - how it works for your weeklong artmaking experience here in Wooster, Ohio, and see the changes I've made to the agenda. I have many large photos on the page, to show what's going on at this biosphere-like art experience. The emphasis in this adult students' art camp is on drawing and painting, whether you choose to work on cloth or paper, or both, or even on stretched canvas. And you don't even have to try my airpen and airbrush, or my sewing techniques, if you don't want to. If you want to study my personal painting and quilting processes, which I've taught consistently here, I have a full lesson plan for the week. So you can go by that plan or do more of your own thing, with my guidance. I want my art camp to help you become more open to letting your art flow out, in whatever medium you want it to be in. I have even had students over the years who are mainly writers, not visual artists. I started my Turtle Art Camps in 1994 and they're going strong. See my 2016 TAC schedule on the main page ot Turtle Moon, along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class enrollment info.
Many thanks, Lucky / Susam
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Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
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