"ImPEACHment Polka: 7 of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
Above: "ImPEACHment Polka: 7 of Wooden Spoons
(wands) in the Kitchen Tarot." full view ©Susan Shie 2020." 59"h x
61"w. Inventory #515. Peace Cozy #80. Made
from 12-20-19 through 2-11-20.
"ImPEACHment Polka: 7 of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2020. 59"h x 61"w. inventory #515. Peace Cozy #80.
Begun 12-20-19. Finished 2-11-20. Large detail images follow the artist's statement below.
I am a social activist painter and fiber artist.
I airbrush whole cloth works which I then sew. My artwork and writing
are all spontaneous first drafts on the cloth. This soft painting is
about things going on in our country and the world and my town in the
Fall of 2019.
Statement:
In my last art quilt, "Greta and Nancy," the House of Representatives began holding their Impeachment hearing, while the world protests of Climate Change were growing exponentially.Now, this new art quilt includes the Senate Impeachment hearing, choosing in the end to acquit the President of the two Articles of Impeachment: Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. Still, like Andrew Jackson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999, Trump has become the third President ever to be impeached. (Nixon resigned, thus avoiding being impeached by the House. He knew his Democrats-led Senate would convict him.)
Standing out against the negative energy of the president's behavior, as he crashes down our House of Liberty all around us, is the Global Citizen Prize, a first-time ever program held on Dec 15, 2019, in which five people were given awards for their service to humanity, especially in working to end poverty. I saw a rebroadcast on New Year's Eve, 2019, of the mid-December program at Albert Hall, in London. I put two of those Prize winners into my quilt here: Amina J Mohammed and Hamdi Yulukaya. She is the Deputy Secretary General of the UN, awarded for her strong work against poverty, following in the footsteps of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who in retirement, started a world group to eradicate hunger in the world. Yulukaya is the CEO and founder of Chobani Yogurt. He was given a Global Citizen Prize for his dedication in hiring both immigrants and refugees for his yogurt factories. He gave such a rousing speech to other business people, saying "A person stops being a refugee, the day they get a job." He was an immigrant to the US in the 1990s, coming from Turkey and eventually following a dream, buying an old yogurt factory and slowly growing it into the leading yogurt company it is today. Oh, and his workers own the business with him.
So beside Hamdi Yulukaya is Linda Ronstadt, because of her defiance of the president and his administration. Read her skirt on my quilt, if you missed her confrontation with Sec. of State Mike Pompeo this year. And beside Amina Mohammed, I added Annie Leonard, the creator of The Story of Stuff Project, against the wasteful lifestyle that has filled our world with plastic and other chemicals. Leonard is the current Director of Greenpeace USA, working hard to fight Climate Change and solve the problems of plastic poisoning of our planet.
I even drew the 50 foot long beached whale, made of ocean-harvested plastic, that Greenpeace made and installed near Manila, the Philippines.
On the far right is Nancy Pelosi, as the Statue of Liberty, clutching the two Articles of Impeachment, that were hand carried from the House to the Senate, for the start of the Senate Impeachment trial of Donald Trump, from mid January to Feb 5, 2020. In the lower background of this piece, I wrote about what happened in the Senate trial, which the Republican majority decided would have NO witnesses or new documents as evidence against the President. In the end, the Senate voted to acquit the President, with only one Republican voting against that. But he made history, as the first senator ever to vote against his party's President in an impeachment.
At the bottom of this painting sits St Quilta the Comforter, a goddess I created in 1997, as an image of my mother Marie Shie: gentle, patient, considerate, kind, slow to anger, but strong and powerful. I want to be more and more like my mother!
She sits between the 7 red spoons of the tarot card this piece represents: the 7 of Wooden Spoons, my version of the Tarot suit of Wands. Sevens in Tarot are spiritual, and Wands are the life force, our creative energy. It’s going to take a lot of righteous creative energy to keep the world from falling apart now, now that the Republicans in the Senate and Trump’s lawyers have said a President can do anything he wants to do, as long as he thinks it's for the good of the country.
And once that trial was over, he began a victory purge, punishing those who had crossed him in the impeachment. There is seemingly nothing to hold him back now. But we know that the pendulum of history swings back and forth, and it's definitely gone too far this time.
I put the President into this piece, as his Baby Trump Balloon, which flies over events in my quilts now and then. This time he's in a big bubble of his ImPEACHment, which he cannot escape. He is acquitted, like Johnson and Clinton: all three were impeached, and remain so.
When it was time to decide where to place my Peace Cozy for this quilt, when everything else about it was done, I gave in and put it on the Peach, next to Trump. He is part of God, I believe, like all the rest of us are. I feel like we have to send him a LOT of Peace, so he can come out of his incredibly insatiable greed for power and money and control of everything. We can send him Love, for his healing, but we MUST NOT accept his behavior, and we must not reelect him!!!!!!
Now it’s time to start working on my next art quilt, about Hilary Clinton's run for President in 2016, and how my granddaughter Eva saw her speaking in Cleveland, 2 days before that highly tampered-with election. This is for one of the 100-year celebration quilt projects of the suffragettes winning women's right to vote. How we wish that Hillary had become President. We would be leading the fight against Climate Change in the world, and making great strides in saving our planet. We'd have solved so many big social problems, and there wouldn't be all those prisons for Hispanic immigrants in our country, at all. And the fossil fuel industry would be well on its way out, as green energy would be taking over the planet. Species would be honored and saved, including humans.
After I make some drawings for a quilt, I put my sketches away and draw freehand with my airbrush, changing the composition and images as I go. I then color the whole-cloth piece, also with airbrush, then write on it mostly with airbrush, but also with some paint markers. I sew mostly by machine.
My way of creating my art quilts has shifted in the last two years, from a wide, panoramic format, to a smaller, square one, roughly 60 by 60 inches. And instead of creating a LOT of very tiny cursive-writing stories on each quilt, using airpen and black fabric paint, I've now switched to using my airbrush and some paint markers to write larger words, which I think are more likely to be read by the viewer! These changes are helping me take care of both of my wrists, damaged by two broken arm accidents in the last 5 years. And the great news is that I really LOVE working in this smaller format, with larger writing!
- Susan Shie, Wooster, Ohio, 2-12-20
Finally put into my website on 7-23-21
Please keep scrolling down this page now, to see all the detail pix, where it's easier to read my stories, in the close-ups of this piece "ImPEACHment Polka: 7 of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot." Thanks!
Visit my Facebook album of making this piece.
It includes lots of sketches, pix of me drawing with the airbrush and
coloring with it, then sewing, and finally, the finished quilt.
If you want to take a Lucky Drawing online class with me, you can find the information on my website or my Susan Shie Turtle Moon Studios Facebook page. I teach 4-week sessions with 12 day breaks in between them. Most of my students consider my class to be like taking a yoga class: You just keep going with the group. You can find info about my next online freehand drawing classes on my Turtle Moon Studios front page.
In all the classes I teach, I am only teaching freehand, intuitive drawing and painting on paper now, using a format very much like my online Lucky Drawing classes. I continue to make my art quilts, but no longer teach those processes. You can learn quilting from others. I teach how to open up and express yourself as an adult who draws. I work to convince you that there are no art rules, no right and wrong. When you knew that instinctively as a small child, you happily drew and painted wonderful things on paper. That innocence is healing, is un-stressing, and is about impossible to find in our adult world. We can get it back, while we draw freehand together, with curiosity, eagerness, and joy.
Drawing is one of our natural skills, and we each deserve to reclaim it. Like singing and dancing, like making up poetry without rules or jazz that just improvises, freehand drawing is easy, and it feels good. So, that's what I teach now. And I will convince you to let go of your adult-self's ideas of right and wrong. I've found that there's no place for that stuff in real creativity.
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 camp agenda. I have many large photos on the Turtle Art Camp page, to show what goes on at this biosphere-like art experience. The emphasis in this adult students' art camp is on freehand, intuitive drawing and painting in large, hardbound sketchbooks now, because I’ve figured out that with these processes, everyone can relax and focus on expressing herself. I want my art camp to help you become more open to letting your art flow out later, in whatever medium you want it to be in.
I started my Turtle Art Camps in my home in 1994 and they continue, though they stopped for the Pandemic and have not restarted yet, in 2021. See my Turtle Art Camp schedule on the main page of Turtle Moon Studios, along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class description and enrollment info.
Detail pix of "ImPEACHment Polka: 7 of Wooden Spoons (wands) in the Kitchen Tarot":
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