"JoeMala: 8 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"JoeMala: 8 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
copyright Susan Shie 2021. 59"h x 61"w. inventory #520. Peace Cozy #84.
Began 12-10-20. Finished 2-13-21.
Many 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 piece is about
our new President Biden and Vice President Harris, the 2020 Election, the attempted
coup, the Inauguration, and a bit of the Impeachment #2, and the
Coronavirus Pandemic.
Materials:
white kona-like cotton from Test Fabrics, airbrush paint, fabric paint, Posca paint markers, 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. Lunn
Fabrics handmade batiks on backing and border.
Techniques:
Whole cloth painting. Black line freehand drawing and color areas painted with
Aztek double action airbrush and airbrush paint. Smaller writing done with Posca
paint markers, because my arms were both broken over time, and I no longer have the strength to
use my airpen. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching of perle
cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
My statement about this art quilt:
12-9-20: I pulled the Tarot card, the 8 of Cups for
this quilt's making. In my Kitchen Tarot
deck, that suit is Pyrex Cups, because I love my antique green glass Pyrex
measuring cups, both of which I bought at my friend Early's store, Uptown
Downtown, here in Wooster. These cups
remind me of growing up, working in the kitchen with my mother, who was the
best cook in the world! This card is about
letting go of something that just kept not working out, no matter how hard we
tried, and moving on, to something much better for us, in a completely new
direction. I chose the card,
mostly
because I'm nearing the end of this 1998-to-now Kitchen Tarot project of
78 "card quilts," and I had only 3 cards left in the suit of Cups, to
choose from. (I only have about 9 more card quilts to make!!) I was really shocked, when I set out to write
about this tarot card on the painting, because it spoke completely to me,
about the change from the last administration, which for me was four years of
negativity, selfishness, lies, cruelty, and abuse – to the amazing election
victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I had NOT known the meaning of this card, when I picked it, but I feel
it's the perfect energy to express that we're turning the country and maybe the
whole world around now, with a chance to reverse all that negativity, and save
the world yet from its path to eco-ruin, among many other forms of ruin we were
headed for!
12-10-20:
I made a lot of sketches, starting with
one of Kamala Harris as the SOL in an evening gown, Rachel Maddow flying over
us, me and the Queen of Spoons as mermaids, and just a head of Biden, in a tall
hat. The sketches soon included women
from liberal politics and 3 young women in my life: my granddaughter, niece,
and sine friends' granddaughter. In the end, I pretty much used the second
sketch's format, that includes a big path from the bottom left, up to the
top. HRC was in the sketch, but turned
into Deb Haaland, Biden's new Secretary of the Interior. I had a house or church on Harris' skirt in
the sketch, but that morphed into the Capitol, way before it got attacked
almost a month later. I chose to put the
three young girls in my life, as reps of the next generation to maybe go into
politics. And I chose Eleanor Roosevelt,
Shirley Chisholm, and Hillary Clinton to represent the older women in politics. Bella Abzug was a mermaid in one of the
sketches. But in the end, I put the Statue of Liberty in, as a mermaid, and she
does kinda look like Bella! I have to say that, after I made a lot of
drawings and went back to study sketch #2 for the actual painting, it was odd
to not be working from the very last sketch.
But that's how it was!
Next
I cut the fabric for the painting, and instead of drawing the picture like I'd
done for years, using my airbrush and black paint to draw, this time I made the
composition with my Panda Markers (Crayola Super Tips, children's water-based
markers.) This gave me time to think
harder about what would go where, and to change things a little, if I chose to. I decided to add some of the Biden Cabinet
women: Deb Haaland, Interior; Janet Yellen, Treasury; Susan Rice, Domestic
Policy. Above everyone, I put a woman flying over, with little wings, and her
hands reaching down to both Harris and Biden (who kept his tall hat, that I
soon realized was Abe Lincoln's stovepioe hat!)
The flying-over woman became Ida B. Wells, an early fighter for women
and blacks' rights, a lecturer, writer, and newspaper owner, and one of the
founders of the NAACP. I wanted to show
Wells giving her blessing to this new administration, so different from the
last one!
For
other objects in the piece, I added the White House, right under Biden and his
big hat; the Capitol in Harris's long skirt; the beautiful, pretty
hippie-looking Statue of Freedom, on top of the Capitol Dome), and that long
path up to Ida B. Wells flying over.
Under the White House I added Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in Queens, one of
the very first people in the US getting her Coronavirus shot, in New York on
Dec 14, 2020. The first vaccines went to
frontline workers, and then people in nursing homes, then teachers, and then
the elderly. We, who are 65 and older, are
still waiting, here in Ohio, to get our shots, tho some have gotten theirs. There's a terrible shortage of vaccines
available.
When
all the sketching in was in place, I used black paint in my airbrush to go over
the lines I liked and added others, where I wanted changes. I've never done it this way before, except in
my piece about Fearless Girl, 4 years earlier!
Next I heatset the black line paint drawing on the cloth and used the
airbrush again, to color the piece. Any
large writing on here is airbrush work, too.
All the smaller writing, which I really started much later, due to a really
huge online class I was teaching, that small writing is done with Posca opaque
acrylic paint markers. For many, many
years until now, I used my airpen with black fabric paint, to make very small
writing on my quilts' paintings. Later I
was trying to do all the big and small writing with my airbrush, but that is
really hard to do small and can be fuzzy at times.
The Posca Markers are wonderful for writing on cloth, and even though
you still have to seriously heat set their lines, it's worth it. Having both
wrists be weakened by broken arm accidents in the past 5 years, I am done with
working with my airpen, which is very hard on your wrists, during the frequent,
required cleanings.
The
Posca paint markers help me make more clear lettering than I can get with my
airbrush, at smaller sizes of writing.
After
the wonderful, gigantic online drawing class was over on Feb 1, I seriously got
into the writing on this piece. The
other reason it took me so long to get started writing on it, was that I was
agonizing over how or whether to write about the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol
Building in DC! It was an attempted
coup, instigated by our last president, who never once admitted that he'd lost
the Nov 3 election, but instead, perpetually claimed that he'd won by a
landslide. Then he invited people from
all over the US, in violent militia and conspiracy-theory groups to come to DC on Jan 6, when the Senate would be
certifying the Electoral Votes, to make Biden's win of the election finalized.
He
led a very incendiary rally on the Ellipse of the National Mall that morning,
telling thousands of angry supporters to march to the Capitol and
fight to save his rightfully won re-election.
They went, chanting "Stop the Steal" and “
"Hang Mike Pence," (the VP was
in charge of the Electoral Votes certification.) They broke into
the
Capitol, beating many police, killing one that day, with a second dying
the next day, from his injuries. The mob tried to find
Congress, who had gone into secret hiding.
When Pence finally was able to call for the National Guard and other
police, the riot got under control, but most Congresspeople thought they were
going to die that day. Nothing
this violent has ever happened at the Capitol before, and within days, the
House of Representatives initiated the first Second Impeachment trial of any
sitting president. In days, they impeached T for a second time, but McConnell, leader of
the Senate until Biden took office, decided to hold off the Senate's trial for
conviction, until 2 weeks into Biden's new term.
In
the Impeachment #2 Senate hearing that just ended yesterday, on Feb 13, 2021, they
referred to the former president's constant insistence that he had won the
election, as the Big Lie. All those who attacked the Capitol really believe
that this man won by a landslide, though he lost by over 7 million popular
votes and the same exact Electoral College score that he himself had over Hillary
Clinton in 2016 (306 to 232.) Anyhow, I did finally start writing about it, and
about other things, too, like the Covid-19 Pandemic, also made worse by that
former president's insistence that it was just a hoax, and that we shouldn't
wear masks, etc. I wrote about other
current events, and about Ida B Wells' inspiring life. If Wells was living now, SHE would have been busy writing and
lecturing and publishing about this last few months in our country.
In
the end, we had a beautiful Inauguration on Jan 20, even though the hate
groups wanted to come back to the Capitol and slaughter the new administration.
Now there were 25,000 National Guardsmen keeping the peace, after the Jan 6
situation, in which a lot of work had been done to keep the Guard and other
reinforcements from coming to fight the mob at the Capitol. I can't remember if
I ever got around to writing about Amanda Gorman, the 22-year old poet laureat, who
wrote and recited the most glorious piece for the Inauguration! If I'd had any room left on this piece, I
would have added her to it! She
looked
like Tinkerbell, in her bright yellow suit, standing at the podium,
reciting "The Hill We Climb," and waving her hands in the air, clearly
casting a spell
over us all! She referenced the coup of
Jan 6 more than once, and clearly left us with the hope that good will prevail
in our country! But that we must stay
diligent and truthful, and protect our nation! I've done a drawing partly about her, and yet,
I think she needs to show up in a quilt yet!
Too bad I didn't think to add her to the back of this piece. Maybe later I can revise it!
I
may have written a bit about the historic Impeachment #r2 for the last
president, over his responsibility for the coup. He was acquitted by the
Senate, with 6 of his party voting with the 50 Democrats, to convict him, but
they needed a lot more Reps, to convict.
That decision was just yesterday, Feb 13, 2021, and I don't think I
mentioned more in the writing, than that the Senate trial was going on. I was
finished with this piece, when the decision came out.
I
included some song lyrics in this piece.
On Kamala Harris's hair and face, I wrote the first verse of the song "Get Together," by Chet Powers in 1966.
Also, on 7 of the 8 Pyrex Cups, I wrote the first verse of "Tea for the
Tillerman," that Cat Stevens/Jusuf Islam wrote and made famous. That song just came into my head, when I was
wondering what to write on the cups. "That happy day," referred to, at the end of the first verse, to me is
Biden's Inauguration! I still consider
it to be a huge miracle that he won, fair and square, and all of his opponent's
zealous efforts to force changes to keep himself in power, were all thwarted. May our beloved United States all come
together now, to make life better and better for everyone on this Earth and for
the Earth herself!
I've
been putting a haiku into each of my drawings and art quilts, and in this case,
it's in the hair of the three young girls: Eva, Savana, and Karlie. It says:
"Be
the world's keeper. (on Eva's hair)
Don't
let greed take us over. (on Savana's
hair)
We
the People CARE." (on Karlie's hair.)
2-14-21:
I flew like the wind to turn this painting into a quilt and get it to Lakeland
Community College in time for the "From Woman XIV" exhibition, curated and orchestrated
in every way by Mary Urbas, the long-time gallery director and curator there. I had many works in her very first From Woman
show and have shown annually since then at this exhibition.
Written
on 2-14-21. Happy Valentine's Day! May all of our hearts be full of love and
hope for the healing of the people from Covid-19, and for the healing of our
planet. May we all learn to
trust each
other and to always vote in leaders who will work hard to protect all
the
People of the whole world. May we all trust honest news services
and not believe manipulated, propaganda news sources, which is something
that's become a huge problem in our land and the world.
-- Susan
Shie, Wooster, Ohio written on 2-14-21. Finally posted here to my website on 12-9-21.
You can see an album of photos of me making this art quilt,
"JoeMala," that even includes the casual, freehand sketches I made for
it, before working on the large white cloth that became the painting,
then the quilt. It has a LOT of in-progress pix in it, including
lots of airbrush work I was doing.
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 in person, 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 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 1994 and they
continue, but have not taken place during the Covid-19 pandemic. Look
for my 2022 TAC schedule on the main page at Turtle Moon Studios, to see when I'm able to start the camps up again,
along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class description
and enrollment info. I've been able to keep teaching online all
through the pandemic, but I also miss my in-person classes, in my home
and studio here in Wooster, Ohio, and teaching at other locations.
Here are a lot of detail images of this art quilt, "JoeMala":
This is the label on the back of this piece, "JoeMala: 8 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
This is me, standing in front of this just-finished piece, "JoeMala: 8 of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
Quilts and Paintings
Susan Shie
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This page updated by Susan Shie, December 10, 2023.