"Use the Skillet: Knight of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Use the Skillet: Knight of Pyrex Cups in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2023. 59.5"h x 61"w. inventory #530. Peace Cozy #88.
chose tarot card 7-21-23. made quilt 9-16 to 11-30-22.Materials:
white kona-like cotton from Test Fabrics, airbrush paint, Posca
paint markers, Aurifil cotton machine
thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread,
one
Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Pellon bamboo and organic cotton batting.
Lunn Fabrics hand-made batiks on backing and border.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Black line freehand drawing with airbrush and color areas painted with Aztek double-action airbrush and Createx airbrush paint. Smaller writing done with Posca paint markers, because my wrists were both broken over time, and I no longer have the strength to use my airpen for small writing with paint. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching of perle cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
Susan Shie. Turtle Moon Studios.
2612 Armstrong Drive, Wooster, OH 44691 susanshie@gmail.com 330-317-2167 www.turtlemoon.com
I am a social justice activist painter and fiber artist, mixing current events, history, personal experiences and ideas into my art. I freehand airbrush whole cloth works which I then write on and sew. I also make many large, double-page, finished drawings in my hardbound sketchbooks, and those look a lot like my quilts. My artwork and writing are all spontaneous first drafts on the cloth. I don't like to look at my sketches, while I'm drawing with the airbrush and paint, to create the piece's images on the large cloth, because I want my images to remain very spontaneous. I let myself sneak looks at the sketches, just to remind myself what goes where, sort of. I love the feeling of drawing and writing on that big, scary, blank piece of white cloth, using my airbrush and black paint, and "letting 'er rip!" Coloring the piece with my airbrush is really delightful work! And then, switching to writing with paint markers on the big piece takes weeks and weeks, compared to a few days of airbrush work. Quilting is faster than the writing I do, but when I quilt, I get to listen to a book, while I sew. I love that! I read a lot of historical, biographical, and environmental books, covering a LOT of mileage, when I'm sewing!!
Many large detail images of this piece are below this artist's statement.
My statement about this art quilt:
On July 21, 2023, I chose for this
quilt, the Tarot card the Knight of Pyrex Cups in my Kitchen
Tarot deck. (Including this piece, I only had 4 more Kitchen Tarot
Card Quilts to make, out of the 78 cards in a Tarot deck. I’ve been making these quilts for the Kitchen
Tarot since 1998, so this is getting exciting now! 25
years of making this project so far!!! The
“end” is in sight now!! Maybe 2 more
years, to make the last 4 pieces! (OK,
maybe 3 more years!)
So, back to THIS
Kitchen
Tarot quilt: Use the Skillet! I see the Skillet as a great symbol
for women's strength. We do sooooo much, to nurture our loved ones
and to do our jobs and to work for the values we believe in! We
definitely hold up half of the sky! So when I say "Use the
Skillet!" I mean to use our women's wisdom and determination to make our
lives and others' lives and the whole world a better place. We
are all Knights, Women Warriors for Good!
Since the tarot
card I chose for this piece is the Knight of Pyrex Cups, I decided to
make my topic be three Eco Woman Warriors: Rachel Carson, Annie
Leonard, and Greta Thunberg. I have read their books and feel they
are all extremely important in the work to save our planet Earth from
being unlivable for life as we know it ... for us and all other
creatures and plant forms and the Earth Herself, and of course, her air,
land, and water.
Rachel Carson (in the middle of this painting), was SOOOOOO instrumental
in getting our work to save the Earth going, with her book in 1962,
"Silent Spring." She was a climate scientist, way before we had
that term! And she wrote a lot more besides that book, and her
wisdom brought about the Environmental Movement! Sadly, she died
in 1964, at only 56 years old. But her long crusade to save the
oceans and all living things, including the earth itself, are still
influencing us. She's most famous for her attack on the dangers of
DDT, but she also cared deeply about protecting the earth, and saving
natural places.
Read Douglas Brinkley's 2022 book "Silent Spring Revolution," in which
he moves through the presidencies of Kennedy through Nixon, documenting
how we got into environmental work. He credits Rachel Carson for
igniting it all. It's an amazing history we all should know!
Annie Leonard came to eco-fame with her marvelous "Story of Stuff"
videos, beginning with showing us how our over-consumption is destroying
the Earth. Her 2010 autobiography, "The Story of Stuff" is
wonderful! She worked for Greenpeace for 10 years, documenting
what happens to our "recycleables," as they get taken to other
countries, where they turn into trash mountains. She was the
director of Greenpeace USA from 2014 to 2022, and now she's on to new
goals for saving the Earth, working with Jane Fonda on that.
Greta Thunberg, the
youngest of my Eco Women Warriors here, is now 20, but was only 15, when
her Friday School Strikes for Climate ignited massive global school
strikes for Climate Action. She addressed the UN and scolded them
mightily, for neglecting to act on saving the Earth. She's met
with many world leaders, but has stopped going to the annual UN Climate
conferences, having decided that they are greenwashed and full of "Blah,
blah, blah!" She saw that the global representatives were there,
taking bribes from fossil fuel companies, to do nothing to stop
the planet from becoming unlivable for all of us. Her 2022 book
"The Climate Book" is full of over 100 climate scientists' essays on
finding solutions to save the Earth. Please read it!
This piece is ALSO about my local art center: Wayne Center for the Arts
(WCA), which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and
next. I took a ceramics class, to learn to throw pots, in 1974,
when the art center was new and at The College of Wooster. Later,
when it moved to where it is now, and I lived very closeby, I taught
drawing classes there, in the 1990s. I started a support group
called WAGE (then Women Artists Group Effort) there in 1996, when I'd
received my MFA degree at Kent State, and needed a women artists'
support group here in town. WAGE eventually grew to include men,
as well, and now stands for Wayne Artists Group Effort, as it includes
artists from Wayne County and beyond.
I put a message into this piece, on 15 golden triangles, so I could
enter it into the art center's upcoming show "The Golden Ratio," which
is about WCA's golden anniversary, and about da Vinci's Golden Ratio and
Golden Triangle theories. First I randomly drew 15 triangles.
Later my 15 triangles inspired me toward the end of writing on this
piece, to figure out a message that would fit into the triangles.
Now they spell out "Save the Earth Now!"
When I began writing on this piece, at the top left, I wrote about how
the Knight of Cups in the Tarot is a devoted warrior. In this
case, it's the 3 women I drew here, and all of us in the massive effort,
to save the planet before it's too late. Climate Scientists all
fear it's already too late, but we have to keep on trying. Monicka
Clio Sakki wrote in her tarot deck book, that this Knight of Cups is a
gallant dreamer, fighting against all odds, for what is right and
good. So I decided that's all of us in the Climate Movement,
fighting against the fossil fuel industry, to stop using fossil fuels
and shift to 100% renewable energy, if we want life on Earth, as we know
it, to survive.
I then wrote here, about many current events. I started with Senator
Dianne Feinstein's death, while still in office, at age 90. She
was the longest-serving woman ever, in our US Senate.
I wrote about Narges Mohammad receiving the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for
her leadership, while serving a long prison sentence, to encourage the
women of Iran to continue to protest their treatment by the Morality
Police there, where they're forced to wear hijab, or possibly be
killed. It's the first documented revolt in history, run entirely
by women, and led by a woman in prison.
I covered the November 8 Ohio election, in which both abortion rights
and legal sales of recreational marijuana won huge support, in spite of
our state's terribly gerrymandered voting districts. Our abortion
choice rights are now protected by the Ohio constitution, thanks to the
devoted work of thousands of women.
Rosalynn Carter died on Nov 19, at 96, at home, with her husband, Jimmy
Carter, 99, beside her. She was an amazing First Lady, who
actively involved herself in President Carter's decision making, and
worked tirelessly for improving the lives of the mentally ill.
I write a haiku, as I think
it up, on each of my drawings, and I’ve done that for many years now. Recently, I also started writing haiku on my
quilts. Here’s the haiku I wrote on bottom left corner of this piece:
"Women, save the Earth!
And work for Human Rights, too!
Healing and Great Love!"
!When a quilt I'm making is almost done, even after I'd done all the
quilting, I have to choose where to put the Peace Cozy. I put this one,
#88 in my use of them, in Rachel Carson's banner. It's the Peace
Symbol on a little 1" or so piece of light green cloth, that matches
Rachel's sash.
There honestly wasn't any other place I could put it, without it
covering some of my writing by then. (Remember, my "rule" is that I
can't plan ahead, where the Peace Cozy will go!) I gave it
to Rachel C, because she truly ushered in our environmental movement,
with her amazing book, "Silent Spring," back in 1962.
I hope you like this piece and can read the writing in the detail pix below!
See my album of
making this piece, on my Facebook page, at
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=susanshie&set=a.10160879924279158
Power to the
People.
– Susan Shie, Wooster, Ohio
November 10, 2023
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Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
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