Art Quilt by Lena Wik in AUROgalleriKIVIK

Lena Wik is a renowned art quilter in Sweden, right now having an exhibition in my galleryin Kivik Sweden.

Lena together with the youngest visitor at the vernissage.

Lena is living in the South of Sweden on an island called Aspö, but born in the North.

Already as a young girl, Lena started to collect pieces of fabric that she liked, without knowing what to do with them. Lena was also very busy drawing and painting as a young girl.

1995 Lena went together with her mother to a patchwork workshop, got a bit confused and finished nothing during this course. But the interest was born, trying to do something with her pile of fabric.

Very soon Lena found out that she had to dye her own fabric. After having read the book Complex Cloth from Jane Dunnewold, she found  a lot of new ways to manipulate fabric. Off she went.

Charlotte Yde http://www.yde.dk/charlotte/english , is also a person who have had a great impact on Lena in her way of thinking about composition.

Since 1997 Lena has participated in many exhibitions with  European Quilt Association and with European Art Quilt III and V, not to forget all the exhibitions with ArtQuilt group Quiltekunstnerne.

Lena is autodidact and has developed her own style, often working on a theme from nature or human marks from bygone times like petroglyphs in making a collage of fabrics, which she quilts together for strukture and texture.

The actual exhibition in Auro Gallery is  about swedish petroglyphs from the Stone Age.

I feel very honored to be able to show the work of Lena Wik in my galery.

The exhibition  ends the 24 of June.

For more info about coming exhibition  http://www.galleriauro.se/ for other languages use the Google translator.

Exhibition Time

Every year at this time, when the snow is melting away and the first warming sunshine is coming out, I have to work with my fabric to finish all those tops that I've started.
 Three exhibitions are in the near future.
I kind of like this situation to be a  little bit in a hurry.It forces me to take decisions that I did not dare before. The meticolous doctor is chased away.
 Since long time I have been in the trap of believing that a top, should have a lot of quilting, probably to show, that I am not lazy.
But I have realized that many of my fabric,that I have produced lately would loose their intrisic charakter, which I have worked so hard to get forward so i do not want to burry them in stiches.
New times, new ideas and I feel happy about my new decision.
Here are some of them which I have started  to work with, but here I show them to you before having quilted them .

This first one , is Sateen  Cotton bleach and Thiox, partly screenprnted.

 

The next one I reorganized for a start,

 made it bigger and the fine texture in this sateen cotton discharged with Thiox,

 Formusol and Bleach came out much more satisfactory against the black fond.

My Birch trees were cut into three, given some more contrast with the black fabric and the lovely texture showed its right face .

Discharge and Thread Painting

Exhibitions and Competions are pending over me at the moment. In the same time I will quit my job in three days and i can't believe it yet. I will partly retire, only working in the wintertime reduced hours.

Finally I will have that time I always needed,  to be able to develop the Artsist in me.

Some more Disharge ,to think about how to continue. Suggestion???

Thiox, Formusol ,no Bleach, on Kona Cotton

Here is the third one, in the serie of seawaters , into which homo sapiens is dumping whatever he dislikes , which the fisher man gets in his net instead of fish.

Thread Painting

Thread Painting is fun. I think I found a method to excavate or give life to my textile paintings.
Since I mainly still work without some plan, when I start my discharging of black sateen fabric, I often use whatever of found objects around me like gaskets ,rubberband for the hair etc. I start by using Thiox and/or Formasol and  often is fracionate picture coming out and I have to give it some more definition.
Then I use Bleach. This process gives me different colors and a feeling of layers. It is very abstract  pieces and I , either cut them up or often they stay whole cloth.
Now the intersting process start and this is the phase I like the most.
 To try to see, what is there in this picture, that is hidden and which I should bring forward. This I call the process of excavation. It is a constant changing challenge and I often have to work for hours. But in change I do not waste my time making scetches. It might come out the same at the end!!
Here you can follow how it changed over time and is not finished yet.

Here is the original discharged fabric, which is cut from a bigger one

First trial with Tread Painting, which became to discreete.

I changed my mind

Now I start to like it

Timeless time

The last week I have been threadpaintinga a small discharged piece, that I showed earlier with, wich I were not satisfied.
A month ago I started to quilt/threadpaint some small discharged pieces. I really did not know how to handle them, so I just sat down at the sewing machine and started. There has been a lot of ripping up,since I never work with sketches. I simply have to sew directly,if bad, I rip it.

This was my first try,with sparce  stiches.

I started to fill up with more stiches and later on I intermixed the colors and built up an embroided top just the way jou paint.

With this one I continued to experiment as follows

It takes along time to do it, but I enjoied doing it and it made me think about the Installation  Timeless Time of Mirjam Pet Jacobs for the Fourth Europen Quilt Triennial for which she was granted with Doris Winters commemoration prize for best innovation for the material and technique
http://www.mirjampetjacobs.nl/Current/frameset001.htm

Thread Painting

Back from the mountain after a fantastic week with my grandson Luka and some others from the family.

I even brought my Bernina with, if there would be time....... Actually we do not have normal electricity,instead we'we got solar celles and a windmill connected to a very intricate system of accumulators ,that my genious husband  has constructed and the Bernina works very well, without polluting the environment too.

 The men were putting up the begining of our Sauna and washroom and in the morning we all went out on the big lake to look, if we had caught any salmon during the night. And, Yes we did!

Me and the Lapp Owl ,a huge beautiful bird was upp in the middle of the night and I coulden't resit taking this picture of the moon. It looks just like something discharged with Thiox and Formusol on Kona Cotton

Threadpainted discharged Sateen cotton

Affordable Fine Art and Craft

 The spring-winter as we call it here, above the Polar circle is a fantastic time. Very cold in the night and -5C during daytime, with sun shining all day. In this way the snow will last until middle of May and we can use our lake ice , for transportation, which is very important ,when you haven't got a road to your house.
 Our day is now very long since we are quickly  advancing to the time, when  it doesn't get dark anymore and we can see the sun all night long. From the end of May there is no night uptill beginning of  July.
Eastern is the time when everybody is coming to visit us in our mountainhouse to go crosscountry skiing, fishing our just relax and get tanned.

Lately, I have had two lectures about my art work, for two groups of women. I was pleased to get so close in contact to people and hear, what they think about my art and hear their questions , how do you do that and so on........ It becomes much more personal and diversified than to read about yourself in a the newsaper.
I think I learnt a lot about myself and how people look at my art. To these lectures, I also brought  small pieces of art that I have been doing lately and they were all sold!!!! Probably, because they were affordable.
I also want to say : Thanks to you to all for leaving commenst on my site, since that also makes me think from different angles on what I am doing.

I am still in the small format area, working with tiny pictures and lately as an experiment ,I have made felted Broches,  after having watched  the   http://www.lindakemshall.com/DesignMattersTV.htm

It was really fun to do them and my friends liked them 

Following pictures are  under construction.

 The first one is Kona Cotton and Pimatex cotton discharged with Thiox anf Formusol and Bleach.Threadpainted.

Sateen cotton resist disharged with Thiox and bleached

Painted Pimatex cotton with Procion MX dyes, discharged with Bleach

Clamped Pimatex cotton dipped in Bleach

A Pieceful Happy Eastern to all of You.

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