Life of Poet James Merrill

James Merrill: Life and Art by Langdon Hammer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like it, but no.
I wanted to like him, but no to that too. Not Merrill's fault, but his biographer's.
This is a recitation of faces (family, lovers, students)  and places (the mansions of childhood, followed by Amherst College, Athens, Stonington, Madison, WI, California ...) and all the while a growing body of poems. Sterile, bloodless. Not Merrill, and maybe not all his poems, either. Just this book. It's a record, no doubt helpful but I like some life when reading a life.


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Flower series 2: Painting orchids

Wild Orchids
16" x 12"
Paint on cotton, quilted

Detail, Wild Orchids

How I made it:

1. Sketchbook drawing. Inspired by orchid in my window. I drew the flowers and leaves onto white Kona cotton then painted them, thought it too boring, so painted black lines and shapes freehand. (11' x 14")
2. Drew it onto white Kona cotton. Black fabric marker. (11" x 16")
3. Painted with fabric paints. They seeped through. Wondered if Gesso would make fabric less absorbent.
4. Painted over white and green areas with acrylic paints. 
5. Layered over thin white felt.
6. Free-motion quilted along drawing lines. Black thread. You can't really see the quilting, but it adds depth. Decided not to use rayon thread. Too shiny.  
7. Tried adding machine quilting detail to an orchid. Didn't like it -- not subtle. ed Ripped it out.
8. Sew a couple of rows of stitching around edges, using straight stitch. Black thread.
9. Attached to Timtex painted black around the edges.  Timex is about 1" bigger than orchids. Mystifuse
10. Add a piece of muslin over the back. Before attaching, put Fray-check on the edges of the muslin and attach a rod pocket and a label.  Mistyfuse adhesive.

Flower series 1: Paint, print, stitch -- stop!

I am not ready.

Not ready to make the series of quilts that I planned a month or so ago: square, precise, Milhazes-inspired mandala-like flowers and stripes in vibrant colors. (Sounds pretty, doesn't it?)

After many false starts, a few paintings, and 2 quilt-ish pieces, I have learned:

• I can't do precise. I like messy, or shall we say irregular?
• I seem to prefer square-ish to square.
• I don't like to do intensive thread painting. For example, below, I copied my painting Roses onto cotton and then adhered it to stable cotton duck. Ideally, I would cover the surface with stitch to mimic the paint colors. But no! I just don't enjoy it.

... and on the positive side, I learned:

• I lean toward an intuitive, even spiritual,  method, not necessarily the mandala style I'd planned.
• I love working on a single subject, in this case flowers. My pop-around brain benefits from focus. There is no end to what flowers can teach me of color, line, shape, mood, etc., etc.
• I love layering.
• I love colors. 
• I love stripes, even precise ones. (One of my hero-artists is stripe master Bridget Riley.)
• Most fun for me has been painting. I thought I was painting to become a better quilter, but I love painting for itself.

My style emerges.

For my next "series" I'm going to paint flowers freely, and experiment with painting on cotton, linen, and silk and combine that with stitch.

In addition to recording progress online, I'm taking notes the crazy way I did in graduate school: big and messy, sometimes upside down --  sitting on the floor and writing/drawing with colored markers on a newsprint pad. One page or more per project, no other rules.

It works for me!

Notes so far

Walking backward to a series

I have taken many steps in my series project -- most of them backward.
First, I pinned my plan to the design wall. The plan taunts me. It seems I've picked exactly what I cannot bring myself to do: inspired by Beatriz Milhazes, I have set out to make precise, geometry-inspired designs in square format, with palette and imagery based on Florida nature.

For my first piece, I picked a drawing in my (rectangular, 11" x 14") sketchbook. It is a watercolor, based on a sketch of flowers against the window blinds in my studio.

The blinds would work as stripes, which Milhazes uses so effectively.

 I traced the image, rearranging the blossoms just a bit. I went to Staples and enlarged and also minimized the flowers. I made tracings of these, then played with them on my design wall, where I had pinned a striped 19" x 19" square for my base. I rearranged them over and over, many times, many days, including just  before I went to bed and as soon as I got up. I added a vase, put stars on the stamens, and took a few photos when something seemed close to good. What I'm looking at now is what a bird would see if he approached the flower upside down. A hummingbird, maybe. No, no! don't let me add a hummingbird!

Milhazes color copies on right, my tracings on left, and trash can handy for many rejects

I also played with the colors of blinds and grass and sky.

What I have been able to do is stick to flowers. A series is supposed to concentrate your thoughts, so give me one point. All this time, I've been drawing and painting flowers, real and make-believe, exact and abstract.

It's not that I adore flowers (I like chocolate and butterflies and bridges better.), but flowers are teaching me so much about everything else: color and line and shadow and impact. I'm afraid I'm also learning I love messy edges and incomplete thoughts. Precision, as in Milhazes' art, drives me wild. Not when I look at it, but when I make it.

But it's true I learned how to cook intuitively by first following many recipes; and I trust my series project will give me the same kind of good grounding. I have the feeling that once I start cutting fabric, the series might practically make itself. I can hope.

Painting flowers, preparing for quilt

I painted the flowers with my fingers and the stems with a brush. I printed the table.
This is kind of like the "Happy" quilt I made a while ago.

I've been painting flowers, kind of free-form. I love the mess that paint makes, and the way colors and shapes emerge without planning. I tell myself this is to get ready to make flowers in my upcoming quilt series. ... but I'm not sure ... I love the fluidity of paint, and may have trouble transferring that to fabric and stitch.  We'll see.

Mandala of flower pieces

12" x 12"
Sea grape, , native azalea, orchid pieces

The center is a  small sea grape leaf; it's surrounded by paint dots, then dancing pieces of native azalea -- in bloom they are dazzling -- sadly, their color has faded into brown swirls.  Last comes petals of old orchids. Then more gold and bronze shiny paint. 

Series: focusing the heart

I'm close to starting a series. It took ages to settle on a theme and a few characteristics to unite all the pieces. Thanks to Elizabeth Barton's Visual Guide to Working in a Series, the preliminary thinking has been fun -- it's learning to choose what I love.  I recommend this to you if you want to get deeper into whatever you are making -- it could be cantatas (Bach did it!) or ice cream (Jeni in Columbus, Ohio, is a master).

Series will feature Florida nature
Palm tree, Melbourne, FL (photo)

Here's my art series plan:

I'm going make mandala-inspired pieces -- 

all square 

several small ones and at least one large -- size to be decided soon. Maybe ( 20" x 20" or 25" x 25")  and then 36" x 36" or bigger.  

Pairs may have similar design but different value structure. (Not sure if I'm up to this one -- I may try this after making several simpler pieces.) 

I will look to Beatriz Milhazes for inspiration. I love her layering and her concentrated palette and spirit and the way she conveys it through flowers, geometry and abstraction. My palette will be different, and I'm trying to grasp the spirit of Florida. 

 sketchbook
Beatriz Milhazes
preparing a series

They will have flowers -- one big one each? 

wild red flower by our mailbox

Also:  poinciana blossoms and that pink flower from Coconut Grove -- flowers I love already.  Possibly stripes. Black and white, for starters:

Orchid in sketchbook (acrylic)

What I like so far about this plan:

Lets me work with intuition (choices of shape and color)

Flowers

Curves and swirls

Layering

May include quilting, embroidery, words, paint, print

May include nature-inspired imagery -- butterflies, swirls, leaves, dragonflies, circles, and maybe hearts, if that's not too sappy. Pointy grasses and palm trees

and cypress roots. Birds. Fish. 

Although I'm referencing mandala, the quilts don't have to be circular or symmetrical. And  -- maybe because mandalas are spirit-based -- they may free me, and also those who see them.