Artistic Style - Fashion Style

This post won't make any sense if you don't already know that I retired from a twenty year career as a textile artist. It began with traditional quilting - as a hobby - and developed into a business designing quilt patterns and writing for publication. Eventually, that evolved to creating wearable art and art quilts and then on to producing textile art for sale and exhibit in high end galleries along with teaching the how-to of developing your artistic voice and the fundamentals of design.

The pieces below were created in the past five years, none of them more recently than two years ago for my last exhibit in January of 2010. I haven't created a textile art piece since then and so far do not have the urge to do so although I imagine at some point that feeling will return. Only time will tell.




Comparing these pieces, you'll be able to see the elements of my artistic style - the voice that I had become known for. I'm not going to list them because I think it's more fun and more educational to determine them from the images - if that's of any interest to you that is. I'm showing them because of a comment from Janine that questioned where I was at and matched some thoughts I'd been mulling over this past weekend. She wrote...

Hope you are discovering your personal answer to the blandness you have been feeling. I am wondering if this at all coincides with your son leaving and experiencing some "empty nest" syndrome. Also good luck in finding your true personal style although it sounds like you do have it worked out pretty much.




LOL - we don't have an empty nest. Our youngest son is only away for the summer and will be back at the end of August. He's deciding what to do next and if that involves university, the cheapest approach is living at home. If he goes ahead with being an elementary school teacher - his top thought - he could be here for another five or six years.




Our daughter, who is also the oldest child, moved out at the youngest age and has since married and moved to another province. Our oldest son lived at home through university and has stayed since graduating earlier this year although he did announce at dinner last week that he is "probably" moving out this fall. I think it depends on whether he and his friends find the perfect apartment. If so, he'll be moving in with two really nice young men and I think it'll be a good mix.




Eventually, all three of our children will have moved on to independent adulthood and that's okay. It's the way it's supposed to be. Once they do, there will be lots of "empty nest" things to explore as a couple. The blandness now is more likely due to the calm after the chaos that had been caused by other things happening in my life over the last few years. While I'm SO GLAD not to be dealing with that any more... as I mentioned before... the pendulum swung from too much to too little so I needed to add in something to help it settle in the middle. I've made a few changes and things look good so far. Again, time will tell however, I've decided not to fret about it and to let it develop as it will and I'm ...




... taking the same approach with my personal style. When I was teaching art & design, I would tell my students not to stress about finding their artistic voice, that their style was there and it would emerge more fully with each piece they produced. It occurred to me the other day that I needed to listen to my own words. There's no difference between the path of artistic style and the path of fashion style - they are simply different directions of the same whole.




Valerie wrote - Re personal style I believe we become more essentially ourselves as we grow older and get more confident with what we truly want to wear.

I agree and would add combined with getting more confident with who we truly are. The older I get, the more I know myself, who I am, what I value, and what I want to express outward. I know what I'm willing to do and what I'm not, what I'll put up with and what I won't. At this point, I barely care what others think about me and care a lot about what I think about myself, in a positive not a conceited way. One way of expressing myself outward is with what I sew and how I dress.

Yesterday afternoon, I was reading Mary Balogh's latest romance and loved this comment made by the hero to the heroine about her "atrocious" taste in bonnets. - "And that, ultimately," he said, "is all that matters. You like them. And a strange thing will happen in time. Gradually your hats will come to be associated with you, and people will look eagerly for new ones. And some people will begin to admire them. Some will even envy them and emulate them because they will assume that it is the bonnets that give you the bright sparkle that characterizes you. They will be quite wrong, of course. The bonnet will lend nothing to their character. You must not retreat into what others deem fashionable and tasteful if you prefer something else. It is sometimes better to be a leader of fashion rather than a habitual follower." - Yes Yes !!

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - less work hours and more time to sew this week

P.S. - from top to bottom the pieces are - Because Red Yellow & Green Were Taken, Spring's First Shoot, Transference, RM1, Pick Me, and Bloom.