I have completed the work I first wrote about in September, a work that combines personal family storytelling with the American Dream. I have titled it American Dream Dream.
This one has been quite a journey, both emotionally and artistically. I am pleased with the final result.
Here’s the work-in-progress as I posted it in September.
I felt I had interesting parts, but not a unified whole. That problem persisted as I began to sew these parts together. I had an important thing (the family picture) down in the lower left, and I had an important thing (the family home) in the upper right. In the middle were some trees, which seemed unrelated to what was going on.
It stayed in that stage on my easel for more than a week, till I saw how to use the trees as a connecting device to hold the two important images together.
An important breakthrough was the addition of the flag. From the beginning, my inspiration was my printed panel of the trees, which — when I first printed it — reminded of a flag’s waving lines. But I had not actually incorporated flag elements into the work.
I added the specific flag elements, the waving strips in the lower right, at the stage when the work was on my easel unresolved. At first, the white strips were very white-white and fresh. It was all wrong.
Somehow, the addition of the sponged “aging” on the whole flag portion lit a creative spark for me, and gave me direction for both the composition resolution and the emotional tone of the whole work.
This also inspired me to add the hand-written words, things I wrote about my family’s past, to insert in the dark blue tree limbs.
There is innocence here: the girl, her father, her younger brother. Dad waves a flag. Yet, they are not exuberant. I see it as a wistful, somewhat melancholy image.
There is heritage here: the family home in North Carolina. (I printed this as a transfer from my family scrapbook. Some of my grandmother’s handwriting is visible on the house.) But it is overprinted with the tree forms. All the meanings of the past are not clear.
Final details to pull things together; I added some stars in the top left quadrant to speak to the stripes in the lower right. There is not an actual large flag printed over the whole quilt but, to me, it feels like a flag.
The binding: I enjoyed the challenge of matching the fabrics around the edge as I created the binding. I think it holds the pieces together.
Matching the emotional content of the work, the actual surface developed in layers. I painted/printed fabric, I stitched, I collaged, I over-painted the final quilted piece. I think it’s right that it did not all come together for me easily.
Realizing dreams is seldom easy.
. . . . . .
For all of us: focus each day
on the good that needs to be done in the world.
Be part of doing it.
Thank you for reading
. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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