CQA enjoys visual and tactile treats by Larkin Van Horn

Mixed media artist Larkin Van Horn makes a point at the Dec. 12 CQA meeting. (Sue Smith photo)

"I like creating something hard on something soft...and something shiny on something matte." That's one working premise for Larkin Van Horn, a prolific Whidbey Island mixed-media artist and teacher who shared her work and her thoughts with CQA members at the group's December 12 meeting.

Van Horn came from a family of embroiderers--"no quilters!"--and that was her medium for a number of years. Then in 1972 she started beading. Her first project? Her own wedding dress! Apparently the experience was a bit much, as it was another 15 years before she picked up her beading materials again. Even then it was a bit of serendipity: She was working part time at a cross-stitch shop, making samples, when she decided to gussy up the pieces with some beads from a bead shop that happened to be right next door. "Pretty soon I was doing more beading and less stitching!" she laughed.

"Pods II." The quilting design was inspired by one of Van Horn's half-waking, later-puzzling, thoughts scribbled down in the early morning: "What about a stick with a hole in it?"

"Crucible." Small pieces fused into place; beaded center.

At some point the idea  of making quilts intrigued her, and Van Horn signed up for her first class in this art, only to find she wasn't good at following others' directions. She made her own way into the art-quilt world and also has made a number of quilts that, like her more current technique (collage), often serve more as the base for beading and threadwork than as stand-alone quilts. "My pieces are small," she added, "because the beading is so intensely done."

She uses her own hand-dyed cotton and silk fabrics for the backgrounds on pieces she creates for exhibitions, but her class samples are done on commercial batik backgrounds: "The students like to work on something that's readily available to them."

"Hold Fast Your Heart." (Sue Smith photo) [The small squares at top of photo are part of the "My 60th Year" project; below]

Detail of "Hold Fast Your Heart." Van Horn often uses porcelain or ceramic faces as central points in her work. (Sue Smith photo)

"Most of what I do now is fused fabric collage with 'stuff' on it," explained Van Horn. The "stuff" can include yarns, various strings and thread creations, porcelain and ceramic faces, found objects and, of course, beads, lots and lots of beads...and sometimes beads on top of sequins for extra sparkle and texture.

One of the most extensive exhibits of Van Horn's work was titled "Night Thoughts," at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook, OR, where Van Horn has both exhibited and curated a number of exhibits. This show, which also traveled to the La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum in La Conner, WA. was three years in the making. "I had to create about 100 new pieces for the exhibit," said Van Horn, adding "About 80 pieces would be hung on walls, and another 20 would go into display cases. The Latimer Center was able to show all the pieces; La Conner hung all the wall pieces but couldn't show the 3D work." She added that the theme or title of the exhibit was "the first thing that came out of my mouth when Latimer asked what the show would be called. I had no idea what it meant, but there it was!"

"The Soul's Winter." Part of the Shattered Circles series.

Detail of "The Soul's Winter." (Sue Smith photo)

When listeners asked Van Horn about threads for beading, she noted that beads are sharp, so you can't use rayon, cotton, metallic or any of the usual sewing thread without having the threads shredded or cut by the beads over time. She uses nylon beading thread, doubled--"If one part starts to shred, you have a chance to replace or fix it before the whole thing breaks," she explained. Another choice would be "Fireline," a synthetic fishing line purchased from outdoor stores. She added one warning: "Fireline can't be ironed...it'll melt!" The fusible materials she uses include both Misty Fuse and Wonder Under,  depending  on the type  of project.

Someone asked about handling bugle beads, notorious for having sharp ends. Van Horn told of a head-scratching experience she had once at a small beading session at a conference in Santa Fe. When the subject of bugle beads came up, one beader said "Oh, I paint the ends with colorless nail polish." The next beader said, "If you use colored nail polish, you get a 2-tone effect." A third beader said, "I use acrylic paint!" The final beader opined, "I have the best method. String them from a coat hanger and spray with an acrylic spray, then use a toothpick to spread the beads apart." At this point, Van Horn interjected: "Why not just put a seed bead between each bugle bead?" Came this rejoinder from the table: "What a waste of beads!"

"Firestorm II"

Many of Van Horn's pieces fit into specific series she's been developing over the years, such as Shattered Circles; Labyrinths; Trees; Angels, Goddesses and Mermaids; Dolls; Gaudi Windows, and Vessels, Shrines and Reliquaries.

In the "Shattered Circles" pieces, she takes a circle of fabric and, either freehand or by following a hand-drawn sketch, cuts the circle into a number of pieces. She then "explodes" the pieces outward from the center to create what is often an extremely complex design that sometimes completely disguises its circular origin. "My rule for myself in these pieces is 'Use every piece'!" Van Horn said.

"Emerging III," part of the Shattered Circles series. Van Horn follows the rule of using every piece of the cut-up circle...but there's no rule against adding something else!

"La Deluge," part of the Shattered Circles series--the orange-red "fronds."

She differentiated a labyrinth--"It leads you into the center and back out again"--from a maze--"It's created to confuse"--and described how she does machine quilting on labyrinthine pieces where the "path" is often a thick cord that would deflect the "foot" of a sewing machine.

"Celtic Spiral VII," part of the Labyrinth series.

"Labyrinth II." Van Horn uses a positioning drawing for the future labyrinth line so that all machine quilting can be done before the thick corded line is applied.

A trip to Barcelona led to her five-piece series of "Gaudi Windows," where her works mimic the shapes but not the colors of the windows in some of Antoni  Gaudi's buildings. For the "Angels, Goddesses...." series, Van Horn, who described herself as "a Lutheran Buddhist Pagan," said she did only one angel but "a whole lot of goddesses!" Her intensely beaded dolls are "meant to be like a 'talking stick'--the one holding the stick is the one who gets to talk--so that you tell your story or your doll's story while you're holding her."

"Bright Gaudi Day," part of a series of five pieces inspired by the architecture of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona.

"Pele," one of Van Horn's series of beaded dolls ("and yes, I give them all boobs!")

"Dancing in the Moonlight" from the Goddesses series. The "moon" is another shattered circle.

"Deep Sea Troika" in the Goddesses series.

The "Vessels, Shrines..." series is largely 3D work, for which Van Horn said she buys the stiffener Timtex in huge rolls. This series includes a number of boxes where the sides are quilted and beaded with the edges finished with a machine satin stitch, then sewn into the final box shape by hand. She defined this series by saying "A vessel is something that holds something else--a leaf that holds a drop of water is a vessel. A shrine can be for anything that anyone holds sacred, and a reliquary holds any object that is considered sacred."

"Starflower Box," in the Vessels series. The edges are finished in machine satin stitch, then the pieces are sewn together by hand.

"Tree House I" in the Vessels series..."A vessel is something that holds something else..."

On her 59th birthday, Van Horn embarked on a year-long project that would culminate on her 60th birthday--each month, she would create a small square of fabric, quilted and beaded in whatever design struck her fancy on that month. Each was titled, signed and dated on the reverse side as part of a permanent record of what is a milestone for so many of us. And of course she created a special box to hold these little treasures.

"My 60th Year." Van Horn created a heavily beaded little square each month between her 59th and 60th birthdays, plus a beaded box to hold them.

Van Horn's works, which include some exquisite pieces of beaded jewelry, have been in exhibits throughout the country and are found in many collections. To see images of her various pieces and series, go to: http://www.LarkinArt.com.

(All photos by G. Armour Van Horn unless otherwise credited.)

"Wet wood" is favorite medium for Helga Winter

Artist Helga Winter speaking at the Nov. 14 CQA meeting

"I like to work on the lathe with wood that's green enough to spray me in the face," said Helga Winter, wood turner, as she showed some of her pieces at the November 14 meeting of Contemporary QuiltArt Association (CQA). In a departure from standard wood-working techniques, where fully dried/aged wood is used for its stability, the Pt. Townsend, WA artist incorporates into her design ideas the changes and distortions that occur when green wood dries and resumes its natural shape.

Some of  Winter's turned bowls and "spheroid" shapes, after use of paints and/or dyes

Winter came to her wood-turning focus in a roundabout way. Born in a small town in Germany, she was exposed to sewing, knitting and fiber crafts in her home but didn't see this as her own creative path. She came to the U.S. as young person, studied Education at the University of  Texas at Austin, and received a graduate degree in Special Education from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

During her graduate studies she did include one art class, and found that she loved it. It was at this time that she happened into a woodworking shop and began collecting wood scraps for projects with her special-ed students. On visits to the shop, she became fascinated with the work being done and, with great persistence, managed to get the shop owner to allow her to apprentice as a furniture maker. Winter eventually tried her hand at wood turning and became adept enough to acquire some grants in 1982. The materials she was using at this time were all hardwoods, native to the region.

These spheroid wood shapes are highly embellished

Winter moved to Pt. Townsend in 1987 and soon became acquainted with the native Madrone trees--a softwood variety quite different from the furniture stocks she had been used to. She learned that the Madrone was "ornery," in that no matter what changes she imposed, the worked wood always wanted to "take its shape back." She noted that in time "you learn to read the tree: crotches, where limbs join the trunk, are always good to use as they are strong."

Winter uses a chain saw to cut a "blank" from a donated Madrone tree.

A Madrone "blank" readied for the lathe

The metal fitting  on the bottom of the blank readies it for mounting on the lathe.

Asked how she sourced "fresh" trees for her work, Winter assured the audience that she didn't cut them down...rather, as her reputation has spread in the area, she often finds "donations" of fresh tree chunks in her driveway, or people will call her with news of a tree that's either fallen or being removed. (She will return the favor by making a piece for the donor!)

A "slimmed-down" blank ready to be turned into a bowl

Outside of the future bowl. A finished little "foot" will be shaped later.

Drying time for the turned pieces will vary with the season in which the tree "fell," with autumn wood being relatively dry and spring wood being relatively wet, and also vary with the thickness of the piece. A one-inch-thick piece can take a year to dry, whereas a thin bowl can dry in a couple of weeks. Winter will reverse each piece top for bottom every day to keep the remaining moisture from all going to the foot of the piece. She regularly achieves bowls so thin that light can be seen through the sides: "I do this by lathing slowly!"

Above and below: the setup for turning the inside of the bowl

Finished inside of the bowl

Turning the foot

Above: the finished bowl, off the lathe. Below: the same bowl after it's completely dry. Note the change in shape characteristic of  Madrone!

Madrone turns brown as it dries, so Winter completes her pieces by embellishing with paints or dyes or, often, pigmented wax, so that the finished piece may look as if it's pottery or glass instead of wood, thus drawing the viewer in for a closer look. Whereas paint can obscure the wood's grain, dyes will let the grain show through. Some of her pieces are spheroid in shape rather than bowls; these are created as two halves and glued together.

Blue dye colors the inside of this bowl. The outside is encaustic wax in translucent colors applied with "hot brushes," showing the various wax layers.

Winter will use an acrylic gesso to collage pieces of map on finished bowls, along with paints and dyes as embellishments.

(Above and below) Various layers of dyes, waxes and paint completely disguise the wood origins of these bowls.

Spheroids (above and below) are formed of two pieces glued together. Acrylic gesso is used to transfer portions of maps on these two pieces.

Here the red color came from paper than was "transferred" to the bowl.

Winter's latest artistic works incorporate not wood itself, but a wood product--paper, specifically  pages torn from books.  ("These are discards from a local bookstore," she added quickly. "I don't dismantle usable books!") After removing a book's binding, she will rip the pages into strips of varying widths.

Dismantled books provide stacks of paper of different widths.

Winter tears the pages into strips of varying widths, using a hacksaw blade mounted on a piece of wood.

 For a series of wall pieces, she has reassembled the strips by sewing, then mounting on board,  and added colored wax to create pieces that bear only a slight resemblance to their origin. "There's no significance to the words on the paper strips," Winter said.

Here, the torn pages were staggered and sewn together in 5-page "signatures,"  wax added, and the resulting piece mounted on board.

A more "measured" mounting of torn pages, with colored wax added.

Here, the sewing "strings" form a visual element in the board-mounted, waxed pages.

Another series involving the torn pages are open-front boxes that, depending on the size, can be wall-mounted or set on tables. Here, she rolls the torn strips into tubes and dips one edge into either clear or colored wax. She then folds the tubes into sharp angles and "meshes" them into the box shapes, creating an attractive pattern of shape and color.

The elements inside the boxes are "tubes" [below] formed from torn book pages with colored wax added. The tubes, in turn, are folded into angular shapes and fitted into the boxes.

This piece, full of folded, waxed tubes, measures 24 by 24 inches.

Winter's works are on display in a number of galleries in the Pacific Northwest. For more about her works and pictures of her extensive series of bowls, go to helgawinter.com.

Corsets: constricting? Hey, they can be fun!

CQA member Mary Berdan finds this corset rather fun!

CQA members had a chance to lace each other into corsets that reflected the styles of our foremothers from centuries ago at the group's October 10 meeting...and pronounced a number of them to be surprisingly comfortable!

Hilary Specht Coffey of Period Corsets, speaker at CQA's October 10 meeting

Featured speaker at the meeting was Hilary Specht Coffey, owner of Period Corsets of Seattle, a company that has been supplying corsets and related undergarments for theatrical and film use for nearly 18 years.

Some of Period  Corsets' models (above) that were available for "audience participation." The antique models (below) were mostly admired...and only touched while wearing gloves!

Coffey described the company as "a cross between a costume shop and a factory. We started as a costume shop, complete with a 'head draper' and costume designers, but it's hard to be profitable making 'one-off' pieces." The operation really took off when the decision was made to select a range of specific designs that could be easily repeatable, in a specific set of sizes, and now employs seven people. "We produce every undergarment from head to toe," she added.

(Above) Typical silhouettes from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries relied on specific undergarments (below) to mold the body to the shape of the outer garments.

Imagine trying to get through a narrow doorway with this 18th century petticoat (above), whose "hippy" shape relies on the "pocket hoop pannier" (below). Both are designs from Period Corset.

Coffey took an informal poll among the attendees, asking what the word "corset" evoked. The answers ranged from the expected--"tight, uncomfortable, stiff "--to the more surprising--"sexy!" She pointed out that whereas clothes are shaped to the body, corsets are used to shape the body itself. "Every 10 years or so throughout history," she added, "a new silhouette becomes the vogue." And each century had its own quirks: 17th century corsets had to be laced up the back, as front lacing was considered "immodest." (Does this bring to mind the usual cover art on "bodice-ripper" romance novels?) In the 1830s--the period of the "dandies"--even men wore waist corsets.

Many silhouette changes occurred between the late 1700s (top left) and the 2000s (bottom right)!

Period Corsets' products are not true, exact reproductions, as whalebone and wooden stays are either no longer available or no longer acceptable. The company's designers research shapes and details of corsets in the relative periods, then pick out the main elements of the historic models and adapt them to the modern customer.

Period Corset designers research historical corsets and other undergarments at a number of museums (above and below) as well as surveying artworks, cartoons, and other materials from the respective periods.

For example, steel is now used for the stays--in sizes from 1/4" to 5/16" and in a spiral version that bends in two directions. Coffey added that they were not into the super-tight lacing of the past, though all the products feature laces as well as, often, hooks.

After research from a number of different sources, Period Corsets' crew create a number of mockups (above), then proceed to create finished patterns in different sizes (below)

(Above and below) "Cone-shaped" corsets in the Period Corsets line and details of the master pattern. This design stops at the waist in the back.

Period  Corsets' "Hourglass" designs (above and below) and master pattern details. This version nips in the waist and comes low enough on the body, front and back, to "control" some of the hip area.

As part of her presentation, Coffey showed a fascinating video titled "Dresses Undressed" produced by Vogue Germany (available on YouTube) that shows the many layers underpinning styles of various eras--a pregnancy dress and its accompanying corset elicited a lot of startled reactions from the viewers!

From right to left: all the underpinnings required for this once-fashionable outfit! (From the video "Dresses Undressed")

Above, "pregnancy dresses" from this era are a far cry from today's maternity wear! (From the video "Dresses Undressed")

"Ghosted" side view (above) and front view (below) of the frightening-looking corset worn under the "pregnancy dress" shown in the video "Dresses Undressed."

Period Corsets' retail line includes models representing eras from about 1560 to 1912, and mostly European in design origin. All are hand made. The company sells only online, but does have fitting rooms available for appointments. And, of course, Coffey stands ready to create one-of-a-kind garments for special order, with costs ranging from several hundreds of dollars to several thousands, depending on the fabric and embellishments selected. While the company does not rent out its products, they are sold to rental houses that supply corsets for film and theatrical use. Their corsets have been used in the movie "Cold Mountain," and several TV series  including "Salem," "Hell on Wheels," and "Sleepy Hollow"....and of course there was the special corset for Madonna....

(Above) Ginnie Hebert gets laced into a nifty black velveteen number that absolutely requires the pose below!

(Above)  Sonia Grasvik adjusts the front of a corset on Sally Morgan--who asked for a bed post to hold onto when the back of this number was being laced up! (Below) What can you say after this but, "Ta-dah!"

Following Coffey's presentation, the audience members gleefully lined up to lace each other into some of the many samples provided. One person said she seriously needed the traditional bed post to hang onto while another person laced up the back of her corset! The challenge of getting ones', um, front body parts (Okay! Boobs!) properly situated in these unaccustomed garments provided a lot of laughs. General consensus was that the corsets proved to be surprisingly comfortable, once properly fitted and laced, especially in providing some back support.

(Above and below) Nicole McHale likes the feeling of this "cone-shaped" number, especially after being laced up by Period Corsets' Hilary Specht Coffey, above left.

For more information on Period Corsets, including company history and photos of models available, go to http://www.periodcorsets.com/.