Oregon Art Beat; #105; Mary Catherine Lamb

I think we pray to the patron saint of work that he would not be what you had feared. The patron saint of editors is Saint Francis to sales. To sales? Not to be for the saint to sales? Oh, well, no, you don't have to worry about it. I'm going to pick it up down here, but it will be very brief. I'm going to pick it up. He came for light over there in that

corner. Yes, he says I'm going to worry about it. Oh, well, I love that display of hands. It's okay. It's okay. I can help you. She's just upset with me because... Now I'm wondering if I should have had that thing at the bottom. No, I'm great with the fear of God. There's another alphabet on the way over there. I mean, maybe it's not that important. You know, it's

entirely... Does it have to be hanging on top of him? Well... Or... I mean, what we could do is I could just take out... Take off the gloves that are protruding, but there is going to be that moment when I'm going to want to show you the back. We talked about that. As opposed to them hanging on a clothesline. And I said, oh, I just lifted up and showed you the back. So it won't be good to have them there, then. Well... And be able to hold them up adjacent to them. There are some drawings here. This is on the wall here. Because it's confused. Like I was confused just now. Right. So I'm going to take this down, take the pieces of paper off, and we'll deal with this first. Then I'll put this back up with no paper behind it. Okay, great. Okay. Because shooting them

will be... With a camera. Right. It's really time consuming. We may run out of time. I might be better anyway. Yeah. No, I'm all for that. Do you want to help me save some time? Oh. All you have to do is... I'm in cat cat. Just hold this box and you can still play with the cat. Look, I don't understand this. How you wind up... Oh, I'm going to leave this side. Oh, this is straight. As I pin it up. Sorry. It's okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay, the phones are now unplugged again.

I love that piece. All I have are these paper squares, and it isn't until I have them all drawn out that I begin to actually make decisions about what the fabrics are going to be. Which is why there's nothing cut out and ready to sew. Because the sewing is one of the very last things to happen. So it's kind of unfortunate that this isn't such an early stage. Okay, I think a lot on that. Well, these really look good. Of course, it's serious talk, but you're sending it like the buzzing light. I'm not going to spend a long time here, but let's just, you know, you're pretty good at this spontaneous walking, it's through stuff. Well, I think so. That's a very insightful comment, Eric. Okay, we're ready. Well, there's all kinds of stuff in here. There's calorie shells and beads from costume jewelry I've cut out.

Oh, let's try it again. That's a little frantic. Oh, I got it. So you wind? Wind. There's a lot of stuff in these drawers. You never know when you're going to need it. Whether it's an embellishment for a quilt or for some kind of mixed media collage thing with an old snapshot. And there's some calorie shells. Oh, God, what are these clothes? I don't even know what these are. Some kind of seed. Sliced wooden things. Fake coral. Fake turquoise. Oh, musical notes. Those are coming handy. Colored toothpicks. Little fabric hearts. Little mother pearl leaves. Little pink scalp shells. Venetian beads. Boggle letters.

Ivory. I don't know what those are. Pasta. These are actual macaroni, I think. Yellow and multicolored. Plastic egos. Wooden checkers. Animal teeth. Plastic mermaids. White seashells. Old bus tokens. Colored golf tees. Colored shop frills. Viles of pigment. Metal stars. Little buttons like dominoes. Oh, good heavens. Another whole section. Little rubber stamps. Game pieces. More plastic animals. More ivory pineapples. Multicolored grommets. Rings. Silvery glittery things. More custom jewelry. More really hideous. Can you imagine wearing a necropada? Little maggots.

More game pieces. Little beads for, I don't know what, Campfire GO project probably. More colored beads. The oddments. The little weird wooden figures. Little clown heads. Whoops. Monopoly markers. Parts cheesy markers. More game pieces. Oh, bingo numbers. Beautiful bingo numbers. Oops. Dice. Majang. Pieces and dominoes. I guess there's no Majang in there. Oh, there it is. Poocies shells. Colored seashells. More turquoise. Little seed beads. Multicolored pom -poms. Oh, god, millinery supplies. Little red fruits. Little more glitter. Little pink dolls. Little pink plastic figures.

Trimano pieces. A game I never played or heard of until I started collecting old game pieces. Beautiful sequins from the 20s. Someone gave them. Metal parts of old ugly jewelry. Lotto cards. Cigarette cards. Little game dials. Letters of the alphabet. Ridge tally markers and stickers. I don't even know what's in here. Oh, anagram tiles. More anagram tiles. More letters. You need to spell out things if I ever want to write a Branson note. This is a place to come. More letters. Oh, dear. Well, there's a plethora of letters here. We don't have to go through all the letters. Jigsaw puzzles of the United States. Those are really good for collages. And I don't know what these say. These are beautiful Chinese wooden

markers for some game. Spelling games. Scrabble tiles. Flash cards. Algebra cards. Vocabulary cards. Oh, I used a vocabulary card on a collage I made not too long ago. It was just the ticket. Anything you could possibly want for a little mixed media found object collage. You know what Craig is famous for. When you're editing to get to edit, very exact. And so Craig would find the 11th hour of the second day. And we're almost to the close now. I know. We're almost to the most important part. Tick, tick, tick. You know.

Recognize it. And these are the squares. So when they get pinned up on the wall in their sequence. And I start making fabric choices. I make a color key. There's the thing on the wall over there with indicating which color goes to which fabric. And then I start putting everything out. I don't understand what the squares are. They're not just enlarged. No. You look at this. I draw them by hand. Looking at, you know, D5. And I draw it a little off. Like instead of having the line start as close to that relative spot as possible, I might deliberately draw it more in the middle of the square. So that then when all the squares are assembled, the contours don't go together. Are we on? Yeah. Oh, God. We'll do it again later. Okay. Based on what? I mean, when you look at that, you decide to make it a little different.

Why are you doing that? I mean, what? How are you deciding? How are you going to make it different? I don't understand. You decide you're going to draw this square a little differently from the way it is. Oh. That just... I don't think it's... Are you trying to make it stand alone interesting? Oh, I see. I am interested in the composition of each... I'm interested in the individual composition. I'm interested in the composition of each individual square. In addition to the way it's a part of this whole, once they're all assembled, the individual squares don't stand out very much. But that's one reason I like this kind of fracturing effect, is because it emphasizes the sort of abstract composition of each one of the individual squares. Because they do seem very beautiful to me as I'm creating

them individually. And of course, they're completely unreadable on their own. But on their own, they're beautiful little abstract compositions of beautiful fabrics. And so I want to emphasize that. So are you adjusting and shifting them around so that they look more aesthetically appealing to you per square? It's just a way of emphasizing their individuality by having them not match up. So we can look at one of your pieces, zero in on one square, and it'll just pop out. Wow, that's a nice square. That's my hope that that might be one of the aspects of the quilts that people appreciate is how beautiful the individual squares are. So

let's take a look at the rest of the quilts. So let's take a look at this. So let's take a look at this.

So let's take a look at this. I don't know. That's going to be too much yellow in that halo. I'll try this one. That's not going to work either.

Well, I'll just try this one for now. Now. Good work. Still way too early to

tell. I don't know. Now, I don't know what else to do. I would never have gotten to this degree of, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, I have no confidence that these are going to be the fabrics that are actually going to be in the quilt. And I would never be actually doing the sewing until all of the individual squares were actually at this stage, heat fused on, and I see what they look like altogether, and that's when I start sewing. But they're not going to know that. I know. Well, it's hard, you know, because I'm supposed to be appearing natural.

And I know nobody's going to know the difference. But it feels so unnatural that it's hard for me to feel normal while I'm doing it, you know what I mean. But if you want one of me sewing, I could sew this. And it would take, you know, a minute. Let's just get right now. See that again? This magic stuff, this heat fusible stuff where I could trace the shape and all that on my paper squares, and then make, it's called Wonder Under. And I couldn't be an artist without it. Okay, Greg, you tell me when I should go. Okay.

right. All right. All right.

All right. All right. All right.

All right. All right. Almost done. All right.

All right. All right. Of course, that's before the quilting.

All right. Okay, I've made a square. I don't know what else to do now. We can stop now. Oh, I was even using a wrong button thread. But I'm sure you're going to get an avalanche of angry phone calls about that. What? I used the wrong button thread. I wasted all that cold metallic on the underside. It should be just white cotton under there. It's going to be, if I decide to use these fabrics, this square right here. So this is B3. There it is right there. And assuming I stick with these fabrics, which I very well may not, but if this is the background,

that's what that square in the park. Look at that over there. Of course, I have completely destroyed an absolutely beautiful, shimmering golden yellow damas tablecloth that still had its original label on it from Myron Frank from the 40s, just shared right into. I mean, I do destroy things that vintage textile dealers around the country would have me strung up for. Because I'm going to

make them into something even more beautiful than they were originally. Because they look more beautiful, you know, like any color, it looks more beautiful next to another color than it does by itself. That hideous chair.

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