[-fiber art, alterations-]

mormors syskrin grandmothers sewingbox

Originally uploaded by gunnels.

This morning’s inspiration comes from Gunnel Svensson of Sweden. She posted this lovely sampler to the flickr Practically Creative pool. It’s made of things from her grandmother’s sewing box.

What treasures!

What a wonderful idea!

Most of us who love fabrics, also love collecting old bits of lace, crocheted edges, ribbons, thread, buttons. Putting them together into a fabric collage is the perfect way to not only save them but also to display and pay tribute to them as well. As Gunnel shows, we can use buttons and thread and even scissors!

It’s a lovely way to incorporate small stitchery projects that were never completed. Now there’s a tribute to our creative but overly busy ancestral womenfolk—finally *completing* their incomplete projects! I would be delighted to think that my granddaughter would care enough to do that with all my incompletes some day!

Think not only of monograms and lace but also quilt squares and scraps made from those gorgeous old fabrics that cannot be duplicated by modern means. Or how about those handmade items that have long since worn out but that are too precious to be thrown away? I know I have some of those tucked away.

Think of it as Heritage Art whether the bits and pieces are from your relatives or are things that you’ve picked up along the way from antique stores and flea markets. They were done by someone’s ancestors and more than likely by women who had very similar instincts for making something beautiful out of what was at hand.

Thank you, Gunnel for your inspiring art.

Click the image to get a closer look at Gunnel’s work.
Please visit Gunnel’s bog.
Edited to add: I just found on Gunnels blog that her sampler has been made into postcards. How lovely! Check them out here.

[process, inspiration]

Book box

Originally uploaded by cramzy.

A Good Sunday Morning in May to you all!

The photo to the right is one from The Practically Creative Group on flickr. It’s posted by ‘cramzy,’ a wonderful fibre artist whose work has impressed me continually.

Cramzy, also known as Emmy Schoonbeek, does all kinds of fanciful, beautiful and colourful stitchery, constructions and embellishments. This one caught my eye because of its cross-pollination effect. It’s so many things and includes so many things all at once.

It’s fibre art. It’s collage. It’s construction. It’s functional. It’s art. It’s a box. It’s a book. It’s got words, music, textile, paper, beads and probably lots more that we can’t see. Do click the image to see it in larger form.

I believe that this process of cross-pollination is one of the best ways to be freshly inspired and motivated.

It’s easy to utilize various skills and interests in our work when we’re already FEELING inspired and creative. That’s part of what makes it fun when one good idea or impulse bounces off another to create something new and unique. But it also can work for us when we can’t find that FEELING.

If you are in the doldrums with painting, try writing in your journal. Brainstorm. Do calligraphy until it turns into something else. Play with letters until they are abstract shapes.

If you can’t get started writing, do a quick symbolic collage of your main character. Or put on music that you love but don’t often listen to.

Another trick is to use these alternate parts of ourselves to be creative while taking a break from whatever has depleted our motivation. For example, when I’ve written myself into a corner, I find cooking to be a wonderful activity to immerse myself in. It’s creative and involves the senses but it doesn’t require a lot of mental concentration. This flow of activity allows my mind time to wander in a relaxed way. Without forcing it, I often find a way out of that corner and come back to the writing inspired and motivated—with a good meal under my belt!

Thanks, Emmy, for your inspiration this morning. Be sure to visit cramzy on flickr and at her blog.

[-art, alterations-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

scroll/reset

Originally uploaded by Mary Bogdan.

I have boxes on my mind.

This week, I covered a small cardboard box in old photos and gorgeous, vintage gold paper I found in my late father’s art supplies. I lined the inside with beads and feathers. Fun!

That little project got me going on containers. Now I’m working on making a box out of a couple of my paintings that have been in a drawer for a decade or more. In bed last night, just before sleep, I came up with an inspiration for a see-through lid so that the painting-lined interior won’t be hidden. This is fun stuff and all inspired by our recent issue on Alterations.

Our image today is from assemblage artist Mary Bogdan. You can see more of her work here in our on-going look at Alterations.

Mary collects boxes and more boxes to use in her constructs. This piece, entitled “scroll/reset” is 19″w x 14.5″h x 6″d. This is what she has written about it:

Well, Mary, I wish I could touch it, look in that cigar box, ruffle the pages. It’s so *FULL*.

I ran across a fun site yesterday called Box Doodles. Whoa, is this ever right down The PCQ’s alley. On this site, people are encouraged to make quick things out of boxes, but that hardly begins to describe the outcomes. Take a look. You won’t be sorry. The box doodles and Mary’s decidedly more sophisticated box assemblage can’t help but inspire!

Here are photos of the boxes I mentioned above. The first is a craft store box that I covered with vintage paper and old photos and lined with beads and feathers.

This one is literally made from one of my paintings (acrylic) bent into shape and glued. The lid is made from a web of machine-sewn threads (done on tissue paper and later removed) sewn onto more of the painting paper with embellishments of beads and lots more thread in the corners.

thanks, Mary.

See all our Alterations articles
See New Again, an Alterations Challenge
- with more photos of my boxes -
See more of Mary Bogdan’s art: The Tide Series
See all our Collecting articles and surveys

Originally published March 2006 in the Practically Creative blog; edited slightly for re-publication

[-metaphorism, inspiration-]

metAphorism is a word I coined to mean a simple, everyday thing, concept or event that points us in the direction of a deeper lesson. metaphor - figure of speech giving an implicit comparison: this is that. aphorism - concise statement of a truth or opinion.

The metAphorism:
The Costume Box
The Lesson:
unplanned, unsorted accumulations are important sources of creative productivity

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

When I was a little girl, we had a big cardboard box in the closet that held anything that could be thought of as “costume.” Never sorted through, never planned, it looked only like an unholy mess. Feathers and ribbons. Fabric to drape and pin. Hand-me-downs and hand-offs from relatives that could never be used in real life. A rabbit-fur muff. A fox stole. A “gypsy” skirt made from horizontal rows of brightly contrasting fabric. There was an evening bag that would bring hundreds on E-bay today. Clip-on earrings without mates. Belts. Beads. Broken things. Unlikely bits of felt and plastic and leather and cotton and wire and pipe cleaners.

The specifics are less prominent in my mind all these years later than the enticing assortment and variety of things.

It was used, of course, at Halloween to devise costumes which were never store-bought. While we sometimes had help from our creative parents, we often came up with our own creations right out of the Costume Box. The other major use was for the garage musicals that my sister, Suze and I put on regularly for fame and profit. Suze was the creative genius behind “Dance through the Centuries” and many others. One was carried out entirely on roller skates (must have been where Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber got the idea). The Costume Box provided the raw materials for transforming us into stage-ready performers.

When I had children, it was second-nature for me to have a box that I threw things into to form their own Costume Box. One summer we rented a condo on the beach with another family. There were five boys in all and I took the Costume Box along, hoping it would provide some entertainment if it rained the whole week. One evening the adults were sitting outside with other people from the condos and our boys came down dressed as characters from Star Wars. Even though there were no store-bought costumes in the box, we watched in amazement as they trooped down in identifiable personages. “There’s Darth Vader!” a child exclaimed. “Oh look! He’s a Stormtrooper!” said an adult. There they were: BobaFet, R2D2, Chewbacca.

It’s truly stunning what our imaginations can do with almost nothing.

None of us became professional performers or costume designers, but the creations that adorned us out of the Costume Boxes had a lasting effect nonetheless. When you have had the experience of making something new out of old cast-offs you remember it forever. It’s not only fun, it’s creative confidence-building in a box.

So when you think about creativity, remember the Costume Box. Don’t let those clutter-clearing shows on TV make you feel too guilty about your accumulation of stuff. Junk drawers, untidy tool sheds, archivist attics, overflowing garages, toy and costume boxes provide raw materials for creative productivity.

Originally published in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collecting

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