The "X" Factor

The theme "Leave Your Mark" presented me with a struggle, so I left this idea alone so that my subconscious could come up with a suitable response.   And... I recalled how a couple of artist friends had made past comments about my abstract work often included an X.   So my quilt is called the "X" Factor.

My art-quilt is made using hand-dyed cotton fabric, dyed silk for the X, and dyed threads for the embellishment.   The line work represents growth with its upward movement, and my choice of red is due to its dramatic and passionate essence.

The background was cotton cloth that I dyed with thickened Procion dyes.   I kept the design simplistic to feature the rhythm of life.  Choice of fabric for the binding compliments the rest of the piece.   

This piece was large a result of intuitive spontaneous choices rather than a planned organised approach.    This is the way I like to work and it reflects the way I now like to leave my marks in daily life.

Morgan and Momoy

This challenge had me a bit flummoxed for a bit; I struggled with how I wanted to represent "leaving my mark".  Each time I considered the challenge, I came back to this thought: the greatest mark I'll leave on this Earth is my children.  They will be here after I'm gone.  Hopefully, they will be good people, responsible global citizens, and loving partners and parents.  That's the greatest legacy I can leave.

With that in mind, I created this piece based on a drawing my youngest did when she was 3.  I have it framed and hanging in my studio.  The color selections are directly influenced by what she drew, right down to the faded small figure.... and the spelling mistake. I  mimicked her crayon drawn line with paint and I used my left hand so the lines weren't as sure.

I took the "leaving your mark" theme one step further with my fabrics.  In our group discussions, we've been talking about some of our individual challenges of using only things from our stash.  I wanted to do that, but didn't have a good fabric for the center panel.  As a result, I used a piece of fabric I dyed with onion skins to be ecologically-minded.   Every small step, I hope, makes a difference.

Resonance

My approach to an art piece is usually a psychological or philosophical one. I am trying to convey a thought or concept in a visual way. For this theme of leaving our mark, after much thought I felt that the belief that I wanted to express was that by our very existence we leave a mark. Just as dropping a pebble into a pond causes concentric ripples to flow outward in all directions, our presence also creates ripples of  influence in the world around us.

If we now think of dropping many pebbles into a pond the ripples spread out and begin to overlap thus causing the patterns to merge and change. Similarly although we send out our particular pattern of energy, so do others and these patterns encounter one another and form new patterns. So we may effect change in other people in ways that we will never know but they will also effect changes in us. Thus we build our families, our communities, our societies and our world.

For Buddhists the bohdi leaf is a symbol of the spirit, as Buddha was sitting under a bohdi tree when he reached enlightenment. I have used an abstracted image of a bohdi leaf to represent the spirit and the echo quilting to convey the idea of the energy waves that we emit and receive as we journey through our life.

I have used a technique of layering colours of silk and then slashing down to reveal the under layers to convey the idea that our influence exists on many levels, physical, emotional, intellectual and psychological.

The materials are Indian silk and commercial cotton fabric.