The Pull of Storytelling

August 10, 2025

Today my head is full of stories.

Saturday, I experienced powerful storytelling –- with words then with images –- and today I am still processing.

That’s the thing about strong stories. They stay with you.

Stories with words: Yesterday we went to the Winter Park Library (near Orlando) to see an exhibit co-sponsored with the National Holocaust Museum. It was an interesting slice of the big Holocaust story: it covered about a decade leading up to and including WWII, focusing on what Americans knew about what was happening to Jews in Europe and when they knew it. And how they felt about it. There was a great mix of text and historical documents, as well as graphs (gauging public opinion at various times.) With the full scope of the Nazi plans now part of our historical understanding, it was quite sobering to learn how strongly the sentiment was against being involved in the war. The sentiment against helping the Nazi’s victims, those who escaped and became immigrants, was equally as strong.

Lots to think about.

Stories with images: We then visited the Orlando Museum of Art to see the Florida Prize artists. All are storytellers with a strong narrative component to their work. They give voice to personal stories. Theu give voice to the stories of communities. They give voice to the earth, our environment, itself.

Lots to feel and remember.

Now, back in the studio, I am working to create a narrative work that will incorporate this image.

I confess that I am sometimes hesitant and held in place by self-doubt.

What am I thinking? How can my images of trees and houses be as important as earth-shaking world events? Who (other than me) is interested in my story or my understanding of reality?

Actually, the two experiences are not separate.

If I heighten my understanding of other people’s lives and stories, I increase my capacity to analyze, and to feel deeply as a human being. I can then also better understand and explore my personal journey.

If I deepen my understanding of my personal journey, it should deepen my ability to understand and to care about other people and circumstances.

We draw on all we know and all we learn.

But MY story is the only one I have to tell.

And I am the only one who can tell it.

Every artist has their own story and experience, and those are the ones they need to explore. And to tell through their art.

It is among the most meaningful experiences there can be.

Here’s where my thinking has taken me so far:

It’s a beginning. More to come.

. . . . . .
Coming Event: I will be showing some of my favorite storytelling works in the ArtBurst Studios Boutique August 20 – September 3. This is an online art gallery – no biddng required. It’s run by a wonderful group of dedicated artists and allows you to casually browse from your home and discover new artists. You can visit now – artburststudios.com – and see the artists currently in the Boutique. Then watch for BOBBI BAUGH and JENNIFER STECK with works to discover August 20 – September 3. Bargain Bonus: My works will be offered at LOWER prices than their usual website price. Oh boy!

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

BLOG POSTS - once a week: Mostly about what I am creating in the studio. If you would enjoy receiving blog posts by e-mail, please subscribe here: I post and send by e-mail each Sunday evening. BLOGS-BY-EMAIL

NEWSLETTER – about once a month: Mostly news of exhibits and my way of introducing new work. You’ll get FIRST LOOKS at new artwork and members-only discounts. You’ll hear from me about once a month. NEWSLETTER

Thinking of Water

August 3, 2025

The quilt I’ve been working on this past week is a good fit with my summertime longings.

There is a section depicting a young girl, dipping her toe into water, the water functioning as a respite, or a place of dreaming.

In the I-can’t-believe-it’s-this-hot-and-we’re-still-alive days of Florida summer, by most mid-afternoons I am dreaming of water. The wonderful cool springs about ten minutes from my home beckon me for a cool swim.

Here’s a detail of the water in the quilt as it exists so far:

Both halves of this water scene are transfers of photos onto fabric. The lower section is a photo I took near the edge of a small lake nearby. It captures the quality of water to reflect light. And I love the contrast created by the bits of plant life.

The top section — bubbles, specs of light, fantasy — are also a photo transfer. But I did not photograph actual water. This is a close-up shot of the surface of one of my plywood painting boards, which had absorbed splashes and spatters and spills over time. I just love it.

Water is varied. Water is all about light.
Water is all about contrasts in lights and dark.
Water is all about movement.
Water is about unpredictability.

Just as I was about to sit down and write this weekend, I was moving a few things around in my studio. I snapped a few images of water created in other ways.

This is also a photo transfer. I remember going out in a canoe with the specific purpose of finding water patterns to photograph. I took a lot of images. Then, bringing the canoe up to the beach, in a bit of water barely six inches deep I discovered this wonderful water and threw in some pebbles to create ripples. Perfect!

It’s also an enjoyable challenge to create the sense of water without a photographic start. This is a section of a quilt I created for an above-below composition, The Ways of Sunlight. This panel depicts the sunlight and shadows below the water.

This composition was created by building up layers of stencil-painted images with acrylic paints on fabric. In this panel I see the things that interest me about water: light, contrasts, movement, variety., unpredictability.

Back to my first photo, now cropped to reveal the girl next to the water;

I hope you want to feel the water with your toes too. And to dream dreams.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Conclusions and Beginnings

July 27, 2025

When I first jumped into my current series of tree-based artworks, I had sketches and ideas of how I might use these printed pieces in different ways.

One way: Explore my interest in the tree images as tree images. Their complexity. Depicting them in layers.

Just this week I have completed the large quilt I’ve been working on and writing about recently. Here it is.

*Writing Using Very Few Words 51.5"H x 59"W* More info my website **HERE**

Now I have that nice sense of accomplishment that comes from completing a large project. And, as often happens, as I was in the finishing stages of this work, ideas for a new work began to cook. I have been inspired to begin a quilt using the trees differently.

Second Way: Explore the trees as components of storytelling works.

Here’s how some of that has progressed this week.

At the core of this storytelling work will be an image of a home remembered, layered in the printed fabric of the tree limbs. I created the house as a photo transfer, with tree limbs superimposed and made transparent. It worked. But it was not enough. I realized I’d actually have to do some manual overlapping as well.

I love the panel of trees I printed, so I was very careful before cutting it up. With paper printouts of both the house and the tree panel, I worked out exactly how to overlap them, and how to get the best use out of the tree section.

I cut the trees and the house print and arranged them left to right: strip of trees, house in the middle, another strip of trees. To attached them to each other, at this stage I just glued the edges.

Here are the three pieces on my worktable, under weights, with the glue drying. When you glue fabric, wrinkles are your enemy. I put wax paper on top of the artwork so the weights won’t stick to the quilt. For this application, I used my plastic cutting rulers to disperse the weight. Long and skinny, and just the size of the area being glued. I weighted them with jars of paint.

After about an hour, I took it apart and pulled off the wax paper.

The pieces are joined, and nice and flat. I’ll work this as a section quilting it onto a felt backing.

Here are various fabric pieces I have created (or gathered from my stash) that I think will go together well as elements in the quilt. I have them pinned up to a Styrofoam sheet on my easel.

The character in the quilt will be a young girl, viewed from above as she sits by water dangling her toes. I enlarged a reference photo, traced it onto muslin, and have begun the process of collaging this section.

Next up: I’ll be developing and deepening the depiction of the girl, and then incorporating her and all the elements into a new story.

When I create quilts inspired by memories and life experiences, the early stages are like the work I’ve done this week. I’m just beginning. I’m thinking about how to compose the picture plane, how to attach the pieces onto one another. The deeper communication between me and the characters and me and the memory will evolve as the piece progresses. There will, I hope, be much to think about.

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Placing the objects. Placing the viewer.

July 20, 2025

What should go where?

Why does it matter?

I spend a lot of time in my studio working out answers to these questions. Moving things around. Considering options. And I spent time this week – in a more analytical way – thinking and talking about concepts of composition.

In a workshop I taught via zoom (THANK YOU for the invitation, Art Quilt Association of Grand Junction, CO) and in leading some exercises with my local arts group (THANK YOU for the great day we had together, Arts Etc.) Drawing on the methods I experienced in hours as a student in Art History classes, we learned by looking at the works of other artists. Some local. Some famous masters.

Some works are successful. Some are not.

A strong composition is a make-or-break component of artwork. It’s not the end in itself. It’s the major tool artists use to communicate whatever it was that inspired them to create artwork in the first place. Composition counts.

This is one of the most recognizable works in modern art:

Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World is a masterpiece for many reasons. It is beautifully rendered. It is intriguing. It has a compelling story.

Part of the emotional punch is created by the artist’s composition choices: Wyeth’s masterful use of a high horizon line to draw the viewer into the picture. There is only one place where one could be to see what we see in Christina’s World. We are down the hill, standing slightly higher than the figure, where we can look down and see the top of her head and the top of her shoulders. But we are well below the buildings, having to look up to see them at the angle they are depicted.

So, Wyeth has placed us in the scene too. That’s why it’s so compelling. We feel like we are right there.

Any time a composition depicts depth, the horizon line plays a part. It’s an element that tells the viewer where he is.

I thought this week of one of the first quilts I created that used perspective to place the viewer.

Flight of the Magical Lawnchair: I used two different perspectives in the same space in this quilt.

First is the angle used to take the photo I used as the basis for the silhouette of the two girls. (It is an old photo from my family scrapbook. The girls are myself and my sister. I am on the left.) The photographer had to be right in front of the chair, looking straight on, and crouched down slightly.

But, in the quilt composition, I have placed these girls up in the night sky, looking down at houses below as they take their imaginary, flying journey.

So . . . Where is the viewer? The viewer has to be up in the sky looking straight ahead at the girls, flying through the night with them while looking down at the houses.

The effect, I hope, is that the viewer feels drawn into this dream experience.

As you create your own works, or as you learn to deepen your appreciation of art as a viewer, pay attention to composition, especially the manipulations of depth and perspective that draw you in as part of the story.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Edging toward the finish line

July 13, 2025

The finish line is almost in sight . . . I can actually see it from here!

Here, on my worktable, is the large tree-pattern quilt I’ve been working on and writing about for a while now.

As you can see, this is an example of the artistic vision winning out over practicality. The work is finishing up at about 52” x 58” – just a tad too big to fit on my worktable. Through most of the process I was working in sections. Now that it’s constructed I just have to figure out ways to deal with it.

(I have a few plywood pieces I can slide under the cutting mat that’s on the worktable surface; they function like leaves in the dining room table for Thanksgiving when all the cousins arrive.)

This weekend I’ve been working on binding and backing.

I bind my quilt edges in different ways. Lately, I have been drawn to a simple fabric strip binding that’s sewn on right sides together and turned so it is visible about ¼” on the front. I like the architecture this provides.

While it serves a finishing function, I want it to be part of the visual communication of the quilt too.

In most compositions, there will be an entry way into the image, some point where the viewer’s eye begins its journey through the work. In this quilt, I’ve added a single splash of burnt orange on the left edge to do that. The orange section leads to an energetic patch of bubbly circles.

I would not want the binding edge there to be a dark blue or teal to match the rest of the quilt. It would chop into the entry of the burnt orange. So, I pieced the binding strip with a section of burnt orange. This will allow that little splash of color to go off the edge without interruption. I change the color of the binding as it butts up next to different colors in the quilt.

Here’s a look at the right side. I’ve used a lighter ochre spattered with dark blue. (I painted this to match the background of the tree section it’s next to.) The dark teal binding on the left will merge into this lighter binding about halfway around the quilt.

I use these small touches to contribute to a progression from deeper to more light-filled printed sections as the viewer’s eye progresses through the quilt.

Also shown above is the quilt being weighted down for the glue on the back side to dry without buckling the quilt. (Acrylic glue is how I attach the felt backing to the finished quilt.)

And now for a scene never-before-revealed-on-my-blog: Here’s my scenic laundry room and ironing board. It’s right next to my studio.

I’m pressing the binding in place after stitching it on. What I wanted share about this is a bit of insight into pressing fabric that’s been painted with acrylics. No problem. Works fine. Just be sure to use a Teflon pressing sheet so the paint doesn’t stick to your iron.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

July 4 Reflections

July 6, 2025

The neighborhood of my early childhood, which I honored with Every One Has a Different Story , was one characterized by an innocence of things outside the neighborhood. Every family had their own stories, some harder than others.

On the evening of July 4, as we sat on our front porch in the dark listening to the sounds of fireworks and watching them decorate the sky, I thought of that time and that kind of neighborhood. The neighborhood where I live now is not a rowhouse neighborhood like the one in which I was a child. But it has a similar simplicity. It’s not fancy. There are families of all kinds.

And our neighborhood has families who enjoy the all-American pastime of setting off fireworks on the fourth of July. There is an innocence to this. (Despite the inevitable accident to someone who handles the explosives wrong, and the terror inflicted on pets and birds.)

Boom!

As I sat in the dark, enjoying the light show, I could not keep from thinking about the other things I had witnessed this week that could not in any way be described as innocent.

In the children’s section of our local library, I meet with a young woman who I am working with through our local adult literacy program. While we are there, the librarians have cartons of milk and fruit and some packaged baked snacks for kids who show up — part of our County’s program to provide breakfasts for children when school is not in session. The librarians do this with cheerful kindness, making it a nice experience for the families.

When I asked a librarian about the funding for this program, she said it’s through the County, backed by USDA money. The very kind of programs just slashed in the tax bill that our elected leaders just passed.

Boom

And I talked to my adult student, who is an American citizen married to an American citizen, both Hispanic, about needing to carry her birth certificate with her at all times, fearful of raids that are now increasing in Central Florida.

Boom.

Am I paranoid? I don’t think so.

The new law will pour $170.7 billion into immigration enforcement—more than the military budgets of all but fifteen countries. The law provides $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times what Trump spent on the wall in his first term. It provides $45 billion for detention facilities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an increase of 265% in ICE’s annual detention budget. It provides $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, a threefold increase in ICE’s annual budget.

According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, the law gives ICE more funding than the Federal Bureau of Investigations; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; U.S. Marshals Service; and Bureau of Prisons combined. In fact, Reichlin-Melnick told Democracy Now!, the law will make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency “in the history of the nation.” (Italicized text copied from July 6 report from Heather Cox Richardson, American historian)

Boom

In Florida, our governor is bragging about our new detention center in the Everglade, which they have laughingly called Alligator Alcatraz, as if the cute alliteration can disguise that it is a state-funded internment Camp. This week it received its first 500 detainee. Who are they? Brought there on what charges? Those facts so far are not forthcoming. Also still hidden are facts behind the funding and state contracting of this huge facility created start-to-finish in eight weeks.

Boom

So. Why write about this in my art blog?

First, I just need to share that I’ve been having a hard time lately feeling spontaneous and creative. I am working in my studio largely as an act of will. It’s like pushing through a dark cloud.

And because artists, I believe, have the ability to help people see things they otherwise would not see. Art can make people think about things they otherwise not think about. To feel things they otherwise would not feel.

We each choose our subject matter. But we should not forget how important this job is. Even now. Especially now.

I send my best wishes to all.

And one final thought… While I work at being understanding, compassionate, striving toward the good and thoughtful. . . sometimes I just GET ANGRY! This is a quilt that allowed me to do that: “Interchangeable.”

Moving in Circles

June 29, 2025

I found myself thinking about circles this week.

I hadn’t planned on using circles in the large tree-based quilt I’m working on now. But, as I put together panels of intricate limb shapes, with a LOT of pattern, I just felt the need for a resting place from all that activity. Circles do just that.

And these are big circles. I created them informally with a little loose randomness by pouring the paint.

While that paint was drying I took a look at some of my smaller collaged works to get some insight into circles. (This is one of the many things I enjoy about creating the small collages, alongside larger quilts. They are a chance to work out patterns and ideas.)

Circles work well together. In Beside the Quiet Morning, the pattern begins with the circular pattern in the photo of water. I picked that up with the large circle top left, printed as a relief print. (I think I used a wooden embroidery hoop for that print image.) Then, the few smaller circles are like bits of light energy. I enjoy having them just pop up here and there in a work.

In Taking a Deep Breath I’ve mixed up sizes again. And in this composition the large circle plays a connecting function. Imagine this same work without the large transparent circle. It’s just disjointed parts. But the circle works to hold the parts together. Circles are natural connectors.

In The Pull of Water, the circles are not linear but solid. Circular solids are very pleasing shapes to me. They connote lots of natural elements. The earth. A water drop. The moon. A moon reflected. I enjoyed slicing the circle shapes and interspersing other patterns into them.

While I’ve been writing, the paint has dried. Here’s part of the poured paint panel with stitching:

May you find ways of holding things together and creating shapes and images that please you.

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Conversations between paper and fabric

June 22, 2025

Fun experiments this week with paper and fabric.

I’ll get there in a few paragraphs. But, first, a few morning thoughts

I frequently write my blog earlier in the week, maybe Friday evening or Saturday. This week I am writing on Sunday morning. I am still in morning mode.

I’m an early riser. Generally I am on our front porch for coffee and poetry reading by about seven am. This morning I spent time just soaking it in. The sun coming through the leaves of the shrubs. The birdsong. The neighborhood quiet. Our hibiscus opening to the day. It is good.

And it is essential. If you are an artmaker, you absolutely must allow some time for yourself. Alone. To observe. To restore. Even if the time alone takes you inward to difficult decisions and memories. You have to have time alone to process life. There’s no making art without this time.

AND – yesterday I spent the morning with my local artmaking group, Arts Etc. The camaraderie, learning from each other and mutual encouragement in a group like this is irreplaceable. Also essential. However or wherever you do it, if you are an artmaker find a group – a tribe. It also feeds what you need to create.

Now to some paper and fabric thoughts:

Our program leader demo’d a number of different kinds of paper, not-paper, synthetic and other fibrous materials. It was interesting to see the array of materials available. Being a simple soul, I brought just my scrap box (A large, flat plastic storage box with a lid) of printed rice paper and tissue paper and did some collaging after the demo.

Some basic guidelines: If you are going to collage paper to fabric, it will be most successful if the papers are thin and the fabric is somewhat heavier. I always begin by taping or pinning my substrate fabric to a rigid board of some sort. (This piece is about 10”H x 28”W) Here I used styrofoam because it’s light and was easy to transport to the meeting. In my studio, I generally use a plywood board. (Covered in vinyl so I don’t glue the collage to the plywood.)

Tape down the substrate. Using a big brush, slather on a good coat of matte medium. Place your papers into the medium. Press in place with the brush or a brayer. It’s fine if medium squooshes out the sides of the papers – that means you are getting a good contact. Layer some more. Slather on more medium. Brush over the whole thing.

The medium is accomplishing two things: First, it is a good glue. Second, it is an archival painting material. By getting a good coat of matte medium under, over, and seeped down into the paper, you are encasing it in a material that will overcome the inherent fragility and instability of paper. Don’t be afraid. It will dry. And it will dry clear. You will be able to cut your paper-fabric pieces to sewable pieces and stitch through them.

Here’s a larger section I collaged. (This is about 24”H x 30”W)

And a close-up

I snapped a photo of a work-in-progress in my studio that also incorporates paper with fabric so you can envision how you might use paper-fabric pieces.

This kind of work encourages experimenting and quick response. And uses up your accumulation of printed paper scraps! Enjoy the process.

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

BLOG POSTS - once a week: Mostly about what I am creating in the studio. If you would enjoy receiving blog posts by e-mail, please subscribe here: I post and send by e-mail each Sunday evening. BLOGS-BY-EMAIL

NEWSLETTER – about once a month: Mostly news of exhibits and my way of introducing new work. You’ll get FIRST LOOKS at new artwork and members-only discounts. You’ll hear from me about once a month. NEWSLETTER

A learning and wondering smorgasbord

June 15, 2025

Lots of little things going on this week.

FIRST – FOLLOW-UP LEARNING ABOUT STENCILS

I had a number of interesting and helpful responses to my discussion last week about cutting plastic stencils. Thank you readers who sent ideas.

Material: The most preferred material seems to be mylar. (I have learned Mylar is a brand name of material made by DuPont. The generic name is polyester film.) There are lots of options on Amazon; search “Mylar sheets.”

You can also look for brand name Duralar film, which I found on Jerry’s Artarama in a roll 20” x 25ft for about $25. It’s .005” thick.

(Thickness notes: A normal bumper sticker that you would buy to put on your car is .002” - .003” thick. So this film would be just a little thicker than that. You don’t want anything thicker than .005”. Too hard to cut.)

Cutter: When I cut my big tree stencil, I used a box cutter like this:

It’s a great tool. Nice heavy handle to lean into. The razor blades that you insert just break off when you need to change to a new blade for sharpness. (Some people just push the blade onto a table surface till it breaks off. This terrifies me. I snap off the blade with pliers.)

And now some wondering: I am still in the middle of my project of printing panels with the tree limb images. I like the images a lot, but I admit I am now quite flummoxed.

The photo above is a tree limb panel and some accompanying fabric I laid out on my worktable to try out some combinations. (This whole unit of fabrics is abut 36” x 36”.) I can see possibilities for an attractive composition.

But—what is this about? Why does this interest me? To be wondering this at this stage of the game is backwards for me. I almost always start with a plan, then create the fabrics to fulfill that plan. Here, I have created panels I think are interesting and going backwards to find a compelling purpose. This is much harder!

I think I need to go back to my original interest – these limbs being part of the complex pattern of a single tree. Now I have reproduced them. But what am I trying to communicate?

More about communication. . . I have been thinking and wondering more about communication in another context this week.

I was thrilled to join in the “No Kings” protests on the streets of DeLand Saturday morning. My little ol’ town had about 1500 people communicating a wide range of ideas in their protests. Some signs were about science. Some signs were about fascism. Some signs were about climate change. Some about vaccines and health. Some were hopeful – expressing a longing for democracy that seems to be slipping away. Many expressed love for America.

And, yes, some were angry. A few signs read F---K Trump. I get it. People are angry.

But, I noticed that on the opposing team, the few large, loud pickup trucks that moved back and forth waving Trump signs, listening to what they yelled, there was only a single message: obstinate anger. The words they yelled were only ugly and angry. It seemed to me they just didn’t have much else to say. There was no offer of a compelling counter-vision of what good or important things they stand for. They just angrily defended their guy.

I’m still processing what all this means. But, at first thought, it seems to me that truth is often complicated, rich and varied. Communicating worthy ideas will not be simple or formulaic.

In art as in life.

. . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Adding a Layer – In reverse

June 8, 2025

As I’ve been surrounding myself with tree limb images in the studio, I’ve spent time looking at them. I’m enjoying the project and the experiments and like a lot of results.

Just as a reminder of how I’ve been proceeding, here’s a snapshot:

I invested time last month drawing and cutting a large cardstock stencil. I’ve printed several variations in different palettes.

What I realized this week, as I looked at the section shown above, is that I wanted some of these to have one or maybe two more layers.

What I want is a layer of dark trees in the foreground of the green-and-yellow-pattern. How to do this?

Option 1 – cut a stencil that’s the opposite, where the tree shapes are the open areas. Then when I print it, I’d be printing the final shape I want to see. I’ve done this many times before with other patterns. But the complexity of these limbs really makes them unsuitable for a stencil with a lot of little bridge pieces holding together floating parts.

Option 2: Use the existing stencil but use it to print a resist material like wheat paste. That way, I’ll be covering up the background and revealing the trees, ready for dark foreground painting. Great idea.

BUT – I created my stencil from card stock. Under its normal use for rolling on acrylic paint, it will hold up well for a long time. But wheat paste has to be washed off the stencil after printing. (Imagine pancake batter never washed off. It would just get gross.) I can’t hose off a card stock stencil. It would fall apart.

So this week I committed to cutting acompletely new limb stencil, identical to the first one, but made out of plastic. It took a few hours to trace it and cut it, but it will be a good time investment. Now I can create all kinds of layers. Here’s my new plastic stencil ready to lay down on the fabric:

Keep focused on the end product: printing dark trees in the foreground of a previously printed forest. (Printing resists involves multiple steps, so it’s easy to get lost. The end goal is important.)

Step 1: Putting down the resist. Here’s the new stencil getting put to use:

Above: I mixed up the wheat paste (flour + water) and poured it into a disposable tray; then I used a foam roller to spread the paste over the whole stencil.

After the whole piece was covered with wheat paste, while it was still wet, I pulled off the stencil, revealing the pattern.

I left it to dry on my worktable overnight.

Step 2: Overpainting Remember: the paste resist is covering up the background. So, I’ll now be painting the actual tree shapes.

Above center is the painted fabric outside drying in the sun.

Step 3: Take off the resist After the acrylic paint dried, I dunked the whole fabric piece in a bucket of water and went inside for a nap. When I came out, the wheat paste had softened up and I scraped it off with a spoon to get rid of most of it. (At this point it’s gloppy and messy.) Then I finished cleaning the fabric outdoors with the garden hose.

Step 4: Look at that! Here’s the result:

Things you might wonder:

Why cut the plastic stencil by hand? Couldn’t I use a Cricut (or similar) cutter or send it out for laser cutting. I could. But I actually like the tactile involvement this provides as I interact with the pattern. Further, this is also a pretty big stencil, possibly too big for higher-tech cutting methods.

Why not just paint the trees by hand, instead of creating a stencil? Two reasons. First, Painting on fabric with a brush does not yield the same appearance as rolling with a foam roller. Second, every time I wanted to use this pattern again, I’d have to draw it and paint it again. Now, I’ve invested in a stencil that will allow me to create the image quickly each time I want it.

What kind of plastic did I use? I’d be happy to share if I knew the answer. In my professional career years ago I worked in a printing company that produced nameplate products, and this was a sheet of material we used in the plant. It’s about .003 - .005” thick and not brittle. It may be Lexan. It is possible that something similar would be available by the sheet at home supply stores, but I don’t know what to recommend. If any readers use a similar plastic available in big sheets or rolls and want to share its name and source, I’ll be happy to tell readers next week.

. . .

For readers near Central Florida: I invite you to the opening of the Exhibit for 22 DeLand-area artists whose work was featured in the 2025 DeLand Area Off the Beaten Path Studio Tour. Information below. I’m proud to have two quilts included in the exhibit, which runs through July 5.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

NEWSLETTER – about once a month: Mostly news of exhibits and my way of introducing new work. You’ll get FIRST LOOKS at new artwork and members-only discounts.You’ll hear from me about once a month. NEWSLETTER

Possibilities Unfolding

June 1, 2025

Full studio syndrome. This week I have a lot going on.

No things finished. Lots of things cooking.

Lots of things interesting me. Here’s what I have hanging on my easel:

Tree limb variations. Light on dark, dark on light. Varied palettes.

Last week I wrote about one of the experiments I thought I really did not like. That must have kicked off a competitive spirit in me, because I decided I really wanted to make it into something I do like.

And I’ve been working on it this week. In parts, on my worktable, almost there:

I started with one of the PhotoShop mockups I shared last week, the one I felt was most successful.

What I discovered is that these very hot, intense sections needed some places of rest and calm beside them. And, as I put it together, some things evolved. I changed the top right to red. The sections that were just a solid color, I added some pattern, though I kept it subtle.

I’m pleased with where it’s headed Still to do: playing with some transparent squares to create more depth and a sense of looking through a layer. And, of course, I need to do the binding and finishing.

. . . .

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to an exhibiting opportunity here in DeLand. For those readers who live in or near DeLand, hope you will be able to see this exhibit.

I delivered my selected pieces today.

The Hand Art Museum is on the campus of Stetson University, my alma mater. This beautiful space will be exhibiting works juried from DeLand-area artists who were part of the 2025 Studio Tour.

. . .

Last week I shared some thoughts from my heart, sharing my despair and anger about the US government’s current direction. I was overwhelmed by responses from readers of like mind. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for taking time to write to me. Let us continue to stick together and to fight, each in our own ways and with our own abilities.

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Seeing Possibilities

May 25, 2025

I’ve been experimenting this week with seeing possibilities. It involves a painted fabric panel I created that I really don’t like very much.

This is part of my on-going project, which will probably stretch through the summer, of working out possibilities and variations using patterns of tree limbs.

A few weeks ago I painted a batch of fabrics. I like these colors and I like them together. Now I’m experimenting.

One of the basic questions about the patterns I’m developing: Do they work better light-on-dark or dark-on-light? I’m doing some of each.

Here’s a panel I created this week using light-on-dark, and next to it a contrasting pattern.

How do I feel about this?

I like the section at the bottom created in yellow-ochre and black.

I think the limbs of the top section work, in the sense that they show up against the dark background and I can tell what they are. (This was not the case at first. I had such strong color patterns in the limbs that the eye just couldn’t make out the tree limbs.) I cured that issue with a wash of burnt sienna inside the limbs, and a little watercolor wash shading on the limb edges.

But this palette just does not appeal to me. It’s too hot.

To see if there might be life in this project, I decided to play with it in PhotoShop: to cut it up and mix it with other things. (Note to artmakers without graphics software or know-how: you can do this exact same process by printing out a picture of your fabric, then cutting out squares and rectangles of construction paper or fabric and moving them all around. It works just fine as a way to experiment.)

I enjoyed creating some larger compositions using what I made:

The new blocks I added to my painted panel could be solids, or they could be subtle patterns that function as solids. And stitched patterns might go through these new blocks to connect them with the patterns in the painted panel.

If you create something that just doesn’t appeal to you, don’t give up. You may end up chucking it. Or you may be able to use it as a jumping off point for something completely unexpected.

Lots of possibilities.

….

I am going to digress from artmaking for a bit now. Forgive me. I have been grieving this week and have thoughts I just need to share.

From my heart this Memorial Day weekend:

Tomorrow is the day set aside to remember American soldiers who have died in war. As I deal with feeling both despondent and angry about the current US President, I find myself becoming increasingly patriotic. It takes the form of longing for, and mourning the loss of, ideals I have always believed to be the foundation of my country.

And then this week the loss became personal. In the kindergarten class where I volunteer, I was told one of the students would not be back to finish the school year. He is a sweet, hard-working boy. He writes his letters beautifully. He loves to draw. Though he speaks very little English, he has learned almost all of the eighty sight words kindergarteners are supposed to learn by year’s end.

He is gone because his family is afraid. They were afraid to show up at school anymore to bring him, fearing deportation. They told my classroom teacher they were leaving the state. They would not say more. They are living in fear. And this sweet, wonderful boy whom I have hugged and laughed with is who-knows-where, living in fear.

There is no possible vision of our country that makes us better by doing this. This is not what soldiers have died to protect.

It’s going to get worse. In the budget bill passed by Congress this week:

“The measure roughly doubles the current annual budgets of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in what Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes is “the single biggest increase in funding to immigration enforcement in the history of the United States.” It increases ICE’s detention budget from $3.4 billion a year to $45 billion through September 2029, a staggering 365% increase on an annual basis that would permit ICE to detain at least 100,000 people at a time.

It increases ICE’s budget for transportation and removal operations by 500%, from the current $721 million to $14.4 billion. It also calls for $46.5 billion for construction of barriers at the border, including completing 701 miles of wall, 900 miles of river barriers, and 629 miles of secondary barriers, and replacement of 141 miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers.” It calls for $45 billion for adult and family detention, enough to detain at least 100,000 people at a time.”

It is tempting to hide in my studio. While that helps me to stay sane, it won’t help my little kindergarten friend.

Thank you for listening.

(quoted text is from the May 23 “letters from an American” by historian Heather Cox Richardson. Her daily emails are carefully documented, footnoted to her primary sources of information and data.)

Pattern Practicing

May 18, 2025

This turned out to be a week with some time dedicated to practicing pattern creation.

We drove home from our time in Greenville, SC on Thursday and Friday I was still feeling a bit zombie-like. But I had promised to lead an exercise in pattern printing for my local art group on Saturday. This easy exercise was just the right amount of not-too-hard to get my brain back in gear.

I tricked the group a bit by calling the exercise “almost-Escher” patterns. Escher’s works are now widely known and admired, especially his intriguing patterns in which one shape morphs into another.

*Sky and Water I* woodcut 1938 M.C.Escher

We did not plan to tackle anything near that complexity. But a useable take-away from his patterns is the creation of all-over shapes that tuck into one another neatly. There are lots of design possibilities.

I prepped some samples in which the shape was symmetrical about a center axis and characterized by a thin-to-wide-back-to-thin shape. Think leaf forms. Or fish. Or stylized stalks of grass.

And I wanted our group to experiment with two printing methods: 1. A simple relief print (stamp) cut from a styrofoam tray and 2. Stencil printing using a see-through vinyl .

Here is my set-up for the stamps.

I find it helpful to add a block or something to hold onto when stamping with thin material. I tried gel super glue, but it only stuck minimally. (Styrofoam is very tricky to glue. Some glues eat right through it. And I needed something to set up on the spot so we could adhere backs right after creating the stamp.) I ended up using double-faced tape, which worked pretty well.

I made a few sample prints to test the cut-outs. The Styrofoam yields a slightly spongey texture, which I found interesting.

For the second print test I lightly brushed paint through my vinyl stencil. (In the photo below, the orange leaf just to the left of the vinyl cut-out is the one I printed this way.) Clear material for a stencil is great because you can see through it and place the printing spot visually.

After our time together Saturday, I realized a slightly more rigid vinyl material would have been better. A clear shower curtain liner would work. Or a rigid plastic piece like the top of a take-out salad tray. (This, though, is harder to cut.)

Here are some of my practice pieces from the afternoon’s session.

In the samples above, each image is created by a single stencil. I picked it up and moved it to the next spot to make the second image, and so forth to fill the space. The clear material allowed for easy visual placement.

A day of practice and thinking about pattern seems to be just what my brain needed to re-focus. This week I’ll be back to working on the next phase of my tree limb experiments. Stay tuned!

. . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Glorious Color

May 4, 2025

Oh my. I might not have enough adjectives for this experience.

Walking into my studio, the fabrics I had painted in various yellows, hit by sun through the window, warming and coloring the very air in the room. Saffron. Sunflower. Gold. Butter. Sun-glorious, wonderful yellow.

As the next step in some tree and pattern explorations, I am painting fabrics. It’s a simple step and can sometimes even be boring. But I am enjoying this so much.

To begin with, I am mixing up fabrics much more than I normally do. Generally, I only use either sheer polyester or plain, unbleached cotton muslin for all my work. But I had a nice stash of neutral colors given to me by a friend from her church liturgical banner project (I got the cast-off fabrics) so I am including them in my mix of working materials.

Because I did not purchase the fabric, I don’t know exactly what each of them is. So, where I describe the fabric in quotes, it’s my word choice to describe the quality of the fabric. But it may actually be something else.

(Note: For textile artmakers who are used to dyeing and its detailed chemistry, you may notice I’m not too picky abut my fabric content or preparation. Unlike dyes, paints are quite forgiving. You can successfully put acrylic paint on virtually any fabric. If the weight of the fabrics in the hand are similar, they swill sew up together nicely.)

My first palette element in this next project is yellow. But, I am using it with black mixed in. This is one of my favorite color mixes. The black adds a very slight olive hue to the yellow.

(A COLOR MIXING TIP: When you are mixing a light color and a darker color, start with the lighter. I spooned out about 2 teaspoons of yellow as a start. Then add the darker color very little at a time. I added black in small dollops, equivalent to maybe half a teaspoon. If you go the other way – starting with the dark – you need to add A LOT of the lighter to get where you want to go. You end up mixing a big batch of paint.)

Adding even more black would yield a rich and wonderful array of olive greens. But, for now, I’m adding just enough to cut the pure yellow and get a bit of variety. Some of the results:

How will these be used? To start the composition wheels turning, I placed one of my newly painted pieces behind the stencil I’ll be using.

This begins to give me a sense of possibilities. But remember, when working with a knock-out stencil, the final appearance will be the opposite of this. The trees and limbs will show through as yellow, and the background will be what’s painted in. Maybe navy-blue-black. Maybe olive green. Maybe grey. Lots of possibilities.

I’ve done some work on the next palette element: a teal blue mixed from cerulean plus raw sienna. This is another one of my favorites. These two hues mix up into a wonderful range of mixed blue-green tones.

When I’m done painting the teal fabrics, I’m going to create a batch of dark navy-black pieces, and some burnt orange. Then I’ll be ready to start mixing up patterns and overpainting my base fabrics with varying tints and hue complements.

What adjectives I will need for the pleasure of those discoveries!

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Beyond the Trees. What’s Next?

April 27, 2025

If you follow along this blog, you know I’ve spent a number of weeks in the trees: seeing shapes and patterns, drawing, painting, then stitching.

TADAAA! I’m pleased to have this project completed. Here is the quilt, Discovering Tree Messages, as I envision it, being a part of someone’s home.

I have uploaded this work and all its information to my website. If you’d like to learn more, click HERE.

As always happens following time spent focusing on a single project, I am now in the what-can-I-learn-from-it stage, which is the beginning of the what’s-next-stage.

There is a lot I really liked about this project. I enjoyed creating a whole-cloth work, which was – for most of the process – more like a painting than a quilt. I really enjoyed being inspired by the complex tree shapes that I discovered. I enjoyed the fact that the project evolved, heading in some final directions I did not envision at first.

I am interested enough in this pattern of limbs that I want to do more with it.

But, there were things I learned that I don’t want to do all the time. The particular way I worked the images, masking off sections and then re-masking different sections, to build up the layers of color and pattern was, well, tedious.

And, while a whole-cloth work is easier to handle, I missed the interplay of fabrics I normally experience in a collaged quilt.

How to solve this?

I’m not sure yet where this will go, but here’s how I am developing my vision of what’s next.

LOOKING AT MY SKETCHBOOKS FOR INSPIRATION . . . My sketchbooks serve as an idea file. I create loose, linear depictions of ideas. I create them quickly without attention to making finished drawings. These shorthand images remind me what I was interested in at the time.

I have a number of sketches of large works, maybe 70-80” wide, created in panels, with the panels attached to each other in some way, and with a mix of images, possibly still life objects. I returned to this idea, this time wondering if one of the elements in the picture plane might be the tree limbs.

I also have some sketches of a traditional house, photographed from multiple angles, then overlapped on top of one another.

Could the tree limbs be a part of this idea as well? Trees behind the houses? Limbs growing up through the houses? Limbs on a side panel reaching over into the composition of houses? Hmmm. I’m not sure.

I’ll keep thinking on this one. Maybe both ideas will evolve into something I want to work on.

Meanwhile

CREATING A NEW TOOL . . . If I want to use the limbs more than once, I’ll want some way to reproduce them that is not so tedious. I don’t want to start from scratch each time.

My solution to this has been to create a large, re-useable stencil that captures a large section of the tree patterns.

First I drew it. (on taped-together manila file folders.)

Then I cut it

That’s where I am today. I plan some time in the next few weeks just experimenting. I am going to paint several different kinds of fabrics, using different but related palettes, and building up images with the newly-cut stencil.

I am hoping that what happens in this printmaking experiment will inspire what comes next.

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Three brave women

April 20, 2025

This week I’ve been thinking about and processing lessons from three brave women. So tonight I thought I’d share some thoughts.

Earlier in April I attended the Studio Art Quilt Associates Global Conference in St. Pete, Florida. Great event. Great speakers. Lots to learn and absorb. Two of the artist-presenters inspired me by their bravery.

HOLLIS CHATELAIN spoke about ways to add emotion to your artwork, emphasizing the importance of color. She encouraged artists to be motivated by what we want the viewer to feel. She uses color beautifully, as in this example:

Hollis’ artwork is extraordinary. She has well-developed ideas and concepts to express and strong drawing and painting skills.

But my take-away about bravery did not become clear to me till I was discussing her presentation with another SAQA artist later that evening. My artist friend confessed that she had never really thought about what she wanted someone to feel as a result of seeing her work. And I realized that it is an act of true artistic bravery to be willing to do so.

It says that you consider your own feelings worthy enough to express them. It says that you dare to think of the images you create as a means to communicate those ideas and emotions.

That process is the heart of artmaking. It’s what makes art different from craft or illustration.

SHIN-HEE CHIN also spoke at the conference. She is a fiber/mixed-media artist and Professor in the Visual Art Department at Tabor College. I also find her work to be extraordinary, as in this example:

Shin-hee’s detailed image-building with thread is amazing. And much of her personal journey is filled with bravery: moving to the US from South Korea, learning a new language, earning a teaching position.

But my biggest takeaway from her talk was her bravery regarding discipline. Because she must balance her studio practice with her teaching schedule, she is very disciplined in her use of studio time. She also devotes regular, scheduled time to artistic meditative practices that feed her creativity.

For an artist to do this, you have to take yourself and your work seriously. It is an act of bravery to commit time and energy – regularly – to your practice of artmaking. You have to be brave to show up regularly. It means you must have or must develop the belief that your work is worthy of the time you will invest.

Often that requires a courageous leap.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON is the third brave woman I have been thinking about. She is not an artist. She is a historian and a writer. I (along with 2.5 million other readers) receive her daily writing by email each morning. I have not found another current commentator who so powerfully uses the lessons of history to inform our current political life.

On April 19, her daily email commemorated the 250th anniversary of the lighting of the lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, part of the warning system the colonial rebels had devised. She describes this dangerous act by John Pulling and Robert Newman (associates of Paul Revere, and – like him – part of the Sons of Liberty.) They and other individuals played small roles that added up to a powerful force, the beginning of our war for independence.

If you feel like you could use a shot of bravery, here ya go:

“The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.

What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.

And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.”

. . . . . .

Learn more about Hollis Chatelain……. https://www.hollisart.com/

Learn more about Shin-hee Chin………. https://shinheechin.com/

Learn more about Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American
heathercoxrichardson@substack.com

The artwork depicted in this week’s blog header is from my Art Quilt Stepping on the Cracks. I didn’t think it would be right to crop the works by Hollis or Shin-hee. So I chose this little girl, who embodies a courageous spirit. The work is on my website HERE

. . . . . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Some Found-Object Printing Step-by-Step

April 13, 2025

This week I am back at work with the whole cloth project depicting complex trees.

It’s time to convert this linear drawing into a fleshed-out image: some colors, some forms, some positive-and-negative shapes.

One of my first steps is to fill in the trees with printed patterns. Not the same pattern on all trees – a mix of this and that.

(A thought about concept: As I look at this work from a step back I amazed at how much it appears to be a forest, or a group of different trees. I am still fascinated that this composition is a close-up depiction of a single small tree that lives outside my studio. Exploring it in pattern and color will, I hope, give voice to how varied it is, to the ways the light hits the different parts, although it is a single thing.)

So, back to details. Masking out areas to stamp and work with resists is something I do all the time. I hardly think about the process. But I often hear from readers who are nice enough to follow along, and are interested enough to ask questions, who ask, “Can you slow that down at bit and let us see more?” OK! This blog is for you!

THE FOUND OBJECT: These pattern experiments will be created with a mat that has a simple vertical-horizontal grid pattern. It is a rubberized plastic of some sort. It’s a mat you would cut to size and put in the bottom of a drawer for cutlery or on shelves beneath glassware. Find them at any hardware or big-box store.

THE WORK SURFACE: To do any relief printing (i.e. stamping) you need a padded surface. Pressing the inked object onto fabric on a hard surface won’t provide enough give. Here’s my padded surface:

I’ve wrapped a beach towel around a piece of foam insulation board. A wood base would also work. I’ve taped a scrap plastic sheet over it to protect the towel. You could create something similar with batting or any other kind of soft material.

INKING THE PLATE: For this first part of the experiment, the mat will serve as the printing plate. I am using the phrase “inking” as one would in printmaking: as a verb. I don’t actually use ink; I use acrylic paint. So, this is how I get the acrylic paint onto the mat to use the mat for printing. I roll it on with a foam roller.

PRINTING THE IMAGE: This is low-tech printing by hand. The printing press is my hand. I flip the mat over, paint side down, and press it on the fabric I am printing. (For my test, I am printing onto unbleached cotton muslin that I stiffened up in advance with a thin coat of acrylic white. That will approximate the fabric in my actual fabric artwork.)

TAKING A PEEK: With most hand printing techniques, you can lift an edge of your plate (or printing object) to take a look at the image. If it’s too light you might want to put I down and press some more.

This mat is not the same on each side. On one side, little nibs stick out at the intersections of the squares, meaning they print as dots. I also flipped it over and printed from the other side, which shows up more as a linear grid. Below, you can see them side by side.

You’ll also see in the picture above a third image created by painting inside the square holes of the mat. This used the mat as a stencil instead of as a relief plate. It is the pattern I finally chose for my tree artwork. Just use a stiff brush, back off on the paint so it doesn’t glob, and force the paint down through the holes. Like this:

Now, just to be a thorough experimenter, I tried one more technique. I placed the grid mat underneath the fabric and rolled some paint on top to get a rubbing. You can experiment using a brush, a soft roller, or a firm brayer.

All of these techniques can be interesting and useful for different applications. I’ve used them all from time to time.

Now my experimenting was done and it was time to paint the pattern, in the actual color I wanted to use, on the actual tree artwork. You can see I masked out the edges of the trees with masking tape so I could work freely without worrying about printing an area that’s not supposed to have the pattern.

I used other found objects and other colors across the tree pattern. It’s getting there!

What’s ahead: more masking and painting. I will be changing the background behind the trees to a dark black-blue, and doing that by rolling on the paint. I’ll be masking out the entire tree portion to let the background show through.

Stay tuned!

BONUS: MOVIE TIME! Last week I shared a poem inspired by a roofing crew at work on my street and I used one of my artworks, “So It Will Not Break in Two” as illustration. I re-discovered this week a video I had created on YouTube that depicts that quilt step-by-step. It’s a nice bridge between this week and last week. It depicts both some step-by-step descriptions and also gets at the emotional content of the work. It’s just a few minutes long. I hope you enjoy. Find it HERE

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

To Future Historians

April 6, 2025

I had a wonderful weekend in St. Pete at the SAQ Global conference. I am still processing the artistic insights I gained, the importance of artists speaking their truths. The friendships. The silliness. The power of the bonds between artmakers.

Meanwhile, returning home, I am remembering some poetry writing I did last weekend, watching a work crew in my neighborhood. So tonight that’s what I want to share.

To future historians

who wonder what it felt like. What
the lives of ordinary people were
in the time of the great dismantling

of the structures we had assumed would be forever.
It felt like 7:15 Sunday morning in the cool air,
a big pickup backing in, the arrival of dark-skinned men,

a crew of five moving with experienced precision
up the ladder to my neighbor’s roof beginning
a choreography of scraping in parallel rows

down from the roof peak toward the gutters.
The sum of simple, hand-held flat shovels
and the bent-back motions of each man accomplishing

the removal of enough shingles that by 7:35
the discarding began. Bundles of now-useless asphalt
carried strong-arms-high and tossed from the edge

to land in the dumpster: a percussion of accomplishment.
It felt like this. Watching their motions — the overhead heaving,
the weight of the landings — hearing the ripping off

of what had been protection. So fast. So efficient.
Like the orchestrated undoings being written
into effect by strokes of a privileged pen.

It felt like this, future historians, witnessing the shredding,
knowing my country tis of thee was in the dumpster also.
Knowing these strong brown men could find everything

gone. At day’s end when they’d drive the truck
to what had been their home and family that morning.
By 8:50 all the shingles had been removed.

The plywood beneath now vulnerable. Exposed.

(Artwork note: It was just this morning that I thought to use to use my art quilt, “So It Will Not Break In Two,” as illustration for this poem and this blog post. I created the work around 2015, as part of my series of remembering and recreating my childhhod experience of home and the fragility of home. Writing about our contemporary political reality, I am called to remember that the forces that can destroy homes and families – just as surely as if a tree were growing up right through the roof – can be forces from outside as well as inside.)

. . . . . .

A reminder for those who care about the direction of our country and who are deeply concerned about where it is going: The simple citizenship act of writing to your representative is still a powerful and important act. Compose a few words. Put them in a document you can cut and paste into the “contact form” on your representative’s site. Find your senators and representatives and copy their email addresses into your working document so it’s an easy task. Write. Repeat.

Find your US representatives’ contact HERE: https://www.house.gov/representatives.
Find your senators’ contact HERE; https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Organic Complexity!

March 30, 2025

This week I’ve been looking at two projects that remind me how fascinating naturally-occurring oganic forms are. As I wrote last week about trees: Tree limb patterns are interesting in ways I would never think of to draw or create on my own.

There’s so much to discover in looking at actual natural forms.

Project #1: Back into the trees. This one is a work-in-progress, that was, in fact, inspired by last week’s blog header. As I opened up that photo in my computer, I thought suddenly how great it would look if it were really big. And how that really big image would make an interesting textile artwork.

So, I went about the process of enlarging the photo and making a pattern. Here’s the paper pattern on my work table. It’s about 40”H x 50”W.

(Some production notes: I created this in a pretty low-tech way. I made a Photoshop Elements document 40” x 50”, put the picture in it, marked it off into 8.5 x 11 sections, then captured each 8.5 x 11 section as a jpeg. I put each of them on a page in Word and printed them to my black and white laser printer. Note that I numbered the sections so I could put them back together. To put them together, I just trimmed off the edges, matched up the images, then taped them together. I was anxious to see the image enlarged and this was the fastest way to do it with what I have on-hand in my home. Interestingly, it allowed me to become very involved with the complexity right from the beginning.)

Next I needed to get the image on fabric. I traced it.

I prepped some muslin with a little white house paint watered down. This stiffened it a bit and provided a good drawing surface. I put the fabric over the taped-together sections on a light table to see the shapes.

After I drew the forms as lines, I put a soft ochre acrylic wash over the whole thing. I just wanted to kill the white, and begin the introduction of the colors I want this to be in the end. Here it is on my easel.

I’ve only had a little time this week to spend on the next stages, which will be developing the palette and printed textures. I’ll be creating this as a whole-cloth painted piece.

I’m sure I’ll have more to share in the weeks ahead.

Project #2 This is just a small piece, 8” x 10”, which I created for SAQA’s Spotlight Auction. All the pieces in the auction are the same size, and presented in a mat with an opening 4.5” x 6.5”.

This work, “Sunlight Abstractions,” my donation to SAQA’s event, was inspired by a piece of monotype printed tissue paper. Its images were created by grass and roots on my gelatin printing plate. I collaged that paper to fabric to serve as the background of the whole image.

Again, I am very interested in how those complex shapes just occurred naturally. Much like the tree limbs.

To finish the work, I painted it in sections for an above-and-below composition. Then I added a sun, some painted floating lively shapes, and stitching to enhance the grass patterns.

If you enjoy collecting small works and the fun of online bidding, I invite you to participate in this auction. You do not have to be a member of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) to participate. The bids start at just $25, and you might grab some bargains.

More importantly, this fundraising event benefits SAQA, which is dedicated to promoting art quilts as a museum-worthy fine art medium. The funds help pay for SAQA’s traveling exhibits.

The bidding began March 26 and goes through April 5. Here’swhere:

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch:

Trees Don't Do...

March 23, 2025

Trees don’t do what we think they do.

Trees are a perfect example of left-brain vs right brain conceptualizing in artwork. If somebody says, “Draw a tree,” it almost certain that person will draw what they think a tree looks like. And it is almost certain that it won’t look like what trees really do.

(I can verify this from my own experience of drawing trees that just aren’t right somehow, and doing it many times. I am still learning to look at trees.)

This Saturday morning I took a walk. On the way home, I noticed the tree next to the driveway of my home. This is a great, powerful tree.

But as I got closer, I realized it offered one of the most important lessons about trees:

ANGLE AND PERSPECTIVE The first photo of the tree was from a distance, and that simple shape could almost be seen as flat. But, from beneath the tree, looking up, things have gotten more interesting:

Now the big limbs overlap. They are not all on the same flat plane. Some go off into the distance. So, If one wants to depict these, it will require some way of addressing depth and angles.

COMPLEXITY is another important lesson of trees. Here is a small small tree that lives outside my art studio.

It’s a fabulous little tree. But look at how complex! There are a LOT of limbs of varying sizes and positions to deal with here. To represent this tree, I think I’d want to deal with the complexity. It could be simplified, but I’d want to do it judiciously. Otherwise, it won’t convey what this tree really does.

Do trees have to represented realistically? No at all.

Here’s an example from artwork hanging in my home:

This is a monoprint by Michael Nemnich, an artist I met when we were weekend neighbors at an art festival. This abstraction of a tree is his signature representation of a tree. It appears in a number of variations in his work. It’s his unique tree. (And I love it.)

On my worktable, I have a stencil ready-to-cut that is also an abstract tree.

I haven’t cut it yet because I may still want to tweak it some. But I like its mix of child-like simplicity and strength.

A different stencil on my worktable, also ready-to-cut, is much more representational. I drew it from a reference photo, going mostly for realism but with some simplification.

Here’s a stencil that’s already in my portfolio of stencils as a positive image. I also drew it from reference photo.

It’s a tall southern pine photographed a few blocks from my house. Drawing those wavy limbs-like-arms was a great surprise to me. If you had asked me what southern pines looked like, I would have just envisioned the tall simple trunk. I did not believe all those limbs were really there till I studied the photo.

(Just a note about stencils. To use a positive stencil, like the southern pine above, I would lay it down on my fabric and use it as a resist. I’d roll paint over it to paint the background, and whatever color or pattern was in the background would show through inside the tree. For the stencils I am about to cut, I will keep both the positive and the negative. It’s interesting to use them both within a work. When I use the negative stencil, it’s like the inside of the donut hole: I roll paint across and create the shape of the thing itself.)

Trees are powerful symbols. They convey strength. The passage of time. Stability. Fond memories. Fragility. So much to work with!

Enjoy exploring and working with trees when they are the right component to express any of these things in your work.

. . . . . .
A reminder for those who care about the direction of our country and who are deeply concerned about where it is going: The simple citizenship act of writing to your representative is still a powerful and important act. Compose a few words. Put them in a document you can cut and paste into the “contact form” on your representative’s site. Find your senators and representatives and copy their email addresses into your working document so it’s an easy task. Write. Repeat.

Find your US representatives’ contact HERE: https://www.house.gov/representatives.
Find your senators’ contact HERE; https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

. . . . . .

For all the artmakers: Happy creating
For all the art lovers: Happy appreciating

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi

bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

How I keep in touch: