Project COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION and Mini Artist Profile : Terry Jarrard-Dimond

COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION - Stage One


Today marks the beginning of COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION, a project designed to create dialogue between artists and a textile construction, artists to artists and hopefully, artist to audience. Most artists work in the solitary environment of their studio. While they engage in a type of running dialogue with their work as it is being created, often the first feedback they have is when the work is presented in an exhibition. Even then, the environment isn't always ideal for more than the casual comment. We are hoping for more and invite you to follow along as this project develops.


The concept is simple: A composition made of fabric is begun and then passed form artist to artist. Each artist in turn has the opportunity to add elements to the composition, remove elements from the composition and/or totally rearrange the elements of the composition. The components of the piece will not be attached to the original substrate until the work is completed after passing through the hands of each person. The one thing they may not do is to remove everything and start over with all new elements. If they remove an element, that element will continue to travel with the work so that it can be added back into the work if someone chooses to do so.


The participating artists are: Rebecca Howdeshell, Beth Carney, Shelley Baird, Gayle Vickery Pritchard , Judi Hurwitt, Leslie Bixel, Fulvia Luciano, Marcia DeCamp, Marina Kamenskaya, Paula Swett, Valerie Goodwin, Kathy Loomis, Leslie Riley, and Terry Jarrard-Dimond. Each week an image of the most current version of our piece will be pictured along with notes and comments from the most current artist. in addition, there will be a mini artist profile of the artist which will feature a photograph of them in their studio, an image of the type work they do and an artist statement. This will help you get to know them as we move along.

Terry Jarrard-Dimond - Mini Profile

As the originator of Compositional Conversations, I had the pleasure of initiating the work and adding the first compositional element. The substrate is a blue/gray (more blue than it appears in the photo) and the element is a rich warm red. I generally work with large shapes and often focus on figure ground relationships. I love working with color and hand dye all of my fabrics.

Terry Jarrard-Dimond


Joy and Sorrow - 59"H x 38"W

I think of my work as interior landscapes filled with figures, structures and spaces that have a story to tell but which are very open to interpretation. I love working in the studio where you can explore and discover to your hearts content.

I live in South Carolina and share a studio with my husband Tom Dimond. I will be teaching a workshop at the Crow Timberframe Barn in Baltimore, Ohio in April of 2011 entitled Ask "What If?". This workshop will be geared for the beginner to intermediate artist/quiltmaker and will focus on ways to generate ideas and tap into your personnal creativity. Next week's mini profile will be on Rebecca Howdeshell and we will see what she has added to our Compositional Conversation.

WEEKLY TEXTILE CONSTRUCTION #13

Expressive Stitching - TC #13


On Sunday I am flying to Syracuse NY to attend Quilting by the Lake at Onondaga Community College. I will be taking a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell entitled Expressive Stitching and I'm very excited about this opportunity. I have not been using hand stitching in my work but I do use lots of machine stitching. I saw Dorothy's work in a group exhibition this past fall and was impressed with the beauty and power of her work and as a result of that experience I applied to attend this workshop.

Our preparation for the workshop was very simple. Bring one example of Expressive Stitching and one example of utilitarian stitching which resulted in being expressive. TC #13 is my example of intentional Expressive Stitching.

The body of the work was pieced from three different fabrics I made recently and I responded to the composition and the surface design in applying stitchery.



I feel very positive about the results. I especially like the texture the stitching gives the work. I used a running stitch in both embroidery floss and with quilting thread, french knots and what I call "rice" stitch.


The process was calm and intimate in part because this is a small piece - approximately 14" x 18".

It will be interesting to see how the workshop impacts my work.

I will not make posts while I am away but will be returning around August 6th. Until then, keep working......work produces results.

WEEKLY TEXTILE CONSTRUCTION #12

Textile Construction #12

Wow! It has been a busy but fun week packed with studio work, show preparation, workshop preparation and all the other activities and demands of daily living. The weekly exploration was done in fragmented bits of time and while I am pleased with the end results, the process was so disjointed that I can not make heads or tails of the photographs I took in relation to the three pieces I worked on. With that in mind, the images and process will not be described in the way I usually do but rather in a more general way.


It has become my custom each week as I start my weekly exploration, to work with three pieces of fabric. Each piece is approximately 22" square. I work on all three at the same time developing each piece as I begin to see what is happening.




The final TC #12 was cut from the lower right corner of the above piece. I liked the entire piece but there was something more interesting to me cutting it so it was not so much of a repeat. I liked the gradation of light to dark across the panel and way you can see the many layers of dye which were painted onto the fabric. I used dye mixed in print paste (see Formulas) which was dripped, scraped and squirted onto the fabric and I did one discharged motif. That motif was squirted onto the the piece pictured below and then picked up on a sheet of plexiglass and printed onto the piece which become my final TC.



I like the second piece as well and will make it into a completed work later. I am very interested in the fact that the second piece of fabric has the look of a woodcut print. As I said before, it was all painted except the large "gold" motif and that is a discharge.

I will be going to Quilting By the Lake next Sunday to take a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell. (I'm going to post the stitching example I made for the workshop later this week) When I return and begin my weekly explorations, I am going to "revisit" some of the things I have done so far. I feel that I have had some wonderful successes and I don't want to move ahead too fast. I want to dig into some of the process just a bit deeper.

Last week I posted this picture and ask you if you had any idea what was going on.


My thanks to the two brave readers who made their best guess. There guesses were very insightful and much more complex than the reality. The reality was that after I had added a complex layer of brown to all three of the pieces I was working on, I realized I had not added the dye activator. This means that the dye would not fix to the fabric. This isn't the first time I have done this but I liked what I had painted and didn't want to wash it down the drain. One time before, when I did this, I mixed some dye activator with print paste and rolled it over the fabric. It fixed the dye but blurred the design. With this in mind, I decided that since the fabric was still fairly wet with dye that I would rub baking soda all over the face of the fabric and see if it would do the trick. Guess what....it worked.


The brown dye you see was fixed by the baking soda. I wasn't sure it would work by itself as I usually mix baking soda with soda ash to make my mixed alkali. This entire Weekly Textile Construction Project is definitely teaching me that it pays to experiment.