fiber arctic inspiration....

...yesterday i sent this piece off to Schmancy in Seattle for the Fiber Arctic show.

i thought it would be nice to share my inspiration, which came from the image below, which is from the exhibition catalogue, The Marvelous Album of Madame B:Being the Handiwork of a Victorian Lady of Considerable Talent. How good is that title!? This image is from a family album- its a hand drawn butterfly with tipped in photographs. I used a luna moth and images of polar bears printed on cotton fabric.

Artist Unknown. Untitled, 1860-80. Mary and Leigh Block Endowment.
via the Art Institute of Chicago

i've always looked toward photography, especially vernacular imagery, very inspiring. i love Victorian memorial works and decorated family albums. one of my favorite books is Forget Me Not by Geoffrey Batchen. He talks about images, combined with tactile objects become memorials, relics and how through these objects we long to remember and be remembered. Most of the images are images in the book come from the George Eastman House (rochester do you miss me?) and the examples are a-ma-zing, really beautiful. You should own this book!

kristen rask, the force behind Schmancy and Plush You has a nice blog and did a short and 

sweet interview with me you can find the blog here and the interview here