Amy Reidel

Her mom cAmy Reidel acrylic and gouache on digital print

In a few months it will be 13 years since I last taught in my high school classroom in St. Louis. Long enough for me to have trouble remembering the day to day work and assignments as I was telling a friend the other evening. Long enough that I not only don't miss it, but can hardly imagine I was a teacher for 25 years. But certainly not long enough to forget the many students who dedicated themselves to their art. One of those students is Amy Reidel who graduated close to the end of my career.

Julia Storm cAmy Reidel  oil on canvas

Amy went on to earn a BFA from University of Missouri St. Louis. Next stop was University of Tennessee at Knoxville for an MFA in painting and drawing. She taught for a while in Tennessee but returned to St. Louis a few years ago.

Karen rising from the amethyst cAmy Reidel photo collage and acrylic

Amy has established herself making art and  teaching (something I never seemed able to do simultaneously) and showing regularly. Recently she was interviewed for a new online magazine and I felt this rush of pride and wanted to share her work with you. 
Read the interview here.

Rapture cAmy Reidel wall installation

Check out Amy Reidel's beautiful website here.

Rapture cAmy Reidel window cling

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Just in the nick of time for St. Nick!

Finally got the tree decorated a couple days ago and this afternoon I set up my old Christmas houses inherited from my mom.  Some of the ornaments on the tree were hers too so they are older than I am.  

Let's just say they are decades old and leave it at that, lol.  

Long ago transitions

I seem to be looking backward a lot these days when it comes to my art. I pulled this piece out of storage tonight and pressed it and rephotographed it.  It is hard to believe that I was in the midst of panic over my thesis work this time a decade ago.  This piece was not part of my thesis show but done prior to my first experiment with composting.  It was however one of the key transitions from printing to fibers using imagery I'd been developing.

 

Town and Country c2001  

Hand dyed and printed/painted silk, vintage silk, viscose rayon, silk organza

The design was repeated in etchings as well as collages (scroll down this page to see some examples) and comes from my fascination with township maps and plats.  I have long been attracted to square things.  This piece is also one of my first attempts at layering fabrics.  This one is pretty complex in that regard and includes some vintage silk that had been in my mom's stash (the orange) but everything else was hand dyed or printed (fiber reactive dyes of course).  But some of the fabric (solid color squares and the multi color rectangle lower down) was dyed back in summer 1976 in that very first fibers workshop I took with Judy Millis at SIUE.  I was just talking about that red fabric in this post.

Where my mom acquired the orange silk I have no idea.  I left the fabric exactly as I found it.  It is only 20" wide with selvedge edges.  In the lower right corner is a written mark as well as a tied resist and there is an open weave structure across the bottom.  A layer behind the orange is purple, visible here from the side with a layer of organza over the top.

My Constant Companion

I acquired Darcy in 1997 1996. Good grief she is 15 16! She was abandoned in Collinsville and rescued by my niece and given to me when she was only 5 inches long. She had grown quite a bit when this picture was taken.  Because she was weaned so early, she still drools to this day when she is purring.

Related to the early weaning is her propensity to knead and suckle, especially if the surface is furry. This weekend she took to this faux fur like a kitten to her momma.

Darcy wants to be wherever I am. She keeps me company in the outdoor and indoor studios, but never has been one to get in the way. She doesn't jump on the tables (usually). But she does like attention. So periodically I have to stop and play with her, rub her head and talk to her. Many a project has been discussed with Darcy.

UPDATE:  Less than a month after I wrote this post, Darcy required a trip to the vet for an infected wound and it was then that my vet called up earlier records that put her age at one year older than I thought. Now as I write this on April 2, 2013 Darcy is asleep under my computer table while I work (fully recovered from the infection) and is on the verge of her 17th birthday. I recently was shown a chart that estimates a cat's age in cat years--whatever that means. Because she is indoors and outdoors her age is increased rapidly. The chart says she is 144! What the heck...you'd think she'd be comatose all the time. But she can still run around like the house is on fire when she has her night time crazies.

Early Days

I've been printing cloth organically for well over a decade now...in the beginning with composting, then adding rust to composted cloth as well as traditional printing (see here and here). In 2006 I discovered Lois Jarvis, a quilter from Wisconsin I've mentioned before and I began to do more and more rusting. I haven't composted since 2007 because the rusting gives me such satisfaction both in imagery and use of time.

These are the very first samples made in 2006 on scraps of silk using Lois's guidelines. And for once, I actually documented what I did (rare occurrence!)

In early days I also worked on cotton and these are some of those experiments. I cannot get the same depth of color I do with the silk-at least in my experiments. Lois gets great results on cotton that she uses in her quilts.  Needless to say, I haven't done much else with cotton except for some very well worn dishtowels that belonged to my mom and that I incorporated into a few quilted pieces, including the newest little quilt that is hanging in the Jacoby Arts Center right now.

One of my goals is to do more quilting. Several people have urged me on after seeing the Collaboration show last year for Innovations. I promise I will--I just have to be in the mood and it also takes a special piece of fabric and lots of staring!

In 2007, I took parts of the sample silk pieces above to create a 12" log cabin patch-my very favorite quilt pattern.  The patch was combined with quilted pieces from several fiber artists to give as a gift to Laura Strand who is head of fibers at SIUE and my former professor.

The red hearth center is a piece of viscose rayon I dyed way back one summer in 1976!!! in a fibers workshop at SIUE with Judy Millis.  No one I know has any idea where Ms. Millis went to.  I'd sure like to know what she is up to nowadays.  I learned a lot that summer.  I think it was the first workshop I took after I started teaching high school art.  Wow that was a LONG time ago.

Cold weather scarves

Wrapped these scarves on a warm sunny day and then the temperature dropped that evening.  The next day I had to wait till night to unwrap because they took longer to rust. It was colder still.

Handling wet silk and rinsing with cold water in 40 degree weather had my hands numb in no time. So I worked in spurts--2 scarves at a time, then I'd go warm up inside.  

Detail of a shawl.

Like these streaky marks.

Blast from the Past

Last weekend at ARTEAST someone asked me about the logo on my hangtags for wearables. I've been using an old photo of my mom and her twin sister for the logo, but long before that image was incorporated into a number of pieces I made during grad school and beyond. I made etchings in copper plate, photo polymer plates and silkscreen images. I worked on both paper and fabric. This piece is a collage made in 2005 (after grad school).

The Frogtown Girls Came from Ambitious Seed 
c2005 Patricia Vivod
composted silk, vintage cotton print fabric, screen printed imagery, walnut ink, on paper