Today I have, alas, no pictures to share, but boy do I have two AWESOME links to share that are art quilt and textile related!  The first is about antique indigo…the actual indigo!  The second is about katazome artist Karen Miller.

First, Isabella Whitworth makes incredible silk pieces in the UK which you can see on her website, here. On a recent post to the Dyers’ List (a listserv for folks interested in dyeing fibers, both cellulose like cotton and protein like wool–to sign up visit this site). She mentioned that she had recently been to an indigo symposium in the UK and was able to see some pieces of contemporary cloth and yarn dyed with indigo that is over 360 years old!!!!!! The indigo was retrieved by divers from a shipwreck that dates to 1641; one expert was given some, and dyed the pieces. Totally flippin’ amazing! Click HERE to go to that particular part of Isabella’s website.  And after you’ve done that, be sure to check out Isabella’s gallery pages….sigh….lust for cloth…..inspiration!

The second treat is thanks to Gerrie Congdon, who is an artquilter, dyer of cloth, awesome gramma, and many other things besides, and relates to Karen Miller. Karen Miller is a West Coast artist who specializes in katazome, a dyeing-out-but-not-if-she-can-help-it art from Japan which in one cuts stencils (meticulously, using many, MANY hours) by hand, applies rice paste, then dyes / prints fabric. Karen was recently profiled on an Oregon PBS program which you can find (thanks for the link Gerrie!) at Oregon Art Beat.

For my Friday Harbor and West Coast readers, you may be intrigued to know that not only is Karen a marine biologist / scientist by training, but her parents (or was it her grandparents? I met her at the Assn of Pacific Northwest Quilters show years ago and the details are a bit fuzzy now) helped establish and get-going the U. of Washington Marine Labs at the edge of the harbor that lends its name to the town of Friday Harbor in San Juan Island, Washington. Way cool! I think she sometimes teaches at Coupeville Arts Center on Whidbey… if I were still on the island, I’d be there for a workshop!

If you love learning about fiber, old fiber arts, and contemporary artists, treat yourself to some websurfing and visit all of these links. I’m going back, and I could watch Karen’s segment on Oregon Art Beat many times (as soon as it was over the first time–all 6+ minutes– I immediately hit play again!).

ProChem is in Fall River, Massachusetts, the town literally on the edge of the state next to Rhode Island (to get to ProChem from the highway you drive through a few blocks of a neighborhood in Tiverton, RI). My dad was born there in (get this!) 1899, and no, that is not a typo…he was OLD when I was born, nearly 59!

Anyway, lately I’ve been taken with pictures of falling down houses here in Maine. This burned out shell on Shove Street in Fall River, maybe 2/10 of a mile from ProChem caught my eye every morning as I drove in to class (the motel is in a neighboring town). On the way home on Saturday afternoon, I finally stopped to take pics because I knew I’d really be sorry if I didn’t. The picture above is of an outside staircase, that went from the sidewalk to what presumably used to be the main living level of the former house.

This next picture is of the old basement /ground level. I love the old arched doorway to the stairs curving up… from the way it is made, I am guessing these were inside stairs to a back or side entry.

Here’s a picture of the charred window frame and old plastered stone wall:

And finally, to help you place things, a wide angle view of the arched-doorway wall and the house next door. It is VERY close…less than ten feet so I’ll bet it was scary for the owners of the new house when the old one was going up in flames!

It is that glorious time of year again, when the air is crisp, the leaves are on fire, the sky is screaming blue (alternating with stormy gray). I don’t know if autumn is my favorite season because I was born in early October (yep, I hit FIFTY this month…. don’t feel a day over early-30s except for my knees!), or just because autumn is so spectacular. After retrieving two quilts from a local quilt show on Monday, I took lots and LOTS of pics on the way home. The one above is one of my favorites…. as usual, I love the close ups. I totally love the sharp contrast of the nearly-black bark and the bright oranges and reds. I’ve been really inspired by some of Dijanne Cevaal‘s recent quilts of treescapes (click on her name, which will take you to her July 2007 archives and scroll down to July 15 and 7), and after the Week 2 dyeing class with Carol Soderlund, think I have several TreeScape quilts in my future!

While on the way down to the quilts, I spotted this tree and, on my return, pulled over for the first of a series of road-side Driver’s Seat Snapshots:

Then there was a whole string of glorious shots (all from the car! I WAS careful and pulled over to the shoulder, etc). Here’s one of turning leaves–I love to see the progression of color change from the treetop and tips of the branches, flushing back towards the trunk.

Then of course there are the startling silhouettes of branches laden with red, the deep shadows of the northern woods behind:

Here is a wide-angle shot, not so pretty, but it gives an idea of what the roadside looks like on Route 90 in Warren and Rockport:

Here is a glorious massing of red:

And a portrait of a young, understory maple:

And another:

Even the gas station had glorious shots. The best priced gas is at the independent station at Tolman Pond on Route 90 in Rockport. Here is a major zoom picture of the trees on the far end of the pond (in the West something this large would be called a small lake!):

As I took the picture of the diesel pump, a guy asked me if I was focusing the camera. I said no, taking a picture. He allowed as how he’d never seen anyone take a picture of a gas pump before, but I think it makes a good photograph. Who knows, we all know I’m slightly deranged (said in a John Cleese voice, please! “Deeee-Ranged!”).

And now, for something completely different:

If you have ever wondered what it would like to be a 4-th generation Maine Lobsterman, check out Ryan Post’s website and podcasts at :

www.MaineBuggin.com

and click on the links for Episodes 1 and 2 (Just below the photo of the cameraman in a red t-shirt) which are documentary-style videos of what it is like to be a lobsterman here in the far north-eastern corner of the US.  Ryan hopes to show what life is like as a lobsterman year-round, not just hauling up the traps when they are full.  You’ll probably need not-dial-up (as in something faster) internet to view the videos.

Paul (Hubby) and Eli (number 2 son) have come to know Ryan through their Isshinriyu karate with Sensei Pete Bishop. Ryan is one of the regulars in the dojo (currently the basement of the Offshore Restaurant, on Route 1 in Rockport….or is it Rockland that far down? No…think it is still Rockport). The denizens of the dojo are all really good guys, and amazingly accepting of this pint-sized kid working out with them (everyone there is an adult, and three black-belt and several ranking belts, yet they accept Eli, age 9 1/2, as one of their own).

Joshua’s girlfriend is from an old lobstering family, too, and it is wicked hard work. It is lucrative when you can get it, but income is sporadic, and of course no one is out hauling traps in mid-winter, so you need an off season job. She isn’t a jock, yet she is so strong that she can sometimes beat Joshua (who is on the wrestling team!) at arm wrestling, thanks to working on the boat (she’s the one who brought us the king’s ransom of four lobsters this summer, which I wrote about in my blogpost Lobster Homicide).

And yes, Maine really is that beautiful! And the colors on the buoys: each lobsterman is assigned a physical location in which he/she can set their traps, and each lobsterman has a particular color of buoy so they can tell which traps are whose. Enjoy!

The inspirational sculpture continued as we walked farther away from the visitor’s center, and then looped back around. Near the Zen / Meditating Garden, was this reflecting rockery. From a distance you’d think it might be a stone found there, with smaller stones around the perimeter, but you’d be wrong, as you can see when you get close and see the finely carved opening. I loved the reflection of the trees, and hope to go back and take pictures again on a sunny day, and yet again when just enough of a chill is in the air to start freezing the water into frostlines on the edges:

The path we took followed along the edge of the river where we saw the sun and moon, a carved wood piece with gold on one side and silver on the other. Here are Kathy and Kate walking ahead of me near the piece:

The light was low, so alas a couple other cool pieces I photographed didn’t turn out since I blurred them. But, tucked into the back woods was the Circle and Line “bowl” with the trough of moss:

On the Birch allee, which will be glorious when the array of different varieties of birch trees matures, are a number of pieces including the raven-woman in my previous post on the sculptures. This piece doesn’t photograph as well as it looks… I think it was called legs:

And saving the best for last, I loved loved LOVED this standing stone:

With my family’s roots in Ireland, I have a “thing” for old standing stones, along with a just-me “thing” for circles, and for sinuous lines (is it because my name begins with an “S”? What if I had been named Brigid, would I still love swoopy lines?). I can definitely see some of this imagery working its way into my pieces based on the gardens.