In Consideration of Bridget and in need of feedback

About a year ago, my friend Kim and I traveled to NYC to see the Louise Bourgeois show at MOMA.  While we were there we toured the blue chip galleries of Chelsea and saw a small show of Bridget Riley.  I was blown away and her works stayed with me.

I went on to experiment with some of her colors in thread and in three dimensions.   Here's the problem:

I originally designed the piece IN CONSIDERATION OF BRIDGET 1 to cascade the elements down to the floor.  Now, when you exhibit in galleries you do need to provide an option, a platform, that is perhaps NOT the floor, so people do not just kick the elements by accident.  So, I grabbed a stretcher covered with a hand dyed fabric to see if the SIZE was right to perform as a platform.  It was a correct size.  AND it was lovely all by itself, instantly becoming IN CONSIDERATION OF BRIDGET 2.

Today, I wrapped that stretcher loosely with the matching blue fabric and placed it on the floor as originally intended.  There are clearly more elements than needed for the cascading effect. 

BUT HERE IS WHERE I NEED YOUR FEEDBACK:  Does the floor cascade overwhelm the wall movement?  Is the floor element, even reduced in size and number of elements, a detraction? Should I forget about adding this?

In Consideration of Bridget 1 (@ 60"h x 28"w))

In Consideration of Bridget 2 ( 22h x 17 w, floor or table installation, meant to be handled)

Should this be Bridget 1?

Baby steps for Habitat

In the breezy studio, it's pretty darn cold and the color references are equally cool.  Not frigid, mind you, but cool, calm and collected.

While I still need to purchase more cloth, more interfacing and probably other un-imagined things, there is enough thinking done to START.  In January there will be 2 workshops with Habitat clients that may shift things. Meanwhile, with holidays and more renovation work on the studio, I will try to be productive.  My contractor will soon slay the breezes that come through ALL the doors in this old building!

Before Thanksgiving, my assistant Dale and I  donned attractive hard hats and visited the new Habitat for Humanity offices.The office accent colors are already a cool, calm, blue-grey with feature walls of natural wood.  

 The hanging I will fabricate will hang across somewhere around the column in this photo, forming a permeable wall between the cubicles and a gathering area.

Surfaced design: procion dye, Dynaflow paint, paint sticks, Lumiere fabric paint, stencils and rubbling

Earlier this week, I got the serger back from the Bobbin Doctor and began the experiments with that.  I determined that the heavy Peltex will got through and will cut!  Hooray!  Determining the tension was not too hard.  From there I went on to do more work on the embroidery machine, learning a couple of small software packages that may allow me to input text with the computer keyboard.  In the next few days I will be working with Airstash to transmit designs to the machine from either  the computer or the iPad or iPhone.  Believe it or not, one of  the text packages is optimized for the iPhone rather than the computer.

So, although only 5 measly "squares" have been fabricated, a lot has been happening around here.