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Including this:

STUDIO: The very beginning of a new body of work

Here we go... New ideas, new direction. Intersections of musical notation, craft process and concept-based art. Music theory meets color theory. I'm starting with a latch-hook rug of Bach's Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I.

IDEA: Bach visualization

Another visualization of J.S. Bach, including a Prelude I'm planning to incorporate into my work. In this case, though, the Fugue in the second half is the most visually interesting part.

IDEA: Bach mobius strip

Been working on visualizations of Bach music and this video caught my eye:

SHOW: Installation shots of Rudimentary

Took a few snapshots of my installation of "Rudimentary" at The Music School of Delaware. ('Pologies for the less-than-ideal lighting.) These long swoops were my last-minute work-around for the school's hanging system, but next time I would really love to hang the squares in irregular grids. I'll have to play around with how to give the flexible, fabric-like copper a stronger structure.

The Wheels / 8 squares, each 4"x4" / tarnished copper

The Stars / 16 squares, each 4"x4" / tarnished copper

Temple Court / 12"x12" / tarnished copper

SHOW: "Aubade" in FiberPhiladelphia

"Aubade: Mnemosyne Sings"
FiberPhiladelphia's Outside/Inside the Box exhibit
Crane Arts Building
March 2 through April 15, 2012

Be sure to walk all the way to the very back of the Icebox to see it...

SHOW: Rudimentary

On display at The Music School of Delaware's Wilmington Branch from February 26-April 26, 2012.
 

ru·di·men·ta·ry    /ro͞odəˈment(ə)rē/
Adjective:
Involving or limited to basic principles.
Immature, undeveloped or basic.

Art-making, for me, comes and goes in cycles, with intermediate periods of exploration, experimentation, uncertainty. I find a basic motif and repeat it, modify it, using the repetition to hone my ideas and resolve technical issues.

The artwork on display comes from one of these between-periods, where the ideas are germinating but the final results remain unknown. The samples are “rudimentary” in the most positive sense of the word — simple building blocks full of potential for constructing something mature, developed, complex.

Drawing on a long fascination with alchemy and curiosity about my quilt-making ancestors, the pieces use copper — considered the feminine element by alchemists — to recreate a handicraft traditionally made by women. The copper remains un-fixed so the tarnishing reaction will continue changing the artwork over time, making it seem alive. Each quilt block is unique, one of thousands that could be repeated and combined to make a larger pattern.

SHOWS: 3 chances to see my artwork this winter

1.
"Four Corners" is currently up at World Cafe Live in Philly as part of a staff art show (my new office is there, so I sort of count). It probably won't be up for too much longer, so swing by and visit the mezzanine to see it. [WCL website]

2. 
Another oldie-but-goodie "Aubade: Mnemosyne Sings" is going up in the Icebox space at the Crane Arts Building in Philly as part of FiberPhiladelphia's "Outside/Inside the Box" exhibit. I've been dreaming of showing "Aubade" in that space ever since I made it, so I'm thrilled it was selected for the show. There's an opening reception on Saturday, March 3. Show runs March 2 through April 15, 2012. [show website]

3.
I'm putting up a works-in-progress show that I'm tentatively calling "Rudimentary." It will be at The Music School of Delaware's Wilmington Branch from February 27 through April 25, 2012, so swing by to see some of my new ideas. [Music School website]

IDEA: Lygia Pape's "Livro do Tempo"

Highly relevant to my current brainstorming. Highly inspiring.

100 words – Katie Murken: Continua

When a system constantly replicates even a simple set of variables, the result quickly becomes organic, seemingly uncontained. By rolling dice to move around the color wheel using mathematical probabilities, Murken dissolves the familiar spectrum into variegated columns of haphazard hues. Towering chroma without regard to art-school theory nonetheless impose beauty on the gallery-white walls. There are the beginnings of excess, of sheer visceral reaction to brilliant abstraction. Phonebooks as the medium could add extra layers to themes of extreme systemization and the disruption of order, but instead are almost ignored, used as a meaningless ground to inexpensively house so much color.

("Continua" at Gallery 2J, 319 N. 11th Street, September 2-October 7, 2011)

RSVP 2011

I'm pleased to have work included in the New Wilmington Art Association's upcoming exhibition RSVP. The show runs September 9 through October 20, with an opening reception on Friday, September 9th from 6:00-9:00pm. More details here.

Come see Three Thousand Daughters in person!

Now on Twitter!

Taking the Twitter plunge. Follow @MelindaSteffy for regular updates and art-related tidbits.

Work in Progress, August 2011

As I mentioned before, I'm in the beginning stages of a new series of work connecting handicraft with language, particularly using visual constructions as an actual language or code in themselves.

One piece in the works is a series of one-page, map-fold copper books. Each book is tarnished with a different quilt block pattern and will have a used sandpaper cover. Industrial material meets book arts meets textiles.

Taping the first few blocks to prepare them for tarnishing

Tarnishing the copper

So far I have 40-some tarnished. Since the fold pattern naturally divides each page into quarters, I'm only using 4x4 quilt patterns, and I would like the final result, if I were to display them in a grid, to also be divisible by 4. Which means I'm either making 64 of these suckers (8x8 grid) or 144 (12x12). 144 would fit nicely with my numerological inclinations, so that's what I'm leaning toward, but it will take a while to get there. Fortunately, "5500 Quilt Block Designs," which I am using as a reference, has ample patterns to choose from.

The pages. The surface will be antiqued and then each page will be folded into a small book form.

The language possibilities still seem wide open, but I'm leaning toward using the names of the blocks (since each one is different) to construct a story or poem that would accompany the artwork as an over-sized caption of sorts. Working title: "Impossible Narrative"

100 words - Sheila Hicks: May I Have this Dance?

While containing all of the gentle tactility and delicate detail you might expect from a textile-work, Sheila Hicks’s two-story cascade blows the whole definition apart. Monumental, visceral – you feel the tangled coils twine through your own gut. It dwarfs you, shrinks you to the size of a pin head next to a spool of thread. You have no chance to passively observe, but must conquer the simultaneous desire to dive in and to run away screaming. Like standing at the base of a thousand-year-old tree, you feel the looming presence of time and the constant but unpredictable workings of nature itself.

 ("50 Years" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, March 24-August 7, 2011)

IDEA: khipus and three-dimensional writing

A recent Slate.com article about khipus, the Incan method of recording information using knotted cords, has me thinking about the relationship between handicraft and language. My current work-in-process involves a series of one-page books of quilt-block patterns made from tarnished copper, so I've already been contemplating abstract methods of communicating via materials and patterns, but haven't really been sure about how to direct a larger body of work. This sort of  material-based, non-alphabetic code might be just the connection. Interestingly, it also ties in to a new-found fascination with Chladni patterns and how they might be converted to musical scores (thanks to another Slate.com article). Several new pieces are now rolling around in my mind.

Gotta love sparks of inspiration.

100 words - Bohyun Yoon: Embody

Bohyun Yoon: Embody
Yoon's "Structure of Shadow" suggests that our material bodies are so familiar, so universal, as to be intangible – a mob of mixed-up races and genders with indistinguishable limbs and torsos. The substance, then, is in the shadows, in the way a focused light condenses us each into a specific person with personality and proclivity, movement and meaning. We march together in haphazard rhythms as our passing bodies and tenuous identities shape into societies that shift and jumble as the light changes. What is our collective purpose, the focal light that directs our course? How do we structure the world when everything around us is shadow?

(At the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, April 4-May 6, 2011)

Installation shots at the Crane Arts Building

Views of my artwork installed in The Hall at the Crane Arts Building during January & February 2011, presented by InLiquid. This time, I installed "Aubade" as one large sheet of the nine panels, so that the scale and color can dominate the space. "Ode" also got a modified installation, with the rows spaced according to the Fibonacci numbers. The "Introductions" are facing each other across the hall in their most formal posturing.

"Aubade: Mnemosyne Sings," with "Introductions I: Mars Enters" in the background

"Ode: Hestia Travels," with "Introductions II: Venus Receives" in the background

"Introductions II: Venus Receives"

IDEA: shadows and intangible imagery

I'm in the preliminary stages of a new piece that is going to cast significant shadows if installed on a wall. I've been contemplating how best to make use of the shadows, and ran across some images of Kumi Yamashita's work. Now I'm fascinated by the idea of incorporating an intangible image, dependent entirely on the correct angle of light or viewer perspective.

This Yamashita piece particularly caught my attention because it looks similar in scale and installation to mine. Brainstorming...

"Myth/Memory" at the Crane Arts Building

This winter, I'm pleased to be exhibiting four of my mixed media installations in The Hall at the Crane Arts Building, presented by InLiquid.  "Aubade: Mnemosyne Sings" will be installed as a wall-to-wall, 15'x15' spread of vibrant yellow textile, accompanied by the burned paper piece "Ode: Hestia Travels" and the copper and iron "Introductions I and II: Mars Enters/Venus Receives."

"Myth/Memory"
January 5-February 27, 2011
The Hall at the Crane Arts Building, Philadelphia, PA

Receptions: January 13 and February 10 from 6-9pm

In Myth/Memory, memory, mythology & alchemy intertwine with the simplicity of a nine-patch sewing sampler and the belief that materials retain meaning from previous uses. Using symbolic materials such as the spice turmeric, tarnished copper and burnt paper, Melinda Steffy constructs rhythmic visual compositions that draw on additional themes of numerology, entropy, sustainability, domestic life and improvisation.
Painstaking processes of stitching, pinning, cutting and tearing result in loosely constructed grids, left rough and unfinished, with subtle variations and frequent repetitions. The pieces are deliberately fragmentary, brief, to give the feeling of a nearly forgotten story or a fleeting line of music.

See the details at InLiquid.com

New Wilmington Painting

I have several textile-based pieces in this group show by the New Wilmington Art Association that focuses on experimental painting practices and new trends.

"New Wilmington Painting"
January 7-28, 2011
Pierre S. duPont Arts Center Gallery, Tower Hill School, Wilmington, DE

Opening reception: Friday, January 7 from 5-8pm