A Life Lived Artfully: Marilyn Wall

Marilyn Wall draws on her life's work and her favorite things to create art that makes us all breathe a sigh. The flowers from her garden never die once she has captured their beauty, as in this first photo:  Luminescent is fused applique, hand-dyed fabric, paint, thread painting and hand quilting.And her joyous Blue Atlas makes me want to try my own wings. The butterfly is actually a moth and is machine appliqued of hand-dyed fabric. The markings on the moth were fussy cut to achieve the desired effect. Marilyn used hand-dyed thread to quilt the moths in the background and used a big stitch.(See the second photo).

As you will see by the samples of her body of work, Marilyn is versatile as well as talented and most of all sees with her heart as well as her eyes. She also has a fun sense of humor! -- Dawn

I am a retired writer/photographer whose passion is fiber art. We moved to Lake Keowee, SC in 2004 and I would live nowhere else.

Most of my life, I have made art. Often the tools were different. I have created ever since I can remember.

First it was with a needle and thread. My first memory of sewing was as a young child. I had a chenille doll bedspread that I cut up and made into a bathrobe for my doll. During my school years I sewed most of my clothing and actually made clothing for other people as well.

After I became a mother I sewed for my four children, my husband and myself. My children love to look at photographs of that era and laugh at my poor son, Gary who had to wear striped bell-bottom pants. Hey! They were the style then.

While the children were young, I worked on many crafts, I knitted, cross-stitched, did needle point, and made a rug or two. However, I longed to be an artist. Mind you I didn’t know how to draw or paint, I had never shown any talent in this direction but the desire was there.

We lived in Meadville, PA at the time and someone told me about a teacher named, Marie Firster who could teach anyone how to paint, and she did.

Later my husband went to work for Michelin Tire Company and this job took us to France to live for about two years. I will forever be grateful to Michelin for the experience our family was able to share by living in a foreign country. Never would we have been able to fly a family of six to Europe and visit all the wonderful places we visited.

Later I took art classes in Greenville, SC and became enchanted with the camera. This led me to a job with a major construction/engineering company as a writer/photographer for their company newspaper. I traveled all over the US documenting construction projects and the people who built them.

(Photo: Flowerfly features cone flower and butterfly. Flowerfly: The technique for the flower was the same as Luminescent. I used a black on black printed fabric for the butterfly. This fabric proved beneficial, because the back was just as usable as the front, when I decided to make part of the butterflies wings 3-D. I painted the markings on the wings with pastels and used acrylic paint on the flower. This piece was machine quilted.)

After a move to Alabama, the first without children to get settled into a new school and no job I became quite bored. One day, while feeling very sorry for myself, a light bulb seemed to go off. I had wanted to learn to quilt for years and never had the time. Well, I had the time now. I found a lady who was willing to teach me the basics and once I put my first quilt together I was HOOKED. This was in July and by Christmas I had made three small bed quilts, two crib size quilts and several wall hangings. These were all hand quilted and two were hand pieced Tumbling Block quilts.

The following April I went to my first AQS show in Paducah, KY and saw my first art quilts. Never knew such art existed. I was smitten.

I tackled my first art quilt with no knowledge of technique, and just blundered my way through. When I show this quilt it is always a favorite with my audience. “Geraniums” is my interpretation of a photograph I took during our stay in France. (See photo) Geranium is hand appliqued on a background of half-square log cabin blocks. The sidewalk was made from the pointillist fabric from years ago. It was cut and pieced back together. Flowers were made in the technique of Fabric Origami and the leaves were sewn together and turned for a three-D effect

I continued on my journey, had a class here, a class there and have honed my technique. I started painting on my quilts many years a go to develop depth within the design. I teach my technique now in a class titled “Fabricating Nature”. One of my favorite places to teach is J.C. Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, NC.

As a Master Gardner my preferred subject over the years has been flowers and the landscape. I have become very interested in portraiture and am presently working on a series of people I find interesting.

Frequently, I combine the tools I have used in the past in conjunction with my quilting. Often I go to my photographs for inspiration and ideas. Sometimes the images from my photographs find their way onto the fabric and become part of my quilt. Just as often, I may need to embellish my quilts with paints, dye or inks. (See photo of Oriental Lilies for different treatments of the same design)

My journey is far from being complete. I have much to learn and many more quilts to make. My desire is to make an impact on people when they view my work. That impact can be good or bad but I hope it is not indifference. My latest piece is a tribute to a friend who died  in July after a year of fighting esophageal cancer. I wanted to make something for his wife to console her in her loss: Jana's Guardian Angels. 


After establishing my design on paper I traced the pattern onto PDF fabric with an Ultra find Sharpie. I had to be very mindful while doing this to keep the ink from puddling. I had researched the word love and dog on the Internet for all the sayings. After filling in the sky background I started writing in the words. I then finished painting Bob and Skeeter. I choose a small 1/4" loose boarder to act as a matting to the outer boarder. It was hand quilted, using hand-dyed thread and silver thread..

Marilyn tells more about Bob's quilt in her Fabricating Nature blog.

She also steps away from nature now and then to capture faces and people in her Mother and Daughter quilt as pictured here.



Mother and Daughter was done in a class by Marilyn Belford at QBL (Quilting By the Lake) in July. It is basically the same technique I use for my flowers, fused applique. This photo is not of the finished piece. It is now attached to a landscape that can be seen on my blog.

Go Ahead and Play!

Thank you Terri for agreeing to guest blog at Subversive Stitchers: Women Armed with Needles. I think you offer not only beautiful fabric art and visual art, but also a much needed message that we all need to take to heart.

Please welcome fabric artist Terri Stegmiller, in her own words. -- Dawn

I’ve been asked many times over the past couple of years if I have any formal art education or training.

My answer is “no”.

The only education/training I have is what I have learned by myself and from taking an online class here or there.

When I answer that question, many times the person who asked it has a response that they just can’t believe I have no art degree or some formal schooling. Sometimes they respond with “oh, you must be a natural then.”

Let me enlighten you. There is no such thing as being a natural. Everyone has abilities and some are able to master those more quickly than others. But they didn’t just pick up a pencil or a paintbrush, or even a needle on day one and by day two they were producing work that was gallery ready.

Artistic talent takes time.

It takes practice. It takes imagination and it takes dedication. I often see many people get discouraged when they aren’t able to create what they see in their mind or what they see others creating. When they tell me about their frustrations my response to them is “have you taken the time to play?”

What I mean by that is this: Oftentimes people are reluctant to use their craft supplies and materials to play and practice with. Many think they can only use the supplies to make something that is a finished work of art or they think that it is a waste of money to use the supplies for play and practice.

If you never play and practice with your supplies, you will never gain the skills needed to create a work of art and you will never feel confident that your end results are worthy. You don’t need to have anyone’s permission to use the supplies you have purchased. The only person you need permission from is you.

Tell yourself that it’s okay to play and use your art supplies.

Tell yourself that it just doesn’t matter if what you end up with is a pile of junk. Tell yourself that you are in training to become an artist and keep an encouraging dialog going on in your head. Do not let any discouraging or negative thoughts enter the dialog.

Keep up the play and practice for a period of time and you will make discoveries about yourself. You will soon begin to think about the possibilities. You will become much more comfortable working with the art supplies and materials and you won’t feel like you are wasting them anymore. You may even find that you’ve subconsciously set new goals for yourself. You may be thinking about making that original piece that keeps floating around in your head and entering it in a show or contest or you may discover some unique ideas that make the work your own “signature” style.

One thing that I discovered about myself is that I had a desire to draw and paint women’s faces. I don’t know where it came from but I knew that when I’d look at the women’s faces that other artists created that I yearned to be able to do that too. I found it discouraging at the time because there were no resources for learning what I wanted to do. Of course there were books on drawing, but they turned me off as they were trying to teach me to draw real looking faces and that wasn’t the look I was after.

So one day I had a talk with myself and made a decision.

“You are just going to do it,” was the mindset I adopted.

So that’s what I did. I started drawing. I would look at the faces of artists I admired and study them and I would ask myself “What is it about this face that really appeals to me?” I kept drawing and practicing. Believe me when I say that the early drawings were not good. But I didn’t let that stop me and I kept at it.

When I felt that my drawings were starting to look better, I decided I’d try my hand at painting them. Well, needless to say those first trials were not good either. There again I was looking hard at artwork I liked, trying to figure out how they got that look. I was basically teaching myself to create what I saw other artists making.

My trials were not always successful, but I didn’t let my use of my supplies and my failures bother me.

I told myself it was my investment in myself.

Over time, my drawing skills have vastly improved and when I draw faces today, they are much different than the early faces I once did. Even now if there is a new or different subject I want to draw, it doesn’t come to me without practice. My skills need to be developed and refined when I explore a new subject matter and my eye-hand-brain coordination needs that practice time to smooth out the rough spots.

I still take the occasional online class because I feel there is always something to learn and another artist may have a tip or trick that would be just the thing for adding to my list of skills.

You must believe in yourself. You can make whatever you want, but remember that it takes time. Don’t give up and don’t get discouraged. Remember that your work won’t look exactly like the artist’s work you love. But you don’t want it to. You want your work to be unique to you. It should be a reflection of your inner soul and shout out to everyone that YOU made it. Go ahead, play!

Photo information:

1. Acrylic painting on stretched canvas.

2. Five ATCs Terri made for a Cloth Paper Scissors magazine challenge. The faces are hand drawn with black ink and then painted with watercolors onto cotton duck

3. This face is thread sketched onto a quilted background. Shading and highlights are painted with acrylics.

4. This quilted wall hanging features a thread sketched face with transparent paints added for see-through color.

5. This quilted wall hanging features an appliquéd and painted face. I teach an online class on this technique called Faces on Fabric.

6. A small mixed-media paper quilt with an acrylic painted face on a paper fabric background.

7. The face, drawn on muslin with black ink, was then painted with watercolors.

Bio:
Terri Stegmiller is a mixed-media textile artist living in Mandan, North Dakota. Terri is the author of Creative Paper Quilts and coauthor of Creative Ways with Fibre & Stitch. She teaches online at Two Creative Studios. You can see more of Terri at her web site http://www.terristegmiller.com/ and her blog http://www.stegart.blogspot.com/.