(For those of you who were unable to attend the recent Surface Matters Symposium or were at a concurrent talk, we have asked fellow SDA members to write about about the various presentations. In this post, Lorraine Edmond writes about Trisha Hassler’s presentation, “Surface Connections.” )

Trisha describes herself as a mixed media artist. She started in quilting at a young age, and now describes her work as “quilting in steel.” Trisha’s earliest textile efforts focused on designing felt clothing (for her troll doll—who remembers those?) As she outgrew dolls, she moved on to clothing. Trish still has some of the elaborately embroidered work shirts and jeans she created in the 70s.
Trish works from her home studio. Her home is an open warehouse/loft in the Pearl District of Portland. (She also rents space in a metal shop from a welder for the messier parts of the process.) An idea board holds an important place above the ironing board in her studio. It is covered with images, words, type, skeletons, and so on. Those come down from the board when she is ready to work on them. She also keeps stacks of journals and sketchbooks. Her studio has no design wall, because the steel is too heavy to work with that way. Instead, she uses the floor to arrange the pieces, then stands on the stairs to look down at the work.
She began working with metal in 1999—in the early work, the metal was simply a frame. After taking an improvisational piecing class, she began cutting the metal into pieces and “stitching” it back together to make the frames. Next, she tried making tables, but the work was not spontaneous enough (people actually want tables that sit flat on the floor).
Some of the metal-framed work she did had openings where you could see past the quilted fiber pieces to the wall. She did enjoy working with the negative space, but realized she wasn’t choosing the composition because she did not control the color of the back wall.
As Trisha’s work developed, she began to work with found objects in addition to sheet metal. Her metal comes from a place on the river called The Steel Yard, which caters to artists. They have a selection of reclaimed construction steel and you can walk through and look at the piles. Much of it is rusted, and a lot of it is too heavy for her usesShe takes 10 x 4 ft sheets and cuts them down small enough that she can move them alone. She loves the rusty metal and sometimes has a tough time deciding which side to use. She uses the steel “as is” and simply seals it with polyurethane on both sides before bringing it into the fabric studio.
Trisha’s most recent work involves both piecing and bolting the frames, some of which are constructed in shadow box forms, 3” deep with the inside piece constructed as a quilt, and others are even more three-dimensional, constructed in a “house” form. Trish enjoys the engineering aspect of working with metal and making the pieces fit the way she wants, plus “who doesn’t want to play with fire?” she asks.
Her way of working with these two disparate materials is best explained by the opening text on her web site (http://www.trishahassler.com/):
“When I work in fiber, the experience is quiet, calm and clean. I do it in my home, dressed in yoga pants. The movements are intuitive, small and precise. This work requires patience, focus and good light. My love of this material runs deep in my bones.
When I work in steel, the experience is loud, hot and dirty. I do it at a metal shop, dressed in a leather apron. The movements are intuitive, large and fluid. This work requires strength, focus and safety equipment. My love of this material runs deep in my bones.
When I mix the two I enjoy discovering the place where they each hold their own and speak together.”

(For those of you who were unable to attend the recent Surface Matters Symposium or were at a concurrent talk, we have asked fellow SDA members to write about about the various presentations. In this post, Lorraine Edmond writes about Jane Dunnewold’s presentation, “Strategies for Exploring Your Visual Language.” )

Jane Dunnewold is well known for her positive outlook and consistent support to artists at all stages of development.  Her presentation on “Strategies for Exploring Your Visual Language” began with these encouraging words: “There are as many ways to get started at

Jane Dunnewold at the Surface Matters Symposium. Photo by Jennifer Nerad.

this as there are people working.”  The range is broad– some people are color field people, while others are focused on very specific content and messages.  What is important is to make work that is recognizable as your own.  If you don’t know where to start, start with content, OR just begin somewhere, pick an object, work on design exercises, collect techniques.

Jane acknowledged the tendency many of us have to focus on “filling our toolbelts” with techniques, however, and emphasized that although there is a time for that, there is also a time to stop collecting techniques, to settle in on some that speak to us, and to put our own spin on them.  She described this evolution as “our responsibility as artists.”

For those of us who are still working at developing that visual language, she offered a multitude of possibilities for starting places.  Some are as simple as selecting a shape or image you like that can be interpreted in your own way (she showed several examples of circle imagery).  Another option is to pick a specific color or color palette to work from.  Jane emphasized that there are many ways of working that are “pre-cloth.”  Choose something to work with every day or until you’ve done a hundred.  Some people take a photograph a day for a year, while others carve a stamp or a printing block every day.

The “expanded square” or Notan is one good visual exercise to start from (do a search for “notan” and you will find an abundance of images as well as an inexpensive Dover book on the subject).  This exercise is a good way to learn to see positive and negative space, and it is worth doing every day for 30 days.  You can use the results of the successful ones to form a repeating pattern that can be applied to cloth in any number of ways.

Jane predicts that you will begin to recognize that your designs have some symbolic meaning, even if meaning is not your starting place.  She also believes it’s OK to work with public domain images and clip art when you don’t feel ready to make your own, but she stressed that “you have a right to make all your own” and that once you get started, you’ll actually love to make your own version of the usual symbols. Another recommendation (good advice that may be hard to follow) is not to jump around from one thing to another—it is OK to use the same image over and over.  The question Jane invites us to explore is “How many ways can you use those images authentically?”

Verbal, rather than visual, approaches can inspire work, too.  Try a free association exercise, starting with one word (her example was “boundaries”).  Set a clock and begin writing everything that comes to mind.  You may be surprised at how many visual images emerge from the list.

One way to build a series of work is to figure out your message, then develop the images. But not everyone likes to work that way—you can choose to be more or less structured.  You can also stay with some simple ideas and images.  “It is OK to go in the studio just to fool around, but it takes some planning to pull off what you see in your head.”:

After many of examples of the “how” aspect of working on visual language, Jane concluded with her perspective on the “why:”

“Life is too short to not love what you’re doing.  If you do love it, do it enough to be good at it.  You deserve to feel true passion for whatever it is you’re working on.”

Lorraine Edmond