Sharon’s Blog

Here is another of the small birds I’ve made. It reminds me of spring!

Well, it would be nice if I posted more regularly. I need to get a handle on that. It seems I get so engrossed in making art that it is easy to forget about blogging it.

I have finished the ketuba (Jewish marriage contract) I was working on. The couple now have it, so I can show you what it looks like.

I’m really happy with the way this piece worked out. It was a lot of meticulous painting, but the gold gouache really sparkles surrounded by the rich green and blue. The couple liked it, too!

I’ve also been working on more birds. I’ve been inspired by spring and decided to try making some smaller-scale birds. This purple and blue bird is one of them. It reminds me of summer evening skies.

Spring must be on the way. Lately, in the morning, I can hear the birds singing! It seems the birds that overwinter here don’t have much to say until the weather improves. I was thinking about the sounds of sunny days when I made this little bird. Sounds like the breeze blowing, children playing, and the ice cream truck driving down the street and playing a tinkly, tinny version of “Have You Ever Gone A’Fishing” on a constant loop. I was also thinking about how some people have personalities like summer days — sunny, positive and colorful. This bird is much smaller than my recent birds. It’s only 2 1/4″ tall.

Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:  I finished these two birds to be juried for a group show.

They are both large-scale pieces (for me, anyways!). The white bird is about 15″ tall, and the blue one is about 22″. The necks are beaded, but the feathers in the body are made of fabric. On the blue bird, I hand-painted the fabric before making the feathers. I’m happy to say that even though I had problems with the first set of legs I made for the blue bird, it is now standing firmly on its own. It was a pain to figure out how to make that happen, but I’m glad I stuck with it!

Well, it’s a new year and time to get back to work! I made new bird legs and cut a new bird body. The old body had been sewn and unsewn so many times, it was looking a bit like a Franken-bird! Plus, this gave me the opportunity to refine the pattern for the body, which had some curves I was not entirely happy with.

Now I’m stuffing it super-firmly. It’s almost time to get the bird’s (new) legs in… There will be much holding of breath around here until that’s done. This part of construction involves lots of hand-sewing. I have a handy needle and pin cushion that looks like a tomato with a baby strawberry hanging off of it. It’s the same pin cushion I’ve had since my mom first taught me to sew, and it’s just like the one she had! It works great, but I do wonder, what’s up with the whole tomato/strawberry thing?

Here is the next bird I’m working on. It’s based on a little blue heron, and is the largest bird I’ve attempted so far — it’s about life-sized. The head has been fully beaded, and it’s heavy! I was really pleased with the way the legs came out, but in putting them into the body I’ve managed to completely break them. Aaargh!

Now it’s time to make a new body and some new legs and try again. The really tricky bit will be to weight the body in such a way that the bird will be free-standing and that means counter-balancing the weight of the head.

I’ll break out the camera and share some work in progress tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a couple sculptures that are currently being shown at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. They are mixed media, with fiber, wire and glass beads which are hand-sewn to the sculptures.