Request For Color Plastic Bags
I need plastic bags; produce bags, grocery bags, newspaper bags all sorts of plastic bags wanted.
If you you have a stash of plastic bags and are willing to part with your bounty of bags, I would be most grateful. I can use them for an installation project. I am weaving plastic bags and 500 feet of hollow braid polyethylene rope into Prayer Flags.
Recycle those bags into art. Accepting donations at Sky Garden Gallery 150 Bay Street, PH9, Jersey City NJ 07302
Prayer Flags In Progress 
Prayer Flags in Sky Garden Studio 
Detail View Prayer Flags
A Big Beaded Bag
I have been working on a big beaded bag, bit by bit over the last couple months. It is still not done I have to finish the shoulder strap and sew on 1000 pony beads.
Beading 
Bottle cap bead detail 
My work desk 
Detail transition between paper and beads
Morning Dew
The making of Morning Dew…
Making camo ropes 
Adding the pearls 
Pearled up detail 
Looks like Morning Dew
Strange Fruit
Selecting materials is a process 
Sorting and building by color story 
Detail view of bottle cap beads 
The beading draws you in 
The ribbons are dripping color 
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Meet My New StudioAssistant
I have a new studio assistant! YAY!
Meet Jeese Durost
Jesse is currently cutting ribbon, making yarn from recycled materials and drilling tens of thousands of bottle caps and corks I’ve been hoarding or received as gifts from hoarder friends these last 9 years. You know who you are and I thank you. XOXO.
Jesse currently lives and works in Queens, New York and rides his bike and takes the PATH to Sky Garden Gallery a couple days a week to help me out.
For his own artwork, Jesse utilizes found and common materials, to build precarious, architectural sculptures, paintings, videos and digital works that attempt to exist in a state of perpetual flux. He is interested in exploring the peripheral aspects of the exterior world, how they inform and are informed by interior, subliminal states of being.
Jesse received his BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1998. His work has been exhibited at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, 33 Orchard in New York City, and 1430
Contemporary in Portland, Oregon.
To see some of Jesse’s personal works visit www.Jessedurost.com
Quarantine Check In From Sky Garden Gallery
If I’ve learned anything during this time of uncertainty, things happen when they happen. And for a reason… If I just allow, there is less stress and anxiety in the not knowing of things.
… for real.
If you want to social distance watch a sunset with me from Sky Garden’s roof deck in Jersey City, please let me know. Open sky and air… and this view…
Ping me your avails.
Kenya Art Residency Update: Turning Lemons into Lemonade
This month, I was supposed to be in Kenya learning beading and basketry techniques but my artists residency with Now Friends was postponed/canceled. Damn you Corona…
For a little inspiration visit with my Pinterest scrapbook Kenya Residency 2020 board instead.
I have been experimenting all year with recycled materials in preparation for this residency. I am ready so, switch up and plan B, turning lemons into lemonade mode…
I enrolled in a ZOOM alternative weaving and basketry intensive program at the Textile Arts Center (NYC) later this month. It isn’t Kenya, but I am moving forward advancing my skills using bottle caps, wine corks, plastic bags, ribbon gifted to me by so many of my favorite people. You know who you are.
Watch my Instagram Stories to see how these works progress.
Beauty is Given
Women’s Work Revisited
As a child, my grandmother insisted My sister and I learn how to sew. “These are important skills every young lady must know,”she would say. And even though I thought it was “old fashioned,” I learned to sew on a vintage Singer machine.
I vividly remember lying on the floor under the machine with my cheek resting on the cold metal stand while Grandma worked the pedals with her feet, letting out the hem on my pants to accommodate my growth spurt that summer. Whenever I see an old Singer machine this memory pops into my head, I can feel the cold metal on my face and smell a wiff of Grandmas perfume, Charlie.
My sister and I also learned needle point, crochet, beading, jewelry making from my Mom and friendship bracelets, macrame, basket weaving as Girl Scouts. My Mom was our troop leader. At the time, these were deemed important skills for young ladies to have… but somewhere along the way, after my Grandmother passed in 1988, I stopped doing “Women’s Work” and set aside craft in pursuit of “more important” things that would help me get ahead in the world, like scholastic aptitude.
My crafting skills lay buried deep in my subconscious for decades, until I rediscovered how restorative working with my hands can be. The repetition of knotting and wrapping has a meditative quality that silences the mind. My brain literally switches off and my hands just do their thing, fusing rope, yarn, ribbon and thread into something new. When I snap out of the trance, something miraculous rests in my hands. It never ceases to amaze me how insanely productive I can be when I stop thinking and just be. Counterintuitive, I know, but this how creativity manifests for me.
I want to honor the women who instilled my love of art, by elevating craft to fine art and banishing the perception that “Women’s Work” is not as important as other art practices. All there is to do, is just be and let it happen.
To prepare for this journey, I am taking a couple workshops for fun and brush up on my skills at the Textile Arts Center in NYC this quarter.
- Bead Embroidery workshop on 02/06/2020
- Intro to Macrame + Knotting, a full day class on 02/16/2020
- Advanced Pompom Techniques workshop on 03/03/2020
Check this space and my Instagram @MissTheda to see what I’m learning and how I’m incorporate these techniques into my art practice. I am excited to see what happens…
