Our New Website

Thanks for following Viewpoints 9!

As of September 1, 2016 we have relocated to our new home:

Viewpoints9.com

Look forward to seeing you there!

Our previous cycles of work are still available at the following links:

Viewpoints 9

Viewpoints 9: Challenges of Nine

Viewpoints 9: Constants & Variables

V9 Exhibition: International House, Davis

Viewpoints 9 is proud to announce a special exhibition of contemporary fiber art selected from each of our original 2012 and 2013 challenges. The exhibit will be held at the International House in Davis, California, April 9 - May 6, 2015.  Viewpoints 9 members, Diane Wright and Martha Wolfe, invite you to join them for the Opening Reception on April 10, 2015 from 6 - 8PM.

fini

V9 Sudoku

Nine artists, nine challenges, eighteen months later.......this is the final post for this Viewpoints 9 blog.

What a wonderful experience it has been!   I think we all agree that we've been challenged and inspired, made new friends and learned a lot from others and about ourselves.

As we transition to our new blog, viewpoints9-2.blogspot.com to begin our second cycle, we bid farewell to Mary Pal.  We will miss her beautiful and thought-provoking artwork and discussions.  We wish her the very best in her creative pursuits.

As we go into cycle 2, we are pleased to announce our new member, Alicia Merrett.  Alicia is living in the UK and will bring a new vision and viewpoint to the group.  We're very excited that she's joined V9 and look forward to her participation.  You can read Alicia's artist profile (and all of the artists' profiles) on our new blog here.  So, please, visit us there, bookmark us, join the site, tell your friends.  It all begins with the first challenge on September 1, 2013.

Oh, and this blog will remain as it is.  You can read about each of the challenges from the links on the left side of the page or access any of the completed galleries from the green menu bar above.  Enjoy!

His Tern

It's hard for me to believe this is the final challenge in our first 18-month cycle.....and Mary really picked an interesting one, "to create a work of any aspect of nature with unexpected and surprising color substitutions".  At first glance, it seemed like it would be the easiest, but as the month moved on, idea after idea was discarded.  Paisley lizards and snakes abound, as do a rainbow of birds on a wire.  Colorful cats are not art (so I'm told) and a lot of unexpected colors actually *do* exist in nature, so those won't work.  Maybe I have just over-analyzed the challenge....

I photographed a lot of sea birds when I lived in Florida and was always amused by the terns.  They have an almost laughable seriousness about them, always lined up, facing the same direction, waiting for who knows what.  I went through lots of these photos when I was making my auction square this year and remembered this character in one of them - this "different" bird, making his joyful noise - while the others ignored him and looked away.  He was a colorful guy and I think it is "His Tern".

Material: Hand-dyed cotton fabrics with raw-edge machine appliqué, embroidery and quilting. 18" W x 24" H

Transformation of odds and ends

by Misik Kim

After working, many pieces are left.

I did not throw away them.

Put these pieces in the box and were stored.

So there are a lot of boxes in my studio.

Some of them are very old and are forgotten.

One day in the vacation, I opened these boxes.

So many memories of my works are there.

Recently I try to work with these pieces to.....

Thanks to all of Viewpoints9 Artists.

It is like long journey to me.

It is hard, surprise and fresh ........ to me.

Now I am waiting next trip with Viewpoint9 .

Thanks again.

 

The work  : 20” ⅹ 20”

Tangerine Trees

Tangerine Trees

I took a watercolor class at the library about ten years ago and the instructor challenged the students to be bold with color. She said if you looked hard enough, you could find every color in the spectrum in your subject.  "You think a palm tree is green? Look harder. In addition to myriad greens, you'll see yellow and blue, even fuchsia." Fuchsia? Really? I get the greens and yellows and even reflected blues, but pink? In a palm tree? Then she showed me.

She painted a dab of the most remarkable pink right next to the heart of the tree. Amazingly, it worked. Not only did it work, it made the painting more interesting and dynamic. What a fun and memorable lesson!

Of course my first thoughts of this challenge led me to the fuchsia palm. I sketched the pink palm with the green trunk next to a yellow sea and purple sky. Nice idea but unfortunately it only worked in theory. Other designs buzzed around my head like bees on a flower, but time ticked by and nothing congealed.

To say I'm not fond of the waiting phase of the design process would be an understatement. Rather than focus on the excitement of visions buzzing about the periphery, I feel pressured by time. I've always been a results-oriented person and knowing there is a deadline looming with a solution just beyond my reach is frustrating. My remedy? Play.

Detail

"Tangerine Trees" is the result of playing with inks and fabrics I hadn't used before. It is the product of "What if...?" combined with a healthy dose of urgency. The soft peachy color is unintentionally faded orange. I was impatient to get to work so I set the fabric in the sun to dry. You know what happens to inks in the sun? Hmm...the bottle does say lightfast AFTER they're dry. Ah well, I can deal with peach, I was just playing anyway.

I used a glue resist on the cotton and then dyed the muslin, synthetic acetate and sheers with India inks.

Oh yes, my husband named it. He said it reminded him of "tangerine trees and a marmalade sky" from the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Out of Control Weather

by Lin Hsin-Chen

Global warming becomes even more serious in summer 2013. Human beings are luckily enough to be able to hide into an air-conditioned room to regulate body temperature. The pursuit of comfort is a human instinct. How about all the other living things on Earth? Are they as lucky as we are? The temperature is getting higher and higher every year. The problem of global warming seems out of control. What a hazardous time we are in! It’s hard to imagine that we human beings will become “climate refugees” in the future.

I attended a cruise trip in July. As a first-time cruiser, I enjoyed the facilities on the ship and felt everything was so novel. But I felt confused when I was listening to the tourist guide on the cruise explaining how the coastline landscape has been changed due to climate change, flood and drought. It swept away my joy and made me feel sad. Why does the environment change? How will it affect the future?

Getting off the ship, we visited the coastline of Okinawa. I saw a scorched tree standing obliquely under the hot sun in the marine park. The tree leaves just looked like black nets. There was no wind under the shade, only high-temperature heat instead. I guess the tree also felt unwell as I did. I quickly ran into the air conditioning car. How about the tree? Does Nature have any method to resist the hazardous climate? Or does it just show the reality in front of human beings and try to give some warns?

Admittedly, this trip was no much fun. The cruise brought me to the coast and let me see the ecological truth and the environmental change we’re facing, which is very different from what I saw from an airplane. The scorched black tree was definitely an unforgettable scene for me! Pray for the Earth!

Materials: commercial cotton, poly batting, lace, silk, flannelette, knit patterns

Techniques: 100% hand-stitched