There Is A Field

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing & right doing

There Is A Field

I will meet you there

These past days I had the pleasure of hanging out with an amazing group of quillers in the first ever Quill-Along, hosted by my beloved friend Erin Curet of Little Circles. With her guidance we all plunged into the exciting world of quilled mosaics and set out to create our very own Retro Flowers.

As soon as I enrolled, inspiration struck and I knew this field of retro flowers screamed Rumi at me. Flowers and stems are all made with the best damn quilling paper available (yes, it's Culture Pop) but for the background I chose to cut my own strips out of old book pages. The strips are full of words and concepts, a metaphor to our ideas of wrong doing and right doing. Among them, beyond them, a vibrant field of flowers, color bursting with life awaits. 

I will meet you there.

This is my first ever mosaic and I enjoyed every little spiral of it! Girls from the team, I have to say, it's been fun working along you and I loved every piece of art posted on the group. It's so weird... At first I thought that we would all come up with similar mosaics, following the same steps and all. It was a delight seeing the uniqueness of each piece, the different atmospheres and characters brought out through this creative process. 

Some of you wanted to know more so I'll let you in into some of the tricks I used to create this.

First off, I have to admit that I never buy frames and never hire a professional framer. There have been a couple of exceptions to that rule over the years, but no, I stick away from framers. It is very expensive and I prefer to offer art for money instead of frame for money. Plus I enjoy crafting my own. That means that I am a big time hoarder of old frames, salvaged from all kind of trash and have a fairly good stash in my studio. This one just fit the required dimensions and so I gave it a little care and a few coats of chalk paint and varnish to make it all pretty and new. Giving life to old, dead things is quite rewarding!

Then there is the mat, which also raised a few questions. It is also hand made. Simple, really. I just cut a cardboard, painted it and then sealed it with a coat of varnish for extra protection. Perfect to hold the little Rumi quote that inspired me. My signature too... :)

The actual background was watercolored black and sprayed with a coat of fixative to avoid accidents. I know Erin advised against watercolors but I did not experience any trouble whatsoever. The paper strips for the background were hand cut from old book pages with an exacto knife and a metal ruler. That means that the edges of the paper were white and that was out of the question as a background color. To counter that I ran the strips one by one over my black permanent ink pad. So they became aaaalmost black. Obviously the distribution of color is not consistent, some places remained white, others were more soaked black. That turned out to be super cool because it gave the papers a unique ragged look and made for a really organic shading. The pictures just don't do it justice! From an angle all the layers of printed letters, jumbled photos among words and inked edges come together to bring the life and character needed to juxtapose the world of ideas that hides the field we are looking for.

The back of the frame was sealed much like Erin suggested, the only difference being in the hanging system for which I used what shows in the photo instead of wire.

I think that pretty much covers it. If you have any questions fire away and I will be happy to answer. For anyone interested, it is listed on my etsy store.

To all fellow Quill-Alongers, looking forward to rolling with you again!

For Erin there are just no words. There Is A Field & I Will Meet You There.

Love & Light & PaperSpirals ~ Anama