Celebrating My Irish Ancestress

St. Patrick’s Day may be over, but it’s always a grand time to celebrate your Irish heritage.

 

I hand-sewed this green velvet heart with a photograph of my great-grandmother who crossed the great ocean with her family to settle in America. I have this hanging in my studio to inspire me.

Mary and Ireland Art Journal

Even though I have had lots of ideas for other projects, book bindings, and paintings, I do not have anything to show for it. Research and pondering--yes; but not much doing. Most weekends nothing actually advances enough beyond placing things together and photographing them for future reference.

But here is some proof I am doing something visual--a personal art journal exploring the connection I feel toward my great-grandmother and Ireland. I have been intrigued with this ancestress since I first saw her photograph when I was a teenager and was amazed how much I looked like her. Her daughter, my grandmother, was a very private person and did not give me any stories about her but I have tried to pursue her story through other relatives. She came from County Meath and left Ireland for Chicago with her family when she was only 13. Over the years, I've played and paired her main portrait with some of my own photos. Things really clicked creating this cover collage with my photos of her, me in Ireland, and my Irish landscapes.

As you can see, the book is in pieces. Since I have not sewn it together yet, I can work on individual pages and re-arrange the order. 'Tis fun!

Saturday Creations

Reaching Out

acrylic on paper

9" x 12"

With the greening of trees here, I turned to a palette of various yellows and blues this week, making some decidedly green creations.

Yesterday morning, my third book sewing class, we tackled a very ambitious book--two-signatures sewn with two needles holding two different colored threads twisted outside the spine. Whew! I managed to complete it but my spine was a bit wide for the paste paper covers. During this class I find I’m struggling, trying to balance my logical side with my creative side. Since I have to be exact and detail-oriented 5-days a week, I am either befuddled or downright rebellious on an early Saturday morning, having to be precise measuring intricate book spine designs and calculations. This class might be too ambitious for me since I lag behind understanding and that, in turn, bothers me even more.

I’ve wanted to learn about bookmaking since I have read so many books and blogs about making your own book and really wanted hands-on instruction. Last fall, I tried taking a full-semester on bookbinding but it was full. Maybe if I had chosen a very simple class with, say, using the pamphlet stitch with variations, I’d catch on more quickly. Most of my classmates already had taken a book class with this instructor.

In the future, I’d like to translate what I’ve learned into creating my own journals, with paper and size of my own choosing since I’m out-growing spiral watercolor books that only come in cold-press paper. Seeing some wonderful books made with unstretched canvas as covers on Gina Cuff’s blog http://dogberryhill.blogspot.com/ might be the direction I’m heading.

Later in the afternoon, looking for something else in my studio, I came across a set-aside project: some small frames with matching glass. I have wanted to make a necklace with an altered photo of my great-grandmother matched with one of my Irish photos. My sister is the jewelry artist but I'm pleased with this result.