When I opened the bag of scraps that Karen sent and dumped out all the slices of circles, the first thing that came to mind was Kay Walkingstick’s early abstract paintings. She used similar shapes in many of those paintings, the meaning of them derived from her Cherokee heritage.
Then I thought of art in the book Tantra Song and the simple paintings from India that were meant for people to meditate on.
Inspired by both, I wanted to create the kind of complex simplicity I found in the details of them.
So I chose a piece of fabric that had been painted and was filled with subtle imperfections that would create unlikely shapes and textures. I used a slice of circle for each and a scrap or two more. This is what I came up with….
These are all potholder size, but I found I liked turning them around, making the bottom the top or the side the bottom. I had trouble deciding which way to photograph them. So I’m going to make them into hot pads, not potholders. The difference is that they won’t have hangers. They’ll sit on a surface instead of hanging on a wall. Which also means they’ll be viewed flat from above.
I’m out of the yellow-painted fabric, but I may try to make more potholders or hot pads, using more of the slices of circles and different fabric. Hopefully discovering something new as I do.
