Snowcatcher had her crocheted snowflakes featured in Art Forum Magazine, January 2014. Her work is intricate and delightful. Last year, a packet of snowflakes showed up in my mailbox, and Snowcatcher surprised me with more of them. My favorite is the one with a star in the center and an orange border.
Snowcatcher raises money for the Colorado/Wyoming Chapter of the National MS Society by participating in their bike ride each June. Read more about this event and the pdf booklet of crochet snowflake patterns that she is offering with donations.
My child-self watched the world with intensity. I remember walking through the Humanities Centre at the University of Alberta, where my father had an office in the English Department. This was a landscape, like outside, there of its own accord. It was a surprise to realize that someone designed this space, built it, inhabited it. There are banners hanging from the ceiling. I remember the colors and how they floated in that middle space, the airy core of the building.
Takao Tanabe banners at the Humanities Centre, University of Alberta. Photo via Miss Sarah of Girls and Bicycles.
These banners were created by Takao Tanabe, a Canadian artist. Printed on nylon, they glow in the light. I didn’t know an artist created this part of my landscape. Born in 1926, Tanabe started as an abstract expressionist painter, and eventually moved into semi-abstract landscapes. His banners were along the way, from the later 60’s/early 70’s, with drafting tool angles, gradated colors, and of course orange.
I found this intensely orange art tile at the GoggleWorks gift shop in Reading, PA. My memory is that the tile was from a company called Blueberry Hill, but I haven’t been able to find them. The style reminds me of the animal tiles from the Moravian Tileworks.
Potter’s Mark
There is a graceful potter’s mark on the back, so perhaps someday I will figure out who made it.
Coats & Clark Book No. 244: Embroidery in Orange, 1975.
Embroidery floss carried color to me as a girl. Anchor Stranded Cotton came loosely coiled and held together with tiny paper labels, and woe to anyone who lost one of the bands while working to unfurl enough floss to thread the needle. I don’t believe the colors made up for the tangle, and the frustration that set into my shoulders when stitching. This sun applique had dark orange, tangerine and nectarine satin stitch, and french knots for the the centers of the circles. I loved the colors, the silky texture, the way the thread built up the linen stretched across the embroidery hoop, but I avoided stitching, leaving the project in my sewing basket, which itself had a satin lining.
Christmas Embroidery Thread via Alicia Gallo on Flickr
I wanted to love embroidering, in order to collect more embroidery thread. Look at this wonderful collection from Alicia Gallo on Flickr!
Closet of Glass. Photo by Margaret Almon.Orange Millefiori. Photo by Margaret Almon.
Part of being an artist is being surrounded by my materials, and my art unfolding from their inspiration. Our surroundings may bear the imprint of our aesthetic passions. A friend, Ivan Chan, once shared a photo of a chest of drawers he described as part card catalog, part Chinese apothecary cabinet, which caught my eye. Perhaps part of my attraction to the librarian profession was my love of libraries as a place, and the fantastic furniture of knowledge embodied in a card catalog. At University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, the main library card catalog lined the hallways. The drawers glided out, and with the right motion could be unhooked and rested on a sliding panel tucked into the center of each cabinet.
Top Drawer of Tower of Tesserae: Orange Gold Smalti. Photo by Margaret Almon.
Ivan is an artist and a psychotherapist, and a print of his, Here Kitty, watches over my studio. The aesthetics of a psychotherapist office having a role in guiding him to the profession echoes what I felt about libraries and now with my studio. The time I spent in such offices contributed to the possibility of creating art, to taking my love of color and creation seriously.
Second Drawer in the Tower of Tesserae. Photo by Margaret Almon.Third Drawer in the Tower of Tesserae. Photo by Margaret Almon.
What surroundings are you drawn to? Is your profession or passion connected to a certain place and aesthetic?
There is White Christmas, and Blue Christmas, but the best is Orange Christmas. After the Christmas Pageant when I was a girl, we received candy bundled up with a mandarin orange. The orange was simple to unwrap, with a thin loose peel. When I moved to the US, I missed the mandarin oranges. Clementines appeared about 10 years later, but they weren't quite the same. The other orange I loved at Christmas was one made of chocolate, with individual sections that came apart. The outside edges of each section had a rind pattern.
For some years after my parents divorced, and I left Canada, Christmas felt unfamiliar, like an absence, a gray fog. As Stratoz and I have celebrated over the past 26 years, I have learned to accept Christmas day as it is, as it unfolds. Stratoz took this photo at his sister's house on Christmas. A little girl's Slinky toy, orange on the outside and yellow on the inside, glowing like a tunnel of light
Sheet of Art Glass in Progress by the Kokomo Opalescent Glass Factory
This photo from Kokomo Opalescent Glass Factory caught my eye ~ a sheet of molten orange waiting to become art glass. There is something satisfying about all glass starting out orange. When I was researching stained glass factories in the United States, I discovered that Kokomo was first, founded in 1888, in Kokomo, IN. Even as Tiffany created his own glass, he also bought glass from Kokomo.
Sunset Mandala by Margaret Almon, stained glass, gold smalti and dichroic on slate, 7 inches.
