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	Welcome to ArtCloth Studios and the Complex Cloth website. Whether you are new to my site, or a visitor we have welcomed before, I hope you'll find useful information and inspiration here.

		Exciting chages are coming to the Art Cloth Studios’ website - we are getting a make-over! Please be sure to check back to see the finished results.

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This guide to elegant framing and finishing solutions is fun to watch and informative. Jane demonstrates stretching fabric over a frame, using a padded background for art work, adapting commercial frames to your advantage for displaying artwork, and more. The tools and supplies are inexpensive and readily available. Choose from display demonstrations for art quilts, fabrics, collages and purchased prints or reproductions. This DVD is packed with information that will help you make the perfect choice.

Welcome and greetings.

It's almost October and today the smell of fall is in our south Texas air. I actually opened the windows in the studio and let the delicious air roll in, which was a treat after the long months of stifling heat. And then the afternoon rain began. Based on the emails I receive, many of you are ready for the change in seasons too.

Speaking of change, I find myself contemplating changes in my artistic life. The impetus seems to be connected to every aspect of what I do. Last spring I felt bogged down by stuff, so we started cleaning out closets and hauling loads to Goodwill. In this neighborhood I can actually put something I don’t want out on the curb, and within 24 hours it disappears. That’s good, down home recycling for you. One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure.

I wanted less to take care of, and I actually thought about closing the teaching studio and relocating back to my home space. I spent weeks on the road, and missed not sleeping in my own bed. I studied my art cloth and decided I wanted it to have more weight…literally and figuratively. So I embarked on an exploration of how to finish pieces without hemming or turning back edges - how to unravel the fear of raveling! And how to weight cloth so that it still references fluidity and materiality, while hanging simply and cleanly? Oh, the excitement of a good challenge.

And if you keep working, you do figure out how to solve problems. My newest pieces are finished with non-raveling, cotton backing and they hang beautifully without sacrificing the essence of the cloth. I am using grommets at the top of each piece to simplify the hanging. The grommets are easy to install and come in brushed pewter and brass finishes – what a fabulous alternative to the tired old sleeve we’ve used to hang quilts and cloth since the beginning of time.

The studio is clean, and with the breeze blowing as it is today, there’s no way I would ever want to close it down. Last week a group of Mastery Program students were here and the creative energy was electric. If I need to cut down on caretaking, maybe I should resolve to own fewer cats, rather than closing the studio down!

I love change when it leads to tangible results. My body of new work is headed out into the world – including the exciting Unfurled: Expressive Cloth exhibit, which will open at the University of Nebraska’s Robert Hallstead Gallery in mid-November. You can get a preview of my work now, but check out this exhibit on line later this fall, and view new works from Els van Baarle, Elin Noble, Karren Brito, and other artists who specialize in the creation of art cloth surfaces.

If you are coming to the Houston Quilt Festival, be sure to visit the art cloth exhibit sponsored by Art Cloth Studios and Committed to Cloth. I’ll be lecturing on the development and progress of the art cloth movement, and I’d love to see you in the audience there.

We continue to develop new educational products for your enjoyment. We’ve just completed the taping of an hour long DVD on framing, finishing, and hanging contemporary cloth and other works of art. Watch for its addition to our store roster. Color for Dyers and Printers is still in production stages.

And I was thrilled to be invited to film a segment for the new Quilting Arts magazine PBS series of the same name. Hosted by Patricia Bolton, the magazine’s editor, this is going to be the hottest new quilting program on television. Watch for its debut in December.

If there’s anything we can count on, they say, its change. Let me know what’s changing with you.

Jane


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