ROXANE LESSA

May News From My New Studio

Roxane Lessa — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:13:42 +0000

I have to say a big thanks to my MOM, who is my biggest supporter, and now that we share a house, I can be more active in her care. The studio is a large bonus room with lots of light and I love it! Still is a bit of a mess, but at least I’m back to making art.

So here’s what I’m working on- a new series- TA DA!! The Energy series! No, I haven’t abandoned my other series, just adding a new one. I have so many beautiful night shots I took on that 4th of July in Boston, I just had to make them into small fiber paintings. Actually they are not that small- 16″ x 20″ and mounted on a canvas, so they really look like paintings.

Here’s Enregy #2 with the gold glitter understitching. I will layer on more colored pieces, but you can already see the movement happening. I drew the lines on first with a sliver of soap and them freely quilted them with gold Glitter thread from Superior threads.

CLASSES:

Speaking of quilting- join me in exploring YOUR quilting. Call Bernina World of Sewing in Raleigh to register for this class on MAY 22 AND 29 from 1:30-4:30 PM. If you’ve ever wanted to improve all aspects of your quilting, this is the class for you.

Also, the DESIGN YOUR OWN ART QUILT is coming up in Chapel Hill at Thimble Pleasures on June 3rd 1-5 pm and 9th 10-5 pm. I have not taught this one in a while, but it is a blast and many folks have taken their own photos or others and made them into stunning pieces of fiber art. Click on the store names to go to their websites for more info and registration.

Hope you are enjoying our Spring and hope to see you soon!

I’ve Moved!

Roxane Lessa — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:13:51 +0000

I am amazed at how much has happened in the last few months. I sold my house in 1 week, packed all our stuff or sold it or gave it away, drove over to my mom’s house, and tried to move in. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff had to go into storage temporarily. My boyfriend, Paul was a huge help throughout the whole ordeal. The kids and I are still adjusting. I still wake up and go, “oh yeah, I live here now”. But the up side is my mom’s large bonus room is now my studio! It’s bright and large, but I did have to clear out a bunch of stuff first.

I decided to start a new series and put them on gallery wrapped canvas. The series is called the Energy Series and they will be very mix and matchable. In other words, you can hang any 2 or 3 together, and they will look great. These are studies of slow open shutter light pictures I took 2 years ago on the Charles River on the 4th of July in Boston. I have another Desert piece that needs quilting, but I decided to work on the Energy Series instead since it’s a time for new beginnings.

Here is the photo:

Here is the fused and quilted piece: Energy #1

A detail:

I used a lot of glitter thread and discovered it doesn’t like it when you don’t use a backing fabric. It kept getting hung up and breaking, probably because of the soft batting underneath. I’m looking forward to making many more of these!

Many changes afoot

Roxane Lessa — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:32:08 +0000

Hello everyone! Happy Spring! Everything is blooming chez moi. My azaleas are coming at a record early time. Besides all that, I’m finishing up repairs to the house getting ready for closing. No, I’ll still be in Raleigh-not moving very far. I’m really looking forward to having more time to make and market art, now that I won’t have a big house to take care of. Speaking of which, here is the new desert piece that is emerging. I am aiming for more abstraction and less realism, which I find hard to do for some reason.

The photo was taken by Tjaart van Staden, who died in a plane crash. The scene is of Black Mountain in Namibia at sunset. I love this color scheme of analogous colors. It has snow dyed silk, hand dyed and shibori dyed cotton and various batiks. The hand dyes are from my collection and from others I have purchased.

A Quick Tute:

For those of you who wonder how I make these, here is a shot of the backing fabric folded back to reveal the wool batt with pieces of black Misty Fuse. This is how I stabilize the back and the front to the batt without pins or spray basting. The pins being a pain and getting in the way of quilting, and the spray being a mess unless you do it outside- also a pain. Misty Fuse is so light it doesn’t add any stiffness or bulk to the finished piece. Just iron with a hot dry iron with your teflon sheet, and everything will stay put while you quilt.

Upcoming classes are:

ThreadUtopia: March 31, 1-4 pm. @ Thimble Pleasures, Chapel Hill

April 2, 10-2 am. @ Bernina World of Sewing, Raleigh

This class trains you to work with all those tricky threads. It’s fast and fun and you will learn all about tension, threads, needles, etc.

Design Your Own ARt quilt: June 3, 1-5 pm. and June 9, 10-5 pm. @ Thimble Pleasures, Chapel Hill. You must be there for both days to complete the class.

This class trains you to take a make an art quilt using a photo by making your own pattern and fusing . If you have a great photo you’ve always wanted to make into an art quilt, this is your class!

That’s it for now, and hope to see you in class!

Capitol Quilter’s Guild- Here I come!

Roxane Lessa — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:19:02 +0000

Where have I been lately? Working on my house, getting it ready to sell. And yay! I have a lovely couple who are buying my house! I have mixed feelings of course, but am looking forward to having little to no house maintenance and working more on my art and teaching. Which reminds me, this week I will be lecturing and teaching my Color Play for Quilters and my Teeny Tiny Art Quilt classes. I can’t wait and have tweaked the lecture and packed up quilts and supplies.

Speaking of students and teaching: look what a few of my students completed in classes I taught recently:

Isn’t that gorgeous! So proud of you Deb!

Now here is the work of Ann.

A lovely use of complementary colors.

Just a quick reminder, I will still be selling my work through the New Bern Art Works in New Bern. If you go there, look for some smaller, more affordable pieces of mine to add to your collection.

If you think someone would enjoy this blog, please forward and share!

NICHE Award Winner!

Roxane Lessa — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:27:49 +0000

I can hardly believe it. I won the Decorative Fiber category for piece, Bubbles pictured here:

Bubbles

The Niche Award is a competition for all working artists in the U.S. and Canada, sponsored by Niche Magazine. To see all the winners, including moi, go to Niche Awards. There are some amazing pieces in all media.

In other big news, I haven’t been doing much art work lately, since I am getting my house ready to sell. Whew, what a lot of work! I miss working in the studio. Add to that, traveling out of state for my daughter’s college dance auditions. It’s hard to stay balanced physically and emotionally with all that going on. But hopefully by this Summer, I should be able to focus once again on the art making. For now I’ll fit it in where I can!

So what’s new with you? Taking any good classes lately? Working on anything in your life? I’d love to hear…..

Teaching….love it!

Roxane Lessa — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:10:28 +0000

This last week I had the privilege of teaching at the Pamlico Quilter’s Guild in NC and at Thimble Pleasures in Chapel Hill. I loved discovering the town of Washington, NC right there on the sparkling river. We got right down to business and got messy with color. I was impressed with everyone’s courage to move past their comfort zones and create small abstract color studies. Good job ladies and send me those pictures!

Next it was on to Chapel Hill, at Thimble Pleasures, one of my fav fabric stores. Their collection of batiks is legendary. We worked on the Fused Applique and Paint pattern: Morning Glory and Angel’s Trumpets. Everyone was a little timid, but they dove into the painting part after a bit of prodding!

painting begun on Morning Glory

not done, but more paint added

And some more:

Purple M.G.

Blue M.G.

Angel's Trumpets

We had fun and again I want final pictures!

On another note: I finished a red lace shawl for my friend and artist, Marina Bosetti, in exchange for a beautiful ceramic wall tile.

blocking shawl

cashmere, silk, & alpaca lace yarn

A Ship Without A Rudder

Roxane Lessa — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:41:54 +0000

Or what making art means to me. So the Holidays came and went, and all art making ceased. Then the New Year came and went and I decided prior to selling my house, I needed to completely clean, discard, recycle and Goodwill a huge pile of stuff that has accumulated. So, still no art making. I am about done with that project, but I noticed a strange feeling start to creep into my daily life. Can you guess? That’s right! There’s no fun in my day to day. Every day is feeling like the last one and there is no thrill or pride in what I accomplished (even thought it was necessary). Conclusion: I need to make art, cause when I don’t, I bore myself. So what my house is cleaner and less cluttered? Even though, the OCD part of me is way happy right now. Yes, it had to be done, but jeez what a way to live!!!! This just confirms in a big way what I already knew–Suzy Homemaker I’m not.

So what does making or enjoying art mean to YOU???

By the way, is the studio cleanup yet? NO. Saved the best mess for last.

On another note: A brand NEW class I’m teaching at Bernina World of Sewing, ta-da!!!! The Joy of Soy! A 6 hour workshop extravaganza using soy wax resist and fabric paint to create your own one-of-a-kind fabric. It’s a very fun and freeing way to do surface design. I know you will love it as much as I do. Call the store to register and get more info on their website.

Other news: I am teaching my Color Play for Quilters class at the Pamlico River Quilter’s Guild on Jan. 25. That’s going to be fun too!

It’s A Girl Thing, sigh….

Roxane Lessa — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:16:31 +0000

So my oldest daughter had a big school charity dance to go to. We went shopping for a dress, even though she had a perfectly good one in her closet. But that one had already been worn at Prom- so we can’t wear that one! Did we find anything? NO. She went shopping with her friends. Did she find anything? NO. She looked online and saw some candidates but nothing below $80, and who knew if they would fit. Did I mention she is like a size 00? With an over developed sense of style? That’s a nice way of saying she’s uber picky. So long story short, I offered to make her a dress out of some beautiful hand dyed fabric I was saving for a new masterpiece or something. Ya know, nothing important. We were aiming for a knock off of a dress we had seen on Project Runway, that I thought would be simple to make. HA! I made a practice dress and made a pattern from it. Then I cut out the real fabric and made this dress that hung from chains around the shoulder. It actually fit her with many alterations and cuss words. Many hours into this project, she didn’t like the feel of the fit. So I took it apart and tried a one shoulder design. By then this poor fabric was looking tortured and finally became too stretched out as it was cut on the bias. Nothing seemed to work and today after working on it until 1:30 AM last night, I finally threw in the towel. I said the words she was waiting for-Let’s go buy a dress. Which we did, for more money than I wanted to spend (although she is coughing up half). I then spent more time today altering it to fit m’lady. Finally, she has something to wear tonight! Just like Cinderella at the last moment going to the ball. I tried to explain this insanity to my BF, gave up and said- it’s a girl thing. Here’s the dress for those of you who stuck with this whole sorry story! What did I learn from this epic failure? Never offer to make anything for my super picky kid again! Back to making art soon!

A Major Award!

Roxane Lessa — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:13:51 +0000

Bubbles, hand dyed cotton, cotton batiks, paint, 2011, 20″ x 17″, 2009.

That’s right. I did it. I entered and I got (to quote the dad on The Christmas Story), a major award!! I’m excited that I got this the first time around. I will be sending my piece “Bubbles” to the Final Award show, and we’ll see if I win the whole shebang. This piece is hand dyed and stamped with fabric paint, then machine quilted extensively.

In other news, the Piedmont Craftsmen’s Show was wonderful. I sold my latest piece , Mojave Sandstorm, to a collector in Winston-Salem, as well as some smaller pieces. Oops, I have to mark them as sold on my website!

Also, for surface design junkies, I’m developing a class on how to do soy wax batik used with fabric paint. It will hopefully be early next year in Raleigh. I will let you know more on that later.

Don’t let the Holiday frenzy drive you crazy, and try to enjoy the Season!

Two New Quiltlets and the Joys of Soy Wax Batik!

Roxane Lessa — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:48:27 +0000

Have you heard of soy wax batik? It’s way fun. I tried it last summer and want to do some more. Soy wax melts quickly, doesn’t stink and is easy to remove after you’re done. I get it from Dharma Trading Co. I pop it into my veggie steamer in a plastic bowl, and when it’s melted clear, I paint it on my fabric or stamp it on with objects. Oh, and the best part….it dries fast so you can dye and paint your piece quickly-because, let’s face it, I’m impatient. Any where you apply the wax, will resist and retain the white or color underneath it. Then get out your old newspapers and iron the fabric repeatedly, until most of the wax is gone. This is by far my favorite resist to use. I even turned Leni Newell ( a well known batik artist) onto it last year when she came to my kid’s school to teach batik. She had only used bee’s wax.

ANYWAY, I had some small pieces I had made using this technique, so I made them into quiltlets. I love the vertical prayer flag format of these pieces. I did extensive hand beading on “Flow”, and you can see the brush strokes where I applied the wax first. ”Golden Spice” was combined with a gold painted stamped piece done by my friend Sherol Lappala, along with my soy wax batik piece, and some gold silk shantung border which struck just the right note for this art quilt. I hope you get to try this fun technique, or failing that, you can buy these pieces at my upcoming show at Piedmont Craftsmen’s Fair, Benton Convention Center, Winston-Salem Nov. 19-20th. Come visit me, I’ll be in BOOTH K-1!

Flow, 27" x 10", fiber, beads, 2011

Golden Spice, 22" x 12", fiber, 2011