Blog Inspiration: Mandy Pattullo

Have you ever had a favorite artist whose work inspires you to improve your own creative process?  Or, maybe to investigate things you hadn't considered before?  Mandy Pattullo is one of those inspiring people to me.  I do not have her sketching skills, nor do I work with some of the materials she uses, but her love of old fabric and stitch and the dignity she gives in her transformations of these pieces is such a person.

For the month of January she began working with postage stamps, filling a sketchbook with paint, paper and cloth, and it made me think about my own box of postage stamps, collected over the years-- and how dwindling the availability of these stamps becomes as we e-mail more or send things through carriers rather than the postal service.  I pulled out the packed-to-the-gills box and marveled at these little works of art, just as I had when I was ten years old.  And if I was a cartoon, I would have had a little conversation bubble over my head with a lightbulb clicking on:  Bingo!

The Bingo Moment came when I realized that the diminutive size was perfect for the palm-sized fabric collages I was working on.  I needed a focal point that had great detail to it, and it must be quite small.  A piece of printed fabric was not to scale, and the pieces were too small to create easily-recognized images.  And there were so many colors stored in those tiny bits of paper . . .

The pieces are built in my little fabric sandwich style, layered and stitched work that might be layers of hand-dyed pieces from old napkins and tablecloths, pieces of clothing, things left over from other projects-- even the threads were often re-cycled by over-dyeing when I had an abundance of one color or another.  The edges might be finished or not, depending on the fabric itself.  The unfinished edge is a way of giving immediacy to a piece, like a quick sketch from a vacation or a walk in the woods.

If you would like to see Mandy's work, her blog is here.  Below are two of the pieces her postage stamp collages inspired me to create.  Now that the gate has been unlatched, this may go on for a while . . .  lots of stamps . . .  tons of fabric scraps . . .  long winter days ahead . . .  ? ? ?

Thank you, Mandy!