Baltimore Sonnets

Power of the Spirits This week has been a busy one.  I've been painting and dyeing fabrics for my newest textile book. textile art by Suzanne Coley  This is the fifth book of the series. silkscreening with gold ink Silkscreening my poems onto the fabrics adds an interesting dimension, especially when I use gold and silver inks. I've been combining my hand painted fabrics with African fabrics to create unique patterns and designs.  So far, I really like how this series is progressing and I look forward to showing you more.

I am reposting this blog post because it cheers me up.  I hope it cheers you up too! ****** The holiday season is always full of wonderful surprises and unexpected gifts.  It feels like yesterday, but actually it was December 2005. Kathryn, Amy, and me It was my first art residency at a quaint gallery in Denver, Colorado.  Of all the regular visitors to the studio/gallery, I particularly loved talking to one.  Kathryn was her name and she was a wonderful photographer.  We talked forever about "all things art, design, and aesthetics." (Our special topics were  darkrooms, new technology, and old time photographers such as Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.) The lovely Kathryn with her daughter Amy One day, we began to talk about films, and I mentioned that my favorite movie was this indie film  Junebug.  And, I began to tell her about this amazing actress,  Amy Adams .  The rest is his...

Creating Handcrafted Textile Books On my studio table: Drawings on linoleum and hand-embroidery This is how it all begins: Embroidery and drawings on linoleum.

Vintage Velvet, Embroidery & Silkscreens This week's book  See Us  is about bringing to light that which has been in the dark. Textile page:  See Us  poem on the left.  Hand embroidery on the right See Us,   is also the title of the main poem in the book.  I silkscreened the poem on the textile page.  When the text was dry, I hand embroidered glass beads to the page. Pale ink silkscreened on vintage navy velvet To further the motif of "see us" I printed many of the images with a pale ink on the dark velvet.  This created haunting, ghost-like imagery. "See Us" textile  book The finished book: The poetic interweaving of rare African textiles, modern fibers, original imagery, and poetry.