Working in a Series

Sunday, January 10th, 2021

I wanted to have a theme when I first started using my art pieces for my calendars.  My first textile art calendar was about flowers and butterflies.  Since I like doing flowers and butterflies I had enough pieces to use for this purpose, however, none of these pieces were created with an intention of being used together.  In other words, they were not created as a series.  They were just random pieces.  It was the same situation for my next calendar which was all about birds.  I just happened to have enough bird pieces since I also like to do birds.

After those first two textile art calendars, I decided that maybe I should create a set or series of pieces that go together.  This was my first intentional effort at working in a series, and I have continued to do this yearly ever since.

There have been a number of books written and classes taught covering the concept of working in a series.  You may be familiar with this idea.  A well known example of this would be Monet’s haystacks or his water lilies.  Many famous artists over the course of history have based much of their work on creating series.  So if I could be so bold, I would like to say that I am in a class with these artists as we like to create works in series.  Note my use of ‘A class’ not ‘THE class’.  I hardly compare myself to some of these great artists, but we do have at least that one thing in common.

Creating a calendar every year presents itself as a perfect excuse to do series work as I always need at least twelve pieces to create a yearly theme.  I try to make each piece have a similar look and feel, be of a similar or same subject, and be the same dimensions. 

Some of the benefits I have found to doing series works include the following:

•           I get to become the expert on my subject, and hopefully I have picked a subject that I like very much and will still enjoy doing after twelve times.
•          To make sure these works all have the same look and feel, I want to use consistent techniques.  This can be an opportunity to improve my skills.
•           I finish with a cohesive group of works that can be displayed together.
•           It gives my viewer a better understanding of my work and gets them excited to see what is coming next.
•           It eliminates the need to think too much about what to create next and helps me build continuity in my artistic practice.
•           I can explore my theme in more detail.       The whole collection becomes bigger than the sum of its parts.
•           It is a joy to work on a subject I care a lot about.
•           There is less pressure to ‘get it right’ on only one piece.  I am actually beginning to do more than twelve pieces so that I can pick my favorites.  There always seems to be a couple that don’t meet my expectations, and by having more to choose from I can eliminate those that I am not as happy with.
•           There is the opportunity to evaluate what went right and improve on each piece.

Next week I will begin sharing my kaleidoscope pieces from my 2013 calendar.