Kim Eichler- Messmer
The ART of IMPROV
This week we welcome Kim Eichler-Messmer to The Art of Improv. Kim is an award winning textile artist currently residing in Kansas City, where she is an Associate Professor at the Kansas City Art Institute. Originally from Iowa Kim was raised by two very hard working, creative, nature loving parents. She learned how to sew in the 5th grade when she and her dad made a quilt out of old shirts. In college, at Iowa State University, Kim studied engineering, Spanish, Portuguese, drawing, and printmaking before finally realizing her love of textiles in a screen printing class. She then earned her MFA in Textiles from the University of Kansas. Kim has shared her love of textiles and in particular hand dying fabric through teaching, not just in Kansas City, but in workshops and classes all around the county. I first fell in love with Kim’s quilts and her beautifully hand dyed fabrics through her book Modern Color: An Illustrated Guide to Dyeing Fabric for Modern Quilters, and have been so tempted to take one of her workshops at A Gathering of Stitches, I look at it every year, but the timing just never jives with my three kids schedules. . .one of these days, until then I had to learn more about her and her process. I am so happy she agreed to share with us all!
Converge Kim Eichler-Messmer
What does working improvisationally mean to you? How would you define the ‘Art of Improv’?
I think of working improvisationally as creating work without a pre-determined end result, working in conversation with the materials and process at hand.
Have you always worked improvisationally?
I remember in college having to propose sketches and plans for art projects and absolutely hating it because I always wanted to just get started. The planning/sketching phase felt like a waste of time because my work would evolve so much during the process of making it and I often didn’t know what I was making or what it was about until I was deep into it. Because of that training, now I go back and forth between working improvisationally and working from a plan. I often feel internal pressure to work from a plan because it feels more focused and driven. But working from a plan can also make me second guess everything to the point of not making anything at all. It’s a constant internal battle of allowing myself to make the things that come naturally while also questioning and pushing myself forward. So, I find that working improvisationally helps me get started and work through blocks, but also needs to be balanced with more conscious reflection and decision making.
Do you work improvisationally, consciously, intentionally? If so, how do you begin? If not, how do you find yourself getting there?
Yes, to all of those! Because I dye almost all of my own fabric with natural dyes, a huge part of my work is wrapped up in planting, weeding, harvesting, foraging, and drying or otherwise preserving dye plants for later use. I am also an avid experimenter/tester/sampler and constantly have dye related “what if” questions that I’m exploring. Many of the tests result in not very exciting results that bring up more questions. When I find results that get me excited, that’s usually when I start making fabric that pushes those results to find all of the variables that will eventually be made into a quilt. The testing phase is often improvisational and sometimes feels like a choose your own adventure book with many possible outcomes depending on the decisions I make along the way
Reflection Kim Eichler-Messmer
How often do you work with improvisation?
Since a lot of my dye tests are not exciting or result in solid-colored swatches, I make a ton of fabric that doesn’t have a specific end-use. I save these all up and try to keep them sorted by color family (in my case, the families are indigo, earth colors, and bright colors) and whenever I’m feeling lost or stuck, I pull them out and use them for improvisational piecing. The resulting improvisationally pieced fabrics will often be cut apart and used in larger, more planned compositions, but they help me get warmed up and feel productive.
Please share a bit about your process. Do you have methods to getting started? Do you have tricks to getting unstuck? Do you have motivators to finishing up?
The trick I use to get started is to just show up. If I go to my studio, there’s always something that needs done – fabric to fold and put away, dye swatches to organize, indigo vats to stir and feed, etc. The act of showing up and doing preparatory work like that gets me excited to start making. But honestly, showing up is the hardest part. It’s really easy to get distracted by life and stress. For me, having a set routine and schedule helps get past that. I’m lucky that I am an art professor and have summers off, so right now I’m able to wake up every morning and go straight to studio without a lot of other distractions. During the school year, it’s much harder and I have to schedule studio time for myself where I go there, even if it’s just to sweep the floor or stir my indigo vat and hope that once I’m there I will get sucked into a project.
When I’m feeling stuck I either start piecing some of my vast collection of fabric scraps improvisationally, just to be doing something, or I pull out my watercolors and inks and make little paintings. A few years ago, I had a major artistic block after my dad passed away. Making a small watercolor painting every day for 100 days got me through it and I will often return to that way of working if I’m especially stuck or bummed out. I need things that are small to work on, so they don’t feel wasteful or come with a lot of built-in pressure.
A lot of my ideas come to me while doing something else, especially physical things like mowing the lawn or pulling weeds, and I am an avid believer in exercise. I run and lift weights and have found that making time for both of those allows my brain a chance to focus on something else, which helps immensely when I’m stuck or trying to work through something complex.
Finishing up is also a battle for me! I hate hand sewing quilt binding and I have to give myself these pep talks about honoring the materials and honoring my time and how leaving a project unfinished is wasteful and disrespectful. I still have a ton of unfinished projects, and I think that’s ok because not everything is great and not everything is deserving of the time and effort it takes to finish something.
Where do you find inspiration? How do you use it?
I find a lot of inspiration in nature, geometry, structures, and systems. I take a lot of photos of textures, shapes, shadows, patterns, and colors in the world around me. Before the pandemic, I traveled a lot and would try to keep my eyes wide open to notice and document as much as possible. I use the photos I take as starting points for color and composition decisions. I rarely try to copy a picture, but I find them very useful as guides and also find that all of that inspiration trickles down through my subconscious. I just started a quilt last week and was shocked that the color palette matches almost exactly a collage I made in January that was loosely inspired by a photo I took in Japan two years ago.
Ripples Kim Eichler-Messmer
What advice would you give to someone interested in trying to work improvisationally. Can you share some good advice that you received that helped you become more comfortable this way?
I think it helps to have a certain level of skill and confidence with the materials and processes you’re working with before you start working improvisationally. Even though I hated sketching and planning in college, I’m really grateful I had formal training in so many different media and really learned how to learn. So often I think people want to jump ahead before they have enough skill to actually make what they see in their head. I teach a quilting studio class at the Kansas City Art Institute and I always make the students learn traditional piecing first to make sure they understand seam allowance, pinning, pressing, matching points, sewing smooth curves, etc. Once they have those basic skills under their belt, the improvisational piecing comes much easier because they’re not struggling with craft.
If you already have the skills you need, then the best advice I have is to trust your intuition and don’t forget to step back every once in a while to look at what you’re doing with a fresh perspective and critical gaze.
Plot Kim Eichler-Messmer
How would you finish the sentence, ‘What if, . . .?’
That question gives me so much anxiety! Isn’t that crazy? As a teacher, I feel like I should have a super profound answer. But I guess I’ll answer it this way - what if I got out of my own way?
What are reading, listening to, watching, or any other inspirational obsessions you would like to share?
I love the series “Abstract: The Art of Design” on Netflix. I’ve been listening to the “Code Switch” podcast from NPR and John Green’s podcast “The Anthropocene Reviewed”. I love listening to audiobooks while I work out. Haruki Murakami and Stephen King are two of my all-time favorites.
Thank you Kim for sharing your beautiful work and how improvisation has an impact. I love learning how other artists use it, it is comforting to know we all struggle with the ‘What ifs’, and the ways we all work through the parts of making that we don’t particularly enjoy. I have made a conscious effort to work around those areas and it has totally impacted my aesthetic. I can relate to so much of what you have shared, the resistance to planning, but the gratefulness for learning to do it. The desire to jump right in, but knowing that quality craftsmanship is important in making really great work. AND Abstract is one of my favorite shows, I do wish they would speed up production! There are so many amazing artists to learn from, thank you for being one and again for sharing with us here!
Emerge Kim Eichler-Messmer
To learn more about Kim visit her website here and be sure to check her out on IG @kimemquilts as well.