Life and Art

When I started this blog more than a year ago, I made a vow to myself that I would try to keep my personal life out of it as much as possible. No one wants to read about my aging cat's drooling problem, or how many times I saw my favorite Star Trek movie last year, or whether I think oranges are superior to grapes (I don't.) Boring, boring, boring.


I vowed instead to start a conversation with fellow artists about process, color, technique, tools, expression, and design. I want very much to spend time with others who understand my passion for- and almost constant state of surprise and delight with- art and artistic endeavors. I feel utterly fortunate to have achieved that goal, and I look forward to many more years of dialogue and friendship.


However, I'm about to break my, "Only art; no personal stories," vow and tell you a little bit about what's been happening lately because I feel like it will have a direct impact on my art. In fact, I can't see how it won't. (If this personal stuff does bore you to tears, no worries, I'm not insulted... just scroll to the bottom half of this post to see artsy eye candy!)


During our vacation last month to visit our parents in the NE part of the country, it became obvious that my Dad's memory is failing badly. Doctors and lawyers need to be seen and hard decisions will have to be made. To begin that process, I made another trip up there in the middle of last week which I just returned home from yesterday.  I feel like I've been living on planes for the last three months!

My life can sometimes be an odd mixture of Really Bad meets Really Good and this short but intense visit with my father was an excellent example. While my reasons for visiting were sad and serious and stressful, Dad and I faced those challenges together... and then went and had fun. Fun for us means getting out into the Pennsylvania hillsides and just driving. We talk, we laugh, we ooh and ahh over the stunning natural beauty, I take tons of photos, and when the day is over, we feel a lot closer to one another. Valuable stuff, especially now.


As an added bonus, the fall color was just past its peak and the leaves gave me ample opportunities for photographs. 

The tiny little coal town I grew up in, Tamaqua, was once dirty, run down and depressing. Most of the businesses were struggling, and unemployment was staggeringly high. Today, the town is fighting to come back, and is wisely using its picturesque roots as a jumping off point.

The real jewel of this region, though, lies in its rolling farmlands and forest-covered mountains.

(The graves of two beloved pets, maybe? These were next to a lovely white farmhouse.)

And like the typical up and down swings of Really Bad meets Really Good, the trip came to a stunning conclusion yesterday when, while waiting in the Philadelphia airport to board my flight home, I witnessed Air Force One land right in front of me.

I was sitting in front of a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the tarmac when I heard a tremendous roar. I looked up from my Kindle and saw this magnificent beauty touch down not a hundred feet in front of me and then taxi out of sight. 

Only myself and one other person seemed to notice and he got as excited as me. About two minutes later, the plane taxied back into view, moved around the terminal building I was sitting in, and into a small commercial field, where it parked and presumably waited for President Obama- who was evidently speaking at Temple University- to board. I got the above photo of it as it was pulling into that somewhat distant tarmac. I'm still over the moon with excitement!

I'm sure it's pretty obvious by now that my studio time has been sparse, but I am still faithfully plugging away at my assignments for Jane's class as well as getting a little surface design time sandwiched in between everything else.

This bizarre, circus-colored thing, a 36" x 45" piece of cotton Pimatex, was the canvas for some deconstructed screen printing.

Taken as a whole, it's pretty scary; it's a prime candidate for using bits and pieces of it in fabric collages. 

This piece, a 36" x 62" length of cotton broadcloth, also got the deconstructed screen printing treatment but so far it isn't thrilling me. 

The colors are weak and paste-ly, but it may be an excellent launching pad for more detailed surface design later with colored pencils, pastels and paint. 

I did something quite fun with it, though, and wound up having a bunch of interesting color palettes to aim for in the future: I ran the photograph of the full piece through some of the filters in Photoshop Elements and came up with these interesting variations.

They can be used for all kinds of things, including being printed onto paper and then worked into collaged art. One of them might even end up as my next blog banner, who knows?


Happy Halloween and happy creating!

Home Again and Studio Doings

After countless cities, airplanes and hotel rooms jammed into one five-week period, we're finally home again. I'd tell you all about it, but a vacation is usually only interesting to the people taking it. But if you're really dying to know, here are some of the photos I took on my various travels, knock yourselves out!

Monday saw me back in the studio and I have to admit, after being out of it for so long, it felt a little foreign to me, like it was someone else's space. To get back into the groove, I charged more screens with thickened black dye.

These guys were done simply enough... I thickened my dye by adding Jet Black dye powder to clear print paste, putting it into a syringe with a very narrow tip, and drawing it onto the screens. Then they sat in the driveway all afternoon to bake in the sun.

Can I admit that I always, always, always seem to make far more thickened black dye than I can use in one session? As a result, I find myself scrambling to prepare more fabric to use it on, rather than put the excess down the drain.

Because I had so danged much left over, I tried a technique written about by Leslie Tucker Jenison in the Oct/Nov 2010 issue of Quilting Arts.

In the article, Leslie uses tiny scraps of paper, MX dyes and silk screens to create interesting textures on fabric. I only slightly modified this technique by using scraps of cotton fabric, which I cut with a pinking blade in my rotary cutter.

I used long, narrow scraps of Pimatex to print on and then, as Leslie demonstrated, scattered the scraps across the unprinted fabric, wet out the screen with my thickened dye and continued to print down the length of the cloth.

The two on the right were printed using Leslie's method and the piece on the left is a monoprint taken from the paper that had been placed under the fabric before printing.  Pretty neat results, and instead of washing all that great dye and texture out of the screen, I left the bits of fabric stuck to it, left it with the others to dry in the sun, peeled away the scraps, and will use it later in the week to do some deconstructed screen printing.

And lastly, there are only two days left to sign up for my Dharma-sponsored give-away. On Saturday, October 9, two names will be chosen by a random number generator to receive one of these fantastic dye kits. All you have to do to be eligible for the drawing is to comment on this post.

Until Saturday, happy creating!

Off To Fabrications!

On Sunday morning, I leave for a week-long workshop at Fabrications in Kalamazoo, MI., with Carol Soderlund called Color-Mixing For Dyers. I'm excited to go and while I wanted to pretend I was on vacation all this week, my work ethic just wouldn't let me, so things got done!

Two 1-yard x 45" pieces of white Pimatex cotton got the deconstructed screen printing treatment.

After printing this piece off, I was sure it would be my favorite coming out of the washing machine.

And I am pleased with the results.

(36" x 45"- a little blurry, sorry!)

(detail)

It has some nice details, but once it was washed, dried and ironed, it looked a little blah to me. Not sure what will happen with it, next, but that will have to come after my retreat!

The second piece I deconstructed this week, which I forgot to photograph before I wrapped it up for batching, looked when it went into its plastic package like it could just wind up a blobby mess of ugly color. I held out hope that it would still wash out beautifully, but I was blown away by the result I actually got.

(36" x 45")

I used the same screen on both pieces, allowing the first few pulls on the turquoise/black piece pictured above to help soften up the dyes, and then moving it to this piece. 

The screen was constructed easily enough. I cut wonky X shapes out of clear contact paper and pressed them onto the front of the screen. Then, from the back, I wet the screen with thickened black dye. After it had set up, I hit it with the black dye again and left it to dry for a couple of weeks. When it was dry, I peeled away the contact paper and the screen was ready to use.

To deconstruct it onto the fabric above, I started with lemon yellow print paste, covered most of the surface with pattern, and then when the yellow dye was used up, I switched to turquoise print paste, knowing it would mix beautifully with the yellow to produce a lime-y green. 

I'm excited because I feel like this is the first truly successful deconstructed screen printing I've done. From this piece, I've learned how to achieve bright, vibrant colors, and I feel like I'm beginning to add depth and sophistication to my usual color palette of bright, cool colors with the stark addition of black.  So yeah, happy all around, today!

Earlier in the week, I finished the last few 2-page spreads in my Sketchbook Project journal. I will hold onto the book for a while (I'd like to be able to show my dad when I see him in September) and then send it back to the Brooklyn Library.

The last page, pictured above, contains a listing of the materials, mediums and grounds I used to construct this book. 

I will be home again on Saturday, September 4th... until then, happy creating!

Amazing News, and Surface Design

I hope you all really like surface design (a lot, a lot, a lot) because starting in October and lasting for the next two and a half years, it'll possibly be about the only thing you'll see on this blog! That's because I've been accepted to Jane Dunnewold's Art Cloth Masteries Program for 2011!! The program will cover all aspects of surface design and fabric dyeing. It's a huge honor to have been accepted and I am thrilled beyond words. I can't wait to get started!!

I have no idea how taking this class will effect either my work or my blogging, nor how much of what I'm learning I will be able to blog about. I know that the work load will probably kick my tush, but I am highly motivated and up for the challenge.

So while I nervously waited this week to hear news of whom had been accepted, I puttered with fabric, deconstructed screen printing, Thermofax screen printing and some overdyeing.

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you how this 100% cotton Primatex started as an only partly-successful deconstructed screen print to which I added several layers of traditional screening with textile inks and paints.

Interesting start, but the original DSP wasn't making me happy. I charged a few more screens with dyes, let them dry, and tried again.

(45" x 45")

MUCH happier! It still needs work, it's a little muddled in the middle and the bottom half is still fading away, but it's got some really fabulous bits happening in it.

(detail)

(detail)

A few other pieces are in various stages of preparations.

This is the second layer of a somewhat familiar theme for me (I did a similar piece that sold at QSDS earlier this year), so to keep it from becoming a repeat, I'll have to run it off the rails in some other direction and watch what happens.

This is the third layer for this piece of cotton muslin. It was hand-dyed, and then screened with black dye and then screened again with white textile ink. No idea where it will end up.

This one is feeling almost complete to me. It needs a little more attention and then some serious trimming with the rotary cutter!

I never would have thought I'd like this motley thing. It started as a deconstructed screen printing on white cotton that just never really "took", in my mind. One day I had some leftover kelly green dye that was already activated with soda ash (and therefore needed to be used right away), so I tossed the remains into a container with this. Bleck, it was seriously awful. I sent it to the discharge bucket and then sat on it for a few more weeks, hating it and not knowing how to fix it. Finally, I just started screening the heck out of it until it began to look better.

(detail)

This opportunity to study for two and a half years with an artist the caliber of Jane Dunnewold is mind-boggling to me. Two years ago, I shifted my focus from painting to fabrics and surface design, and a whole new world of art opened up for me. This weekend, even more of it unfolded when I read the email welcoming me to the next class. I intend to suck up every moment of education and wisdom I can.

Wish me luck! Happy creating!

Return of the Fringe

Last year I began creating stitching samples for a client, and without meaning for it to happen, they turned into their own on-going series I've always called "Fringe".

Some of these little pieces became my "favorite one ever!" for a while, and I've allowed the series to carry me along to wherever it has wanted to go.

It's motored right into this year, and resulted in another piece created for a quilting challenge over at 3 Creative Studios.

This week, I finished a couple more of these fun little critters. One got a permanent home on this stretched artists' canvas.

The canvas, one I've been tinkering with for several years, is 12" x 12" and contains countless layers of paint, cheesecloth, paper and even a few stitched remnants of other quilts (click the photo for a hi-res view). The canvas is embellished with paper buttons and paper beads.

 

The quilt started life as white cotton. It was layered with batting and a muslin backing and then tight pleats were sewn across the front of the sandwich with more lengths of cotton. The pleats are snipped open and the whole thing was then hand-dyed, over-dyed, and finally laundered many times to develop the shaggy fringe that is the cornerstone design element of this series. The quilt, which itself only measures about 6" x 7", was stitched to the canvas with transparent thread.

A second Fringe piece out of the dye baths this week is this little thing.

It was constructed in the same manner as the others but has only been through its first dye bath. I love the way the fringe has tangled all of the colors together and now lays across the piece, but the palette is not as sophisticated as I'd like it to be, so it will likely undergo another dyeing or painting session. Then I will listen as it tells me whether it wants to be beaded and mounted, like the others, or if it has other ideas for its future.

In other areas of the studio this week, I dyed, and then overdyed and then overdyed again this simple cotton sarong for a vacation we're taking to the Bahamas next month.

I was going for tropical colors and mostly achieved that, but it's just a little wrap to tie around my waist as I go from my room to the pool and back, so I'm not going to fuss with it any more.

This week also saw me practicing again with my new Thermofax screens on old painted papers.

It's so much fun that I find it difficult to put the painting supplies away when it's time to move on to something else!

Finally, this cotton art cloth piece is now hanging on the design wall while I decide what more it needs.

It measures 45" x 45" and started as off-white cotton Primatex. It was treated with some breakdown printing and then screen printing.

I have four screens charged with dyes waiting for a DSP session next week. Until then, hope your weekend is as chilled as mine will be!

Happy creating!