Bathroom Bowl

These pictures are from a bowl in my bathroom. It's from one of those bed and bathroom places that sells pot pouri. I just love looking at it (long after the smell is gone), and I would really like to be able to reproduce the green spiral thingy. I've seen websites and blogs where people seem to have an image that is there own, and they use it in most of their art, and sometimes it's a very powerful message. On my list of things to do is to find an image or shape I like, and use it over and over again.

Deconstructed

Yesterday I finally got around to screenprinting ala Kerr Grabowski. I've watched her video 3 times and taken 4 pages of notes so I was ready to try.

In the above piece I painted the screen with olive green and black dye, let it dry, then went back and added some turquoise marks. I know I should not have any white left on the fabric, but this piece seems kind of decayed looking, like some of the Jeanne Beck pieces.

These 2 pieces were also made by painting the surface, letting it dry, then going back and screening, first with clear print paste, then adding color to the last few attempts. They look so totally different, not like they are from the same screen at all.

This piece was screened with clear print paste over objects to get markings, then when it dried I added some black marks. I printed with red/orange/yellow dye.

This last piece was not screen printed. I had intended to print it but ran out of screens. In a previous life I had pleated a piece of white fabric and stuck the bottom of the pleats in dye, trying to make stripes. I was successful, but it was boring, so yesterday I stuck the piece in a cup and did accidental dyeing like Ann Johnson. It's usable now in something I may make. This process is really fun and I could wpend days doing it, in fact I hope to if we can get Kerr out her to Southern CA.

soup

Yesterday it was so cold here that I felt the need to make soup (O.K. cold is a relative term since it was about 60, and I know you in the midwest and east are laughing your asses off) I had seen some soup recipes in this months O magazine and stopped off at the store to get the ingredients. By the time I got home I had lost interest, but this morning I was determined to crank these out (before it reached 80 degrees outside). I made butternut squash soup - I added curry to it, potato soup and tonight I will make shrimp bisque. The first 2 were delicious, and I labeled and froze them, and I'm looking forward to the bisque.
All this cooking has kept me out of my studio, but I think I needed a break since I have been thinking or doing fiber art nonstop for several days. I'm thinking about some things I want to try in screenprinting so this afternoon I'm going to mix up the soda water, urea water etc and get started with the screens.

After the Fire

I'm working on another piece in the Aspen series, and this one is for a different venue. I belong to a group, Quilts On The Wall, and we have a challenge to make something that says "Beauty In Imperfection". I have been putting it off because of the Aspen series but I knew I wanted to do something involving nature, and when I finished the last piece I felt like I wasn't done yet so I thought about forest fires and realized that was the quilt I wanted to make for this. I layered several pieces of shears, stitched them down and then burned them. I then added a few bits of hand stitching and now I'm trying to figure out a background. The other pieces in the series were mounted on canvas, but since this piece will probably travel to quilt venues, I can't do that. This is the piece below

And this is a close-up of some of the handstitching. I'm not sure of the blue background, I may do a green one instead.

Aspen in Moonlight

I've finished the 3rd in a series of Aspen tree pieces. It's a little darker than the others, but the same technique.

I'm thinking of one more I want to do and then I may end the series, or I may take it in a whole new direction!

Mark Making

Another day, another experiment! I have several screenprints that I'm not happy with and decided to try making marks. I have a tjantjing tool and I have seen the work of Gerry Chase and decided to give it a try. My friend Diane has a great blog about a class she took with her at http://www.goingtopieces.blogspot.com/. For my first attempt I used diluted acrylic paint and except for the drips, I really like it.

The second piece I tried using drawing ink and then I sprayed it with water to dilute it further.In the third piece I went back to diluted acrylic and tried making a design.

I'm liking this technique and now I'm thinking of ways to enhance it!

12X12

I have been asked by my friend Diane to join 11 other fiber artists in a new group called 12x12. We will be doing a small challange piece every other month, with each of us taking turns choosing a theme. Some of us will be keeping a sketchbook/journal to document our progress, others are working more spontaneously. Hopefully at the end of a year we will have enough pieces to exhibit somewhere. The first challange is the word dandelion!
I enjoy challanges because they take me out of my comfort zone, I'm made to do something I wouldn't have chosen otherwise. I really am not sure what I want to do here, but I'm thinking of some screenprinting, or maybe some fused interfacing and cheesecloth. It's amazing to me how someone can come up with a word like that, drop it into the middle of a group, and now that's all we think about!

Jeanne Beck

In my links pages, I include a link to Jeanne Beck. Jeanne is a fiber artist that I was fortunate to take a class from earlier this year at Pro Chem in Rhode Island. She is an excellent teacher and I think everyone in the class would agree that we came away with a lot more than new technical skills. Jeanne threw herself into our experiences and went out of her way to appreciate what we wanted to do with our art. She did not try to impose her art on us, rather she encouraged us to try things that would complement what we were already doing. She introduced me to scrim, and using cheesecloth soaked in diluted fabric paint and left to dry in the sun. She taught us how to paint on fusable interfacing, then tear it up and use it as a starting point for our work. She really got me hooked on hand stitching. If your ever able to see her work or attend a class, I think you should jump at the chance