I have been crazy busy with various deadlines, travels and art excursions. A few weeks ago I took a class at Arrowmont, in Gatlinburg Tenn. with Yoshiko Wada. In this class we explored ways of giving our work more dimension, and I was introduced to my first indigo dye bath.
I loved the immediateness of indigo, no waiting for the colors to set, just dip and rinse. I didn't love the idea of maintaining a dye bath, which involves feeding it a sucrose solution and generalized babying. I'm not sure how much of this I would do at home. The best part of the class was spending time with Yoshiko. She pushed me to experiment a lot more with my work, take some chances, risk some failures. I came home rather immobilized, not sure where to go with my ideas. I made a few samples, cut some things up, stitched some wire to old samples to bend them. Now I'm looking at these experiments while back in my comfort zone of stitching and dyeing. It takes time to move forward.
A few days after I was home, Ted and I went to CAFAM to see the paperworks exhibit. One of my favorites was Susan Sironi, whose carved up books were amazing. The piles of "leftover" paper was a testament to the work involved.
The second artist I was interested in was Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia.
When looking at his website, I couldn't find anything resembling this work. It fascinated me,
I think because it was simple and complex at the same time.
All that paper, woven together to make these shapes.
Paula and I have an exhibit going on currently at Penn College which has been getting a lot of play on Facebook. It was included in a "slow art" day, in which viewers were invited to study a piece of art for 20 minutes, then draw and discuss it, and it was exciting to see some radiology students recognize the images they were looking at.
Our A View Within work has a busy schedule next year, traveling to Oregon, Florida and Illinois, with a possible stop in Houston. I'm excited to see our art out in the public eye.
2 comments:
How wonderful that you got to take the workshop... looking forward to see what bubbles up in future. Thanks for the heads up on the CAFAM exhibit.. will have to check it out.
Great that your exhibition is exciting thoughtful responses.
I found your reaction to the workshop interesting. I too have in the past taken workshops where I got most from talking with the teacher, but was not at all sure I was interested in the way of working for myself. It's good to try techniques, even if it's only to rule them out - possibly.
I find your work fascinating, and look forward to reading about and seeing examples of what you are doing.
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