3rd Annual Artist Retreat - Friday part 1

Friday was a day of accomplishments. A day of what ifs, just do it, keep it simple, focus and crop it. All my mantras [plus a new one] rolled into one delicious day.

 Friday morning's screensaver compliments of Pam's husband. 

 A bit of rusty tea exploration on paper.

 Figuring out what to do with these.

Pam's first completed piece outside the annex.

2 lengths of 16 feet each drying inside.

 My view from the shared work table. 

Love the play of the colors.

 Pam's luscious water fabric.

 Feather from Julie. 

 Light and shadows.

 A sliver of sunlight gracing my rusts.

 The sound of water moving will be missed.

Need one in my studio.

 Hmmm....what to do?

 Crop it.

 Then crop it again.

Esmerelda approved.

Green tea #1

 Green tea #1 is now 3

 My halogens [photo above] need to be replaced with sunlight or color correct lights.

Isn't the color here wonderful?

 Pam's water fabric stretched on canvases.

 My rusty remnants after going on a tear

and cropping oh! so many.

 3 rusty thread nests for Jeanne

135 rusty squares of varying sizes waiting to be stretched onto canvases

Magic

Those of you who follow the blog have heard me mention my friend Pam. It's to her house that I escape for the artist retreats. And it's her that I Skype with on Fridays as often as life allows.

Life, however, has been throwing curve balls at both of us lately. Mine came in the form of the snow storm and power outages that plagued Connecticut for a week...or more in some towns. At some point, our curve balls have been family related. My charming little urchins have a way of frying my brain to the point where I wonder if senility is setting in early...when I can think coherently enough to wonder, that is. 52 is too early for senility, isn't it? Please say yes.

Back to the art stuff. Two lengths of discharged fabric hang on one display board while rusted cottons hang on another - both waiting for inspiration and/or genius to strike. During our most recent Skype session, I mentioned to Pam that I've recently become intrigued with the Japanese boro method of patching and thought it could be interesting to attempt a simple version of it with the discharged fabric.

I'm not quite sure at what point...or even why now...that I moved the computer over to show Pam the current arrangement of these rusted cottons, but she took one look at them and said,

 

 Crop it.

So I did. And that became this

Can you see it? A piece? It's there. And to think that Pam looked at it for...oh...maybe 3 seconds before saying the magic words which took rusted cottons that have just been hanging around in the studio and transformed them into an actual piece of rusted boro cloth. There's work to be done, sure, but now there's a story to be told. 

Pam worked her magic with the discharged fabric, and possibly even my Christmas cards, in the space of...hmmm...5 minutes tops. My snow storm and twin fried brain was amazed by it all. Hopefully the amazement will lift soon. After all, there's work to be done by Friday.