Buried Treasure - 5 days

Welcome! Seth Apter of The Altered Page is hosting a hunt for buried treasure - favorite older posts from our blogs that strike a cord. It was fun culling through my entries from several years ago. Instances or processes or pieces long forgotten were revisited and remembered.

logo from The Altered Page

In the end, I chose a post from May 2012, entitled 5 Days. I was getting ready to head out to Pam's for our 3rd annual artist retreat. Seems fitting as we've just finished the 5th retreat and are planning a mid-year get together. Enjoy!

 ------------------------------------------------------

5 Days, originally posted May 22, 2012

The countdown is on. The clock is ticking. 5 more days until I board the first of two airplanes that will take me to Kansas. Can I tell you just how much I'm looking forward to this? To our 3rd annual artist retreat...to a week with a very dear friend...to a week of being able to think and speak coherently [little urchins are staying home with Dad]...to a week of art...to a week of breathing.

Yes. The countdown is on. I'm sitting here in the studio listening to rain falling, to birds chattering, to cars driving by and for the sound of little urchins' stumbling footsteps as they come down the hall to the studio where they know mommy will be.

I should be writing the proposal for Silvermine. It's due on Friday, after all. Yikes! Then again, there's velcro to be pinned to the 5 large rust beauties. There's green tea #3 to be peaked at to see if the time is right for unbundling. There's....well, there's a lot.

Yet here I sit, remembering last year's artist retreat. How we'd planned to do one thing, tried it and failed miserably. Regrouped the next day and ended up giving ourselves over to the studio muses, Esmerelda and Cecil are their names, but that's a story for another day.

I ended up taking over Pam's printing tables [that's her in the doorway]

 and printing yards

 and yards [there are 6 of these 4 ft x 12 ft pieces behind me in the closet...patiently wait]

 of cotton 

and organza.

I even got the most delicious lines of from monoprinting all of the paint off of the holey fabric that produced the multitude of circles.

That was last year's artist retreat. While most of those pieces are resting comfortably, biding their time, knowing that one day their bin will be opened and I'll reach in, a few have been rusted.

 So now there are layers

 

 and layers

 of circles.

Hmmm...wonder what would happen if I printed over the already rusted prints to add a 3rd layer of circles? Just a thought...

Philadelphia - Philagrafika: Doing Time/Depth of Surface

Before wending my way to the Crane Arts Building yesterday, I strolled over to Moore College of Art and Design to view the 4 featured fiber exhibits. All were good, but it was Philagrafika: Doing Time/Depth of Surface that interested me most.

screen capture from Philagrafika web site

As a fiber artist and sometimes printmaker, the "skin of architecture" print achieved in this process held me mesmerized with it's textures, layers, colors and most of all, it's history. The pictures below are mine...and my attempt to capture and convey all that I felt while viewing this magnificent piece.

Screen printing

 Been doing a bit of screen printing this week...

  

of the rusty variety, of course.

Monday through Friday - printing screens, building layers and color.

In case you want a better look at the fabric along the way, the full shots from the mosaic are below.