What a week

It's been a week of what if's in the studio. Major what if's. Breakthrough what if's, in fact. Yep. It's been that kind of week.

My Morning Tea, my sketchbook for the 2013 Sketchbook Project, is nearly finished. Just need to think about the cover design and what blurb about myself to put in back.

The pages...spreads really...alternate between marks and text. The marks are made of tea and rust using the tea bag my morning tea was brewed with on any given morning. The text is a memory from childhood regarding tea. More about the sketchbook once it is complete.

Pam's tip about ironing the tea bags on freezer paper to run through the copier worked so well with the tea bags that it was impossible not to try on...hmmm...

 a piece of rusted cotton or

 rusted silk organza.

[this is the breakthrough part, in case you're wondering]

Given organza's translucent qualities, it just begged for further exploration, don't you think?

 I did. A second printing was called for.

  And a third.

 It needed turning this way

 and that.

And then the tea bags were calling too. 

 They wanted to play with a canvas.  

 It became a bit of balancing act, needed turning this way and that, 

needed a bit added here and a tad added there.

In the end, all was right. A good balance of tea bags and rusted mono printed cotton.

 

And then...yes there's more...

A friend emailed to ask if I'd like her stash of DMC threads on a spool. She's moving and lightening her load in the process. I said I'd be happy to have them and promised to put them to good use. I'll admit my mind latched onto DMC threads and so was picturing DMC floss. 

What arrived yesterday from Joan was far more delicious than cross stitch floss! As I unpacked the box - oohing and aahing all the while - the patterns of the wrapping caught my eye. I'd never noticed how beautiful spools of threads are. 

Thank you Joan for the wonderful threads! One spool has already taken a good long soak in green tea with a rusty bit or two for company. It's now resting, airing itself in the studio.

At the end of partial week 2 of kindergarten, I can safely say that my brain cells are beginning to work again. And holy smoke Batman! does it feel good. 

85

85?

Yes. Give or take 1 or 2 for faulty counting.

85 pieces of cotton, organza and cheese cloth,

in sizes from ranging from 3" x 9" to 60" x 72"

have been rusted so far this rusting season.

Stacks

Winter has become my rusting season. 

 I've become a rusting fool.  

Too true. Too true.

Stacks

Back in September, Seth Apter over at The Altered Page decided to embrace his fondness for stacks in the studio and asked others not only to do so, but to share them in a post entitled...what else?...Stackoholics Anonymous. I considered participating, but just never quite seemed to get around to photographing mine.

This morning, midst needing to make room on my work table to open bundles, it occurred to me that there's a nice little stack of fabrics that have been accumulating since Thanksgiving and the adage of better late than never came to mind. So, without further adieu, here's my guilty pleasure stack.

This is actually a good record of what has transpired in the studio since the semi-disastrous experiment with the cranberries. As I seem to be on a roll rusting right now, it's tempting to just keep adding to the stack and see how high and varied it gets before the 2012 artist retreat.

Starry night

Tea and vinegar soaked organza 

wrapped with purple waxed linen, 

now rusting snugly in a bag.

Star - a happy accident,

a pleasant surprise.

Good night all.

It's finally Thursday!

What's so great about it being Thursday? Well...all that art cloth that I printed last week at Pam's house during our 2nd Annual Artist Retreat is scheduled to arrive today. Fingers and toes are crossed in hopes that the 3 boxes given over to UPS arrive safe and sound and filled with everything that was in them when trustingly, maybe naively, handed over for shipping. 

Last year, a few of the dearer pieces made the flight home with me. This year though, the dearer pieces are 6 lengths of cotton measuring 4.5 ft x 12 ft. That's a lot of fabric when folded and my carry on bag just wasn't big enough.

After printing like mad last Tuesday on the tables Mike, Pam's husband, had set up for us in the studio, 

 

the driveway was the only place we could think of that was big enough to display the massive amount of cotton.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, 2 more of these were printed - 1 gray, 1 black. The plans are to keep them simple. Keep them big. Edges need finishing and possibly the tiniest bit of hand stitching.

Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think I'd ever print 12 ft long pieces of art cloth. It's killing me that our house isn't large enough to hang them. Whose house is? Our driveway may become an art gallery as well to satisfy my need to see them all together.

My stash for the week:

 

 Five 12 ft pieces with 3 drop cloths on cotton

 organza

 more cotton

 black on black detail, cotton

 red on gray detail, cotton

 gray on gray detail, cotton

 red on gray detail, cotton

 gray organza over red cotton

I think you can understand why the excitement over it being Thursday.

Indigo #6

#6 is in progress. While it's a bit busier than the preceding pieces, there's something about the lines of hand-stitching in red over the white stitched circles that I am finding very appealing.

Indigo #2

Just finished sewing the last bead on the second indigo piece. There's something about this one that reminds me of a sewing pattern. What do you think? Pocket, maybe?

Artist Retreat - Thursday & Friday

When Pam and I dubbed this visit an artist retreat, I doubt either of us had an inkling as to how accurate it would be. Once we decided just what it was that we wanted/needed to do, we worked diligently.

We devised a system that made use of all the paint pulled through the screen. It gave us yards of original screen printed fabrics as well as yards of fabrics monoprinted from the excess paint. After finally calling an end to the process last night due to our brains being spent from the pace of the last few days, we starting trying to figure out just how much fabric had been printed.

For myself, it's along the lines of:
5 yards black linen
4 yards white linen
5 yards white silk organza
5 yards white cotton
2 yards black cotton

My silk organza is original screen prints while the rest are monoprints. Pam was using organza and sheers that were 108 inches wide and I don't remember how many yards were printed, but it's around 15 or 20 plus a bit of cotton.

Thursday was a semi-play day. We had lunch with Diane of Diane's Artisan Gallery at a funky little new age sort of southwestern restaurant

where Diane ordered the largest burrito we'd ever seen.

After lunch Pam & I went in search of gifts for my daughters and then ventured over to Diane's.

As lovely as the fiber, jewelry and clay in the gallery are, it was her yarn display that really held my attention. The colors that she weaves with are vibrant and alive and I couldn't resist getting a photo.

Next was a trip to the Spenser Museum on Kansas University's campus to see an exhibit by Kim Jongku entitled Mobile Landscape employing metal filings to create landscapes.

This piece ran the length of the wall and was exquisite.

We weren't sure if the artist intended for viewers to walk through the filings on the floor so we just stood and admired...and watched our feet being projected on the screen above.

As we left the exhibit, I turned for one last view and was struck by the mirror image of the reflection.

After a day of play, it was back to work yesterday. Here's just a sampling of what we did.

I fly home to Connecticut in a few hours. Two boxes of printed fabrics were mailed yesterday...just not enough room in my suitcase. However, there are three pieces too precious to hand over to anyone and they are in my backpack for me to carry home.

I'd like to say I'll rest on the flight, but my creative mind is already at work wondering what comes next with the pieces we created as yardage. Some will be cut into smaller pieces, but a few will remain large...and hopefully I won't screw them up in the process.

Thank you Pam for a lovely week! And thank you to John and Mike for being such understanding husbands. Now...when can we do this again?

Project Experiment

Project Experiment is my title for a collaboration between my dear friend and fellow fiber artist Pam Sullivan and myself. I've been in a quandry for how to start working in the studio again and during a recent conversation we arrived at the idea of exchanging samples of fabrics that we'd worked on and letting the other have a go at them.

The past two Saturday nights have found me in the studio doing obscene things to the fabric samples that Pam sent in Round 1. I say obscene because to me Pam's "samples" were perfect as is and the thought of doing anything to them was just...well, obscene.

However, last Saturday night found me in the studio working on Piece 1 and enjoying it. Last night found me working on Piece 2 with equal zeal. Hopefully, this exercise will be repeated this coming Saturday on Piece 3 which to date has me drawing a total blank as to what to do to.

I have a confession to make though. As enjoyable as it was to work on Pam's samples, what really enthralled me was the by-product of working on her pieces. Last week's exercise included white organza and acrylic inks...and a bit of storytelling. After finishing working on Piece 2 last night, I just had to work out an idea from last week.

Confusing to read? A bit. You see, I know Pam will be reading the blog and don't want to be too explicit with what was done to her samples. That would spoil all the fun when she gets the pieces back.

Here's a few looks at last night's "by-products" though.

White organza painted with acrylic ink 

and a bit of storytelling.