Nugget of Joy

The duo who is busy building a nest in the grape vine. Aren't they sweet? More of them here on my photo blog














Quote: Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld. Henry Williamson

In the Studio

Sometimes the mop-up cloth, left, is more interesting to me than the intentional pieces are. Just a few folded and dyed fabrics. The deep orange, I thought, might be toned down some with Camel as it's neighbor, but instead "yuck" happened. olive green and deep orange! Maybe over-dyeing will improve the strip of fabric, or? I do like the design though that was improved by some dribbles of black dye.

Rust Brown and? Khaki perhaps? Nice for something.

Purple and Palomino. The colors in this piece are richer than shown  here, so much so that I toss this one over my sewing machine as a dust cover.

In the Studio

Parfait dyeing of which can be found by googling it, or I think that Vicki Welsh has some outstanding recent examples of on her blog. Strips of fabric were dampened and I only used a small amount of from left to right rust brown, medium brown, and camel. The middle piece looks grey, but it's not, it's brownish. The camel color turns more olive than I care for, but the rust brown is a color I like to use. I folded the first two fabrics, left to right, and twisted the one on the right. Why only a small amount of dye? I wanted to use up what some remaining dye from a recent dyeing session. This is a technique worth pursing. So, it seems that using dry fabric and lots of dye are the way to go; we'll see.

What happens when you use Honey Brown, Terra Cotta, Burnt Sienna, and some black acrylic paint on wet fabric? Well if you smoosh the colors together and allow the fabric to dry in a tight ball you might get this. Just playing around, but I like the textures. The fabric is stiff, but will be great for a few things.

Deconstructed Screen printing. I adore the serendipitous of it!

Quote: The richness of friends cannot be overvalued. Sally Huss

Mail Art

"Embrace Mistakes," Seth tells us in the current article at MMCA. And I couldn't agree more. One of the mail art pieces I've been working on absolutely refused to behave itself. I should know better than to use StazOn ink over top of dyed fabric, the ink prefers a clean slate. The Fleur de Lis was barely evident. Okay, now what? I painted some wonder under, stamped the Fleur de Lis image on the back of the dried fusible, cut it out and ironed it over the stamped image on the fabric. Oops! left the iron on the wonder under too long. Okay, now I'm annoyed, but wait, the result is something that would never have happened if I hadn't kept making so-called mistakes. I'm fond of the distressed effect, so much so that I attempt to achieve it in  nearly every piece, perfection is over-rated, at least that's the way I see things. I'm hoping to over-iron some wonder under on another piece that I'm working on. Wish me luck!

Quote:  The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth.
Pierre Bayle

In the Studio

Just portions of larger works-in-progress. I will say this though, they're both break-down screen prints except for the tree and the red found-objects stamping.

In the 88 temp range again today, no complaints from me! I can't get enough of sitting on the patio watching the garden grow, of the lizards stopping by to check me out, and of the birds taking baths in the fountain. One of the larger lizards seems to greet me every morning while the smallest one can't scoot away fast enough; I understand the feeling.

Quote:
You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.



Ken Kesey

The wait is over

The book "1000 Artisan Textiles" arrived yesterday and these are the two out of four pieces of my work that were chosen. I was pretty certain that 713 would be in the book but I thought that perhaps one of the other two would be in the book rather than 714. To see all the 52 creations go here: The one following these two, #32, is the one that I assumed would have been chosen, and the other piece I entered for consideration is in the process of becoming something else.

Kudos to Sandra Salamony and Gina M. Brown for putting together a marvelous book; the volume is truly beautiful and very inspiring.

A  mono-print from this weeks marathon session of screen printing and fabric dyeing. The results from spending hours in the garage studio have left me in a quandary. What do I do with all of the screened and dyed fabric? I have vague ideas that most likely will become solid ideas when the time is right to work on them. Right now I need to get in as much time as I can before the desert heat keeps me indoors of which it nearly did today. I wanted to shout at the universe, "Not yet! Bring back some cooler temps!" It's been about 88 degrees for a couple of days now. And if that isn't annoying/worrying enough I was awake after 2am when a gentle aftershock from the earthquake that hit 6 days ago reminded us that the earth is still shifting on her axis. So, if you feel a little out of balance it could be that Mother Earth is having a difficult time finding her balance.

Quote: Our primeval Mother Earth is an organism that no science in the world can rationalize. Everything on her that crawls and flies is dependent upon Her and all must hopelessly perish if that Earth dies that feeds us.

-Viktor Schauberger

Challenge

The challenge following the word Puzzle (see below Feb 28th) is Passage, in case you didn't figure that out. How to get letters onto fabric? Well, one way is to use sticky back foam letters that were purchased for $1 from Target some time back. I took a gamble that they would work and ended up more than satisfied. The thickened dye seeped under the letters just enough to color the white fabric that remained from printing the same screened design twice on the same piece of fabric. The tree design was applied to the screen with blue school glue gel and rather than thickened dyes I used textile paints on the screen. Why only a detail? The reveal isn't until the week of April 24Th. Besides, I'm not sure if I'll even use this beginning for the challenge.

So, if you've heard about the 7.2 earthquake in Mexico yesterday that was felt in CA you  might wonder if this area shook as well. Yes it did! I knew from the rolling of it that we weren't in the epicenter but if the rolling didn't stop when it did I think there might have been considerable damage here. The floor looked like waves.  The wind was starting to blow around the fabric I was working on and I was reaching for the button to close the garage door when the earth started moving. My but that's a strong wind!  The rolling lasted about 45 seconds and a few things fell but happily nothing broke. It's believe that we what felt was around 5.1 which is enough to get our attention. Rocking and rolling yesterday and strong monsoonal winds today.

Quote: as artists, we run the risk of staleness if we close ourselves off to fresh experience. Each day must remain an exploratory expedition. Julia Cameron