Monthly Archives: March 2009

Dye Triads

132 little dye baths

132 little dye baths

My recent work has all been using earth tones and neutrals. I’ve been using premixed dyes from Dharma and Prochem but have been thinking about exploring how to create all those browns myself. This week I’ve been home with a sick kid and with left over dyes from a scarf dyeing class I taught last Friday. Voila! The perfect time to mix up 132 little dye baths.

dye baths in plastic cups

dye baths in plastic cups

I made two sets of triads, each using three primaries. One set used Sun Yellow, Mixing Red, and Mixing Blue. The other used Turquoise for the blue. The results were quite interesting and I found it a really valuable exercise. My husband says I’m a “dye nerd” and I think he may be right!

sun yellow, mixing red, and mixing blue

sun yellow, mixing red, and mixing blue

sun yellow, mixing red, and turquoise

sun yellow, mixing red, and turquoise

Earth and Sky–Artist’s Statement

Earth Form Five, detail

Earth Form Five, detail

My work is informed by my exploration of surface design on fabric. I begin with white or black natural fiber cloth which I then dye, discharge, print, paint, and resist. I find these processes endlessly rewarding and I enjoy the challenge of finding the correct solution for each piece. Patterning, forming, and finally stitching bring each work to completion.

This body of work is inspired by the landscape that surrounds us and the touch of human hands upon it. These influences, nature and civilization, and the passage of time overlap and intertwine in the pieces represented here. The titles, numbered instead of named in most cases, allow the viewer to make his or her own association of the work to the natural world.

The Earth Forms are a direct response to my experience of nature. The cracked strata of sedimentary rock in a cliff face, the whorl in a piece of driftwood, the line of color in a beach pebble, the force of a mushroom as it bursts from the forest floor: all these details come into sharp focus in the light of our gray winter days. Each form is a document of the passage of time.

Artifact Six
Artifact Six

The Artifacts interpret these natural forms and textures through the lens of culture. Shield, basket, urn, or offering, each one is marked by an ancient civilization, an imagined series of Rosetta Stones discovered by an archaeologist’s assistant.

Breakup is a response to the quickly disappearing polar ice fields. The heavy hand of global warming is our civilization’s signature on the land in the coming age.

The Seen/Unseen panels were displayed in Fall 2008 as part of a larger installation for Sound Transit’s Start on Broadway. They panels represent civilization degraded over time, architectural details abstracted and crumbling. Crows fly past, one of few representatives of wildlife in our urban lives. These images which are symbolic of transformation are so pervasive that they are seen, yet unseen.

Breakup

Breakup