Monthly Archives: May 2013

Of Weeds and Websites

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I’ve been spending a lot of time at the computer this week doing a much needed clean up of my website. It’s nothing radical, just updating and reorganizing so that the navigation is a easier and information is more accessible. You can’t see most of it quite yet, it’s all happening behind the curtain, but it should be all spiffy by early next week.

I’ve been working with a consultant to help me figure out my short and long range goals for my art career. Reorganizing my thinking led to a middle-of-the-night realization that I should also reorganize my website to make the work I’m interested in promoting more visible. I’m also going to the SDA Conference in San Antonio next week and it will be good to have everything up to date before then. Nothing gets me motivated like a deadline!

Yesterday, after many hours at the computer I needed to get away from the screen but I also had to leave in 45 minutes to pick up my daughter. A perfect amount of time to do a little weeding.

weeds

weeds

We have a small (4000 sq. foot) corner lot but it’s all garden. Back when my kids were little we took out all the grass both inside and outside the fence and planted it. It was pretty easy to keep up while the kids were playing or napping. Now, with a full-time art career, it’s harder. This Spring the garden is lush, overgrown, and full of weeds. I often get compliments on how beautiful it is from people walking by, but all I can see is how much work there is to be done. I can’t see the garden for the weeds. I’ve been trying to fit in an hour at a time, a couple times a week to work on it. Otherwise it’s too overwhelming.

It’s kind of like the website. Sometimes you’ve just got to put in the time to prune things back, move some plants around, and do a thorough weeding.

Yesterday I took some photos of the garden. Seeing it through the camera lens gives me just enough distance to see what the neighbors see. And it really is beautiful.

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East and West of the Mountains

When I travel to exotic locations I’m always surprised when the locals express an interest in visiting here. Why would anyone in Paris or Costa Rica or New York want to come to our podunk little corner of the country? Seattle doesn’t have the history, the depth of culture, or the weather of the places that I like to visit. Although I’m happy to call the Northwest home, it’s sometimes hard to see why it would be a destination. This last weekend I took a trip that reminded me to look at both the forest, and the trees.

This was the long Memorial Day weekend and my husband and I traveled across the mountains to Tieton, a tiny town in Eastern Washington that is recreating itself as a center for arts and artisan businesses. It’s a noble cause led by Ed Marquand, a publisher of fine art books. It’s a leap of faith to see a vibrant center in this dusty and mostly deserted town but it appears to have taken root. It will be very interesting to see how it grows over the next 5-10 years.

the “Tieton Towers”

1920s book binding sewing machine

1920s book binding sewing machine

 

100 year old heavy duty paper cutter

100 year old heavy duty paper cutter

I have three pieces in Salsa, a show in Tieton put together by the Contemporary Quilt Art Association. The opening of the show was a good excuse to make the trip across the mountains to check the Mighty Tieton out for myself. The long weekend, and the prediction of bad weather in Seattle, made it even more attractive. We had a good time: saw the show which is high quality and varied, got a tour of Paper Hammer and the Marquand Editions Bindery, ran into some old friends and made some new, drank wine into the evening, slept on the floor of an old church, and had a lovely breakfast with fellow fiber artist Jean Hicks and her husband Ross, an old friend and one of the creators of The Fremont Troll, and their son Asa. It was great to catch up with Ross, it has been almost 25 years since the adventure of building the Troll. That was a crazy time!

Along the road in the Yakima Canyon

bluffs

Yakima River

On our way back across the mountains we took a scenic drive through the Yakima Canyon. It was beautiful with rolling hills and a riparian zone along the Yakima River. My husband is a birder and we are a good match for pace as long as he’s got his binoculars and I’ve got my camera. The geography and ecology are so different there and yet it’s only a 2-3 hour drive away.

aspen leaves

trail at the Umtanum recreational area

It’s always good to get home, even if you’re only gone overnight. Monday there was a minus tide of 3.7 so, even though it was damp and chilly, my husband and I went for a walk along the Puget Sound at Richmond Beach which is about a 20 minute drive away. That was a whole different kind of beautiful, and one that is very familiar. Vistas in shades of gray, a tapestry of multi-colored seaweed, crab molts and starfish, anemones and fish eggs clinging to a strand of seaweed, the shock of color of a wild rose all the more vibrant in the muted light. All of these provide a source of comfort and inspiration to me.

Richmond Beach Park

 

collar from a moon snail egg case

roe attached to the seaweed

beach cobble

 

Travel always resets me. By stepping away, I’m able to re-see what’s in front of me. Experiencing the new helps me appreciate the familiar. And reminds me of just how much where I live has to offer visitors from any part of the world.

The Dresses, part III

These dresses have me in thrall. I’m fascinated by them as part of a process and also as objects. They hold meaning by their existence, their former use and age, their preciousness and fragility. They are poignant and they are beautiful.

one of the dresses on the screen before I take it off for printing

Here are some photos from my last printing session with them. I’m enjoying how they are changing, as they absorb dye, are washed, and are dyed again.

When I think and write about my work the overarching theme is change over time, whether glacial or within our lifetimes. Even though this work is vastly different from what I’ve been doing for the past few years, I think it fits within my body of work. For now, I’m not worrying about it too much. I’m exploring and following my passion.

another dress on a screen

the dress silhouetted from the other side of the screen

the dresses after I take them off the screens

the screens ready to print

printing a screen

breakdown print 1

print 2

print 3

The Dresses

I got a message yesterday that I show I had been invited to participate in this Fall was not happening after all. That is, I was “disinvited” to participate. It stung, all right, but it’s also a relief in a way. The work I was going to make for the show was feeling like a diversion from what I’m starting to get at in the studio.

I’m continuing to explore mark making using the antique baby dresses that were gifted to me. I’m not sure where this work is leading me but it feels important to follow. I was talking with the studio mates yesterday about it and Anna was encouraging me to immerse myself in it without attaching to the finished product. Her advice was that the work itself would inform me.

I’m drawn to this work: printing and looking. Sometimes I just hang up a piece of fabric and look at it. It’s a kind of meditation, I guess. My mind feels suspended, not thinking but just observing and being with it.

So it’s time to lick my wounds, let go of expectation, and get back to the studio where my work is waiting for me.

print on velvet

print on silk broadcloth

The Press

My studio-mate and good friend, Anna McKee, is a print maker and painter. She has a large and beautiful press in her studio and has offered to let me use it many times over the years. Since I’m in the midst of exploring new ways of printing on fabric, it seemed like a good time to take her up on her offer.

baby dresses after dyeing process

I’ve been working with absorbant materials for a while as a way of creating texture on breakdown screens. I then use those textured materials to print as well, creating both “positive” and “negative” imagery. Anna and her husband and studio-mate, Paul E. McKee, gave me some antique baby clothes from his family to use in the dye studio. I used those dresses to set up some breakdown screens last week (see previous blog post).

I usually take prints directly from the dyed fabrics by wrapping them in soda soaked fabric and letting them batch. I decided to try running them through the printing press to see how it  would be different. I got some interesting results. Overall, the prints were lighter in color but had more detail. This make sense. The color would be lighter because the fabric was in contact with the dye for less time: less dye = less color. The crisper detail makes sense because the rollers of the press apply so much more even pressure than I can with my hands or a brayer.

print taken from the dress with the press

detail of print taken from dress

Now I wonder, why did I wait so long to take advantage of this amazing tool? Anyway, the prints are lovely and I look forward to more experimentation.

(and I didn’t win the Audience Choice spot in the Art Walk Awards but thanks for all your votes!)

print from breakdown screen

detail of print from breakdown screen

All in a Week’s Work

This business of being an artist involves wearing many different hats. Making art, sure, but also marketing, networking, writing, packaging, shipping, inventory, shopping, research and development. I’ve had one of those weeks where I did a little bit of everything.

Monday was house and laundry and blogging and looking at art books day.

 

Tuesday included a trip to the Pacific Fabrics to ogle all the beautiful laces in their “Galleria” and pick out a few inexpensive ones for my continuing experiments with using absorbent materials for printing. At the studio I mixed up some print paste so that it would be ready for printing on Wednesday and placed a big order at Dharma Trading Co. There was also a site visit to Carkeek Park where I’m proposing an installation for this year’s installment of art there curated and sponsored by Center on Contemporary Art.

at Pacific Fabrics

 

Wednesday morning I packaged up and sent off my entry for the Member’s Show at the SDA Convention in San Antonio. Once I got the studio I found a very special gift from my studio-mates, Anna and Paul: antique baby clothes from Paul’s family! They are so beautiful. I asked A & P one more time if they were really okay with the clothes getting dyed as part of art making and they agreed. After all, like the gorgeous doilies I use, at least this gives these special pieces another chance to be alive in the world.

a detail of one of the baby dresses

a monotype

After admiring the baby clothes I did some monoprinting with the absorbent fabrics I bought. I also spent some time looking at art books and sketching ideas for new work.

Thursday I washed out Wednesday’s printing then went to the studio to set up breakdown screens for printing on Friday. Friday is when my intern, Jesse comes, so I have to have work ready to go so that I take the best advantage of the extra help. Luckily, it’s been warm and sunny here so the breakdown screens would dry overnight. I used the baby clothes and the absorbent laces. In the afternoon I met with my friend Jessica. She recently left her job at the gallery and is going to help me with some research–just because she’s so nice and she wants to keep her mind active while she’s home with her baby. I am so lucky! In the evening I worked on my proposal for Carkeek.

setting up breakdown screens

the dress after I took it off the breakdown screen

Friday I jammed on getting the Carkeek proposal together and got it submitted by 10 am! Jesse called in sick, which actually was kind of a relief because it freed up my day. I’m excited to print but it will have to wait until next week. At the studio I peeled all the fabrics off the breakdown screens and then packaged up three pieces that I’m delivering to CQA tomorrow for their group show in Tieton. It was a beautiful day and Anna and I snuck out for lunch in the sun and she showed me their architectural drawings for their new studios.

And then there’s this blog post . . .

So, to summarize . . .

Monday: research

Tuesday: research, inventory, acquisitions, prep work, writing

Wednesday: packaging, shipping, research, acquisitions, research, planning, and some making

Thursday: laundry, prep work, networking, career planning, writing

Friday: writing, packaging, networking

It was a busy week!

screens all ready to print . . . next week

 

Experimenting with Textures

I’ve been using some textured fabrics and doilies on breakdown screens. It’s an extension of the work I’ve been doing with absorbent materials and what I taught in my class at Pratt a week or so ago. It’s a technique that continues to excite me and I feel like it’s a way into the theme of my next body of work.

Here are some images of the process and resulting fabrics.

Textured fabric is wrinkled up and allowed to dry on a silk screen coated with thickened dye.

The silk screen is ready to print after the fabric is removed.

After printing and washing: fabric printed with the breakdown screen, the textured fabric used to create the patterning, and fabric that was printed directly with the textured fabric.

Closer to Home

Several times while I was in Paris I had conversations with people about my home, Seattle. I was always a little surprised that they were so interested in visiting here. Why on earth would someone from Paris want to visit here?

One day during our trip I wandered into a beautiful little ribbon shop on the Place des Vosges. It was so precious and I was overwhelmed by the selection. I wanted to buy something, but what? Feathers? Sequins? Delicate white lace? My husband was waiting outside so I just took some pictures and let it go.

There’s nothing like travel to give you new perspective on your life. That ribbon shop in Paris helped me remember Nancy’s Sewing Basket here in Seattle. Nancy’s is a boutique fabric store with the finest fabrics in town. It’s where you go if you’re making your wedding dress, need some fine wool for a suit, a special button, or, yes, some lovely ribbon. My husband and I bought ribbon there almost 20 years ago to tie each of our wedding invitations. It’s that kind of place.

It was time for a visit. While I was there I tracked down some very fine and sharp hand sewing needles and bought some quarter yards of lace to use for breakdown printing screens.

I travel because it opens my mind to new experiences. It also reminds me of what’s special about coming home.

a selection of ribbons at Nancy's