Monthly Archives: November 2010

Blades–the Final Cut

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number four before and after

I’ve got all thirteen of the Blades series ready to go on to the next step now. I was able to put them up all together for the first time two weeks ago. Seeing them together made me realize that I still needed to do some adjustments on the shapes. Right around number eight the shapes shifted in a way I liked. I needed to make some changes on the first seven to have them all work together. Some of the changes were pretty subtle, like number four here that just needed to have some more organic curves added to it’s edges. Number five needed the most work, here’s a before and after shot.

before

after

Now that they are all fixed up in paper, it’s time to move on to surface and color. First stop is my stash to see what I’ve already got. I expect to spend the next couple weeks in the dye studio developing new fabric for the series. I’ve yet to really develop a color theme, I’d like to add some purples along with the reds, browns, and ochers I’ve been working with in the last year or so.

I’ve planned to work on the series in two parts in order to have some variation in what I do each day and also to get some pieces completely finished early for photography. We’ll have to see how that works, I already feel a little nervous about it. When I start feeling anxious about the work I have to remember that this happens with every project. I have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and not get overwhelmed by the whole project. Yeah, right.

NorthWest Designer Craftsman

Yesterday my husband and I hosted a social for the Northwest Designer Craftsman organization. I’ve been a member for a couple of years but haven’t been able to give much to it. I was happy to contribute my house for the gathering and it gave me a boost to get some long overdue cleaning done, too.

It was a loud, convivial, and crowded event with many of the local luminaries of craft. They are a graying group, but very welcoming to those of us new members whose hair hasn’t completely changed color. It was an honor to host people who I admire for their depth of work in craft.

I would love to see some kind of mentoring program within the organization, or even just an informal way to share information with those who have so much more experience. I had great, but short, conversations with some women whose work I really admire in basketry, Jan Hopkins, Danielle Bodine, and Jill Nordfors-Clark, and Dona Anderson. I still feel a little nervous around people who have shown more and have had more success than I have. And yet, each of them were so friendly and approachable, and many said how much they admired my work. What do you know? Part of the reason I joined NWDC was to get these conversations across media, especially since I’m still trying to figure out where I fit, or even if it really matters.

The organization is coming to a turning point. Many of the members are elders, and there is a need for new energy to reinvigorate it. There are a few people who have taken on leadership roles with the idea of change. After yesterday’s event, I feel there is something there, something worth investing time and energy into to help it survive. I’d like to help, but I have to take baby steps otherwise it’s so easy to over commit. To be continued . . .

Persimmons!

Last weekend my husband and I had a quick getaway to San Francisco. We had a great time, we ate, we drank, we walked, and walked some more. And what did I take pictures of? Fruit at the Farmer’s Market, of course! There were six kinds of persimmons and these gorgeous pomegranates at one of the booths. I wanted to buy one of everything but getting it back on the airplane posed a problem. We did have a big, beautiful, delicious, ripe persimmon with breakfast, though. Not something readily available in Seattle.

Testing One, Two, Three

I’ve been doing some testing for my dye book. I realized that the longer I work with dyes, the more sophisticated my testing has become. Some of the work I did five years ago is incomplete. So along with the tap tests I did earlier this month, I decided to update my dye book with discharge effects. I went back through my samples and found the original test fabrics I did (because I don’t throw away anything!) and was able to use them to do the samples. I got a new discharge agent from ProChem called DeColourant. It’s citrus based and is supposed to be less toxic than bleach or thiourea dioxide. It comes in both a spray and paste so of course I ordered both.

So my discharge tests became very involved, five different discharge agents: bleach, soft scrub with bleach, thiourea dioxide, paste DeColourant, and spray DeColourant. I tried all five on cotton and rayon, and the three without chlorine on habotai and raw silk as well. And all of this with 43 different dye colors. Can you say obsessive?

So now I have lots and lots of little piles of little 1.5 inch squares of fabric with different discharge effects. I haven’t had a chance to compare them all because I don’t want to get them mixed up. In general, my observations are that soft scrub takes away more color than plain bleach and that the DeColourant doesn’t work that well. Now I just have to find time to paste the samples in my book so I can really see them. Oh the glamorous life of the fiber artiste!

13 Blades

I’ve never worked on such a big series at one time before. I now have 13 of the blades worked out in paper. When I got to ten, I realized I needed to get a better sense of their sizes, especially because I don’t have a space in my studio I can put them all up together. I made a list of all the approximate dimensions, divided them into small, medium, and large sizes and decided to make one more of each. It feels like an odd way to make art, but right now I’m not really visualizing these completely as individual pieces but as part of an installation. I’m excited by these crazy shapes.

Pam, my studio-mate, is out of town this week and offered to let me use her studio which has a nice big wall. I put them all up on Tuesday and learned what I really already knew, that I needed to rework the first seven pieces. Also, this is a big body of work! I’ve been reworking the pieces with the goal of having them all worked out in paper by the end of this week. Luckily, it’s taking a lot less time to rework the pieces than to come up with them from scratch. I want to finish the last two today, then put them all up on the wall again. Hopefully, they won’t need anything beyond some fine tweaking.

Next week is Thanksgiving and my youngest daughter doesn’t have school all week. I’m planning to use that time to get started on to the next step: cutting out the patterns in peltex and hand-stitching them together to make sure they work before I move into fabric. I started thinking about that yesterday, just how am I going to sew these together? Ah, but that’s next week’s challenge. This week is paper!

In the Garden, part II

Sometimes it seems trite to say that my work is inspired by nature. And yet, what an amazing show is on display every time I step outside. I took a walk the other day and photographed some of the changes there have been in a few short weeks. The ripening and bursting of seedpods and the changing color and decomposition of the leaves are signposts of the Fall. Here in Seattle, I can feel the omens of a cold winter in my bones and in the chill at the back of my neck. Today is grey, with precipitation that is a cross between heavy mist and light rain and will most likely last all day. These are times for reflection, for deepening ideas and developing concepts. To look at those blue sky pictures, remember the vivid colors, and try to catch a glimpse of their essence in the work.

opened lily seed pod

hosta leaves

detail of smokebush leaf

Stitching and Sketching

I borrowed Gwen Hedley’s new book, Drawn to Stitch, the other day from my friend Peggy. It’s really terrific and inspiring. The author’s focus is on hand-stitching but I think there’s a lot there for anyone who works with fiber and stitch. I was inspired by one of her exercises and spent a couple hours on the project. I took one of my pieces of breakdown printed fabric, tore it into strips, and then wove it loosely together on a piece of fusible web. Once I got it woven I fused it together to stabilize it, then layered it onto some dyed batting and background fabric. I machine stitched it along the grid, free-motioned it to emphasize the dyeing, couched some yarns down, and even did a few seed stitches by hand. I’m happy with it, although it is of a shape and size to remind me of a potholder. It reminds me of a map with the combination of the grid and the organic shapes. And it was enjoyable to do a project without a specific end point, kind of like a three-dimensional sketch made of stitch.

Show at Foster/White

Talked to Phen at Foster/White Gallery this week and we scheduled a show in the gallery for April. Pretty exciting! It’s really good for me to have a target date, I work best to a deadline. It helps me to focus and make work plans.

Not All Fun and Games

I use some premixed dyes in my work. Finding the time in the studio to painstakingly mix and document mixing tertiary colors has been something I’ve wanted to do, but just hasn’t made it to the top of the list yet. So I order my colors from ProChem or Dharma Trading, test them pretty thoroughly, and keep a dye book of the results. I reference my book all the time.

tap tests

When I took Jane Dunnewold’s class this Summer, she suggested doing tests of mixed dyes so that you can see what primary colors are being used to create them. So I did “tap” tests of all my colors by labeling two inch squares of cotton, dampening them, and then carefully tapping just a tiny bit of dye onto them. The dye colors spread without mixing and you can see the make up pretty well.

I got some new dye colors as well from ProChem and have started testing those. For my book I dye cotton, raw silk, habotai silk, and I’ve started doing rayon, too. Next I will test the different discharge agents. I use thiourea dioxide, bleach, and I just got a new product from ProChem called DeColourant that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly.

This stuff is enjoyable too, it’s just more the “work” of artwork.

new dye colors from ProChem

Halloween Parade

On Halloween I brought out Bad Hairy and some banners for the Capitol Hill kids’ Halloween parade, the Creepy Crawl Parade. It’s their first annual parade and they asked me to come and bring some festive elements to make a splash. It was great fun, they had a good turn out, and the weather was beautiful (always a concern around here). It was a lovely family event, lots of cute babies and other youngsters along with their parents. Bad Hairy was a big hit with the kids, it’s so interactive. They can shake one of his three hands, high five him, squeeze his nose, even poke him in the eye. And the inflatable is so easy, just take it out of storage and charge the batteries. I hope they ask me back next year!