Monday, March 05, 2012

shopkeeping

I spent the morning digging about in the studio, checking over inventory and putting up some new offering of hand dyes over in the shop.  Even though winter's chill is back in Georgia,  dye days will be on me before I know it -
the  tree frogs said so.

 I'm finally sharing some of the proceeds from last seasons adventures in going crazy with color.



I know that natural dyeing is all the trend and the delicacy and subtlety of the work is beautiful, but for me, I crave intensity in every direction so I flagrantly overdose my cloth with Procion MX..(.the good folks at ProChem bless me each night, I'm sure) and there will be more adventures with soywax as both resist and carrier.  There will be discharging and overdyeing and painting..things that have not yet occurred to me, stuff  I dream about and wake to try the next day as the mood moves me.

2 comments:

grace Forrest~Maestas said...

i love to dye with leaves. Yes.
just kind of letting things get
very close to rotting in some pot
out there in the summer heat.
but i will always love, like
LOVE
your pieces. for me, they
portray human ecstasy.

Anonymous said...

i think natural dye is pretty but i'm still unsure of how well they'd hold over long term use.

i know when i read online and find old quilts made of natural dyes in a lot of cases those colors are gone and a lot of the natural dyed apparel has an almost unrealistic set of care for instructions.

i know there's the philosophy of just embrace it but with small kids and my life there's always a spot of something somewhere. i just can't imagine when i have to scrub out some poo, spaghetti sauce, grapes, dirt, etc.....

literally waving goodbye to anything but what later resembles faded muslin.

i really admire it, i think it's beautiful, but i can't imagine switching backward for everything i make. there is a reason women were happy to become consumers of commercial cloth ages ago.

i'm happy to at least attempt to ride a balance.