More new stuff and miscellany

Pamela's talk about non-representational work and the mere mention of Mark Rothko has caused me to drag out pieces of hand-dyed damask and hand painted cottons that I could never bring myself to cut into and use them in a large way. I recently came into a few acres of a really intense, black polyester blend that has found new life as base and backing fabric. Just gonna stare at it awhile and try to see how the stitching will help or hurt it. I'm having second thought about the center element. It's starting to look like a skirt.

This is me going away with Voodoo and Jinx who are not quite aware that the other is there or mayhem might have ensued.

And this is my little pagan family protection nest.

WWU3 or maybe not

#3 is in the early stages. I resisted coming out of the blue palette but Jim insisted and he was right, but I'm not happy with some of the shapes so after the "brutal wash" there will be some hacking. The mauve/gold/white pieces of fabric are a kind of cotton that you can no longer buy and take the dye in wonderful, fine grained marbled way that I could never reproduce in any other cloth. This was originally a sheet from my Aunt Jo & Uncle Chuck Morley's hunting lodge in Flint, Michigan so it is easily fifty years old. Two summers past, it became too fragile to continue as my favorite bedding so into the dyepot it went. I've been hoarding it ever since. The cut work came from an estate sale in Narragansett, RI.

WIPS

These two pieces have come together for me in ways that I have to call mystical. They are made from the hand dyed antique damasks and cutwork lace pieces that I have been collecting for a while now and based on that wonderful, cut-rate, ancient cotton muslin I scored at OHCO. In some place the holes in the fabric were just there from age and laundering. In other areas I used sandpaper and a rock to abrade the raw edges and thin places for tearing - cotton damask is rough stuff. This one (55"x40") finished with less painting than I first thought. The second piece has more stitching in it's future, some hand stitching and painting . They are both large, this oneis 57"x 42" , both too big to photograph inside the studio without picking up furniture in the frame but it's still dark out. After the top was constructed and hand basted, I put it through a rough, hot machine washing with some work clothes. When I went to build it, I found that I had exactly enough batting left, to the 1/4 inch. I didn't see those spooky eyes until after it came out of the dryer. Thinking about working on these pieces leaves me feeling vague and slightly possessed. I like it.

Flow & Recuperation

After taking to her bed for a couple of days with lethargy and mopery, a 124$ trip to the vet for a look-see and some pink medicine, Jinx came into my studio today and jumped up onto the new WIP, rolled about and generally proclaimed herself on the road to recovery. We are all relieved. I finished up work on what is now titled "XX" and pretty quickly "XX 2 " came together on the design wall. As big as it is, it turns out that I had exactly, to the quarter inch, enough batting to get this piece built. I did some things differently this time, distressing some of the fabrics with sandpaper and rocks to get the worn feeling I wanted. ps. the original working title of this piece smacked of plagiarism according to the author of a book by the same name. He sicced his literary agent on me and the smell alone was enough to back me off and change the title of this whole series. We'll see what's in a name now that the book will not be mentioned here or anywhere else by me.

Stymied is my middle name

Seeing what Marie, Rayna and Dijanne have been up to is driving me nuts! There is a huge pile of PFD fabric, a big bag of soywax and a dozen new tubs of mx dyes waiting for me in the studio and whatever scraps of free time I have, I seem to only be able to accomplish SLEEP. Before any of that I have a deep need to tiptoe up on the current WIP and do things to it while it's not looking. It's a monumental piece as much in scale as in meaning for me and I'm worried about screwing it up but the vision calls for a little more. My baby sister Patty was here just overnight and I had 72 hours of anxiety over the fact that I perceive her as a disciple of Martha Stewart .Her daughter Kim says she walks around with a sponge in her hand and a glazed expression on her face. In my house I (half) joke that I had better do some domestic engineering before the Board of Health starts nailing notices to the door. Of course she was a gracious guest and we enjoyed the first all-Georgia family sit down dinner in longer than I can remember. Pat was here representing Wildlife Artists, Inc. on a sales call to the Georgia Aquarium toting with her a huge duffle bag full of the most adorable collection of stuffed creatures you could imagine. Some folks get all the fun! When she's not pushing plush she's a kickboxer!