quick and dirty

batik, bumped






The pool is full, if ungroomed. Most of the amphibian denizens now relocated.
There was much running about and stuff to do after two days of slacking but the sun was too bright to put off a quick shoot of some of the pieces I've been working on that I will be putting up for sale in the shop. All you have now is this list of raw, enormous images that may well feature my toes or someone's hairy tail.

In the morning I will be moving them into the shop with descriptions, sizes, prices etc.  If you see something you like today, reserve it with an email. Some of the pieces are large and I will be willing to cut them in half.

Full Moon celebration

Despite the unseasonable cold (it barely cleared 55 here all day) I used hot water and got a couple of great finds into the color today just to see what  would come of it.

There were some vintage finds today at a local antique place that was giving an additional discount for it's anniversary!  I hope the dye solution doesn't freeze in the night.

My little garden pots struggle on and what it that we see in the background? YES, finally! We will be opening a skating rink by the weekend if it keeps up this cold!

Colin & Raquel were here most of the day doing the dirtiest work after we let the pool go totally back to nature this winter, uncovered again. Raquel and I took two five gallon pails swarming with all kinds of tadpoles and polliwogs down to the brook and freedom.  I can swim with a clear conscience.

stitching day

I spent (wasted?) a lot of time wandering the web yesterday and have been inspired by a lot of other people's hand reveries, I picked up where I left off with this one and will spend the rest of the morning with it. I've had my satisfied fill of household chores for the moment.

grey morning

"GreyGrid" is a perfect reflection of my mood this morning.

The weather is the same, dim, uncertain, vaguely threatening - generally unhappy. I was treated to a Braves game at Turner Field last night on Fireworks Friday Night! Coming off a come-from-behind win the night before we were hopeful of a high spirited game but a combination of friday the 13th nonsense plays and bad calls conspired for a loss for the home team. We stayed for the fireworks anyway but the video I so dumbly shot sidewise didn't even come out and today all my bones are complaining bitterly about all that marching around on concrete. Next time rollerskates?

This piece is permanently attached to an 11x14 canvas with matte acrylic gel.

seeing spotz

I'm not sure exactly what I am looking for in the right set of dots but that won't keep me from looking longer.



I may get out the crayons later!

Jake said this looked like a Hubble deep space shot. I'd agree if it weren't for that nasty red blotch.

This was a piece of cotton that disappointed me because I discovered that the cloth must have some poly content that made it resistant to getting strong color from the dye. This was a cleanup rag before the discharge - it may have a starring role coming up.

rich results

If I do say so myself, this cloth came out pretty spectacular just wish I knew it's  provenance. If anyone has any notions please let me know. 

(that's the ever-present critic's paw in the upper right corner)


You can go here and here for some closer looks. This one looks like gila monster skin.


I'll be sharing these and other new pieces in the store over the weekend. Smaller pieces, more variety...

from sublime to spectacular

Remember this score?  Combing through the acres of cloth I finally found a tag. Read it, carefully clipped it off and tossed it "somewhere safe" for future reference. Where that might be I have no clue at the moment.
All I can recall is "cotton" and the name of a company in NJ.

I cut this one up into rectangular pieces and spent yesterday morning using soy wax, dye powder, sugar and salt on ten or so pieces. I lost count.

Wish I knew more about thread count. The hand on this cloth is soft like sateen. The pattern you can see is part of  the weave, not embossed, embroidered or printed on. When wet it feels almost like chamois. And it took the wax and the dye so aggressively that I had to boil everything to really get it clean and ready to iron. When was the last time you looked forward to ironing anything?  

before

....and after.
Well worth the trouble and mess!

until tomorrow

It will be tomorrow before I can see what will become of these. Spent the morning with soy wax, paint and dyes. Now, I'm off to the whine mine to see what happened over the weekend.

the perfect dessert

After a lovely day with family, the perfect dessert hatching out of the washer. Summer is upon us!

Eye candy from the burning deck

It was blazing out on the deck today so I had to work these pieces in stages dashing into the darkened, cool living room to regain my vision. At one point I thought I was working in black and white.


Later, when the game is on, I'll iron all these to heat set the metallic textile paints.

what fun. more later and much of the day tomorrow...

hubris

If the weather stops being so crazy the plan for tomorrow is for continued work on the cloth most recently dyed. Some soy wax in preparation for overdyeing this weekend, some paint, some discharging and hopefully,
some magic.


(Notice the void on the railing in the background. That's Voodoo fantasizing about hummingbirds on a stick.)

to show, or not to show

Baghdad Bazaar

Elizabeth Barton has written an excellent post about whether and where to show your work.

Great questions asked and I'm sure the answers/comments will be stacking up and full of insight.

I've started a very short list of fiber exhibits that I've decided to take a shot at this year but I am more inclined to look for mixed media art shows because entering textile shows is starting to feel like preaching to the choir. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I've gotten into any of the biggies and I will keep trying. I just want to reach out to a wider art audience.

Now to get off me arse and get my most recent work photographed and update my website. Ah, yes..the work!

My work has been through changes in both technique and direction since I last updated the website. These two pieces were part of the I-4 Corridor exhibit at the Peabody in Daytona in 2008. There have been a few others since then but it time to get busy or start giving away horse blankets.

Clubbin'

spring today, summer tomorrow

The Yankee peonies are running riot this year in my Georgia mailbox garden. The deep pink ones in the foreground came from cuttings taken from peonies grown by my grandfather in Armonk, NY and later moved to our house in Golden's Bridge.

After we moved to this address in '98 I brought down some cuttings after a visit. The dark pink ones in the foreground are the original color and the pale ones in back are a recent mutation. Below is my only nod to vegetable gardening..those are grape tomatoes that produced right up through November of last year in the only place on the whole property that gets enough sun for veggies.

brand new bag

I had to work over the weekend so I loaded up the scrap basket and proceeded to pave over that cloth bag.

It was a blinding lime green paisley Vera Bradley knockoff  when I bought it in the grocery store a few years ago. The perfect size, shape and arrangement of compartments, I could never quite get over the color and use it, even for 50% off...the trend was over.

I made over the scalding yellow duffle bag version three years ago and it's still in service when I fly (makes a great pillow depending on what you stuff in it)

I've given up stitching in the tiny cramped spaces and am resorting to metallic textile paint to cover up the remainder of the green. It will be a work in progress for a while but I think I'll start using it today...well, as soon as the paint dries.

Astounding news last night about killing OBL.  I can't help but wonder about all the people he infected with his hatred over the ten years in hiding and what they are thinking. Wonder about the people who were willing to hide him and what the Hell is this crap about burying him at sea?

There is passing interest in this household about conspiracy theories and I can't imagine what they will make of this piece of nonsense.

Do you know where your work is?

I was waiting for the power to go the other  night and stalling about shutting down the computer by rooting around in old bookmarks. Mine are so disorganized as to be almost useless. It was "404 error" this and "OOPS, page can't be found" that as I opened crusty old links.

Then I stumbled across Saatchi Online and realized I had work on display there and my gallery there was ages old and badly needed updating.  If you signed on with Saatchi when they first made a splash by offering this freebie,  you should revisit them and get your house in order.

Something new, they offer the opportunity to sell prints of your work  but your uploaded images have to meet their size specs and mine are all too small for now.

 
They have completely redone the interface for artists and it took some time to get up to speed. There's much more to be done and I realize that my online time would be better spent at this than playing words games that I almost always lose!

Then I got to thinking about all the various places that I have spewed my work online and my brain starts to hurt!

Oh well, it's a sunny day today, I'm off from work and may go larking about town looking for trouble, film at 11, never mind the Royal Wedding (lovely as it was).

eye candy relief

The fierce weather left us relatively unscathed. I gave up watching the storm tracks on TV figuring I'd hear the alarm from the fire station nearby. Hardly. 



No art  from me today so enjoy some freedom, energy and excitement.

Branko Bursac

Gwen Fox

Emily Miah Stewart

Green Bag redux

The overdye and discharge didn't wreak as much change as I had hoped so it's going to be up to me and the scrap bag to set things right. Here's a good start. It's nice to have this distraction from the weather.

We are in the path of the storms birthing tornadoes all across the south. My studio/office is on the top floor and from the window I can see our next door neighbor's towering trees tossing in the wind like so much green surf.

The next moment the wind drops, all goes still and muggy and the sun lights the treetops from an odd angle. It's been on and off all day. They say tonight the real trouble is coming. The tree frogs have been flat out insane at night.

new day, new project

From hideous mistake to potential serviceability.
A little dye, some new zippers and a little TLC. Who knows, I may run wild and break out the beads!

I've been shopping for a new bag for a while now with no success and realize it's because I'm hung up on an old favorite that needs a second chance.

Pastel Hell

Lesson learned. Some rot about being conceived or executed in haste. I have paid the price for disregarding a few cardinal rules. #1..let the dye warm up after you take it from the fridge. #2 be positive of the nature of your cloth. This sheet turned out to have a dash of synthetic by the looks of the results.

One of the groups making quilts for the quake survivors in Japan will be getting a whole tops worth of 8" squares by the end of the week.

PS- thanks for all the positive comments. I should know by now that my pastel dreams never satisfy my craving for the bold, daring and vibrant when I am awake and fully aware. I know someone will make something beautiful with these and then it will be given to someone who will appreciate it's function first and maybe it's beauty too. 

Easter

I hard boiled a few eggs this morning but have left off dyeing them. A giant chocolate rabbit has been being nibbled at for a week already, beyond a Sunday dinner, we don't do Easter now that the boys are (mostly) grown. It used to be like minor Christmas here on Easter. Somehow the notion of new toys crept into the baskets in place of excess candy.

There was cloth to dye today first thing. Sometimes ideas come in dreams.






Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen. This fabric has been lolling in the soda ash tub a while now. I ripped it into strips and rolled them, not too tightly.

the dye went straight onto the turkey platter and the ends dabbed in colors.

the rolls then stood on their heads in mason jars for a few minutes...and then taken out and flipped over to take full advantage of gravity from the opposite direction.

and then laid out like so many tasty little Cannoli to spend the day drying in the hot sun.

Now to keep my hands off them for a while.
 
PS...why wait? I unrolled them to dry flat in the sun...quickly.

spoze-yah update

I like the overall effect but it was a whole lot of work although the process could be refined to make enough fabric for a project in one session. Not as much "creep" as I wanted from the dye...thickener maybe. Maybe doing the creep thing after the blocks are stitched together and wet with soda ash. More trials to come.

I came into a large quantity of thick poly felt and wanted to see how it went under the needle. Machine quilting here is too mannered for my taste. Hand quilting is in order but not for a while.

plotting

I have been captivated by this quilt on the cover of Susan Beal's "Modern Log Cabin Quilting" and spent part of my evening doing my own version of Jude's "what iffing" but I've always called it "spoze-yah" (go on, say it out loud) .

It involves some things I have been warned against, like sewing dyed and painted but unrinsed cloth. Speculating about some of Mary Anne Jordan's pieces like this one and thinking about what the dye will do if you just let it.

no time for tea

I doubt this teapot will ever see any liquid again. Maybe Sangria.  There was no top, so maybe it's not really a teapot but  I saw one just like it in a wonderful film yesterday.
 
Take the time, settle in, watch the faces and listen to the voices. Give yourself over to this one - "Dean Spanley",
  and I promise you will be delighted.

(a very photogenic teapot, here and here are some large, flashy images. my magpie brain is captivated with the reflections)

phase one, wrap up

It was a long day at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx...even the tools and the tablemoppers had a good time.






the theme of the day seemed to "extra-terrestrial hides" 

there is still a lot of work to do but it will have to wait until the weekend.

Goodwill

I love the Goodwill in Lilburn. There are many people of good taste and apparently great means who bring their barely used things there for me to scarf up on Tuesdays with my SC discount.

(I compensate for these trips by watching a couple of episodes of Hoarders and making up a bag of things to take back to them...)

2$ for a large silver plated teapot? Who could resist? It was dancing on the shelf before my eyes!

No one seems to use top sheets anymore - I scored two brand new, king-sized sheets of very high quality cotton with the intention of cutting them up for the dyepot. After washing and drying I discovered I like sleeping in luxury, especially for 2.50 each. There was also a tan cotton lawn skirt with acres of tiny pleats...pre-sewn shibori I'm thinking.

link love

A special thanks to "oh what a world, what a world.."
Lorraine has become my personal online curator.
I keep  coming back to these artists:

Kathleen Cammarata
Mary Zeran
Brian Belott
Michael Cutlip
Elise Wagner
Emily Mason
Julian Hatton

the commonalities to my eye - freedom, drama, confidence and love of color & shape, and joy in the making. What do you think?

and don't forget to add "Lines and Colors" to your daily blogreads, it's always worth the time.