New Work

I have been doing some prints and mounting them on deep canvas, but haven’t had time to get the photos put up here on the blog. Here are a couple of my favorites. I do enjoy using construction fence patterns.

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More Monoprinting

paper pattern posterize

 

 

paper pattern equalize

 

 

paper patterns 1posterize

Class on February 22

So far, Saturday afternoon classes seem to be doing well in the small town of Norris City. There is quite a bit of interest in my 2 hour classes. Coming up on February 22 from 1-3 p.m. is a new one called, Create Your Own Painted Papers for Collage. I think the idea came from seeing several of the gals in the Paper and Wax Collage class go through and pick out a lot of my dyed and painted papers to use in their own collages!

So call me at 618-383-2040 to sign up or come by the Studio and sign up. I’m here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10-4 and most Saturdays. (I work for the newspaper across the street the rest of the week).

Here are samples of what we will be doing.

painted papers

 

Next week the Home Extension crew comes in to watch me demo some dyeing and printing techniques.

Spontaneous Screen Printing Class

Beth gets ready to print with a glue screen.

Beth’s freezer paper prints.

Laurie’s unique pumpkin prints

Mark tries adding color to his freezer paper prints.

I love how this one turned out.

Jan works on a piece of commercial cloth, adding more designs to it.

One of Jan’s paper designs.

This is another of Mark’s designs. It took him a while to paint this design on the screen, consequently some of the dye dried and when he printed it, it had a breakdown printing appearance to it.  Of course, I love that.

Susan paints some of the open areas of her prints.

Some of Suzy’s work.

A pretty cool freezer paper screen made by another Beth in the class. I really like this screen design.

 

The Very Busy Month Of June

As you can see I haven’t blogged for some time.  June was a really busy time for me.  I was creating two brand new classes…and then trying them out on my “guinea pigs”!  Postcard Panache was the first class. I had the actual idea for this class last summer, but like anything else, if there is no demand for something, my ideas may remain just that…ideas.  But in March this year, two ladies from Louisville put a demand on me for this class, so I worked hard to get samples made and get it prepared so they could have a full day of learning.  These two ladies came to my house for the day and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.  Now I just have to get it up on my Lectures/Workshops page.  There is always something to do!

Postcard Panache is a class geared to teaching people how to use all of the new artsy products that are  on the market.  I sell all these products at quilt shows, but demos are important because people don’t quite know what to do with Angelina fibers  and other items.  So, in postcard format, I showed these ladies a number of ways they could use bottled inks, Smooch Spritz, Angelina fibers and film, BoNash bonding powder, foiling glue, foil, stencils, etc.  They had quite a play day and were very complimentary, which makes me feel happy that they were so pleased.

The second class I created is a screen printing class.  I finally settled on a name for it no one else has used, at least not that I know of…Spontaneous Screen Printing.  Several gals from the St. Louis area and other friends of mine signed up and declared that they  had a great time and learned a great deal, so I feel I have done my job.  It is a lot of work creating and planning a brand new class, then packing everything for it.  At the same time I was planning a demo on Friday for the artisans center where the class would be taught the following day.  Due to the extreme messiness of using dye paints to demo I opted to do something totally different!  Which made me even more work…what was I thinking?  Again, it was a project that had been in the back of my mind for some time, so in a way, by demo-ing gelatin printing using paints, I got some “work” done for future artwork…AND I got a commission out of it too, which was very unexpected, but welcome.

Sketching And Gouache

I recently participated (somewhat) in an online journalling class with Roz Stendahl.  It was sponsored by Strathmore.  See Roz’ blog here.  She encouraged me to sketch in this workshop, even though I’m not a big sketcher of real items.  I’m more of a…doodler.  I do appreciate seeing someone else’s work of sketching and the fact that Roz painted her sketches was interesting.  But for me to do it…not so much.

I was out mowing the yard on Monday when I saw dried seed pods on our Golden Raintree trees.  I knew I had to grab that twig with pods and sketch it.  There was something so simple about it…and it was old, from last years pods, and dried out.

I did sketch it, then yesterday I decided to paint the page with gouache, which is a watercolor paint that Roz highly recommends.  I purchased some specifically to try it out.  I sort of like the process.  I don’t know that this will make me become an avid sketcher, but I’m warming to it.  Roz would be so proud.  (And I have enough gouache to last me to my nineties.  I only ordered 3 tubes, but the amount of paint this took is so minimal.)

Pods

I’m even thinking of adding some photo transfer to this page.  The Golden Raintree trees are now in bloom, preparing to launch their thousands of new seed pods.  I took photos yesterday.

Tuesday

Well, I guess Mondays are lining up to be my “domestic” day.  After making Mounds balls,  I also made biscuits for supper later in the afternoon yesterday.  Did some laundry and cleaning up a bit too.  My husband hates to see things laying around and me…well, if I can’t see it, I forget about it and there are some things I want to remember I have to work on or at least think about so I can make a decision! (I recently found my Indiana sales tax form somewhere it should not have been…out of sight, out of mind.  Luckily, I still could meet the deadline.) My “studio”, aka, the shrinking 9’x 9′ extra bedroom, does not give me the space to leave things out where I can see them and think about them.  I pretty much use the whole house!

The thread came yesterday, so today I will again start stitching on a piece I am working on for my show.  I should be doing that now, but well, here I am.  I wanted to post some of the deconstructed results from last week, and I now have the photos loaded onto the computer.

I used different sized screens and some of these are overprinted…and may still need some more overprinting.  And they have not been washed yet, but you get the idea.  I really really love the breakdown look of this kind of printing.

The reason this whole piece of cloth is not printed is because I am pondering using these  as 4 separate prints for wall pieces.  We’ll see.  They might need more printing on them.

What I’ve Been Up To

Last week, I ran out of thread on a piece of art I was stitching on.  Rather than take a whole day and drive an hour away to buy thread, I opted for an internet order instead.  Of course! the company only had one spool of a color I needed, I found out later, and of course, I need more than one, so yes, I will be making that 1 hour trek in a couple of weeks, but I made a lunch and outing date with a friend, so driving an hour for thread won’t be all that I am doing that day.  Oh, the down side of rural living…even if I do love it!

In the meantime, there is plenty for me to do while I wait for the thread….so I got started on making some prints on cloth.  These will be deconstructed prints.  First I had to create the screens.  I smeared a few colors of dye paint onto the back of blank silk screens, then pushed objects that will create designs and texture into the paint.  Then let dry for however long it takes.  Purchased screens or homemade screens using framing wood pieces that lock together…it’s all good.  I have learned something about making the homemade screens though.  Do not use polyester sheers…they STRETCH!  And you won’t like it.  Use nylon material to avoid this. I am going to have to re-do some of my screens.

While I had the dye and the bubble wrap out, I decided to play.  I do that a lot…try something new…see what happens.  I laid my dry soda soaked cotton over the bubble wrap (to see how to soda soak cotton, see my tutorial on the sidebar), then laid a blank screen over it and pulled prints.

This deposits quite a bit of paint on the cloth, hence the following “monoprint”.

Since these two pieces use the same colors, they can be used together in something, but there is variation in the cloth.

I still need to finish one piece of cloth before I put my stuff away…maybe today!

But right now, I am making Mounds balls. ;=)

Need Help Please

I went to the SAQA website today to post a plea on my Visioning page and while I’m there I am currently deleting 478 emails in my inbox.  Do you know how long that takes doing 20 at a time?  It’s taking a while.  So I decided while I’m doing that I will post a blog post here and ask for YOUR help too!

I have my first solo show in October this year.  I have a series of small (5″ x 7″-ish) works I will be mounting on deep 12″ x 12″ canvases.  I will be painting the canvases before I mount the fiber work.  I personally did not wish to paint the canvases a solid, flat color, but rather wanted to  do swipes of color that had movement, feeling that this was more in line with the fiber work.  But now my question is: what are others going to like?  I really want to sell at this show and am now wondering which method will make the work more sell-able.  Here is how the canvas looks at this point.  Sort of wispy, worn, like the side of an old barn.  But is this what people will want? Eeek!  I really need help with this.  And I know people can only give me their opinion and in the end, I still have to make the choice.  But I still want to hear from you.  And I will ponder any suggestions anyone has to make too.

And if you need a little distance….

Catching Up

On Friday, February 11th, after 3 attempts to go, I finally made it to Form, Not Function at the Carnegie in New Albany, IN. A friend and I first visited Jane Dunnewold’s wonderful exhibit, Etudes: A Daily Practice on display in Louisville, KY at the Hite Art Institute. We enjoyed that very much, then went to New Albany to find the Mexican restaurant, which had moved, before we went to Form Not Function.  I love Jane’s work. It was an awesome day and I really should do that more often. It just reminded me that I don’t get out enough!

Back to life at home….my husband and I went out to eat at an awesome Mexican restaurant the next night in Marion.  Can you tell I like Mexican? Here’s what I got…Don Sol’s Fajitas.

The salsa was excellent and there was enough food to take home for lunch on Sunday!  The restaurant is Don Sol’s in Marion, IL.  If you are in the area try it!

Last week I painted dryer sheets.

This week I ironed them.

This week I painted sky fabrics.

And dyed all of these things.

Cotton and rayon circular scarves, jumbo cotton rick rack and a bunch of onesies.  Walmart now sells organic cotton onesies made by Faded Glory.  They are so nice and soft.

Well, that’s my week so far.  I have more to do before the Bloomington, IN quilt show next week.