Week's Progress

'Rising Together', 15.25" x 10", Procion on cotton

Detail

'One Hand Clapping', 16.25" x 10.25", Procion on cotton

Detail

Productive Day

The second lichen-dyed figure got finished up today.  

  

I decided to give her a face of the light brown raw silk, features drawn on with my super-fine Sharpie marker and Prismacolor pencil.  Once I was done drawing, I stitched her face onto her head, allowing some of the wonderful lichen stains to show around it.

 

Also completed today is this little piece for another local show in September entitled 'Rise Up', and sponsored by our local domestic violence prevention program, WAVE (Woman's Aide in Violent Emergencies).

'Home Fires' approximately 18"x24", Procion on cotton, machine quilted

Detail

Summer Morning, Sunny Days

The moon was setting and reflecting in the high tide in front of my house when I was getting ready to go to the swimming pool at 5:30 this morning; I went out on the deck in my swimming suit and sweater to snag a photo.

On Sunday Devil's Club caught my eye as we hiked around the Three Lakes trail.

Flossy stood guard while I picked berries.

Sunday Review

I ducked into the studio yesterday to take a look at the week's work before heading out the road to pick berries.

 Detail of drawing begun on Thursday.

Detail 2

 Rain Forest Festival figure #3 (work in progress)

She is made of lichen dyed fabrics.  I am debating about the way to handle giving her a face. 

I drew an audition on a scrap of the raw silk with my micro pen; not sure this is exactly it, though.  May try my sepia micron next.  Off to the mighty mighty day job today, however.

Catching A Glimmer

"We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe - life is complicated enough as it is, after all.  We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves.  Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints, we tend to go on as though nothing has happened.  To go on as though something has happened, even though we are not sure what it was or just where we are supposed to go with it, is to enter the dimension of life that religion is a word for."

- Frederick Buechner

Drawing #1

This little (6" wide) piece in progress is of lichen dyed fabrics: rayon foundation with some raw-edge applique  (raw silk) and Prismacolor pencil plus bead embellishment.  I found it very relaxing to approach the machine quilting intuitively - like drawing in my sketch book with no preconceptions.

Detail

Lichen Dye Figure #1 - Completed

In addition to taking down the exhibit at the Clausen Museum, today I spent time with the cedar sticks I picked up on my Wednesday evening walk, preparing them as arms and legs for the little lichen dyed raw silk Deer Woman.  The scents of cedar and lichen sweetened the air as I peeled off bark and worked the sticks smooth with sand paper.

 I decided to have the arms and legs be more of a structural element, using continuous sticks and then binding on forearms using one of my favorite materials, artificial sinew from Dharma Trading Co.

 Detail of her arms and head

I plan to make this figure free-standing by anchoring her feet in air-drying clay covered with beach stones or other natural material.

Rain Forest Festival Project #2 and New Scarves

I took the muslin figure to the woods this morning and Flossy helped me find a good place to bury her.

 Flossy is always good help in the woods.

I will dig her up in early September, right before the exhibit.

 

 Here are the scarves from the Thursday run, which were tied with beach rocks.

 

 

The next Rain Forest figure, in progress.  This one is made from the lichen dyed raw silk.

 

The end of the studio day had her this far.  I am searching for sticks for her limbs in the forest tomorrow when I go out to pick berries in the afternoon.  Now it is quite late - GOOD NIGHT!

Rain Forest Festival Project #1

Today I spent half the morning upstairs at the sink rinsing rinsing rinsing dye from yesterday's batch of scarves.  (They turned out great - photos tomorrow).  Once that odious task was done I got started on a project I have had in mind for almost a year for Petersburg's Rain Forest Festival art exhibit in September. 

We had a terrific lichen dye workshop at Rain Forest Festival last year.  Here is some of my product from that, which I am going to make into a series of small sculptural figures (ok, dolls).

I decided to make a prototype first from some lovely heavy duty muslin I had laying around.

Here she is, all sewn together.  I am going to bury her out in the forest until the week before the exhibit (if I can stand to wait that long) when I will exhume her and give her a face and we'll see what else.  I am hoping the time under ground will mark the fabric in some interesting ways.

Dyeing Scarves with Beach Stones

The day began with a walk for Flossy after I got out of my early morning water aerobics class (fondly known as the Morning Mermaids).  Patchy morning fog gave way to watery sunshine as we crossed the muskeg above town.

Once I reached the studio I quickly mixed up a new batch of dye concentrates and got out the stones Cherie and I collected several weeks ago out at the end of the road on the Rainbow Rocks beach.

I wrapped a batch of my silk scarf blanks around the stones with artificial sinew.

I also wrapped a nice stick with a scarf.  I was intending to push the scarf down on itself as in shibori but the stick was having none of it.  Fine.

After I had a half a dozen wet scarves wrapped and tied and in containers, I used the dye concentrates with citric acid left over from the Jellies project to color the scarves. 

I was trying for the wonderful celadon greens and purples I saw on the morning walk.

I was using Brilliant blue and Golden yellow, with fuscia red in various combinations.

I can't wait for tomorrow when the rinsing/washing/drying will reveal whatever magic the dye has up its sleeve!

Very Green Afternoons

We are in the season of screaming green accentuated by cloudy, misty weather.  From the Monday and Tuesday after work walks:

devils club and skunk cabbage, primarily

at the edge of the muskeg

blueberry leaves

random leaves and grasses plus some kind of berries we don't eat

Jellies, Part II

Today I ironed out the silk organza panels dyed for the jelly fish samples.  I was pleased with the rich blues and greens the Procion dyes gave me.  The panels range in size from approximately 40"x40" to 18"x18".

 Under-side of the green jellyfish before sewing the yarn 'tentacles' in place between the layers of organza.

After the organza was ironed, I decided which panels to combine into sets of three layers.  I painted a 10" and a 12" embroidery hoop with acrylic paint and cut my hand dyed yarns to 84" lengths while I waited for the paint to dry.  The yarn was then placed between the silk layers and secured with fusable web to stabilize during sewing which I didn't quite get around to before getting called away from the studio for the rest of the day.