Monday, April 27, 2015

She Asked! I Told!


This fabric collage was in a local juried exhibition recently and won an Honorable Mention. A friend who saw the show asked me about my process for the construction and this is my reply:

The piece Arc of the Day is indeed very abstract. For this one, I was itching to use some of my hand printed (deconstructed screen printing) fabric that I have been making for the past several months. Two printed small pieces were joined and I added the yellow commercial fabric for the upper half. I needed two things from the yellow: 1) contrast with the lower section and 2) a way to make a piece of the size for which I already had the perfect frame. (A lame way to design, but I am always driven at least in part by necessity.) The several yellow squares were needed to unify the top and bottom sections visually, as was the tall purple column in the middle (which also covers the seam that joined the two small pieces on the bottom). The placement of the squares also provides movement across the piece, as the sun moves across the sky each day. They looked too plain, so I added the hand stitches on those nice bright little boxes. And I really can't help adding some embroidery on nearly everything I make lately.

That's my story! Probably not as complicated or esoteric as you might think. Thanks for the opportunity to be a bit analytical :-)

Friday, April 24, 2015

Thinking of Susan

One of the finished pieces
 Using only the rug pad and
the tail end of the paint.
Yesterday I worked on a small fabric collage that called for a unifying layer of paint. (More about that one soon.) The leftover paint got me thinking about the fun I had with Susan Andrews printing in her outdoor studio. Not quite the abundance of plant material to play with while the snow was flying outdoors, but here are my results. More of this!!!

Basic tools, 3 paint colors, rubber rug pad as stencil and printer
Fabric pinned to my wonderful print board made of foam insulation board, thin foam padding, and clear vinyl.
The twig was used under the fabric for texture with the roller
... and on top of the fabric as stencil and for printing.