Adding the Details to A Deeper Sense

By now (in mid-January), the Deeper Sense art exhibit at the Paul Smith's College VIC has been open for more than a month. Its accompanying research presentations are completed and many of the Paul Smith's College student researchers have graduated and launched into the larger world. 

My own art for this show, Standing in the Stream, will be submitted soon for a juried exhibit. For that reason, I won't show the finished work here yet, but I will finish its story.

Above are some of the photos I took at the Smitty Creek watershed as well as a map scan, transformed into sepia images and printed over the textured stabilizer that was painted with acrylic washes.

The strips of text above were printed on sheer silk organza, lines by Robin Wall Kimmerer from her essay "Interview with a Watershed," published on  the website Ecological Reflections:An Archive of Art and Science Collaborative Efforts. Her writing expresses much of what I had to say about the relationship in this project between the science and the art, and Robin allowed me to use some of her poetic words in this piece. I'm very grateful to her.

 Here is some data from the project and an antique map of the study site, all also printed on silk organza. My friend David Casey adjusted the graph into a more useful form for me. Thanks to him as well.

In the photo above, I have started applying the printed maps and data to the eco printed silk panels, along with strips of hand-dyed silk in shades of blue that represent the importance of water as the basis of the ecosystem studied in this research project.

The images printed on the textured stabilizer were stitched to a central narrow panel of cotton. All three sections of the piece were hung from one curved stick that had been peeled by beavers, an animal that dramatically alters this landscape over long periods of time.

My next post will take you to the opening!

Getting to the Deeper Sense

For me, making art based on a particular place is a long, slow, thoughtful, enjoyable process.  I often bring objects back to the studio to think about and to work with. When I visited the Smitty Creek Watershed in October, I collected plants, along with photographs and notes made while listening to the Paul Smith's College students and faculty about the research going on there. I also do a fair amount of research, exploring related scientific literature and other writings, maps, and images.  

The plants I collected were frozen until I had was ready to begin the work. I decided to make a couple of eco prints with them, a process of wrapping the leaves tightly in fabric or paper and then processing them with heat.

I dipped each leaf in a dilute ferrous sulfate and water solution to deepen the tones of the plant pigments. A few old iron and copper nails were wrapped in the bundles as well, to add some marks representing the human influence on the landscape. The leaves were laid out on two silk panels, then wrapped tightly around pieces of pvc pipe and secured with string.

The silk, metal, and leaf bundles were then simmered in hot water for about two hours to set the leaf pigments and the nail marks on the fabric.

Above is one of the silk panels, now permanently printed with the leaves and nails, as well as with the long linear resist marks made by the string wrapped around the bundles during the heat processing. Below is a detail of the print, showing evidence of spruce, fern, red maple, aspen, and black cherry leaves.

Next, I will add maps, data, photographs, and words. Check back here to see how I do that in my next Deeper Sense post.

A Deeper Sense: Looking at Place with Science and Art

 This photo is from one of several field trips that have already taken place this semester with Craig Milewski's Stream Ecology class, a course for senior Paul Smith's College students working on final projects before graduation - called Capstone Projects at this college. As a scientist and a poet, Craig encourages his students to do high quality field research and to also think about this final project as an opportunity to interpret their work artistically, through visual, written, or musical arts. And he again has invited several area artists to join in to produce artworks that interpret the project in some way. The students' final presentations and art will be presented to the college community and the public, along the artwork of the lucky professional artists invited to join in.

(The first of these art-and-science projects in which I participated took place in Spring 2012. See my blog posts from March through April 2012 for my process that time. And here are images of three of the five final works, which I now realize I did not post!)

 

This new project - "A Deeper Sense" - focuses on a forested watershed not far from the Paul Smith's College campus where research has taken place for about 12 years. Questions about the role of stream channel disturbance after 2 consecutive hurricanes with heavy rains are being investigated, among other issues.

As I prepare my art work focused on this project you can follow my process on this blog. I'll post on my main page, and you can also find the whole project on my page "Deeper Sense Project" listed in my blog header. I welcome your insights and comments!

The Best Surface Design Exhibit in the Adirondacks!

Okay, as far as I know, it's the only surface design exhibit. But no matter. There is a lot of beautiful fabric in the gallery, with information to tell you how it was done. It is my personal mission to explore fabric and mixed media art in my community, with an educational component, and this exhibit has been loads of fun! Many "Wow!s" and "I want to try that!s".

Since mid-October, my gallery has been filled with the color and texture of unique, hand-dyed, printed art fabrics. Have you heard the term "shibori-dyed" but aren't quite sure what that means? See Susan Hahn's mini exhibit of "how it's made" shibori samples and her finished artwork.

Shibori samples by Susan Hahn

For lots of images of screen printed, direct dyed, snow dyed, eco printed, stamped, batiked, shibori dyed fabrics (among others) and more information, check out the page above "In the Pink House Gallery." If you want to see it all, come on in soon - up through Sunday, November 22nd. But the information will stay on my gallery page, so enjoy!

Holiday Open Studio on Saturday

My chickadee drawing on organza, then over fabric and hand stitched. A little more to do on these. (Thanks for the idea, Valerie Komkov Hill in Quilting Arts!)

Mini collages turned into little hanging art works.



Also paper lanterns, little books, and cards. Selected art on sale.

See you on Saturday, December 13 from 10 to 5. With over a foot of new snow, the Adirondack woods will be beautiful!

NICHE Studio with fresh snow today

Avoiding the Doldrums

 

This is what I see from my desk this morning in Night Rain Cabin, at an odd moment when the chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches are not at the suet feeder on that birch tree. Most of the giant snow pile is from the deep blanket of snow that slid off the roof in many Whoosh-Thumps over the past few warmish days

I have been away in some lovely warmer places when most of this snow fell, so I don't have the same exhausted outlook on this extreme winter here in the Adirondacks as many of my friends. But it has been a time of a darker outlook in past years because of the sunlight deprivation that gets intense for me by now.  This year I am holding up pretty well, partly because of our trips and partly because I have so many wonderful art projects and events that buoy me up. And I am so grateful for all of that.

On Friday, my friend Lynn and I went to the opening of the Cover Art Show over in Lake Placid. This annual show is sponsored by the Arts Council for the Northern Adirondacks, with the main objective of finding a piece of artwork to grace the cover of the arts directory for this region (which is getting heftier every year). As always, it was great party and an opportunity to see other artists and friends.

I entered a piece that I reworked from one of my fiber collages that I made over the summer. It is a little deconstructed digital photo of my cabin Hobbit House, with added fabric fragments and decorative stitching. Here is the original: 

Fernville Spring

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like this little piece, but originally it was mounted on a muted turquoise rayon background to coordinate with its ten sister pieces for a show. I decided that background wasn't what this one needed now. So I painted, stamped, and otherwise played on the background fabric to come up with this:

I popped it back into the original frame, renamed it Deconstructed Cabin, and entered it in the Cover Show. I was surprised and pleased to learn it received an Honorable Mention!

Two Saturdays ago, I went to the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA to attend Wen Redmond's workshop on printing with natural materials. Really fun and interesting! There is also a wonderful show up at the museum by members of the Studio Art Quilters Association called No Holds Barred. The range of styles, subject matter, and materials used by these talented artists was mind-boggling! See it if you possibly can! After lunch, Wen talked about and showed her art quilts, starting with early pieces. All wonderful, beautiful, and inspiring. 

Using Wen's directions from a 2007 issue of Quilting Arts magazine, I made two pieces that were accepted into the Adirondack Artists' Guild recent juried show. Because these works are constructed with a photo printed on the top sheer layer and an opaque layer of the same photo underneath, separated by the depth of the stretcher bars, they look 3-dimensional (or "holographic" as Wen describes them). I love this technique - lots of potential for future work.

Low Tide Treasure

Winter Ferns

The photo below shows how the Winter Ferns piece was assembled. The lower opaque layer was glued to the back of the sheer layer which was attached to the stretcher bars by the border fabric.

So, on to the next project - finishing work for my April show Out of Season. Lots to do. More about that next time!

    

A Renewed Daily Art Practice, at Last

Hard to believe it has been over two weeks since the Art & Garden Party! The weather was perfect that day, the flowers were gorgeous, and a couple of close friends tried the morning drawing lessons. They both claimed they haven't done any drawing since childhood, but they took to it quickly and made a couple of lovely watercolor sketches each - beautiful! Many thanks to the many friends who came and enjoyed the day together. I am grateful to each of you. Perhaps it will be an annual event.

Now I am in Fernville, our Adirondack property, and enjoying all this place has to offer, even though Spring is late to unfold here, and in mid-May the Beech leaves are still softly opening, downy and rosy. In addition to the things I love so much here - the rivers and lakes, wonderful birds (Mourning Warblers, among others, the other day), a lively arts community, and fascinating people  - I have found a life coach who is helping me enormously by getting me on track with my art making and art business. With her encouragement, I am again making time for a daily art practice. For now I am working with a book about fabric embellishments that I received as a gift several months ago. Below is the piece I made with "Tucks" - inserting various bits and pieces in each tuck. I included fabric scraps, photos cut from old natural history encyclopedias, and embroideries cut from sheer fabric. It makes me think of a beach scene.

The next day, my project was "Deconstructed Quilts." Taking small scraps of fabric, the pieces are assembled on a square of fusible web and then ironed to bond them together. For this one, I used some of the off-white embroidered fabric I used for the beachy piece, as well as an old fabric piece made by printing a photo of one of our cabins onto muslin. It has faded somewhat, and I cut it apart to reassemble the pieces with other fabric scraps. Here you see the piece before I did any of the machine embroidery. Four pieces are in progress now, and I am so glad to be learning some new things! Thank you, Jane!!!

Spring Wonders on a Small Scale

Spring is arriving in the Adirondacks too. It is slower, colder, perhaps more reserved for now. This morning I heard a poem on the radio about a sweep of  hundreds, maybe thousands, of daffodils by water. What a gorgeous spectacle that must be! But here, I’ll take my spring wonders in smaller scales. The beautiful reds of over-wintered pitcher plants and sphagnum moss. The surprising purple on the scales of a balsam fir cone, recently disassembled by a red squirrel for the rich seeds hidden there. And (above) the unfolding leaves of Hobblebush, a wild and native viburnum that has surely one of the most wonderful flowers to be seen in the May woods up here.