Botanica Exhibit

This month I'll be showing my own work in the Pink House Gallery, all on the botanical theme, with an opening on Friday, June 3rd from 5 to 7 pm. I've been enjoying using plants as partners in my art making for several months and it will be fun to hang some of that experimentation on the walls. Below are a few examples of both finished works and of those in progress. For more information, see my page "In the Pink House Gallery." I'll have quite few new fun gifts this summer too. I hope you can check it out.

"Findings - Live Oak Leaves" - leaves embroidered on paper with watercolor

"Beech Leaves" - deconstructed screen print on paper

"April Remains I" - screen print on fabric

"Purple Grape Iris" collage - fabric and thread

April in My Studio and Beyond

To say that April is quiet month where I live is an understatement. Which means that it is a great month for travel, writing, and art making with few interruptions. So this post will be a bit of a diary of my projects and whereabouts over the past 3 weeks.

The colorful photo above is the catalog cover of the gorgeous art quilt exhibit at the Wayne Art Center a bit northwest of Philadelphia. I went there as part of the Studio Art Quilt Associates annual conference, held in downtown Philadelphia. The conference included great talks, lots of interaction with terrific artists, and renewed energy for the whole field of art quilting. If you want to see the art made and promoted by SAQA, click here. Lots of diversity and skill to be seen.

In addition to the conference itself, it was wonderful to see some of Philadelphia's attractions, including the quite astonishing Magic Garden, located on and around South Street.

Me, taking those Too Many Photos

 

As an added bonus, it was SPRING there! I drove home in a blizzard, and we still haven't see much green. Good thing the summer is glorious here.

The other big project this month is my turn as the month of April artist-in-virtual-residence on the fabric surface design blog "... And Then We Set It on Fire." I am so honored to be part of this group of accomplished fabric artists. If you are interested in fabric surface design, you might want to join and follow.

For the "Fire" blog, I'm writing about and showing images of fiber art with plants as both part of the media used to make the art and as subject matter. Here is one of my deconstructed screen printing projects, using an overwintered wood fern and some dried grasses from the Bloomingdale Bog Trail (to ground you locals).

 

There are several classes going on in the Pink House studio too. I'm especially enjoying the "Learn Drawing (and Some Botany)" and our monthly drawing group. And you haven't really seen the world until you look at box elder flowers under the dissecting microscope!!!

Can't help myself - I'm such a botany geek!

Escape!

The other day, I left the icy barren landscape of my home for humid breezes, green plants, and welcoming friends.

It takes awhile for my mind and body to catch up with my surroundings. To loosen and open. To thaw and breathe.



Last week, I made this little shoulder bag to bring along as reminder of what I love to do (and to hold the few basics I need for my explorations). Made with my deconstructed screen printed fabric, silk ribbons, and some other goodies.

The Blobs and Dots

I drew on a couple of my screens with thickened fabric dye and a plastic syringe. It seems almost impossible to control the lines, as the dye blobs out at its own free will at times! Another aspect of this printing process that is usually delightfully unpredictable, and I love working with the resulting prints. Today I'll do some deconstructed screen printing after this dye dries on the screens. Holy Smoke! I have so much to learn!

See Judith's posts this month on "And Then We Set It On Fire" for her work with this technique (among others). The link is in My Blog List at the right.

Cool Little Workshop - Part Two

 For our next session, Pat and I worked with some silk screens, masks, and stencils on the fabrics we monoprinted a few days before, as well as fresh treated fabric.

I made a simple bird stencil with freezer paper. It was underwhelming when I printed through the stencil but I continued using it to make ghost prints with the paper.

Pat had a couple of screens with a bit of day-old dye left on them, so we unexpectedly did some deconstructed screen printing too. The vertical lines and colors from the screens added a lot! We placed some some newspaper stripes (or "legs," as Pat calls them) and circles ("heads"???) on the fabric as masks. They stuck to the screens throughout out work, until we removed them. (They look pretty cool too with the screened dye. I'm using them in some kind of collage work later.)

Here is one of the screens with dried dye as we started with it, and below is a length of fabric with the lines, masks, and more dye spread on over all. (Yellow on the top; purple on the bottom.)

Monoprinted, deconstructed screen printed, freezer paper masks. The nice brown is from our sludge bucket!

My favorite. Am I channeling Pat???

For you, Beth! The hands-only red print transformed by spreading yellow dye on most of it with a putty knife.

Back in the Studio

 My stay in the sunny south is over but not forgotten. I'll insert some images later of my travels. For now, I'm so glad to have access to the print making studio at Bluseed in my hometown. I was there last week doing more deconstructed screen printing. Above are a couple of my homemade screens, one an old framing mat and the other cut from thick foamcore, all taped up and with old sheer curtains to stand in for the silk in my better screens. These are freshly covered with thickened fabric dye squeegeed over various objects such as a piece of rubber rug pad, hardened hot glue shapes, pieces of cardboard, and bubble wrap. The hair drier is pointed at them on high to dry the dye before printing.

 The print on the left is my first pull with my clear print paste over a screen with dried indigo dye. The green transferred to my screen from a piece of cardboard that was previously used to pattern anothenr screen. The right-hand print is the second pull. See how the dye is dissolving more with exposure to the print paste.

The next pair of prints used the same screen as above but with some black cherry dye mixed with the print paste. All these were printed on a white cotton sheet. I printed on several pieces of fabric that were not presoaked with soda. I had read on the "... And Then We Set It On Fire" blog that the fiber reactive dyes can be set immediately after printing with a spray of soda ash and water solution on the back before leaving in a warm place to "batch". It worked like a charm.

And I love that my electric mattress pad will batch a whole batch of fabric at once. I just make sure my fabrics are securely wrapped in plastic trash bags. Then I put them to bed between (or under) the sheets, turn the control to High, and go about my business. If they haven't been there long enough at bedtime, I make sure I put the bags of fabric under the mattress pad, turn the heat down (or even off), and use my body heat to continue the process. The outside temperatures hovered right around zero all week, so it worked put perfectly! An electric blanket will be equally effective. A bonus of living in a cold climate.

If you are a fiber artist, you really need to check out "... And Then We Set It On Fire". I have learned so much from the wonderful posts on this blog, including the two tips I used for my printing: making the screens from the old mat and from foamcore and spraying my prints with the soda ash solution.  Another great link is from Kerr Grabowski's website - she posted a nice short video on how deconstructed screen printing is done. I can never explain it well enough. And please let me know if this post was helpful to you!

Let's Try This

I really do love to post on my blog, and I've been trying to find an easier way to post more often. Technology is my friend but I'm still trying to get the pieces to come together smoothly. Any words of advice?

I'm busy completing lots of small projects for my gallery and for my open studio on December 13th, so I'll add a photo or two of some of those, without much chat.

Here a small piece of gorgeous fabric I made at my deconstructed screen printing workshop in late October, receivng some hand embroidery to enhance the marks made by the gradually dissolving dye. It will become a small square framed piece soon.

New Directions

My first experience with deconstructed screen printing. I took Kerr Grabowski's workshop at the Schweinfurth in Auburn, NY last week, and my work will probably never be the same! Above is one of my screens with dye and thickener ready to be pulled down the screen, along with part of a previous print just showing above. We printed mostly on cotton fabric but I did a few experiments on paper and sheer fabrics. Below is a different print on sheer silk organza, after several passes with the same screen. Love it!