A Lovely, Quiet Holiday Gift Gallery

The annual Pink House Holiday Gift Gallery is open on Fridays from 11am to 8pm and Saturdays from 11am to 5pm through December 23rd, as well as when the Open signs are out or by appointment. Lots of "doing" for friends in need this year, so call me when you can make it to the Pink House. I'd love to see you. 

And so many wonderful gifts! Many by talented artist friends, some made by me, all carefully selected to help you find the Special Something for your Special Someone! And I am happy to ship to you or your dear ones!

Pilllows and Plant Prints 

The Eco Prints Department

The Gift Solution - a Gift Certificate for a workshop or scarf or tiny birdhouse or .....

Wool Hats by Ann Clarke I

Wool Hats by Ann Clarke II

Crepe de Chine Silk Scarves by Pat Pauly

Colorful Linen Pillows by Pat Pauly

Rustic Pillows by Cris

Fragrant Candles

Little Framed Eco Prints

Zen Rocks by Chad Pattison

Lots more for Heart and Home.  Hope to see you soon! 

Happy Holiday Gift Gallery!

The gallery is filled with colorful handmade lovelies made by my artist friends (and a few by me, at long last) and after some errands, my open signs will be out. For today, the bookkeeping, labeling, and other undercover activities will take a back seat to getting my "bouquet" of little balsam firs and white birch branches out in the garden arranged, lighted, and decorated with my new pink Christmas balls. (What color did you THINK I'd choose?!)

Below are some of the items in the gallery, and please go to my Holiday Gift Gallery page above to see more. I am gradually adding more to that page, so check back again. Prices range from $10 to $75 - just right!

Jean Poole's 3D fabric bags. $15 -$25.

Linda Smyth's colorful note cards. $15 for pkg of 4.

Lake Champlain painting by Linda Smyth - for your camp! $65.

Linda Smyth's watercolors in painted frames. $45 each.

Fanciful Birdie House by Lynne Taylor. $49.

Painted Box with sliding lid by Lynne Taylor. $35.

 And if you really can't decide, you can buy a gift certificate for any amount, to be used for an art class or some artwork. She will be grateful!

 

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!

Gotta See it

Perrella Gallery

On my way south through the Adirondacks last week, I stopped at the Perrella Gallery on the campus of Fulton-Montgomery Community College near Johnstown, New York. My mission was to see the new fiber art exhibit - Fiber Currents/Current Fibers - which includes the work of a few of my favorite art quilters. Well worth the trip!!!

Having a high quality fiber art exhibit in my part of the world is uncommon (although the annual Quilts Unlimited exhibit is open now at View in Old Forge). I'd like more of that, and that is what my Pink House Gallery in Saranac Lake is about.

For now, yes, I'll drive to see the work of Betty Busby, Wen Redmond, Pat Pauly, Judith Plotner, and others! You should too - so much better in person than via my cell phone photos. Nice catalog for sale too.

"Retia" by Betty Busby

"Pink Leaf 4" by Pat Pauly

"Remembering the Wind" by Wen Redmond

"Brooklyn Ensemble" by Judith Plotner

Gallery at the Pink House

Mixed media by Susan Andrews

More by Susan Andrews

I'm having so much fun showing the work of my artist friends at my gallery. The exhibit "Arrivals & Departures opened on Friday, featuring the work of Susan Andrews. Here are some highlights:

Art by Lynne Taylor, Deborah McDonald, and Carol Boyer (r to l)

Art by Pat Pauly, Cris Winters. Carol Boyer, and Lynne Taylor. (r to l)

Art by Pat Pauly and Cris Winters (r to l)

Zen rocks by Chad Pattison

A Room Full of Paulys

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Rochester, New York to see family and to work with Pat Pauly. Just before I came, Pat opened a show of her work at the Axom Gallery. I have admired Pat's work for several years but there have never been more than two or three of her pieces in each exhibit. Walking into the Axom Gallery, I was surrounded by her colors, shapes, symbols, and designs. It was a stunning experience! The exhibit is up through March 14th. Get on over there, if at all possible!

The top image is of an entire piece with her mummy bag motif. And here are some wonderful details . At the bottom of the page is another entire piece.

My photography does not do justice to the colors and the techniques. I want to try it ALL. And I am in awe ....

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.

Cool Little Workshop - Part One

This week I had the great good luck to work with Pat Pauly on some surface design techniques on fabric using thickened fiber reactive dyes.

Pat with some her fabric

Lesson 1 was monoprinting. We dropped blobs of dye on a plexiglass sheet then spread the dye around using gloved hands and fingers, plastic spatulas, spoon handles, and whatever looked interesting. Pieces of white fabric (about fat quarter size), pretreated with a soda ash solution (to encourage the dye to bond with the cotton fibers), were dropped onto the dye-cover plexi. Then we used our hands and a couple of different rollers to press the fabric onto the dye. My preference was the standard paint roller.

The pieces we made that day were left to batch without rinsing, so we could continue applying dye next time. One of the very best things I learned from Pat that day was the magic of applying more dye using just a spreader of any type to add color to the "background". This piece below in red was my first monoprinting attempt, using only my hands to spread the dye and then to print with my hand. Wait until you see what happened next!

Cris' monoprint - stage 1

Happy Information Overload

On Friday I drove to Essex Junction, VT with Pat Pauly to view the Vermont Quilt Festival. The image above represents my experience there: loads of color, spectacular techniques, fresh ideas, and a lot happening all at once! (Apologies to the artist who made this masterpiece. We were about to leave and I forgot to photograph her tag. Love it!)

It was fun to go there with Pat. She pointed out many pieces, techniques, and artists I couldn't quite put into context because of my inexperience in this little universe of quilts. And when we left, she asked me how I would view the event if (or, more likely, when) I come again. A great question! I answered then and have thought about it since then. I would

• Buzz through the entries quickly then go back and spend more time on a few favorites (usually in the contemporary abstract category).
• Spend more time in the special exhibits area and attend more of the talks there. Loads to learn from the experts there.
• Make a better shopping list before I go! Now that I know I can buy almost anything related to fiber art there, I'll know what to expect. I did pretty well though - found several things I want for the workshop I'm taking at QBL in a few weeks, including silks at this very inviting booth.