Flour and potato dextrin resists

Teaching informs my work in multiple ways. First, I get inspired by the students’ enthusiasm.  I also usually have some time while the students are working to work. This unstructured time allows me to experiment without an agenda. My prep time also gets me to delve deeper into techniques. I’ll be teaching a workshop on using resists for surface design later this month at Pratt and it’s kept me in the studio, delving away and as a result, influencing the pieces I’m currently working on for the Foster White show in February. It’s kind of a chicken and egg sort of thing.

Three pole wrapped shibori pieces

I’ve been doing a lot more shibori work, dyeing, pole wrapping, discharging and then overdyeing. I’ve also been working with organic resists, flour and potato dextrin. The potato dextrin is tricky, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I tried it a few weeks ago and it worked pretty well. The potato dextrin gives a really interesting, characteristic cracked earth looking effect. So I tried it again last week and it totally failed, and on some pretty big pieces of fabric, too. Instead of drying and cracking, it simply caked over and was white and floury. I decided to go ahead and over dye it anyway, figuring even if I didn’t get the full crackle effect I would get something. And I hated the idea of  just washing it all out and starting over. I ended up with some pretty interesting fabric, not exactly what I’d planned, but when does that ever happen?

potato dextrin on velvet

detail of flour and potato dextrin resist