For the last few weeks I’ve been working on a book. I started it in my workshop with Larry Calkins and it’s what I focused on during my Orcas Island retreat. It’s a repository of marks. It’s a place to make without engaging my inner critic. It’s a place to play and experiment. I’ve been obsessed with it, working both at the studio and at home after everyone’s fed and the kitchen is cleaned up.

In the book I’ve experimented with a lot of different techniques but with a very limited palette: black, white, and brown. I used sumi and walnut inks, white acrylic paint, black and brown water-based printing ink, toner transfers, black and white thread, charcoal, graphite, and conte crayon. I painted, printed, drew, cut, tore, collaged, and stitched. I worked back and forth through the book, adding layers until each page felt complete.

Over the years, my studio-mates and I have critiqued each others’ work both formally and informally. It’s been pretty informal for the last 18 months or so because of transitions in all of our lives. But now that the Fall is upon us we are back to planning and scheduling our sessions. I went first today with my book.

I was excited to show it to them. The book feels big to me, like a dictionary of my personal language of imagery. But I was also nervous. Would they flip through idly? Say, “hmm, that’s nice.” It is, after all, not a finished piece or something I would show in a gallery, but a record of being in the moment. It is an attempt to reset my brain and my hand after a long slog through production before I jump back into the process of making.

sumi and walnut inks, toner transfer

walnut ink, brush pen, stitched paper

monoprint, walnut ink, stamped acrylic paint

I didn’t need to worry. Paul, Anna, and Pam pored over every page. They asked questions, oohed and aahed, got into my process. They really saw the book as the big step that I feel it is. They made suggestions of ways to build on what I’ve started. Ideas of developing some of my visual ideas into drawings or prints. Ideas that make me nervous because I don’t know how to do that yet. Ideas to push me out of my comfort zone. But isn’t that what I’ve been after?

So what have I learned about myself, my process, and my language of mark making? I’ve learned that, at least for now, stitch is integral to my work. By making the choices I did with my media, from stitching on paper to drawing lines of dots to transferring copies of my dyed fabrics, thread and stitch are what I’m drawn to over and over. Color, form, and texture are all important, but stitch is constant.

So where does this lead? What is next? How do I incorporate this into my existing work? I don’t know. I think I just have to start and it will seep in to the new work. It’s already there.

sumi and walnut inks

walnut ink stamped on to stitched paper

walnut and sumi inks, brush marker, toner transfer

collage, printed cheesecloth, stamped and painted walnut and sumi ink

collage, monoprint, walnut and sumi ink

monoprint

monoprinting with stitched paper

I’m taking a little break from making art before I launch in to the next body of work. I have a show scheduled for March at Foster/White. I’ve been a feeling a little dry with my ideas and tight in my process. I’ve known it was time to rediscover pleasure in my work so I’m taking a few weeks to play.

I’m a big fan of Larry Calkin’s work. He’s a local artist who also teaches at Pratt. I feel there is a similarity in our work, more in our process than in any visual style, and we co-taught a class a few years ago. I like that he isn’t constrained by any particular medium but his work is still distinctively his own. He does encaustic, sculpture, jewelry, and sketchbooks. His work is rustic and I’ve actually seen him throw a piece on the ground and walk on it before picking it up and continuing to work on it. I admire him as a teacher and thought he’d be a good resource in my goal of loosening up. So I took a trip out to his studio in Issaquah this week for a sketchbook day. He teaches a sketchbook workshop but the dates didn’t work with my schedule so I arranged a semi-private lesson for me and my studio-mate, Pam.

toner transfer, sumi ink and walnut ink

It was another one of the beautiful Fall days we’ve been having and there were four of us there set up under the trees working in our sketchbooks. Larry’s two dogs, Lizzie and Archie, and his chickens were wandering around as we worked. I made a lot of marks and some mud, literally. Larry uses many rustic tools and techniques including using native clays as pigments. It reminded me of working in the Solstice Parade workshop as I only had to look around on the ground for some bit to incorporate into my work.

Larry uses a toner copier for doing transfers. I brought some copies I had made of my fabrics and used acetone to transfer them into the sketchbook. Then I used walnut ink, conte crayon, charcoal, and collage over the top of them. I also used some sumi ink. It’s a pleasure just to move the brush across the page. It’s good to make marks freely and not be attached to the outcome. It’s good to just give myself permission.

It’s good preparation because I’m going on an artist mini-retreat to Orcas Island next week. Really looking forward to taking this open feeling up there and seeing what happens.

collage, walnut ink, conte crayon