Category Archives: Inspiration

In the Garden, part II

Sometimes it seems trite to say that my work is inspired by nature. And yet, what an amazing show is on display every time I step outside. I took a walk the other day and photographed some of the changes there have been in a few short weeks. The ripening and bursting of seedpods and the changing color and decomposition of the leaves are signposts of the Fall. Here in Seattle, I can feel the omens of a cold winter in my bones and in the chill at the back of my neck. Today is grey, with precipitation that is a cross between heavy mist and light rain and will most likely last all day. These are times for reflection, for deepening ideas and developing concepts. To look at those blue sky pictures, remember the vivid colors, and try to catch a glimpse of their essence in the work.

opened lily seed pod

hosta leaves

detail of smokebush leaf

Stitching and Sketching

I borrowed Gwen Hedley’s new book, Drawn to Stitch, the other day from my friend Peggy. It’s really terrific and inspiring. The author’s focus is on hand-stitching but I think there’s a lot there for anyone who works with fiber and stitch. I was inspired by one of her exercises and spent a couple hours on the project. I took one of my pieces of breakdown printed fabric, tore it into strips, and then wove it loosely together on a piece of fusible web. Once I got it woven I fused it together to stabilize it, then layered it onto some dyed batting and background fabric. I machine stitched it along the grid, free-motioned it to emphasize the dyeing, couched some yarns down, and even did a few seed stitches by hand. I’m happy with it, although it is of a shape and size to remind me of a potholder. It reminds me of a map with the combination of the grid and the organic shapes. And it was enjoyable to do a project without a specific end point, kind of like a three-dimensional sketch made of stitch.

Blades

I’ve been developing a new series called Blades. It’s grown out of what I started this Summer working with grass, both literally and metaphorically. The Grasses Series was an investigation started by printing with blades of grass on the silk screen. I was thinking about grass and how it is so common that we don’t see it except as a green expanse in a manicured lawn, or as weeds coming up where we don’t want them. The idea of “grass roots” as a powerful way to spread information becomes clear when trying to weed long underground shoots out of flower and vegetable beds. The resulting fabrics turned out very interesting but I didn’t end up using them as I had intended in the pieces I made this Summer. They were either too small, or just weren’t right for those pieces.

The pieces I completed this Summer, which will be in a group show called Olive Branch at Foster/White in their December, ended up being more about grains and are titled Emmer and Spelt. Only one piece said “grass” to me and I titled it Stipa, a latin name for a type of grass.

sketchbook images of blades

So I started working with the grass fabrics again this Fall, making some shapes that would work with them and the series morphed again. The grass shapes became Blades which have become a much deeper series than I originally intended. I currently have eight shapes made in paper and am planning on making four or five more. There’s another series brewing as well, the Cotyledons. I’m hoping to develop both of the series together. I’ve got three of the Cotyledons so far, hoping to do a good number of them along with the Blades.

I’ve been dyeing as I go along with the paper work. Although the fabrics may not be specifically for these pieces, I’m sure there will be some overlap. I’ve been trying to stay focused on working in the paper but sometimes I just need to take a break and get some color on fabric. These wet and dark Fall days have been good studio days for me. It’s easier to spend time concentrating in the studio when it’s raining outside.

Doilies

I’ve been working with doilies lately. I love the way they look and feel. I love the way they get dyed and overdyed when I work with them. I love that they are relics from another time when people made things by hand. You can almost feel the hands of the grandmothers and aunts who made them. Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am “ruining” them by using them but they look so beautiful after they’ve been through the dyes and I know they would just be forgotten in some drawer if I wasn’t using them. This way I’m giving them another life. These photos show me using them as a resist while printing a big breakdown screen. In the photo below you can see the outline of the doily under the screen. After the screen was pulled I used the dyed doilies to print a piece of silk, then I rolled them up in some soda soaked fabric and let them sit overnight. Each gave a different effect, three for the price of one, plus I have the lovely doilies to reuse. A good new life I would say.

the doily used as a resist

dyed doilies batched with fabric

printing with the dyed doilies

In the Garden

Took a little photo trip around my own garden. So many interesting shapes in the Fall. Here are the seed heads of poppies and lilies and the shapes of the unopened fuchsias.

Fall Color

I’m lucky enough to see these beautiful trees outside my dining room window. When we moved into the house 12 years ago they had just been planted by our neighbor. Now they are about 30 feet tall and absolutely gorgeous year round. Yesterday the sun was shining through the leaves and I rushed out in my slippers to take these photos. The variety of color knocked me out! My mind is already thinking dye colors, let’s see, Bright Green 711, Avocado, Burnt Orange, Scarlet . . .

Doors and Windows

I’ve been in transition lately. Where in the past the crispness in the air of Fall has been invigorating, this year it feels a little mournful. The busy Summer has moved into the new schedule of the school year. My oldest daughter started high school this Fall and both girls are starting earlier in the morning, which is challenging for the whole family.

The big transition happening in my studio life is that my wonderful, creative, inspiring studio-mate Anne Baumgartner is moving to Los Angeles. Anne is an amazing person and artist and has been an incredible support to me. I know she’ll be popping in and out and, as she says,”still has a Seattle address,” but it won’t be the same. I’ll miss you, Anne, your energy, your dedication, your integrity, your strength, your supportive ear, and your laser-sharp eye!

Not to say I don’t still have amazing studio-mates, Anna McKee, Paul McKee (that’s Paul E. McKee), and Pam Gray. They are all so very different and each of us adds our own special spice to the Easelstan mix. We’ll be having a group show (including Anne) at the Phinney Neighborhood Center in February. Look for news on that in the upcoming months.

But about those doors and windows. I feel like I’m in transition in my art. I don’t know what the next thing is and it’s an uncomfortable place to be. There’s something different looming ahead but I can’t quite make it out. That feeling of being unsettled in my work bleeds into the rest of my life, I’m a little cranky, a little at loose ends. I’ve been through this before and it helps that I know it will resolve, but it’s still no fun to be here now.

In this unsettled place I figured the best thing to do was to make something, no matter what it is. I got the image of making this hanging piece for Anne as a gift to take with her. The image of the door with a window in it means new beginnings to me, with the window offering a peek at what’s ahead, but the piece has two sides, one looking into the future and one looking into the past. I hope that she finds a place to hang it in her new studio and occasionally thinks of me.

This is where I am now, the door isn’t open yet, but I can begin to make out what’s through it when I look out the window.

Burning Man 2010

Bliss Dance

For the last four years, I’ve made a trek at the end of Summer to the Burning Man festival. It is a place like no other, a temporary city of 50,000 rising in a few weeks time on the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, and disappearing just as quickly, leaving no trace. It is an experiment in community, where radical self-reliance and radical self-expression are the founding principles. Gifting of your art, your food, a massage, a cup of tea, or just a helping hand is the only medium of exchange and learning to say “yes, please” and “thank you” is as important as receiving the gift. I go to be renewed by the heat, by the art, by the geography, by my friends new and old and to break out of my patterns and escape the demands of my everyday life, even if only for one week a year. It is a place of extremes, in weather and in experience. You’ll laugh until your stomach hurts and be moved to tears by a gesture. Some people go to party until dawn, some people go to do yoga at dawn, some people get up at dawn ride the playa and take pictures of the amazing art. It’s all there, the wild raucous parties, the quiet of the break of day, the lazy afternoons watching the dancers at Center Camp, the Lamplighters hanging lanterns along the 3, 6, 9, and 12 o’clock roads at sundown, and of course, the burning of The Man. The Black Rock Desert will bake you, thrash you, and ultimately, open you up.

I hope you enjoy my photos and know that they only represent the smallest glimpse of the experience.

sunset after the rain

The Man from the top of the platform

a wooden dome built from modules

the view of Bliss through the dome

the Lamplighters preparing to light the streets of the city

the Dust City Diner where I had a grilled cheese sandwich at midnight and orange juice about 7am the next morning

the Monkey Chant at Center Camp

The Front Porch, an art car

dandelions were a common theme for this year's art

a view of The Temple through the artwork

my Burning Woman banner at camp

a dust devil

long shadows at dawn

at the perimeter trash fence

one of the burns on Saturday night

Workshop with Jane Dunnewold

I just got back from a week-long workshop with Jane Dunnewold at the Pacific Northwest Art School in Coupeville, Washington. Jane, whether she knows it or not, has been my mentor since I discovered her first book in 2001, Complex Cloth. She is an innovator in the field of surface design and is ever researching new techniques and continually updating her methods as materials change and improve. I have all of her books including her newest, Art Cloth, and refer to them often. Suffice it to say, I’m a big fan.

I took a workshop about four years ago from Jane on printing with thickened dye. I learned a lot and applied it immediately to my work and my teaching, where it has become a big part of my practice. This workshop though, on layering techniques with dyes and paint, didn’t seem like it would have as much new material for me. I decided to go for it anyway because I’ve been wanting to take a class for a while now to have time to get away and work with different focus. I also knew from my previous workshop with Jane that there would be plenty of lessons beyond technique. Jane’s critical eye for composition, her way of relating material to students through relationships, her depth and breadth of knowledge, and her warmth and humor are all part of the workshop experience.

Swatches after two dye baths

The concept of this class was to create art cloth through creating multiple layers of dye and paint. We worked on small, swatch-sized pieces of fabric to be able to try many combinations. We manipulated fabric and dyed as many as three layers on a single piece of cloth. We created tools including stamps and stencils. We worked with various temporary resists on fabric and on silk screens. We worked with paint on the dyed fabrics using the tools and resists. Students made beautiful, complex pieces (and I made a few complete dogs which you will not see here.)

Jane has replaced the use of discharge in her personal work because of health and safety concerns. She uses paints to mimic what she used to do with discharge. She did demonstrate using chlorine bleach as a discharge agent, stressing safety and telling several cautionary tales, because she said she’d rather people learned to use it safely than try it on their own without guidance. I’m not ready to give up discharge, but I took her stories seriously. Although I use safe practices in my work, it was good to reinforce the respect that should be given to the dangers that can lurk in misusing these chemicals.

It was important to keep up our strength during class.

A few times during the class I found myself thinking, “Well, that’s not the way I do it!” I had to laugh at myself and tell myself that I wasn’t there to do things my way, but to try something new. If I wanted to do it my way, I could stay home and work! The class was a great opportunity to try new things, to get out of my head, and to do some open ended exploration.

Along with the techniques, the big focuses of the class were on color theory and composition. Jane stresses creating a “color constant” for yourself matching the media you use to the color wheel. You can then teach yourself how to mix color using the pure color dyes and paints so that you are in control, rather than using the proprietary mixed colors sold by the dye and paint companies. I have to admit I love my mixed dyes. I test them fully and find them a great short cut for working with tertiary colors, but I understood her point. I’d like to spend some time in the studio this Fall working with blending tertiaries from pure colors. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

For me, the most valuable part of the class was the time spent in critique sessions, analyzing color and design choices. Jane is amazing to watch in action, stressing that there are many answers to each question. It is up to the individual to identify the options, and then pick one based on objective rather than subjective analysis. In critique we can apply the same choices, analyzing objectively rather than responding to our “likes” or “dislikes.” Jane spent a morning identifying language and concepts to analyze these choices. It’s discussed in her new book and is definitely worth reading.

I was really pleased with the workshop. I came away with some nice samples, some new tool ideas, and some deep thinking to do about color. It was a great group of women and I enjoyed meeting new people and had a great time hanging out with my roomies. I definitely drank a lot of wine! But like any workshop, it will take many months to assimilate what I learned into my own work. That’s part of why I don’t take many classes. As much as I love Jane Dunnewold and her work, it’s not my work.

The rest of this long, long blog post is photos and descriptions of some of the swatches I did in the workshop. I documented each layer so that I could go back and trace what I did.

golden yellow with purple overdye

paint in complementary color stamped in overall pattern

Here are three swatches I did in the class, explained layer by layer.

On Monday I started by loosely gathering a piece of rayon and dyeing it with golden yellow.

Tuesday, I used rubber bands to make circles on it and overdyed it with a purple made with Mixing Red and Mixing Blue.

On Wednesday I created an all over pattern by stamping over the entire piece with a complementary color.

paint applied through flour resist screen

On Thursday I used a silk screen I had created by scratching a pattern through flour resist on the screen to print orange stripes across the grid made by the registered stamps.

And on Friday I added a large scale element to add a focal point using the purple of the background.

large scale image added in background color

dyed mixing red and boysenberry

overdyed with rust

I started this second swatch by twisting the fabric and then dyeing it in the Mixing Red.

Tuesday, I twisted it again and overdyed it in Boysenberry, a red violet pure color I haven’t used before.

I thought that was pretty bright and not my color scheme so I put rubber band circles on it and overdyed it a third time in rust, a color mixed with Boysenberry and Golden Yellow.

On Thursday morning I covered it with a flour paste resist. Once that dried I crackeled it and painted over it with thinned black acrylic paint. I’m pretty happy with it now.

For the third sample I started on Monday with a piece of mercerized cotton broadcloth which I loosely pleated and dyed turquoise.

I didn’t get much texture from the manipulation so on Tuesday I folded it diagonally and overdyed it Rust.

That wasn’t very interesting either so on Wednesday I flag folded it and put rubber bands around the corners, then overdyed it with Mixing Blue.

Well, that was getting somewhere! I then used an chrystallographic design of scattered elements and printed with complements using stamps in a bright value of the complement, stencils in a darker value, and finished it by printing my flour paste silk screen in a medium value. You can’t go wrong with orange stripes!

Michigan Sunset

I was in Michigan this Summer and saw the most amazing sunset. The color and intensity was like nothing we get here in the Northwest. Talk about complementary colors. I kept waiting for the pods to arrive and the aliens to take us away!