I’ve been dyeing away. Here’s a selection of fabrics both old and new. I’m working with a red-violet into orange palette and a tiny bit of chartreuse keeps finding it’s way into the mix. We’ll just continue to see how this goes.

my palette for this dye session

My exciting news is that I’ve been asked to create a wall installation for the Bellevue Arts Museum. I was so disappointed about not getting into the Fiber Biennial (still sorta sensitive about that) but this is actually better. The piece will be on display for up to a year in the Forum, which is the large atrium at the entrance to the museum. Details are still being worked out regarding timing of install and which wall, but the project is a go! Although, I haven’t actually signed anything yet, come to think of it.

Stefano Catalani, the director and head curator of the museum, first called me about the project about 6 weeks ago. Once I submitted a proposal I waited month or so for confirmation. So now that it’s a go I’ve been having a little trouble getting started. Maybe because details about the final shape and installation are still up in the air, maybe because it’s a big, high profile project, or maybe it’s always like this and I have a selective memory.

In any case I finally started in by taking a deep breath and dyeing a bunch of fabric. I had to remind myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect but at least by starting I have something I can respond to. That’s much easier than the blank white canvas syndrome, or in my case, the blank white cotton, silk, and velvet syndrome.

dyed cottons, silks, and velvets, oh my!

I was asked to do a commission in January. The couple had purchased one of my pieces and wanted a second to go with it. Simple, no? Well, since I agreed to do it I’ve heard about some nightmare experiences that artist friends have had. Mine wasn’t bad, but it was still challenging for a number of reasons.

The first was that the clients wanted to hang the piece they had purchased upside-down. They liked the way it looked and, since they wanted a second piece to go with it, why should I complain? Well, okay, I’m game. The work is abstract after all. I keep all my original paper patterns so I put Blade Six together again and hung it up in the studio the way they wanted it. Huh, it sure looked upside-down to me.

Second, the art I’m making now is different from the work I was doing a year ago. I found it difficult to get back into the creative space I had been when I originally made the Blade series. Everything I drew looked awkward and clumsy. I finally used another pattern from the series as a starting point and reworked it. I reversed the direction of the pieces and changed it into a more curvilinear shape. It’s now quite different from the original pattern but it gave me a way in when I needed it.

paper patterns for new and old piece

Thirdly, matching color on hand-dyed fabric is a difficult proposition. I keep pretty good notes about my dyeing and luckily had written down how I had dyed the fabric for the original piece but it was still hard. How strong was the original dye bath? How long did it batch? These are the kind of details that make a huge difference in the results.

The original fabrics were both silk blends. I had dyed them black which came out a purpley gray because of the silk, then pole-wrapped them, discharged them in a thiourea dioxide bath, and over-dyed them rust orange. All of my new dyeing for the commission turned out much darker and more saturated. It looked fine but was different.

newly dyed fabrics

And that gets to the most difficult thing about doing this commission. I wasn’t just making something that pleased my eye but was constantly second-guessing myself. Did it work with the other piece? Did it match enough but not too much? Would they like it?

Knowing what I know now would I still do a commission? Yes, probably, but I would have a much better idea of the challenges involved at the start. And I would definitely ask for more money.

the finished pieces

When choosing fabrics for the new series, Traces, I kept the colorway limited. I want these pieces to read as individual elements but also work together as a whole.

I began my selection process by bringing a bunch of fabrics to the studio from home where I store them. I keep them sorted by technique but this time I sorted them by color. I decided to work with greens and browns (big surprise) and laid all the fabrics that I like out on my work table. From there I played with the colors, using the negative shape frames from my patterns as a way to isolate the fabrics and look at them together.

Here are some photos of the selection process.

final fabric choices

“A trace is, simply, a line etched across a plane. A feature like the famous Natchez Trace (featured in Eudora Welty novels) is, then, a line in the dirt etched across the land. . . . Traces are old game trails that have evolved into human footpaths. They are ancient thoroughfares first cut by hooves and claws, and followed by indigenous walkers.”

Luis Alberto Urrea
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape
Edited by Barry Lopez

I often find myself poring through this book when looking for a title for a new series. It’s an alphabetical list of vocabulary used to characterize the landscape. The short essays are written by forty-five writers, from journalists to novelists. It’s enjoyable to flip through and read about the landscape, its unique forms and its history. Goat prairie, hassock, infant stream, pahoehoe, racetrack valley all are described by writers including Jon Krakauer, Barbara Kingsolver, and William Kittridge.

This series was hard to title. It feels like both a zeroing in on the details and widening out to the panoramas of geography. It’s funny how these little pieces can come to be imbued with so much meaning. In the photo above, you can see their beginnings, edges painted and waiting for the next step. They look like the outlines of states to me, with their combinations of straight-edges and meandering lines; some edges cut by rivers and some superimposed by the straight lines of map makers who want to create order out of chaos.

The title Trace plays on all these meanings. It is both a verb and a noun. It is a path of desire. It is a hint of something left behind. It is the act of going over a line with a pencil. All of these and more. It works.

drawing lots of thumbnails

I’ve begun working on a series of small works. After completing the Stone Mothers I was kind of burned out with working big. I’ve wanted to do some small “sketches” and have been really interested in working with multiples. So, I’ve been working up these small squares. The squares are three-dimensional but not very deep. I’m mounting them on panels give them more visual heft.

I’m thinking of them as details, like the detail photos of my work. The square format emphasizes that for me, cropping in on the work. I also like the way it plays off the format of quilt squares. I’d like to see them hung in compositions, much like a modular quilt.

It took me a few days to figure out the patterns. There’s not been much square about my work up until now. The first couple of patterns were quite frustrating. But there’s nothing like multiples to help you figure things out.

There’s been a lot of learning in the this new, as yet unnamed, series. The work is about the details, the up close look at what I’m doing. And it’s also about a sense of discovery, about finding pleasure in the work itself. I don’t ever want to get to the place where the work isn’t feeding me. It’s important for me to take some time to play, to not take everything so seriously. Otherwise, Cameron is not going to be much fun to hang out with.

picks to be turned into full size drawings

editing down the full size drawings

Making patterns in paper

glueing up the first piece to a panel

the finished first piece

I found these placemats on clearance at a kitchen store before the holidays and snapped them up for their surface design possibilities. They are flexible, durable, and vinyl so can be washed and reused. Normally I don’t like to use premade designs, like commercial stamps for example, but in this case it seems like the patterns would be pretty removed from their original purpose. Plus they were just really cool.

I finally got a chance to play with them in the dye studio. I was very interested to use them for the work I’ve been developing, using them for both positive and negative marks. I started by setting up breakdown screens using both mats as resists. I got some very nice prints with the screens although I wished, in retrospect, that I had used some different dye colors.

placemat and print from breakdown screen

prints from breakdown screen

I had an aha! moment when I was looking at a breakdown screen that still had dye on it after I had taken all the prints I wanted to make. Sometimes the screens break down quickly but, depending on the thickness of the print paste, others can make dozens of prints. It always seems like such a shame to just wash those potential prints down the drain. The brainstorm came when I realized I could lay soda soaked fabric on top of the screen, brayer it down, and get a positive image from the screen to complement the prints from the silk screen. The prints turned out a little fuzzy, most likely because the fabric was wet, but I think there’s some interesting potential there worth more exploration.

breakdown screen with dye left on it

fabric printed with dye left on the screen

I also used the placemats as stencils and applied thickened dye through them. I’ve started printing onto some less than successful fabrics that I pulled out when I organized my storage. I might as well experiment on them because I’m not going to use them as they are. Maybe they’ll turn into something fantastic and maybe they won’t, but I’ve got nothing to lose with them as they are.

green dye printed using placemat as a stencil