Building C is a busy place. A whole team of workers are there framing and hanging drywall. Progress is definitely being made! We’re still figuring out the best way to get my sink installed. I’m trying not to obsess over details and hoping that October 15th is still the day I get the keys.
Category Archives: Work in Progress
That Sinking Feeling
Okay, every dye studio needs a sink and did I find a beauty! I found a used, double bay, restaurant style, stainless steel sink in great condition on Craig’s List. I just had to get out to North Bend with a friend and truck to pick it up.
Next step is getting it installed. Unfortunately, even though my new studio is very close to the water supply in the building, apparently it is not so simple to get it hooked up. It’s nothing that can’t be solved by throwing money at it, but my budget is blown already if I can’t find a lower price than the first one I got. I’ve got another meeting today to see if there’s a simpler, and cheaper, workable solution. Here’s hoping!
A New Studio Space!
I just signed a lease on a new studio space! It doesn’t look like much yet but I have many plans to make it into a usable space for working and teaching.
First come the walls and two windows that will be put in by the building manager by October 15th. From there it’s mudding and taping the drywall, adding an stainless steel sink, lighting, a big design wall, and a 14-foot-long printing table.
I can only imagine what it will be like to have all that wall space and how it will affect my work. It’s a big project but I’m planning on being open for the Ballard Art Walk on November 9th!
More to come!
Change is Good?
My big news, which I’ve actually known since February, is that I’m going to move my studio. My studio-mates who own the building I’ve been in for over 10 years are building studios at their home and selling the studio. For a while my husband and I were looking at buying the building and keeping it as artist studios. But, unfortunately, the numbers just didn’t pencil out and it would have been a money-losing venture. It just doesn’t make financial sense. We found out right before we left for Burning Man that it wasn’t going to work out. I was sad but at least it was settled after seven months of being in limbo.
I’ve been pretty anxious about moving my studio because I don’t do change well. I’m relearning that I need a lot of security to be creative. So much of what I’m able to do is because my wonderful husband is there to support me–financially, sure, but also emotionally. Without going in to detail, I had a pretty difficult home life as a kid. Even though I’ve done my therapy and don’t like to dwell on the past, it’s still part of who I am. And having my safe and secure little studio taken away has shaken me up and taken me back to that little girl growing up without stability or control.
It’s a difficult place to make art from. The good thing is that I’ve been able to recognize these connections to my past and that takes away some of the anxiety. Going to Burning Man was really good for me, too. It’s was inspiring to see large-scale and ambitious artworks come to fruition in that harsh and unforgiving environment. I was also inspired by the open hearts and minds of the community of Burners. And the desert gave me the mental space to put things into perspective.
I came back to Seattle motivated to find a new space. It feels good to take control of my environment. To refine what it is that I need and want in a space to create. And to have Faith that it’s out there. When I would talk to friends about what was happening they often said things like, “Change is good,” and, “It’s all happening for a reason,” and other annoying West Coast platitudes. Yes, all that is true but it didn’t help me feel any better at the time.
Now I’m taking this time of change to open up my work, to expand my process, to experiment and mess around, to explore without the pressure of deadlines or a show coming up. I don’t have to be perfect and neither does my work. I do have Faith, now, that this change is positive, an opportunity to grow as an artist and as a person, to push myself past the safety zone. I can brave the center of the Char Wash, an art installation at Burning Man, with flame throwers spinning around me and not get burned.
Perhaps my next space will be a perfect place to work. Or maybe not. But whichever way, I can always make a change.
It’s All Part of the Process
dyed fabrics batching on the deck
Last week I dyed half the fabric I’ll be working with for an installation in Bellevue, Washington. I don’t have a date or location for the installation yet so I’m working on faith here, like always I suppose. This Summer is a good time to get the dyeing done and ready to go. Plus, knowing the way these things work, I may end up with only a week or two’s notice before the install date.
doing the laundry
picking out the stitches
Although the technique I’m working with is simple, there’s a lot of time involved. First I sew each 18-inch-by-12-foot-long strip into a tube. I then scrunch the tubes onto PVC pipes and apply the dyes. After the dye sets I wash and dry them, remove all the stitching, and iron them out. Even though I do them in batches, it takes well over an hour for each strip. When you multiply that by 26 strips, it adds up. None of it is brain surgery, it just takes time.
Luckily, this Summer I have time. I don’t really have any deadlines. I’m in shows but it’s all existing work so I’m just packing it up, delivering it, or picking it up. I’m enjoying these sunny days and the long evening hours with my friends and family.
Change and hard work are on the horizon. For now, I’m content to be picking out stitches, ironing, gardening, relaxing, and soaking up all the Vitamin D I can before the pace picks up again this Fall.
before and after ironing
I’m Back in Seattle Again
55 yards of silk torn into strips
I’m back to work, for a little while anyway, before I head off for my next trip. Today’s task was turning a bolt of silk into 26 twelve-foot-by-18-inch strips for the installation I’ll be doing in Bellevue. Next step is to sew the strips into tubes so that I can scrunch them on to pvc pipe for a shibori pattern.
My intern, Jesse, is coming to help me at the studio tomorrow. We’ll be dyeing half of the fabric with three colors of blue. I’ve done a number of tests to check the colors and techniques but it’s always a leap of faith to dye so much fabric at once.
Wish me luck!
samples washed and ironed
Of Weeds and Websites
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the computer this week doing a much needed clean up of my website. It’s nothing radical, just updating and reorganizing so that the navigation is a easier and information is more accessible. You can’t see most of it quite yet, it’s all happening behind the curtain, but it should be all spiffy by early next week.
I’ve been working with a consultant to help me figure out my short and long range goals for my art career. Reorganizing my thinking led to a middle-of-the-night realization that I should also reorganize my website to make the work I’m interested in promoting more visible. I’m also going to the SDA Conference in San Antonio next week and it will be good to have everything up to date before then. Nothing gets me motivated like a deadline!
Yesterday, after many hours at the computer I needed to get away from the screen but I also had to leave in 45 minutes to pick up my daughter. A perfect amount of time to do a little weeding.
weeds
We have a small (4000 sq. foot) corner lot but it’s all garden. Back when my kids were little we took out all the grass both inside and outside the fence and planted it. It was pretty easy to keep up while the kids were playing or napping. Now, with a full-time art career, it’s harder. This Spring the garden is lush, overgrown, and full of weeds. I often get compliments on how beautiful it is from people walking by, but all I can see is how much work there is to be done. I can’t see the garden for the weeds. I’ve been trying to fit in an hour at a time, a couple times a week to work on it. Otherwise it’s too overwhelming.
It’s kind of like the website. Sometimes you’ve just got to put in the time to prune things back, move some plants around, and do a thorough weeding.
Yesterday I took some photos of the garden. Seeing it through the camera lens gives me just enough distance to see what the neighbors see. And it really is beautiful.
The Dresses, part III
These dresses have me in thrall. I’m fascinated by them as part of a process and also as objects. They hold meaning by their existence, their former use and age, their preciousness and fragility. They are poignant and they are beautiful.
one of the dresses on the screen before I take it off for printing
Here are some photos from my last printing session with them. I’m enjoying how they are changing, as they absorb dye, are washed, and are dyed again.
When I think and write about my work the overarching theme is change over time, whether glacial or within our lifetimes. Even though this work is vastly different from what I’ve been doing for the past few years, I think it fits within my body of work. For now, I’m not worrying about it too much. I’m exploring and following my passion.
another dress on a screen
the dress silhouetted from the other side of the screen
the dresses after I take them off the screens
the screens ready to print
printing a screen
breakdown print 1
print 2
print 3
The Dresses
I got a message yesterday that I show I had been invited to participate in this Fall was not happening after all. That is, I was “disinvited” to participate. It stung, all right, but it’s also a relief in a way. The work I was going to make for the show was feeling like a diversion from what I’m starting to get at in the studio.
I’m continuing to explore mark making using the antique baby dresses that were gifted to me. I’m not sure where this work is leading me but it feels important to follow. I was talking with the studio mates yesterday about it and Anna was encouraging me to immerse myself in it without attaching to the finished product. Her advice was that the work itself would inform me.
I’m drawn to this work: printing and looking. Sometimes I just hang up a piece of fabric and look at it. It’s a kind of meditation, I guess. My mind feels suspended, not thinking but just observing and being with it.
So it’s time to lick my wounds, let go of expectation, and get back to the studio where my work is waiting for me.
print on velvet
print on silk broadcloth
The Press
My studio-mate and good friend, Anna McKee, is a print maker and painter. She has a large and beautiful press in her studio and has offered to let me use it many times over the years. Since I’m in the midst of exploring new ways of printing on fabric, it seemed like a good time to take her up on her offer.
baby dresses after dyeing process
I’ve been working with absorbant materials for a while as a way of creating texture on breakdown screens. I then use those textured materials to print as well, creating both “positive” and “negative” imagery. Anna and her husband and studio-mate, Paul E. McKee, gave me some antique baby clothes from his family to use in the dye studio. I used those dresses to set up some breakdown screens last week (see previous blog post).
I usually take prints directly from the dyed fabrics by wrapping them in soda soaked fabric and letting them batch. I decided to try running them through the printing press to see how it would be different. I got some interesting results. Overall, the prints were lighter in color but had more detail. This make sense. The color would be lighter because the fabric was in contact with the dye for less time: less dye = less color. The crisper detail makes sense because the rollers of the press apply so much more even pressure than I can with my hands or a brayer.
print taken from the dress with the press
detail of print taken from dress
Now I wonder, why did I wait so long to take advantage of this amazing tool? Anyway, the prints are lovely and I look forward to more experimentation.
(and I didn’t win the Audience Choice spot in the Art Walk Awards but thanks for all your votes!)
print from breakdown screen
detail of print from breakdown screen