Adding to my textural journal

Working in my studio the last few days, I have been setting up some new artwork. My first choice now is to go to my textural journal after I have printed several surfaces and working out the layer order in my journal. I make changes until I get what I want from the materials I am using. I now have the start of 5 new pieces, it will be sometime before they are all finished. I am working on the makeup of the layers such as dying canvas and crocheting hemp, also getting the twigs in one of the pieces tied with hemp. When the digital layers aren’t exactly what I want then I reprint what would work better.

I did finish a piece that I will add to the blog by the end of the week. It is made with digital prints on canvas, organdy, and tyvec. Tied fiberglass screen and twigs along with cheesecloth, one of my art quilts cut up and recycled into the composition. It is about an inch in thickness. Later for that one. Here I have several pages from my textural journal with trial makings for other work.

Forest Surfaces 5

Tane Mahuta is a kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest on the northern island of New Zealand. It isn’t just a kauri tree, it is the most massive kauri known standing today. The age of Tane Mahuta is between 1250 - 2500 years old. Forest Surfaces 5 is from a photograph I took of the top of the tree in 2005 while I visited the forest. Waipoua Forest is an unusual and incredible place and has been inspiring my work for the past 3 years. The barks of the kauri trees are luscious to see.

Forest Surfaces 5 is 29” x 19” and made up of layers that are bound together with florist wire and attached to hardware cloth. There are 5 digital surfaces in the layers.

Layers from top to bottom:
*Digitally manipulated photograph printed on lutradur that has been slightly heat distressed
*Digitally manipulated photograph printed on white matte paper
*Digitally manipulated photograph printed on tyvec, heat pressed to warp slightly
*Dyed burlap glued to the back of the tyvec
*Twigs
*Heavy weight hemp crocheted into 2” squares
*Digitally manipulated photograph printed on both sides of rice paper
*Twigs
*Dyed Cheesecloth
*Dyed canvas
*Digitally manipulated photograph printed on dyed canvas

The detail of the piece was photographed with a white background so that you could see the inner detail.

I will be finishing another small piece this week and have 2 more in the works. Thanks for looking.

Forest Surfaces 4

This piece is 16” x 15”. It is composed of 10 layers that are bound by wire and the attached to black hardware cloth..

From top to bottom here is the make up of the various layers:
Digital print on airiel paper
Dyed canvas
Twigs
Crocheted jute twinr
Digital print on both sides of canvas
Twigs
Dyed cheesecloth
Dyed canvas
Dyed Pimatex cotton
Digital print on matte paper
The layers are by steel dark annealed wire. The print came from a photograph I took in the Waipoui Forest on the North Island of New Zealand. The picture was manipulated in Photoshop before printing.

Textural Journal

It has been over a month since I last wrote. I have been working on some of the items I needed to make for my daughters wedding and then also creating things for the new baby. Won’t be long now, the wedding is in a month and the baby will be here when she is ready. Either late April or early May.

The pictures here are of my new textural journal. The idea around this journal comes from something an art professor told me over 20 years ago. In creating 100 drawings the first 25 are things you have already done, the second 25 are things you have already seen, the third 25 are things you have already thought about and the last 25 are new ideas. Since I don’t draw I am working on textures in small creations. Well I am not doing 100 at one time, but I wanted to give this idea a go. On March 1st I made a new journal in which I hand dyed and digitally printed 140 lb watercolor paper and made a dyed canvas cover. I then started doing 365 small compositions knowing that as I work through all these little texture ideas I will find some that I would like to do in larger work. The journal pages are around 9” x 10”.

Every day I work one small composition that corresponds with my forest surfaces work. When I skip a day I catch up. Today I am right on schedule, but last week I was behind 10. Since I started the journal I have created 3 new pieces that are new ideas for me. In the next week I will publish the 3 pieces and what I used to create each of them. For today I have published a few pages from the inside of the journal and the outside cover with a side look. The journal is quickly getting very wide. Some of the compositions are thick and most are more 3d then I usually work. In the midst of this yummy journal are some great ideas for a installation corner I will be creating in one of my upcoming shows.

So here is a look at my new textural journal. Stay tuned for the work that has been initiated from this project.