Yosemite National Park Tessellations

Yosemite was on the agenda last week. One of the most beautiful places in the world, Yosemite National Park is located in Northern California in the High Sierras and contains nearly 1200 miles. I first visited the park in 2005 for an artist residency and have been back every year since.

This year we visited familiar places and enjoyed some that were new to us. Mariposa grove is my favorite. The majestic trees are incredible. We hiked to the upper grove (which by the way is where the best of the trees call home) at 8 AM and were magically alone to enjoy the awesome environment. We spent 3 hours hiking and only when we were back at the bottom of the lower grove did we see any other hikers.


Since returning with over 2000 photographs, I am exploring some natural tessellations and then creating some of my own. One of the places in Yosemite that has a base for natural tessellations is Mirror Lake. This quiet, engaging lake is a short hike and well worth it. It is a great place to visit in all the seasons and enjoy the changes.






Yosemite Falls never ceases to amaze. No matter what point of view you see it is a massive powerful falls. At this time of year, there is no major crashing of ice as it melts and flows, but the falls is impressive just the same.



Enjoy these tessellations from my recent visit to Yosemite. These images are available on KathyAnne Art. Visit the entire Yosemite Collection or click the link and you will see the start of these images at the bottom of the page. Browse to the next few pages for the rest. Members get unlimited downloads with their membership. Non-members can download images on a pay per image basis.

Digitally Printed Beverage Can Installation

Creating with a vision in mind….. Recently while contemplating printing surfaces, I had this thought about creating a forest installation with recycled beverage cans. My biggest problem was trying to assess where this idea was going. So I slept on it and got a picture on some ideas to proceed. Printing and working with the can’s surface is the start.

The cans do present some difficulties. Pretty easy to print a few at a time, but printing 100’s is a little different. The cans need to be cut, flattened, sanded, washed, pre-coated, attached to carrier sheets, printed, dried, sprayed, dried, coated with MSA Varnish and one more time dried.

Once those tasks are finished for 100 cans, days have passed and to keep the process going 100 cans are in the works in different stages of the process. It is quite an undertaking and the printing itself is a little scary. It took me several days to come up with the best way to print the right amount of cans on a carrier sheet that would go through the printer with no crunching or scraping sounds. Any kind of sound is not to be ignored and the printing process has to be monitored at all times to make sure there are no problems. Immediate response to my printer is imperative to keep it running and printing.

Now it remains to construct the pieces. For one of the configurations in the installation it takes one can to piece 15 to 17 inches. I have finished 150 cans to start the creation of the installation.

The surface is enchanting and it will be sometime to get enough pieces together to see what has to be done. There is excitement as I watch it go together, see what can be depicted with this unique surface. The forests reflect light in amazing ways and I can see that is the surface of the cans. It will be entirely interesting to go forward from here.

The pictures here show various stages of the process so far. Tomorrow at 4am my husband and I will be leaving for Yosemite. The few days we will spend in the Maripose Grove will enhance my sense of how this installation will enfold. I will continue to post on the unfolding.

Portland Oregon Workshops

On June 26th I will be teaching a couple of workshops in Portland Oregon at ARTFIBERFEST 2009.  Right now, ARTFIBERFEST is doing a one day drop in rate so anyone can take one workshop without staying for the whole time of the venue.  This means that if you are in or around the Portland area, you could take a one day workshop that would cover the basics of digital printing on fabric.  

Digital Textile Journal is the title of the workshop and we will be learning about how to print on fabric and then use the prints in collage work for journal.  Since it is a one day workshop we will use fabrics that have already been pre-coated for printing.  The workshop participants will get complete instructions on how to coat and print fabrics.  We will use my Epson PM 260 Dash to print 4" x 6" images to be used in the projects.

This is a great way to get an introduction to digital printing on fabrics.  If you are interested in taking advantage of the special drop in rate for one workshop ($160) please email Teesha Moore.  

My other workshop is available the same way.  You can check out one of my older blog posts from January 11th of this year.  This post gives the details of both my workshops at ARTFIBERFEST 2009 - Cover it Funky and Digital Textile Journal

Join me at ARTFIBERFEST for one of my workshops, or come for the entire retreat and have a great weekend!!!