Forest Surfaces 8

Finished this new forest surfaces piece yesterday. It is the beginning of the work that I will have in a show at La Jolla Fiber Arts opening on July 28, 2008. Lots to do between now and then.

Forest Surfaces 8 is 20” x 24” and has been assembled on hardware cloth with floral wire. The layers consist of:

*A digital print on tyvec that has been heat distressed. The tyvec is printed on both sides.
*A digital print on lutradur
*Jute twine knotted with twigs
*Aluminum screen
*Colored hemp that is crocheted
*A digital print on both sides of Fabriano Artistico hot pressed watercolor paper 140 LB

Forest Surfaces 7 is lying on my table in pieces, this is the redo from a piece called Yosemite Falls finished at the end of last year. Stay tuned for how that turns out, hopefully this afternoon, I will decide on the final configuration, but then again, maybe not☺

JULY WORKSHOP REMINDER

On the 28th, 29th and 30th of July, I will be teaching about printing specialty surfaces on an ink jet printer. The class is titled Creating Designs on Textiles and specialty paper from digital prints. We will cover the A to Z of printing on many surfaces. We will be working with lutradur, tyvec, organza fabric, canvas, watercolor paper that has been previously dyed, a substrate we will make from gel media and cheesecloth, pima tex cotton and poplin. Think that covers most of them. In the 3 days of the class we will use inkAID to coat the various surfaces and learn how to get a quality print. We will use my Epson R2400 printer for the prints and the class will be a hands on class. After learning all the information from this workshop you will be able to use your inkjet printer and print digital images on a wide variety of surfaces. This will be a great class, so if you are going to be in the Flagstaff, Arizona area at the end of July, you can go to the website and sign up. You can also email me for more information. It does say that this is not a beginning workshop, but I will work with all levels of ability.

Above you see a few different surfaces. The first one is a print on cream mica wrinkle paper. The second pic is what the mica wrinkle looked like before printing. The third surface is one that I made from gel media, cheesecloth and inkAID. The forth is a metallic wrinkle paper. This surface was scratched a little before printing.All the surfaces were coated with some type of inkAID before printing.

In the Works

This is what I call the reincarnation of Yosemite Falls. That piece is in the post for Dec 3, 2007 entitled Yosemite Falls. I took it apart and tried some little textural samples from my textural journal and this is the beginning of putting together the pieces to finish what will be called Forest Surfaces 7. This is a first look and after some of my deadlines this week I hope to finish it by the end of May.

What aTreat!

I am staying with my daughter, helping her take care of our new grandchild. Ryan Sabrina came into our life on May 2, 2008 at 8 pounds 7 ounces, 21 inches. She is of course a little sweetie, but what grandma wouldn’t say that. It’s been 30 years since I had my last and having a baby to hold and rock to sleep is no less enjoyable. What a little miracle she is and how exciting to think of what she will see in her lifetime. Ryan is a great sleeper and after the first 2 nights home when she wasn’t sleeping at all, that is a wonderful thing. Right now she is on pretty much of a 4 hour eat and sleep schedule, how I wish mine had done that.

I am writing an article for Cloth Paper and Scissors with a deadline of June 1. The article will appear later this year, so I have lots to keep me busy in between caring for baby. At the same time I am reworking the art from Yosemite Falls I took apart.

On the 13th of May I leave for Omaha for my other daughters wedding. I will post pictures of the family and more artwork after that.

Enjoy!

Forest Surfaces 6

As I work the studies from my textural journal I am experimenting with a variety of fibers and surfaces. Forest Surfaces 6 (7" x 7") started from another composition recently completed on Yosemite Falls. I took that piece apart entirely to rework it, I just didn't like it. That artwork appeared in another post on December 3, 2007. Currently I am reworking other parts of that same artwork.

Expanding the surfaces I am working with is inspiring. Next year I will be teaching a workshop in printing on uncommon surfaces with an ink jet printer, at the Surface Design Association Conference. More on that soon……

Forest Surfaces is composed of several layers:
Twigs are seen on the top, they have been tied into strips of fiberglass screen. The digital prints are on the following surfaces- canvas, organdy,tyvec and lutradur distressed, with dyed canvas and dyed cheesecloth mixed in.

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.

Forest Surfaces 3

I’ve been really busy – new happenings! I will be teaching a 5 week workshop in Surface Design at Yavapai College in Prescott, fall term 2008. We will work with dyes and then digital surface design. The class will meet on Tues and Thurs nights at 5:30 – 8:15. My intention is to teach basic techniques and allow students to push a technique to see where it may lead. Should be a great class! Yavapai is a fabulous school and I am delighted to be teaching there.

As for this artwork, Forest Surfaces, ३ is my latest piece. It is composed of around 7 layers. These layers include a substrate I created from gel media, dyed cheesecloth and inkAID printed, printed tyvec that is sewn to crocheted steel wire and heat distressed, printed lace paper, printed dyed canvas, copper mesh and aluminum screen mesh. All the layers are attached together with steel wire and copper wire on copper mesh.