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Archive for the ‘workshop’ Category

November Is Almost Over!

Monday, November 23rd, 2015

Truth be told, I am having a nice November. My SDA job has taken less time. I no longer have the Printed Fabric Bee to worry about. Portland has been beautiful this fall. Wednesday, Paige and her mom and dad are arriving to spend Thanksgiving with us. I am so happy about that. We will be going to Lisa’s for the dinner. She has a big dining room table. I am making the turkey, stuffing and a pumpkin pie. It will be nice having the whole core family here in Portland.

At Trinity, we are having our annual art show and sale for Thembanathi, a nonprofit project that provides early childhood development, education and community building in an area of rural South Africa devastated by HIV and the effects of segregation, poverty and unemployment. The bowl and necklace up there were my purchases. Here are some other examples.

There are also prints and photographs. The work is done by Zulu artisans and is really beautiful. The bowls and little animals are made from colorful covered copper telephone wire and the jewelry is mainly beads.

My art quilting friend, France Alford, turned 70 last month and she requested that all of her friends make and send a 6 inch block that was sandwiched and quilted. This is what I sent her. I finally got it finished this month.

I also finished this sweater and hat for a little girl baby. Her mother is a friend of my daughter Stephanie. Now I am starting another set for my hair stylist’s baby boy.

You know I am chilling when I am knitting.

Last week, I got to go back to the Seeing Nature exhibit at the Portland Art Museum for a docent tour with my local SAQA group. It was great to see it again with a docent. There was another interesting exhibit that was not quite installed when I was there last time. It was very intriguing. It is title Paradise.

The artist collaborative Fallen Fruit will explore Oregon’s paradisiacal backyard through the lens of Portland Art Museum’s permanent collection. Based in Los Angeles, artists David Allen Burns and Austin Young create site-specific projects using fruit to examine concepts of place, history, and issues of representation often addressing questions of public space.

I hope I can go back and study this a bit more.

For my master class this month, we were given our choice of 3 photos to simplify and interpret. I chose this one of Christo’s gates in Central Park.

I decided to distill it down to the simple shapes.

My mock up in fabric was thus:

I did not have satisfactory grays so I am waiting on some to arrive from Etsy and I also need to work on the orange bits. I cropped it so that it looks centered, but it is not.

So, I am not blogging as much, but I hope that I bring you something interesting when I do.

Posted in Art Dates, Family, knitting, My creations, workshop | 2 Comments »

Encaustic/Fiber Day Three

Thursday, August 6th, 2015

Are you tired of seeing this piece? Here is the final incarnation of what I was calling a hot mess. When I came into the classroom this morning, my first goal was to work on the pieces I had started and figure out how to finish them. I added more wax to this one to seal in the collaged materials, then scraped wax and added a bit more black. It was telling me it wasn’t finished. My tablemate had an electric encaustic tool that you could dip in wax and then make fine lines. I grabbed some cadmium red and borrowed the tool and added some graffiti and wow! I loved it as did the teacher.

This brown silk piece was needing something, too and there was too much wax medium which was obliterating some of the details. Lorraine demonstrated how to use a stencil on our work so I grabbed some sequin waste and added the turquoise dots and then threw some turquoise pigment in the other corner. The dotted area is finished off with a blending of brown Shiva paint stick. Then I went to work with the razor blade and the little mini-iron. Here is how it looks, now. Lorriane thinks it needs something else.

The cheesecloth piece was making me very happy after the wax had dried, but it needed a focal point. I picked up a magazine at the store last night and started looking for things I might collage in the work. I found several bits with varied stripes and I like what happened. Lorraine said this was her favorite of my work. Now that I know how to stencil with the wax, I can see how I could make little rectangles of color using pigmented wax. Just to recap, I started with a piece of hand-dyed cheesecloth that was rusted, adhered to the board and then branded before the final wax coating and collaging.

Lorraine encouraged us to do some drawing with wax to show the hand of the maker. I had an indigo dyed dryer sheet which I adhered to a board, covered with wax medium and then drew circles with the cadmium red.

I had an indigo pigment oil stick that I picked up at Dick Blick and rubbed the piece with it. I love what happened.

I had time to do one more piece. I just love the idea of using my unique fabric as a base for encaustic work so I grabbed a piece of shibori silk organza and adhered it to a board and went at it with a brush and wax. I also had some copper foil with me which I rubbed on to the piece.

I felt it needed a focal point so I started looking for things from the magazine. Not sure this is it – still needs some work.

I enjoyed this so much. I am feeling that I want to pursue encaustic as a second medium for my work. Hope I can make it work.

Posted in Encaustic, workshop | 1 Comment »

Encaustic/Fiber Day Two

Wednesday, August 5th, 2015

We started today by putting yesterdays pieces on the table and critiquing them for composition. She then showed us how adding elements can enhance or improve a composition. She thought the black lines on my piece were two big and that I should scrape them down. I collaged in piece of a net onion bag and some horsehair lines. I just love the look of the lines made by the horse hair. Almost everyone in the class loves this piece, but me not so much. I really like a simpler more serene composition. I think changing the orientation to the top one, helps.

Next on the agenda was learning to wrap a board with fabric. I had a nice piece of funky dyed silk that I think Kristin La Flamme might have given me. To wrap the fabric, you put a very light layer of wax on the board and then press the fabric on the board and smooth it and iron it with a Clover mini-iron to adhere it to the wax.

Then, the board edges and back are carefully waxed and the fabric is wrapped and the corners are trimmed and ironed down.

Next, we used a soldering iron like tool to burn marks into the top.

Here is this piece with more wax and some horsehair spirals. The wax was not completely dry so it is still opaque in areas.

Here is a board wrapped with the rusted cheesecloth fabric with marks burned into the surface.

I then covered it with wax and added some pigmented wax and some perle cotton. The wax was not dry on this when I left.

I am enjoying the class so much. I got to have a session with Lorriane and she looked at the encaustic I have done and my art quilt portfolio. She saw a definite relationship with how I approach art quilt composition and my encaustic compositions. That felt good.

Posted in Collage, Encaustic, My creations, workshop | 1 Comment »

This and That

Tuesday, August 4th, 2015

I promised an update on what has been going on in my life. First of all, lots of good things. Mr C and I got to take a preview ride on the new Orange light rail line that crosses the Willamette on a brand new bridge and goes out through our old neighborhood. We watched it all being built for the last few years. So that was fun.

My art quilt daughter, Kristin La Flamme and her family, have made the move to Portland. I am so excited to have them here. There worldly goods are not arriving until the end of this week and so I had them over for dinner in our air conditioned condo on a 100° plus day. The highlight was the homemade peach ice cream that I made.

We also had a double date with Lisa and Clay and saw the very funny Amy Schumer movie, Train Wreck.

Icing on the cake was a visit with my long time interwebs friend, Mary Manahan from Philadelphia, whose daughter is starting law school at Lewis and Clark.

My disappointment last week was not getting into the High Fiber Diet Making Our Mark show. It is the first time I have not had a piece in the annual show. Such a bummer. I was really despondent and had a crisis of confidence regarding my work. Here are thumbnails of the the two entries:

I will be interested to see the pieces that did make it in. Some were given alternate status, meaning they would get an airing when the venue was large enough. I’m sure glad I am not an alternate – that would tie up two pieces for over a year with no guarantee of being in an exhibit.

I did, get great news a couple of days ago. Ode to a Tree made it into the Oregon SAQA show and if I had a choice of shows to be in, it would be this one. They have quite a few venues lined up already. Here is a thumbnail of Ode to a Tree:

There was one other fail which I can’t discuss at this point. I might show the piece at some point.

The piece up at the top is almost finished for my July master class – late because I had a heck of a busy end of July. The theme was rhythm. I have to finish quilting it when I get home. I really like it

I am currently on the coast in Lincoln City in a cabin with Mr C and Scooter. We arrived last night.We are staying in a cabin at this funky motel on a cliff looking out over the Pacific Ocean.

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning.

Today was day one of a mixed media/encaustic/fiber workshop with Lorraine Glessner at the Sitka Art and Ecology Center. It was awesome. I felt so refreshed and relaxed and happy when I came back to the cabin tonight.

Here is Lorraine getting ready to lecture.

Our first task was to learn about how she rusts fabric and do some of our own. Here is a sample of her rusted silk.

Here is my salt water soaked fabric with rusty bits doing their thing. I have a piece of dyed cheese cloth that and a couple of pieces of cotton.

Here are some of the goodies that we are working with.

We started out just learning how to use the wax and to scrape it to expose layers. She made us get up and move to another persons piece and add a mark and some wax and we kept moving around the room. It was very liberating to leave our precious piece to others and to them work on someone else’s piece. I really liked what had happened to mine when I came back to it.

Here it is:

Here is how I left it tonight: (iPhone photo is a quite blurry, but I really love it.)

So, there we go. I have such a great life. I have to move on and not let one disappointment take me down.

Just took this at the end of our street.

Posted in Encaustic, High Fiber Diet, Juried Shows, This and that, workshop | 1 Comment »

Oops!

Thursday, May 28th, 2015

This mess is what I have been working on this week. I am trying to create the redwoods photo in fabric. I am doing the confetti collage method where you use bits of fabric and then cover it with tulle, pin it down and quilt the heck out of it. I am using a lot of my hand-dyed fabrics to get the special effects of sunlight through the giant trees. Here is the original photo.

I have set it up on my sewing table which is not quite the full size I need. I so miss my old work space at the big house, but I am adapting. I am using the ironing board for my cutting surface.

Last night was my last art quilt class. I didn’t get a lot of photos, but my students did such a super job. Last night. I gave them the opportunity to make a fiber art postcard. Here is my sample, not finished.

Here is a student postcard. I took my sewing machine in so that I could zigzag stitch the edges.

And here is am art quilt done by one of my teenagers. I love how she did the curvy landscape.

The stove in The Congdo is falling apart. It has cheap plastic parts that are cracking and breaking. To replace the parts. it will cost quite a bit so we decided to get a new slide in GE range. Can’t wait for it to get here.

So now you know why I have been a slacker blogger.

Posted in My creations, Trinity Arts, workshop | Comments Off on Oops!

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