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Archive for the ‘Soy Wax Batik’ Category

Winding Down

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

spidersculpture

This is a photo of the spider sculpture on the front lawn of the Kemper Art Museum. One day, I caught this squirrel hanging out on the spider.

squirrelonspider

Most every one has departed from Kansas City. We have one week of post-conference workshops that start tomorrow. I will get latecomers checked in tomorrow morning. After that, I am taking Digital Photography for Textile Artists — a one day workshop. I will be packing up and heading home on Wednesday.

This morning, I heard a lecture by Jerry Bleem about Unconscious Advice for the Self-Conscious. His premise was that we often enter our studios with goals: the next show, the next sale, success. He asked us to see what we might learn from artists who ignore career, market and style. He proceeded to entertain us with the wonderful world of the self-taught and the visionary as he entertained us with slides of outsider artists. This is something that I often think about. Just doing the art for the sake of doing the art can be very fulfilling.

Next, I enjoyed a demo of Using Soy Wax Three Ways, by Jane Dunnewold.

janedunnewold

The three ways are stamping, folding and dipping and stenciling. Here is a piece with dye brushed on after stamping with a stamp cut from a sponge.

soywaxspongestamp

This is a piece that was dyed, soy waxed, discharged and then printed with a screen to get a very complex surface.

janesoywaxdischargeetc

I added some more photos of the wearable art to my Flickr.

Tomorrow is June 1 and the reveal of the latest Twelve X 12 reveal. The challenge was identity. Be sure to go over and see what we have done.

Waxing with Ginger

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

gingerworking.jpg

Ginger of Gingerfied came by yesterday and we decided to do some soy wax batiking. I heated up my new electric fry pan to melt the wax and hauled out my crate of objects for making marks with soy wax. I bought a bunch of antique potato mashers which I had not used.

You can see Ginger’s results on her blog (link above).

This fabric was originally discharged with turquoise dye added to the discharge paste. Here it is with soy wax marks.

waxeddischargefabric.jpg

I painted it with turquoise and purple paint. Here it is after heat setting and washing.

batikdischarge.jpg

It is ready for another layer of something – stamping or screen printing.

This was a rather ugly piece of orangish low immersion dyed cotton with soy wax marks..

waxedorangyfabric.jpg

Here it is after painting with turquoise paint – what an improvement.

paintedorangyfabric.jpg

This fabric is silk that I folded and dyed in a class with Jane Dunnewald. It has been languishing in my studio for over a year. It was a pinkish orange color. I didn’t get a photo with the was, but here it is after painting with red Setacolor silk. It has been heat set and washed. I was going for a subtle effect. It is now ready for another layer of something.

paintedbatiksilk.jpg

This is a piece of hand-dyed cotton with some gorgeous colors. I am going to mix up some dye for this so it is still sitting with the wax, waiting for me to figure out what color(s) to use.

waxedfabric.jpg

Ginger and I talked non-stop. We even had a lively theological discussion with Mr C at lunch.

After Ginger left, I ran up to Westmoreland to get my hair cut. Then Mr C and I went to Cha Cha Cha for some Mexican food before attending a lecture at Trinity by the pre-eminent biblical scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. They discussed the first Christmas which they have written about in a newly released book.

These men are proponents of what I call progressive Christianity. We first met Marcus when we lived in North Carolina. His wife, Maryanne, is a priest at Trinity and coordinates the Center for Spiritual Development. Mr C and I are very excited because we are going to the Holy Land with the three of them and 30 some other folks next May. That is, if Dumb and Dumber will cool their heels and not invade Iran and escalate the strife in the mid-east.

Today, I did some major work on the SDA site for the 2009 conference and babysat with M & M while their Mom and Dad got some work done. They have no school next week and Steph needed to get organized for Miles’ birthday party on Monday. We messed around in my studio and then after lunch we went to the library. They are such book kids and feel right at home in a library.