CONFLUENCE Exhibition

It's a bit early to be announcing the show but I just can't wait.    There will be about 40 pieces: art quilts, framed textiles/mixed media and prints by the five artists who comprise Confluence.   All the work focuses on issues of WATER.   This will be the fourth iteration of the show in the last couple of years and it just keeps getting better and better as new work is added.   Please consider coming to the opening on September 26 if you are anywhere near Redondo Beach, CA!  Or call to schedule a visit before November 16.

More Page Experiments

I was going to rust, organic dye, bury, etc., some more fabrics to get a really beat up surface appropriate for the abandoned pages.   Then I got an inspiration:  disperse dye.   Haven't done it in years.   I tried it on both synthetics and silk.   I like both but think it will be more permanent on the synthetics and more easily ripped up, burned and otherwise abused!  I liked the color on both fabrics and now will test the silk for permanence.

 

 

 

Texturizers #3

This is my contribution to the third set of the round robin exchange I'm involved with which includes 8 fiber artists.   Focus on TEXTURE.  I don't post the work of others so this is all I can display, but we are hoping for an exhibit when the entire 64 pieces are complete next year.  Stay tuned!

 

 

More Experiments

Here are 2 more results of the techniques I've been working with to create pages/ashes of old religious texts left to moulder when their readers were imprisoned, persecuted for their beliefs.  The series is beginning to come together.  I'm fine tuning the techniques and have cut several barbed wire screens to overlay.   The next iteration is going to be a bigger.

3D Shibori

How much fun is this???   Dye transfer, wrapping and steaming.   Here they are before and after binding.

Burnt Page

Ink transfer onto release paper lead to serendipitous bleed and inspired a bit of heat around the edges.  This piece is too fragile to use in a resolved piece, but interesting and evocative.  It also gave me yet another idea to try.

Another Page Experiment

A completely different technique and completely different look.  Aged paper and torn bindings.   Stained beyond use.   Modern materials put to use telling an ancient story.

New Work

After almost 4 years working on CHROMA where the 8 panels are 80" by 50" this new series is on a much smaller, more intimate and manageable scale.    I'm looking at books, time, wear, continuity and return.   Much dyeing is going on at FiberFly Studios in preparation.  Very exciting to be starting anew and watch the creation unfold.   This is the first experimental piece, a collage, no stitching yet.

 

Palme d'Or

Hollywood/Cannes - the bejeweled palm trees and glittering stars draw adoration to their balmy/palmy magical oases of the imagination.

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Dye Workshop at FiberFly Studios

Eight fabric lovers came to dye.   We spent the day ice dyeing, doing low immersion dyeing and painting with thickened dye.  We played with some resist techniques:  clothes pins, rubber bands, folding and stitching.    Lots of the fabric went home to be batched overnight so I haven't seen all the results, but here are pix of attendees busily creating!   So much FUN!!

Away in Berlin

Just got back from an excellent visit to Stockholm, Dresden and Berlin.   Here are a few pix.   The first two are of bits of The Wall which are on display mid city Berlin, and the others are just shots of the Brandenburg Gate at dusk.

 

UNHINGED!!

This is the second piece in a round robin I'm participating in which is focusing on texture - both visual and literal.   This is my response to a sweet piece by Connie Tiegel with a welcoming gate.   Being something of a contrarian, I jumped right in by rusting heavy Pellon for the gate, stitching it to a shiboried background, then creating the atmosphere with all kinds of wonderful layers of semitransparent fabrics, stringy stuff and scads of beads.  In spite of the few embroidered flowers, this garden may not be quite as welcoming!

Gyre #11

This could be the last in the Gyre series which addresses the Garbage Patches in our oceans in which vast unmeasurable quantities of plastic swirl, are broken down into tiny beads and consumed by all manor of sea life.  They never disappear from the planet.  They are insidious detritus of our consumer society and our need to toss and replace items in our daily lives.   I have collected household plastics which come to me, iced dyed the fabric, then hand stitched the spinning imagery underlying the bright plastic forms I then appliqued in place.  The piece is 42" x  44"

Dye Workshop!!

There are still a couple of places left.

Here are samples of the techniques we will be doing: