Long Time No Blogging! I wish I were better at adding things here, but alas, like so many of us, Time is My Nemesis. We've gone through a beautiful spring and summer, and now we are  into autumn!  This is a long overdue catchup for sure....The colors are really coming along this past week. This photo to the left is from the annual Kent Museum art exhibit in Kent's Corner, VT. The colors were just starting to turn a bit when we got there last week. The show is always amazing, so make a point to check it out sometime. Every Sept-Oct the show lasts the whole month...This year's show is called ReVision....
 
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As always, my studio work is slow but steady. Recently I just finished up two larger works, and have been making progress on lots of other pieces that are all in various stages. 

​This piece below is called 'Clearing' (photo credit Paul Rogers). It is 30"h x 48"w, and was made with textured acrylic paint on canvas, my hand-dyed silk gauze, more paint and graphite, then layers of silk, a little color pencil, and a lot of hand stitching. The stitching really catches the light from certain angles, causing an effect that I just love...

This next piece below is also 30"w x 48"h (photo credit Paul Rogers). I'm still deciding on a title, so right now 'Untitled'. It was made with hemp/linen fabric that went through multiple stages of shibori-dying and color removal, then cut and pieced, also with selected warp areas removed. It was stretched over painted canvas, with color pencil, acrylic paint, and hand stitching. The subtle lines from the shibori stitchings make for a really active ground pattern. I love the presence of this piece, and really need to get it a title!   

Below are some of the smaller 8"x8" pieces that are in progress. They are all cut from two of the Ikat panels that I'd worked on awhile back...These particular panels ended up not as interesting as they were/too even-toned. So I'd cut them down to make some multiples, and then did some color removal to each of them. Then I've been layering up the fabrics behind them, and doing some hand stitching. They are coming along as a really nice grouping, I'm enjoying them so much! In the end, I think there will be twelve of them. (please excuse any poor photos, I'm not the best at that!)

Here's a bunch of other studio shots of different pieces in progress...Please click on the gallery to be able to read their captions to learn some tidbit of info on technique or backstory....And of course, please get in touch if you're curious to learn more!

Okay, well there are a few more in progress but I gotta get off this computer already! You can see why I don't post too often, ha!

Hope everyone enjoys this fleeting season, and thank you for reading. Get in touch if you have questions!

In the previous blog post, there's a photo of small woven pieces in progress. They were cut down from a couple panels from the Ikat Warp project that's been brewing over time. I should have posted this image above for context....It shows the almost-full length of the woven yardage. Only one panel was cut from the length (that's the second one hanging on the right side of image).

Anyway, the smaller pieces in the previous post were cut from the two sections that are in the middle of the warp here-just as the length turns left / goes horizontal in the photo...

and below here is an image of the two panels I think came out the most successful overall, the contrast of the ikat stands out most in them and the 'island' shape is almost a mirror image on them...

I'm not sure how these will finish up...for now it interests me that they pick up colors that are also in the mixed media textile painting that's been in progress (shown on the wall behind it). Hopefully when they are all finished, they will relate to each other...not just in color, but because of the 'island' shape/theme that I've been working with for a bit.... 

So just wanted to post this - will be trying to be more frequent here. We'll see how that goes!

Till then, here's a shot of the park up the hill from the other weekend - the snow is melting more this weekend I hope. The sun is out strongly this morning, so it's a safe bet :)

This shot was a little while back, but it was pretty magical circle-sun-rainbow phenomena - where's the pot of gold?

SO it was winter, hibernation, soups, stitching, snow, ice, cold - and now we're on the other end of it. Melting. piles of dirty snow/ice, patches of land, mud season, birds chirping here and there, moss looking brighter. 

Usually I love winter, even though I can often suffer from seasonal blues. The later part of the winter found me with a couple of colds and an injured wrist and elbow/arm (wrist from falling on ice, elbow/arm from something else). So there was a good month+ that I really couldn't do much artwork, which is always a bummer. For folks without body pains it's hard to describe how it can affect everything. It's really draining and distracting. But luckily it's been So. Much. Better. ...And even though it's not 100% back to what it was, I'll take it.  :) 

Here's some images of works in progress in the studio....Read the captions to see what's what!

The top bundle is in the midst of receiving some hand stitching. Then I plan to do more machine stitching before dyeing and taking those all out to see what markings happen in the dye process. There's an old weaving in there, layers of cotton and silk, and even some paper just to see what might happen. In the past I had papers where the color would transfer, but this is different paper so that may not work...We'll see eventually!

The middle photos are of a bundle that I took the color out of. I'm still digesting how they came out. Truthfully, I either did the thiox bath too strong, or kept it in for too long - or both! But I think I should have stopped the process sooner. There's not enough contrast / darker areas. SO that's a disappointment, because it takes hours and hours to rip out all the stitches. But I think there's a couple pieces of silk that seem to have potential so it might not all be a total loss. 

The bottom bundle there are in early stages. There's cotton, hemp and linen layered together, and I did the hand-stitched area. I plan on layering more fabrics together, stitching more, and then dyeing them. Very exciting!

The top two pieces are one of the painted pieces that have dyed silk and will have hand stitching. When I was injured, stitching through these types of pieces was way too uncomfortable, so this smaller piece and another piece that's larger have not received enough attention at all lately. This past week I was able to get a little done, but have to really get focus. I've got so many pieces in different stages it can be not a good thing sometimes....

The bottom two images - Remember the ikat warp/weaving?  Over the holidays I cut the 9-10 yards down to separate panels. Among those, there were two panels that were pretty flat/relatively uninteresting, so I thought maybe they'd be better if I cut them down into smaller pieces and took the color out.  I'll do another blog post to show more of those other panels at some point...

These small pieces will wrap over 8" x 8" canvases. The black you see the right photo is just some interfacing that I put on the edges to help them not unravel since the weaving is fairly open/loose, and when I cut them they don't have their selvedge anymore.  So the black is  just there to help the weaving stay stable while I work on deciding the colors to go behind them and whether they will get any added dyeing or stitching.  They'll be wrapped around when finished and won't show. (I don't picture then hanging that close together either - it's just the size of my table and/or pin board - they're pretty tight there! )

It is interesting to see how the color from behind changes how each piece looks....

This next photo below shows another piece that's been brewing over time. The fabric is a hemp-linen that I stitched and dyed a couple times, then cut apart and put back together. Then I ripped a bunch of warp threads out to have some more open areas in the bottom half. It's stretched over a painted canvas, so that yellow color peeking through those areas is from that. I've been working some color pencil into some areas, here and there, and deciding what else it needs. It's another 48"w x 30" size piece.

There's more to share but it feels like there's a lot to see in this already! I'll save it for another post, and will try to include additional progress shots of the pieces here, or others that were left out this time. 

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is enjoying their early spring-time! It feels like a long way till real spring up here in Vermont, but we're getting there. One day at a time...

Till next time, Wallace says 'get off your computers and take a nap or go outside' people!