I haven’t posted for awhile. I’ve been at Nancy Crow’s Timber Barn studying with Claire Benn, and came back so inspired and full of ideas and color I’ve done almost nothing but work in the studio. I started some large pieces while at the Barn, challenging myself to take advantage of the large printing tables they have. This piece is 13 x 55, and was printed using a break down screenprinting method. The piece was twice this size but I cut it in half because I wanted a kind of totem pole vibe. This is the second half, which is now a second piece, slightly larger at 17×59:
I thought it would be interesting to quilt this one horizontally but I think I like the vertical quilting (on the first one) better.
The screen I used had text that I scribbled on it using a needle nose bottle. When I scraped the color on I deliberately let the fabric wrinkle, which made for some beautiful marks.
I’m also really happy about another piece I just finished:
This one is 17×57. It’s tentatively called “A Mother Who Loves Books,” because I was thinking of my mother when I made it, and the text is a poem from Let it Be a Dark Roux, “My Mother’s Perfume.” It’s linen, and I am loving how unfinished linen looks like on the edges. I’ve been working on a few more, unfinished, pieces using torn linen, and I can’t imagine tiring of the tearing for awhile. There’s something powerfully, almost…archaic about linen that’s unraveling a bit at the edges. This piece was originally twice this size horizontally but it felt too symmetrical, and Claire showed me a way of getting rid of the symmetry by manipulating the fabric–I cut off a bit of one side and folded the middle, leaving the pleat. There’s no batting, only a backing of black felt, which I allowed to project beyond the back. The marks in the middle are a kind of graffiti–my mother’s name and my name written over each other. I added texture to the fabric with a crumpled piece of parchment paper dipped very lightly in a couple different colors of thickened dye then again very lightly touched onto the fabric.
I’ve been working a lot with color these days; right now it’s shades of yellow, gold, curry, mustard, etc. This is one of the first ones that I experimented with different mixes. I think this one is about 7 Golden Yellow to 1 Hot Chocolate, maybe a touch of Rust Orange. What fun!
