Category: Art

I'm a day behind telling you about Art & Soul, but there's a lot
going on here!  So here's a quick catch up from Friday and Stephanie Rubiano's Bedazzling Butterflies class.

It was such a great class that even my workstation looked pretty!

Stephanie was a fabulous and very kind teacher.  Her science-geek background made the class extra fun. The results were all stunningly beautiful.  This is Beth's piece, almost finished.

And here is Andi's.

And finally, mine.

It was a great class and I would definitely take anything Stephanie was teaching in the future!  I'm off to class, but will write about my teaching debut yesterday, in Dyeing to Collage, which was lots of fun, due to a fabulous bunch of students.

Yesterday was my first day of classes at Art & Soul.  I had Sally Jean's Soldering for Virgins class.  I bumped into Sally on the elevator going doing in the morning — she was as nice as she could be from the get go and she and her husband Brad (his name tag read "Mr. Sally Jean") taught a fabulous class.

I am no longer scared of my soldering iron.  Flux is my friend.

My soldering was far from perfect, but I really enjoyed it.  I can see myself making little charms and babble to use in fabric books and assemblages.  This was a great class and I'm so glad I finally got to take it!  This is my favorite charm.

My sweet roommate Kathy Wasilewski stayed up late with me the night before making teeny-tiny collages to go under the equally small pieces of glass.  We had a a great time and I ended up with some wonderful little pieces.

Majesty is one of Kathy's little collages, and I just love it.  The strange looking thing on the left is a vintage button on top of a little snip of one of my silk ribbons.

I sat with the nicest table of women in this class!  It was one of those delightful groups were everyone shared everything and helped each other along.  I wish I could just take them along to every class with me! This is Chaundra, who was as in love with her soldering iron as I was by the end of the class.

Today I'm off to Bedazzling Butterflies.  We're making assemblage boxes using pictures and butterfly wings.  And then tonight we have the annual diva get together.  I'm really looking forward to it and hoping all my girlfriends will like the little presents I put together for them.

I thought I would share some of the fabric I've been working on for Art & Soul with y'all.  I've been working with some muslin and silk for the last few days, and the results have been a lot of fun.  (For you knitters who are here looking for my progress on Juliet, this fabric will be cut up to use in fabric collage, but I'm starting to think some of these pieces would make wonderful linings for knit purses.)

This is a blue piece, done in a sort-of-shibori, style of dyeing I have been obsessed with for the past year.  This is a natural (unbleached) cotton muslin, that is perfect for this process.

\

Here is a pink piece done using a modification of the same technique.

And this is my favorite, so far, of the silk pieces, done using my crackle dye technique.

This is a close up inset of the same piece.

This is the perfect time of year for fabric dyeing in Alabama.  The days are cool, with beautiful blue skies and blooming cherry trees and wisteria.  It makes me wish I could take everything outside and dye all afternoon.

I know from experience that it is true that children tend to surpass their parents.  My oldest child is smarter than I am (and is kind enough to remind my of that fact frequently — the joys of living with a 17 year old).  So it should come as no surprise that the real artist in the family is my nine year old.  I thought I would share a recent drawing of hers that was published in a local newspaper article on fantasy dinosaurs.

I’m not sure if you will be able to read the small print here.  It says:  Trendy Triceratops.  It is totally addicted to candy and is the mother of fashion.  Sigh.  That’s my girl.

This week’s hostess on the Gothic Arches art challenge is my friend Karen Owens, so I knew I would have to play.  Karen’s theme is transitions, which seemed to put my muse into overdrive.

For me, transitions seem to be all about family lately.  Watching four children grow up, especially the oldest two who are in the process of sprouting their adult wings, is a pretty engrossing transitional process for any mother.  This arch is about a not-so-mythical person who seems to dominate my art, not always as explicitly as here though, where the piece is named for "King Baby" who in one way or another has ruled my world for the last 17 1/2 years.  My youngest is at the end of his babyhood, which is an enormous transition in my life.

Five has always seemed like a banner age to me.  It’s the end of babyhood, the start of school and reading, and really one of my favorite transitions that children go through.  Good Egg Five is dedicated to this transition, which my youngest is going through this year.

Mary and Enid is all about the relationship between siblings.  It’s hard when older siblings go away, and also hard to be the only girl, especially with teenage brothers.  This arch is really about wish fulfillment and Ellie’s desire to have a sister, to go along with all those brothers.

This is Ellie Gets Her Wings, because, well, she has.  It is incredible how grown up she is and how sensitive, thoughtful, playful, and spiteful can all be mixed in together.  I really enjoy watching her grow up.  I’m not sure if you can see the detail in the scan, but the inverted postage at the bottom is some pretty Russian stamps of ballerinas that came to me on a parcel years ago, and that I’ve saved for just the right project.  Ellie has the heart of a ballerina, and although I have mixed emotions about her pursuing it seriously, her work with a professional company last winter was a huge part of her transition to growing up.

This is my last arch (I warned you all that Karen’s theme made me sort of prolific), determined girl.  One wish I have for all of my children, no matter what they choose to do is that the will know their own minds, follow their own dreams passionately, and feel like they have the ability to be the person they want to be, not little cookie cutter versions of what they are "supposed to be."  I hope their transition to adulthood will involve the freedom of flying to be themselves.

Beth Bricker is one of my favorite artists.  Her work is always very beautiful and evocative.  So it was a real treat when her book for the pock-et-ful round robin showed up in my mailbox! She has made wonderful canvas pages, with grommets so she can bind them all with ribbon when they return home.

I had this most unlike me vision of what I wanted to do — something simple and clean, sort of like sketching, but in collage form.  I have no idea if that will make sense to anyone other than me, and in many ways, the piece I did doesn’t comport with that vision, but it was spontaneous and fun.  I enjoyed working in this book so much!

I started by sewing an old piece of ledger paper to the canvas, and then painting the outline of a tree on it.  The leaves are tiny little scraps of fabric that I cut into leaves and glued on, with a fabric glue.  On the side is a muslin banner that reads, "many different things grow there, but the best of these of love," which I think as I look at it now, must have been a subconscious play on the passage in Corinthians that is often read at weddings, as I’ve been thinking about a friend’s upcoming wedding all week.  It’s really very simple.  Very little background work, which is unusual for me.  I wanted the tree to grow out of a nest of grass, so I painted some silk and ran stitches across its length so I could gather it.  After gluing the silk to the canvas, I trimmed bits away to make its shape vaguely nest-like.

The back is simple as well.

I really love how it came out.  I used a little Moon Shadow Mist Spray on the back, to antique the page a bit more.  I used fabric paint on the pocket to get the words and  vintage buttons below.  The pocket is filled very simply  with a tiny vintage cabinet card (Beth does wonderful things with cabinet cards), an old flash card with the word friend on it, and some of my hand-dyed silk ribbon.  I’m hoping the ribbon will come in handy when she binds the book.

Now I’m off to make Babaghanoush for international pot luck dinner night at my oldest child’s school.  The Judge is off napping.  It’s one of those wonderful, early spring days, where a nap outdoors sounds just perfect, so I’m hoping the ghanoush goes together easily!