Gessoed Fingers

Have you ever tried typing with gesso on your fingers?  I have a sort of gesso obsession.  I paint with it, I scribble in it, I cover stuff with it.  A comfort in times of artistic block.  A multi-purpose cure to many evils.  I think I look at it the way my husband, a good southern boy, looks at duct-tape.  In any event, it’s all over my fingers right now and it’s an unpleasant typing sensation.

I’m using the gesso in my work in Beth Bricker’s fabric book.  I’ve been diligently working on my pages for over a month and am down to some final details and the final sewing, but my studio is in such a hash that I couldn’t find enough space to lay the pages out, so i’m working on my (oil cloth covered) dining room table.

I really don’t sew anymore — my machine gets more use on paper or canvas than on fabric these days, but these pages are lots of fun and Beth is a gem for having this idea!  For the fronts of my pages, I used a transparency image sewn over a painted block of (what else?) gesso that I’ve stamped over.

And, I’ve had some help from an unusual source.  We now have collage cats, real collage cats, living in our house.  We had an utterly devastating experience, that I still don’t really want to talk about, involving Ellie’s darling birthday kitten and a congenital defect that we weren’t told about when we purchased her.  Long story short, earlier this week my wonderful husband, a man who has never seen a puppy or kitten he didn’t like, refused to choose between kittens as a "replacement" (I was still to devastated to do much more than go look and acknowledge that they were really cute) and decided we would get the little girl for ellie and the little boy would be our anniversary present to each other.  So we are now the proud parents of two adorable, enchanting Maine Coon Cats, Harry & Hermione, who are winning our hearts and helping to ease the pain of losing our wonderful kitten Amy.  Harry & Hermione are fascinated by art and have been only too happy to help out with a random cat paw print here and there.