Pattern & Content: Day 1

It was a good first day. Even though Kerr is going over all of the basic stuff about the techniques, I still feel like I'm picking up where I left off. I don't know if it's this place or just luck of the draw, but all of my classmates seem to be well developed artists with a fair amount of dye experience. It's making for a fast-paced class, which is good.

Today we started with a warm-up exercise by doing a 4' x 4' charcoal drawing. We even had a jazz accompaniment! The photo below shows my drawing. After some initial gestures we were to think about the inspirational object that we brought with us. My object was a pair of scissors, which is were the oval shapes (the handles) and hexagonal shapes (the nut that holds the blades together) come from.

We did some sample deconstructed prints in the afternoon, and ended the day with prep work for tomorrow. We had to pick an image of a work of art from which to develop a color palette and design concept to explore tomorrow. I started with a painting, then related it to the hex nut image from the morning, and worked up the draft design below.

The plan for tomorrow is to explore this image in as many different ways as possible. It promises to be challenging but very good.

Greetings from Ohio

After a 6+ hour drive through wind and rain, over one massive hill after another, I'm here in Pickerington, OH--about 15 miles east of Columbus. This week I'm spending 5 days at the Nancy Crow Timber Frame Barn taking Kerr Grabowski's class, "Merging Pattern & Content" (http://nancycrow.com/HTML/barngrabowski.html).

Although class doesn't officially start until 9AM tomorrow, we had the option to go to the barn this afternoon to get our workspaces setup and meet the other students. There was a lovely dinner at 6, followed by a full round of introductions. I was surprised to hear how many people have been to the barn before and how many of my fellow classmates have taken classes before with Kerr. I think a number of folks are treating this as retreat time and not just learning time. I guess I am too. It's going to be great.

My very first show!

What do you know? I got into my very first quilt show. Remember a while back I said that I entered my art quilt called "Teach Us to Pray" in the SAQA Amazing Art Quilts Show? Well, today's post contained the usual junk and catalogs plus a thin little envelope with my handwriting on the outside. Dan figure out what it was before I did, even though I've been waiting for it. I gave it a quick squeeze, felt the square outline of a slide inside, and decided that it was almost certainly a rejection.

It was not! Much to my surprise the first sentence started with the word "Congratulations." I don't know what to make of this. I'm heartened, grateful, and surprised. The juror (Julia Pfaff) selected 39 pieces from a field of 122 entries. That's pretty good. The show runs in Staunton, VA Aug 29 - Oct 5 then goes on to the Mid-Atlantic Fiber Arts Festival 2009 in Hampton, VA. I got two for one.

This is just a great send-off as I prepare to leave for Ohio tomorrow morning for my week with Kerr. Five whole days of studio time--what joy.

Watch the blog this week. If things go as planned, I'm going to save a little energy for blogging each night.

Homework for Kerr, part 2

Read my last post before you read this one. It will save me the trouble of explaining what this "homework" thing is all about. The second part of the assignment is to prepare a written critical assessment of my work--not so much a critique, but an analysis of recurring theme, colors, techniques, etc. So, here goes. A critical look of my work

Color

• orange
• green
• blue
• brown
• tan
• black
• love purple, but I've avoided it because I've had trouble mixing it successfully (that's getting better since Carol's class)

Technique

• Mostly working with thickened dye
• Direct application with foam brush
• Doing a lot more painting than I expected. Maybe I'm part painter?
• Screened dye--often printing with the full area of the screen, with or without paper or wax masking on the screen. I like the hard square edges.
• Extruded dye to create messy lines. The syringe is a little hard to control and forces me to work fast, which is good.
• Layered application of dye (some technical problems here that need to be worked out)
• Discharge paste screened on with a mask to remove background dye (love to do this with leaves)
• Drawing with discharge paste in an syringe or a squeeze bottle

Form, shape, and pattern

• Almost nothing figurative or textual
• Lines and grids
• Round and square spirals
• Circles--regular and irregular
• Leaves
• Dots
• Splatters
• Question: what are my cultural motifs?

Texture, rhythm, descriptive words

• Happy
• Layered
• Depth
• Rough
• Messy

Scale

• Patterns tend to be 10" X 10" or smaller
• Overall composition size tends to be about 24-36" wide X 45" tall
• It's time to do a full width 2-yard piece
• Maybe I need a BIG screen

Fiber

• Cotton--some Kona, but lately Test 400M Print Cloth
• Silk--Habotai is my favorite
• Rayon--takes dye really well and great for whole cloth quilting

Embellishment and quilting

• Running stitch to outline specific shapes or add detail
• Fabric paint--outlining shapes with dots
• Fabric markers to add detail or outline
• Reverse applique
• Machine embroidery
• Yarn appliqued by machine--free motion or with an embroidery machine
• Quilting tends to be dense--stipple, lines, or grids, almost all free motion (I don't do feathers!)
• Starting to do some echo quilting

Homework for Kerr's workshop

I'm leaving one week from tomorrow for Ohio to spend a week at the Nancy Crow Timber Frame Barn studying with Kerr Grabowski. I've been looking forward to this workshop since I made my last drive down Thunder Mountain Road in a billowing cloud of dust. That vivid scene was on the last day of the workshop that I took with Kerr and Rayna Gillman last summer at Peter's Valley. Come to think of it, I started this blog just a couple of days later, after reading Rayna's blog and being inspired to give it a try. I'm a little conflicted (but only a very little) about taking a second workshop from the same person. There are some really great teachers out there. Shouldn't I be looking for breadth instead of depth? I guess I'm more of a depth kind of guy when you get right down to it. Anyway, I don't expect this workshop to be a repetition of last summer. I'm going with the expectation of refining an developing some of my skills, getting answers to some of my "what am I doing wrong here" questions, making great cloth, meeting interesting people, and working in the Barn. It's going to be great. I'm already wishing that it was a 2-week workshop, but my boss would have a fit so it's just as well that it's one week.

So, Kerr sent an e-mail yesterday to the whole class giving us a homework assignment. Can you imagine?! Like I don't have enough to d0? : )

First we need to bring "2 objects that you feel strongly about" and these are to be used for inspiration--sketching, collage, etc.

Second, we are to do a critical assessment of our work, looking for common themes, characteristics, etc.

2 Meaningful Objects This shouldn't be hard, but it is. I've done several laps around the house and come up empty handed (but I did do a little cleaning as I went!). I've come to a sort of weired realization: it's the house and it's contents as a whole about which I feel strongly. I have real trouble picking up a piece of pottery or some other object and saying, "I wouldn't want to live without this." Everything I see or touch has a shared memory attached to it. It's something that Dan and I bought together, built together, some connection. This is an amazing and emotional realization.

Now, I still need two things to take with me...I feel strongly about the cats, but Hillary and Isabella would not enjoy the trip. Isabella had a panic attack the last time she was in the car for more than 5 minutes.

I've settled on two odd things, but they are full of meaning. The first is a journal from a couple of years ago. It includes the beginning of my discernment period (the one I'm still working through), the time of my first serious fiber workshop (Jane Dunnewold), and my conscious, verbal acceptance of myself as an artist. Other volumes and this blog have followed, but this first volume represents the whole.

The second object is a pair of Gingher shears. They were a Christmas gift from Dan more than 10 years ago. They weren't terribly expensive, but something I had hesitated to buy for myself. It wasn't a big thing, but one that was incredibly thoughtful. I opened this gift in front of most of his family and sat there in silence with tears welling up in my eyes. I think it was the validation and support that was so moving.

That's enough of that for now. The critical assessment part of the assignment is going to have to wait for the next posting.

Good new that I forgot to share

I got a note from Darcy Love (ArtCloth Network) that she added me to the group's membership page on the website (http://www.artclothnetwork.com/members.html). It's not a big deal. It's just a thumbnail that links to my personal website. And yet, it is a bit of a big deal. It's a little piece of me out there in the great wide world, and in excellent company to boot. I was tickled when I got Darcy's e-mail, but sharing the news got lost in all of the vacation preparations.

So what next? Well, having been back in the office of just one week, I'm now thinking ahead to May 18th when I'll be driving to Ohio to spend a week with Kerr Grabowski at Nancy Crow. I've been looking forward to this workshop for a year. It's going to be great. I just wish that all of my travel wasn't happening back-to-back. I was away for a week in March, another in April, and now this thing in May. I feel like I'm packing suitcase every time a turn around.

Vacation pics

You probably don't need to see these, but just in case...

The view from the beach. This is what we spent most of the week looking at.

By contract, this is what a lot of the rest of the island looks like, at least on the French side. Yes that's livestock in the front yard.

Happy, rested, and well fed on our last night.

Back in the saddle

Vacation was lovely. As expected, we spent a great deal of time at the beach on cushy chaise lounges under a big umbrella staring at the water. That was interrupted by occasional swimming, eating, drinking, and reading. It was just what we both needed. We had lovely weather except for a little bit of rain near the end of the week. We ate very well, if very expensively. Perhaps we can just accept it as a given that where people are speaking French they are probably also preparing good food.

The trip back was rather bad--American Airlines, delays, long lines, missed connections, etc. We left the hotel at 1 PM Saturday and my head it the pillow (in my own bed, thank God) at 330 AM on Sunday. Total frying time was 4.5 hours; you do the math. Even after all that, I was tremendously grateful that we did not get stuck in San Juan as most of our fellow travelers did.

Would I go back? Yes. The resort was lovely, situated high on a hill overlooking Anse Marcel. We had free beach privileges at the resort down below.

Lessons learned? Avoid American Airlines. In the Caribbean: travel on weekdays; avoid flying through San Juan; expect all flights (especially on the weekend) to be intentionally oversold and delayed; arrive at the airport not one minute less than 2 hours before your flight; allow 1-2 hours for immigration, baggage claim, and customs. Never go to any airport without food in your carry-on luggage. The sandwiches that I made before we left the hotel saved us.

So, I'll post a couple of pictures over the weekend. It wasn't a very good photo vacation for some reason. For now, I'm back a work and very grateful to have had some time away. I think I was a lot more burnt out than I thought given how much better I feel now (even after 3+ days of work).

I survived

...but it wasn't pretty. Actually, the work was a huge success--all the servers successfully upgraded, more than 130 happy users, and no impact on the publishing schedule. Now, the upgrade team may be a different story. I think we're all pretty much wrung out and, quite frankly, fed up with management bureaucracy. It's kind of ironic that if you do your job well then a VP or Director will tell you it's because he/she rode your you-know-what beforehand. If we hadn't done the job as well as we did then we'd be getting miserably abused now. Either way there seems to be abuse; the only difference is before or after. I don't know. This is just more complaining. I've got a really bad case of bad attitude right now.

St. Martin will cure that. No, I'm not building a shrine in the back yard. (Off the top of my head I can't even recall who St. Martin was). What I mean is that Dan and I are going to the Caribbean for a week. Much needed, much appreciated, and much anticipated. Packing starts at the end of the week and we fly out early Sunday morning. We're staying in a smallish boutique resort east of Grand Case on the French side of the island. I'm going to laze in the sun, practice my so-so high school French, eat, shop, and try to ignore how painfully low the dollar is against the euro.

St. Martin is about 200 km ESE of St. Thomas. The weather should be delightful this time of year. I don't know if there'll be another posting between now and the trip. If not, you can at least expect vacation pictures when we return!

This is not my idea of fun

It's Friday night about 9 PM. I should be having a martini with Dan in some nice outdoor cafe, but I'm not. I should be at home sprawled on the sofa with a cat sleeping on my chest, but I'm not. Instead, I'm at work supervising a big computer system upgrade (software spread across several servers and about 150 workstations).

I got home at 10:30 last night and I'd love to be home that early tonight. I don't know if that's going to happen. Regardless of when we finish tonight, we'll be back here by 9 AM tomorrow morning to finish whatever doesn't get done tonight and do several hours of testing.

Not much chance that there'll be any art cloth created this weekend. If it sounds like I'm pouting that's because I am. This is just not soul-feeding work.

Work in progress from last weekend

I got some work done last weekend. This one's three overprinted layers of monoprinting. I'm not sure that the picture does it justice. I think it's more interesting in person. It's certainly not done, but seems to have the potential to turn into something.

The photos below show a piece that I started a couple of weeks ago and cast aside because it was too ugly to deal with. I decided that this would be a good test subject for Carol Soderland's overprinting formula. In a nutshell, if you can find a reasonable approximation of the color that you are overdying, then you can easily determine which colors you can produce by overdying AND the correct dye formula to produce the selected target color.

And here it is on the print table with freezer paper resist in place. Once I got the big white spirals in place I actually liked it a little better.

And here's the next stage after overdying and adding some linear detail with dye in a syringe. I think I came pretty close to what I wanted. Since I took this picture I've started stitching around the spirals. We'll just have to see what this turns into.

Newsy update

I'm a bit behind with the blog, but it's just the same old excuse: too busy. Last week I was getting over my killer cold and then there was church Thursday - Sunday. Somewhere in there--I think it was Saturday afternoon--I managed to finish assembling my color sample book. And of course there's always work and EfM to keep me occupied. This week's reading was about process theology, which is fascinating stuff, but not something that I can really explain (and probably not something that your really want to hear about).

I'm a little confounded that I haven't been able to find any studio time, but at least I've got some good ideas rattling around in my head. There's one piece that I started a couple of weeks ago that is currently too ugly to show. I'm hoping to begin working back into this weekend using Carol's color formulas to try to get it closer to where I wanted it to be in the first place. I'll have to see how things go. I'm already booked to spend Saturday morning with some folks from the church search committee analyzing survey results.

I got two wonderful packages in the mail today. The first was slides of my "Teach Us to Pray" quilt that I need for a juried show submission. I used a website called iprintfromhome.com. You upload your images and a couple of days later they send you mounted slides for a very reasonable price. I got 2 copies of 2 images shipped for about $10. Something worth considering if you find yourself needing slides made from your digital images.

The second package was a complete surprise from Candy, a woman who was in the color workshop with me. She works in a lab and sent me some great surplus equipment for measuring dye concentrate. The studio is really starting to look a little like a high school chem lab. Thanks Candy!!

Color Mixing: Day 5

It's Monday and I'm back home. I took the day off from work to try to nurse myself back to health, and I promise that I'll rest after I finish this post, but I do want to finish the story of the workshop.

The last day was a whirlwind: color play, evaluation of dyed cloth from Saturday, and taping up color gradation samples.

I'm 1/3 of the way through assembling my sample book. This is what the pages look like. I think I've got 42 more pages to go. Each one of those squares is 1" x 1".

The next three shots are sample yardage that I dyed during class. They are all low water immersion with wet soda-soaked cotton (Test 400M). The two purple pieces are part of an exercise in manipulating dye concentration. The multicolored piece is a "scrunch and pour" in which you apply dye concentrate directly to the fabric as it's being scrunched into a bucket. I love all of these pieces, but they need to sit for a while before I decide what to do with them or to them.

Finally, here's a picture of the whole class. I think this is the first time that I've gotten one of these. After a workshop I always regret not taking more pictures, but especially not having pictures of the group. I'm in the back row, 2nd from the left. You can't really tell that I'm high on cold medicine, can you?

And...my last words about Carol's workshop. If you are a dyer and you are interested in having better control over the colors that you produce or just want to understand how primaries can be mixed to produce a gamut beyond what you thought possible, then TAKE THIS WORKSHOP. You'll work hard, but you'll go home with valuable tools and information.

Color Mixing: Day 4

This has to be a short post. It was a great workshop day, but I'm not feeling much better than I was this morning--still sick, maybe sicker. I did everything that I could think of to avoid giving this to anyone else. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's activities, but I'm also looking forward to getting home to my own bed.

I continue to be amazed by the color tools that Carol has developed. Today we had several hours of lecture, evaluated some things that we dyed yesterday, worked on our sample books, started a new dye bath, and dyed a value progression of an individual hue.

Here's a picture of my progression drying on the table. The light values are pretty amazing. The darkest values are toned using the complementary color. Carol's numerical system allows you to find the complement of any color. Pretty amazing.

Here's Carol holding up a sample of her hand-dyed cloth.

Color Mixing: Day 3

Actually, as I write this it's about 630 AM on Day 4 (Saturday). I've slept all I can, such as it was. So, here I am in Fall River for this much-anticipated workshop and I'm sick, sick, sick. I think it's just a really bad cold, but I feel like complete poo. To put it in perspective, if I was at home and this was a week day, I would be calling in sick without a moment's hesitation. But, I'm not at home and I can't blow off 20% of a workshop--not this one, that's for sure. Besides, spending a day in bed at the lovely Hampton Inn Westport might just make me feel worse. Yesterday I popped DayQuil gel caps every 4 hours and soldiered on. I'm afraid today might be a little uglier.

OK, enough of my sob story. Yesterday was a 12-hour day with two short breaks for meals. I continue to be amazed with the system that Carol has put together and with her level of organization. When I finish assembling this sample book I'm going to have a terrific resource--one that I never would have taken the time to figure out and compile all on my own. Yesterday we had several hours of lecture and demo, cut up our dyed fabric into strips and organized them, then began assembling the first the pages of our sample books. We also did one low-water immersion dye bath with 1 yard of cotton. I've made the most beautiful mottled purple. Pics tonight I hope.

Here's a picture of some of the pressed and sorted cloth at 830 AM yesterday.

Here's a picture of the my first sample book page, which I think I finished around 830 PM last night.

By the time that I finish this book, I will have stuck down 3,087 little 1" squares. Between this first page and several other pages that contain portions of this series made from duplicate squares, I have so far stuck down 147 squares--that's about 4.8%.

What does all that mean? I means I've got a busy day ahead of me. The alarm just went off. Time for a shower, some more DayQuil, and a lot of coffee. Please take a moment to pray for me to be delivered quickly from the grip this virus, which has arrived at a most inopportune time.

Color Mixing: Day 2

It was another busy day. Today's picture is not particularly interesting. My camera battery died just when I was getting ready to snap a shot of the huge piles of fully dyed 1,000+ ten inch squares. What you see in this picture is a room full of folks all working very hard.

We all worked from 8:30 AM until 6:30 PM and there wasn't much down time along the way. By the time we left the studio, all of individual squares had been washed, pressed, and sorted, ready for cutting tomorrow.

We've got another long day tomorrow, but we get to start working on yardage--the fun stuff!

Color mixing: Day 1

Yes, it really is going to be over 1,000 swatches! I've seen the swatch book that's going to result from all this work and it's pretty amazing. Carol is organized beyond anything that I've seen in quite a while, but she's organized without being uptight. That's nice. So, we do two straight days of dying/overdying--Yellow, Red, Blue--in regular, bright, and earth tone families. Then I gather that there's going to be quite a good bit of ironing, cutting, and assembling of pages.

This picture picture tells the tale: graduated cylinders, buckets, and spoons. We're dying even solid colors so every bucket needs to be stirred for about 90 minutes. I'm actually a little sore. (Not enough gym time).

OK, off to dinner with a big group. One of our class, Michelle, is local and she's leading a bunch of us to an out-of-the-way Asian place. Funny thing...I met Michelle the last time I was at ProChem for a workshop...nice to reconnect.

Installed at Hampton Inn, Fall River

I'm in Fall River, MA this week for Carol Soderlund's course "Color Mixing for Dyers" at Pro Chem. I'm looking forward to the results of the class (hopefully better color control), but I'm wondering what it's going to be like to create 1,000 color samples in 5 days--at least that's what the course description promises.

The supply list is 1 1/2 pages of office supplies--notebooks, sheet protectors, stapler, tape dispenser, etc.--and odd things like empty soda bottles, party cups, and plastic spoons. It's such a pile of stuff that I ended up buying a cheap laundry bag to carry it all. I found it at--gasp--Walmart where I was buying 2 liter bottles of soda to pour down the drain. I certainly wasn't going to try to carry all that on Southwest.

Here's a picture. The full bad is only slightly smaller than the hotel nightstand! And I'm going to distill all of this down into 1 notebook of swatches?

Rayna sighting

I attended my very first guild meeting this morning--Potomac Craftsmen Guild. I've never belonged to a guild before so I'm still in the easing-into-it phase, trying to figure out how I'll fit in. It seems like lots of knitters and weavers, but there are definitely quilters and dyers in the bunch. The special guest for today was Rayna Gillman herself.

Here we are together. I think it's the only picture I have of us together. At least she looks good. Me, well, I'm happy to have a picture of the two of us.

Rayna gave her "Oops" lecture about making art out of mistakes/accidents. It definitely fits with my mode of working. If I threw away everything I made that went awry then I would have very little to show for all of the time and effort. I think there's a great deal to be said for sticking with a difficult piece until you get it right. Though I have to admit that there does come a time when enough is enough, and it's better for a piece to go in the trash can than back into the dye pot.

Shameless self-promotion

I love my blog. It's given me a great way to ease into having a web presence and I've met some really nice folks as a result. But a blog and a website are different things with different purposes. After a bit of fiddling I've put together my first website dedicated to my art. It's a place where people can see the type of work that I do and learn a little about me without having to read months of blog postings. In theory it might be a sales tool at some point in the future, but that's still a distant glimmer on the horizon.

Take a look and let me know what you think. I always welcome suggestions.

http://www.russlittlefiberartist.net