finding fun in the weirdest places

went on a *field trip* at work yesterday. the mission was to go check out a couple of warehouses that someone has in a little town near here. the deal is we clean them out, sell the stuff, and keep the profits... and i have to admit, it was just the tiniest smidge hard to stay focused on the actual task at hand when confronted with all of the fun stuff in there. yes, there was rusty stuff everywhere. =) i got sidetracked left and right when coming upon nice little piles of things that just screamed ART MATERIALS!!! hell... we could certainly make some $ from selling this stuff... unfortunately, i think much of it could well come from me!!

as we all know, just about anything in multiples = art supplies....

well i came across a box of these....

if i am remembering right, these are some sort of brick ties... (ok so i'm a little vague on that....) i grabbed a handful and brought them home.. and have been generating all kinds of ideas of what to do with them... in the meantime, i thought i'd play with the image a bit in photoshop and print out the results to make a screen with... so here is the image after fiddling with it..

at the same time, i had rusted a blank silk tie that i had come across before leaving for cleveland. loved the way it came out. but ms can't leave well enough alone just had to tweak it a little bit.... and a little bit more... so i printed over it...

and ick... i think i ruined it...

well....maybe it's not as awful as i

thought it was. since it's too late to turn back now, i figure i just as soon keep going with it and layer a little more printing over it. no, i haven't done it yet.. but i'm thinking what better thing to print on a tie than a tie???

stay tuned...

no telling what it will look like tomorrow.. if nothing else i will have another good example of what NOT to do!

more snippets from the week

here are a few of the things i worked on there..

this is an example of *extreme printing*.. i did quite a few pieces on the lovely palm bark that was laying around just begging to be used.. i've coated them with matte medium since i've gotten home and look forward to using them in some future work:

the dry studio space was located in what is their dance studio,

so we had design mirrors.. kidn of weird working while looking at yourself!

we also had a thermofax machine there so i spent the first day making

screens that i hadn't had time to make before i left... the next day i printed another scroll piece... i didn't have a piece of rusted fabric that looked appropriate so i printed it on white pfd and will rust it after the fact.

also started a rust composition, which was left lanquishing after i started playing with the various embellishers that were there. i did have one more rust compostion up, that is now hanging on my design wall here..

and here are a few of the things i did with the embellisher... not only is it fun, but i have so many fabrics and fibers that are perfect for this process.. i absolutely have got to get one of these.

and this one, below, is still a work in progress

yippee!

a new piece!

it's been incubating for a while. i've had these fabrics floating around the studio for at least 2-3 years. i've taken them out, put them back. taken them out, put them back. ad infinitum. until a few days ago...
and i actually really like what it's evolved into - which is not even close to the vaque notion i had in my head before i started. so i''ll walk you through a few steps. what did we do before digital cameras?

step 1. a random assortment .... i twirled the composition around and around in photoshop, looking for which side wanted to be up... and played with rearranging fabrics.. and ended up taking most of them down, as i wanted it to have a more vertical look....




so here is step 2.

it's moving closer to what i want...there are definate vertical lines happening. now i see that i need to repeat the vertical

and take out the horizontal bit of striped rust fabric. i also added the small strips of *stripes* which are actually pieced strips recut and resewn...i love the discharged circles (still vertical) and the rust shapes on the left hand side, which are starting to look like, what else??? - fences.

so now it's a matter of refining...

and here is the next step. i'm pretty happy with it overall, but not wild about the middle section... so still thinking..

in the meantime, once i got to this stage, it told me what it

was and finally had a name...which helped to decide where to go next with it..

i like the screen of the tree in the center, but it's way too small.

so back to photoshop to resize that image, and make a few modifications....

i printed it out, cut around some of the white areas, pinned it to the design wall, and took another couple of photos... played around a bit more and eliminated the bulk of the white background till i had it where i wanted it....and did the deed...

and now it's ready to be stitched.. and frankly i can't wait to start

on it! i can actually see exactly what i want to do to it....

(tho it remains to be seen if what i want to do ends up being

what it wants... you know how those pieces start getting

demanding!)

and it's name:

echo ( as of now.. i reserve the

right to change my mind!)