Local Color

There is a new movie coming out about the artistic process. The preview moves me...

Its description reads "Local Color tells the story of a troubled teenager who seeks artistic advice from a cantankerous but world-renowned oil painter. Through the course of their time together, the young man learns how to see the world through an artist's eyes and the master learns to view life from innocence again. Based on real characters and incidents in the life of writer / director George Gallo, the film resonates with a poignancy and authenticity rarely seen in movies today."

Called Local Color, here is the movie's web site where you can read the synopsis, about the real artist who tells his story, and see the trailer. Click here: movie web site.

General release in theatres on November 7th, probably in the smaller art house theatres - keep an eye out for it!

Sherrill Kahn classes

I am excited to be extending my stay in Regina so that I can participate in three classes with Sherrill Kahn from California. These include : Painting Pizzazz, Creative Embellishments, and Creative Collage. The only problem is that I have had to pack an extra suitcase with all of the supplies!

Sherrill operates under the name "Impress Me Now" and her web site is www.impressmenow.com which you can look at to see her methodology and stamp line. Here is a picture of her art and the type of work she does. I am looking forward to the class and seeing what new 'playing' I'll come home to do afterwords!

Saskatchewan Prairies, Farmers and Wheatfields

Articulation is heading to Saskatchewan for its yearly study session and annual AGM. Each year we gather from across the country (British Columbia to New Brunswick) for one week to study a Canadian ecosystem and produce a future exhibition based upon our photographs, sketches, on-site and remote research, and resulting original designs done by each of us.

Initial brainstorming to jump start the creativity includes....
farming
machinery
buildings
grains
crops/fields
wild flowers/ grasses
animals
open skies

For more info on the Prairie ecosystem, check out the Canadian Diversity Web Site hosted by McGill University at:
canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/ecozones/prairies/prairies

And the "Prairie Sky" was voted one of the Seven Wonders of Canada.
www.cbc.ca/sevenwonders/wonder_prairie_skies
Watch the film on this CBC page to see some awesome skies in various seasons, at sunset, and during storms.

So, this blog will be quiet for the next little while as I attempt to get a start on our latest topic for study.

Previous topics and places we visited for the Articulation group include:
2004 - Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta - we created an exhibition on the Canadian Badlands.
2005 - Cold Lake, Alberta to study northern lights and ice formations - this became the basis of our exhibition on Martin Frobisher and his quest for the NW passage which was shown in Calgary and Banff, Alberta and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
2006 - Winnipeg, Manitoba - we are currently working on upcoming shows with designs based upon the architecture of the heritage buildings in the downtown area.
2007 - Vancouver Island, British Columbia - we are currently working on an upcoming show on the rainforest ecosystem of the Pacific NW.
2008 - Regina, Saskatchewan - Prairie landscapes.

The Articulation textile art group is made of Canadian 'City and Guild of London' classmates Miriam Birkenthal, Donna Clement, Leann Clifford, Gloria Daly, Wendy Klotz, Ingrid Lincoln, Linda MacKay, Vickie Newington, ReBecca Paterson, and Lesley Turner.

How To... FRUIT DES BOIS

"Fruits of the Woods" or berries in the wild. I wanted to convey the juiciness of any and all red berries, whether strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, red currents, or what have you. I did this piece first and loved it so much that I continued the process and created the grapefruit and oranges piece.

I started with a piece of solid red velvet, and using my trusty colour wheel picked threads to enrich and enhance. But first I added more layers of colour to the fabric with the Deka Iron On Transfer Paints, darkening some areas and lightening others.


Then the stitching. This piece is much larger that the citrus one, over twice its size. Again, over 20 hours of stitching were involved in its completion.


Detail of stitching and colour blending...


The final piece mounted on a richly painted canvas and again wrapped around to the back so that the sides emphasize the softness, roundness, plumpness and berriness.


Again, I love these velvet pieces!! They are crying out for touch...

How To... PAMPLEMOUSSE ET AMIS

"Grapefruit and friends" - the working title for this piece was originally "Citrus" as it includes oranges, lemons, blood oranges and grapefruit but I do love the French version of it above.

Starting with a multi-coloured piece of velvet in pale pinks and oranges, I added even more layers of depth by using DEKA Iron On Heat Transfer Paints over top. These are powders that you reconstitute and paint onto paper, then iron onto synthetic fabrics - one of the few ways of adding colour to synthetics.

I deepened the colour by adding yellows and reds. I then picked out a variety of machine embroidery threads with which I would add the stitched details.


I added the outlines of the fruit, adding layers of colours for the outer skins and for the pith interiors.


Then outlines of leaves were added between the fruits and the majority of the stitching started, filling in all of the exterior spaces with nine different shades of blues, all overstitched to blend the colours and build the richness...




One hour of sitting at a sewing machine without a break staring and concentrating on a surface 12" from your nose is very intense. This piece took over 20 hours of stitching and is just sooo wonderfully tactile - you just have to touch the softness of the velvet versus the stiffness of the dense layers of machine stitching.




I was at a quandry thinking of how to finish it. I wanted it to be touched to be appreciated. I was thinking that a cuff would be wonderful - worn against your skin and yet seen from different angles to see how the velvet puffs out from the dense stitches. Nancy Dormer and I were brainstorming and I happened to notice an empty canvas she had laying on the ground. When I picked it up it clicked - I could wrap the piece around it and still have all the benefits that a cuff would have. An edge to view it around; the softness and dimension of the velvet still available for the touch; and yet a vehicle that could be mounted on the wall or left freestanding on a shelf. It was the perfect solution!


I did two pieces using this same technique and absolutely love them both. They are the richest in colours and lushness; and are both so tactile that they scream out "touch me! touch me!"

How To... MYRTILLE

Blueberries!

This piece was inspired by a photograph, blown up of blueberries - but for something different, I used metal to make them out of!


I started by making a background to mount the piece onto. Using a multi-layered base of Pelmet Vilene + upholstery fabric + painted Wonder Under + fused and melted chiffon scarves, I free machine embroidered across the entire surface in a controlled pattern.

I then fused on some Metallic Foils in two shades of blues and a purple, which came out really bright so I heated them with a craft heat gun to dampen their effect. Then, onto the metal.

Using ArtEmboss Colored Foil in green (a 3-mil aluminum sheet that is soft enough to emboss into) I traced the blueberries from the photograph and added textural details. I then heated the metal with a miniature blow torch to change the colour of it from green to blue. It was then painted with a black acrylic and when partially dried, rubbed to remove most of the colour but keeping enough to highlight the detailing. Working quickly while the paint was still damp, I sprinkled embossing powders to be embed into itself. Heating these with a heat gun added more layers to the colours.


The metal was then free machine stitched onto a piece of acrylic felt and cut out. Here is a detail:


Looking through my yarns to add a little more colour, I found this one that I wrapped around black pipe cleaners and then machine stitched as an outer border onto the background piece.


Then it was layout and adding 'interest' pieces.
Going through my various stashes, I found a piece of mesh that had been dipped into a paper slurry with the paper drying onto the crossbars. This brilliant magenta matched the border yarns so perfectly that I had to use it!


I made some fabric beads out of hand dyed cotton bits and stitched felt that had been zapped by a heat gun; and a small tile made out of Friendly Plastic.


When I stitched the metal down onto the background I formed it into a 3D shape by stuffing it with quilt batting - this gave some dimension to the piece.


Here is the final creation before it was framed in a simple black frame on a white matte board. I am pleased with the end product and how it all ties together.

How To... POMMES ET POMEGRANATES

First off - hello to Tracy, Linda and Suzanne for joining in subscribing - glad to have your company!

Secondly - I have been a little behind in posts as I am enjoying my first free time all summer and the fact that our cabin (that was flooded with 9 feet of water in the floods of 2005 and has slowly been repaired by my husband, working alone) is now ready for human occupation - hooray! The past two weekends have been spent out there golfing and continuing with the small repairs, like cleaning out the eaves which turns into removing and replacing them (you know, small stuff like that!)

And thirdly - I am going to be discussing the pieces I made for the Nectar exhibit now hanging in Inglewood in Calgary and should explain that all of their titles are in French in honour of executive chef and owner Rebekah Pearse's pastry training in France.
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So, onto piece #1. Entitled Pommes et Pomegranates (Apples and Pomegranates) this piece started as a white piece of cotton.

The first step was dyeing the background. As I don't have enough space in my studio (that is, basement rooms that I am ever expanding through) for wet work, Lesley Turner and I get together every summer in her garage. Throughout the year we gather white materials in cotton, silk, wools and synthetics and then, play. When we have a lot of natural fabrics, we like to follow Ann Johnston's book Color By Accident and work through her different techniques using Procion MX dyes and low immersion dyeing. We fill big buckets with a mix of fabric types and I especially love the 'colour parfait' method that gives a different colour for each level while in the end all levels correspond together. This piece ended up salmon colour on one end working through to a magenta on the other.

The next step was when I took a Discharge class at Alberta College of Art and Design this spring. With instructor Tara Griffiths, I learnt about Vat Dye Discharge for the very first time - it was like magic! You put an image on and the process removes the colour of the original cloth and dyes it a new colour at the same time - wow, how cool is that!?! So I designed and burnt a silk screen (again, for the very first time) and printed on a lot of different fabrics. Here is what this one turned out like - I spread dyed discharge paste ranging from deep purple through lemon yellow (that turned a green in the center where they touched) along the top of the screen and printed away. The piece was then processed by steaming (the white marks are where the water droplets dripped onto the cloth in the steam bath - could be considered an oops, but to me it is just another layer of interest!)

Then onto the sewing machine for some quilting (which in its pure meaning is simply stitching two or more layers of fabric together.) The method I choose for this piece is called Italian Quilting, whereby parallel rows of stitching are added, and then stuffed with wool to get a padded surface. This picture doesn't show how textural this piece is but gives an impression...

The next step was edging. I decided to use silk flower petals but as the colours weren't exactly correct, I spent a day dyeing them to match.


I then overlapped them along the edge and attached them to the woolen strands that overhung with my Embellisher machine. (Aside: I love my newest toy, a sewing machine with no needles to thread! Instead there are five barbed needles that mesh fabrics together to create a new surface. Its common name is an Embellisher, but that is actually the Babylock brand name. My machine is actually by Janome and called Xpression. Check link for details.)


After the two sides were completed I added a flange to the top and bottom in a complementary fabric and colour; painted a canvas to mount it on in a deeper shade of orange; and attached the two together.


I was really happy with how the colours blended and how the side edging added to the overall piece for design interest, and thought the entire piece was cohesive. If you're in town, check out Nectar to see it in person!

Nectar Invite

Here is our invitation for the exhibition at Nectar Desserts.
(Hot off the press!)

"The Fruits of Summer"

Whew! Another show comes into fruitation (ha ha, fruitation, get it?)

Nancy Dormer, Lesley Turner, her husband and I spent the morning yesterday in Nectar Desserts, hanging our show that will be open this summer over the next two long weekends (August and September). As usual it looks great - and especially with the addition of Nancy's paintings amoung our textile creations.

The title "fruits of summer" is wide enough to cover our theme of fruits and flowers that bloom and bear fruit over the summer. I will be posting photos and details of my pieces one by one over the next week. Here is a sneak peak into the loft gallery... (Check right hand panel for Nectar's location and hours.)