Or maybe i should say “RE-re-opening”!!!!! I’m tired of fighting with the coding between Paypal and Blogger, so i’ve gone back to BigCartel. Same address as the “old/previous” shop, but a new look, hopefully, enticing new and old customers 🙂
The shop is here, so please bookmark it!!!
I missed a week at ACAD–summer holidays with the Greyman, and some serious Garden Hard time, both necessary things, and also time to think on things. If the school studio is too cool now for my favourite processes, what else can i do?
My favourite eucalyptus in “in season” again–that means it’s an import, as it just doesn’t grow in Alberta! One of the perks of working in the fffFlower Mines means access to things that just aren’t available in my garden or neighbourhood. There *are* certain “go-to’s” i can pick fresh, but the majority of plant materials that give satisfying results are neither “native” nor zone 3 hardy.
Yesterday i stitched in the home studio while these were percolating.
Two euc “trees” 🙂
LOVE this silk:
It was a good day.
That’s a Binary table above. I wrote out the entire phrase in it, punctuation included, and surmised that it would be insane to stitch the whole thing this way…………I’m “translating” a phrase that holds 58 characters, a piece of cake in regular text, but multiply those by 8 and that’s 464 little marks! The space available for that means my “numbers” have to be too tiny, which makes them impossible to read, and therefore pointless, and the TIME to do this wholly in Binary would exceed my timeline–given that there are other parts that still need working.
Truly, the punctuation does not have to be in Binary, and when i started looking at the phrase, certain words jumped out, and became another phrase in themselves, fitting with(in) the original phrase, the meaning of the whole and *as* another consequential but purposeful catch of words. It also lessens the numbers of signifiers by 238, so i have “only” (HA) 226 to do. Given that some of these are now going to be actual letters/words, it’s less daunting, and requires less space, time and layout!
Yesterday at ACAD, i made a start as i waited for fabrics to percolate and imprint. And it took less time than i thought, not as much a worry as anticipated!
Proofreading was the hardest part 🙂
01010111 01100101 01110011 01110101 01110010 01110110 01101001 01110110 01100101 (we survive) oh boy this will take some time and patience……..
I’ve had this brilliant idea all along that the work needs some text, but last night “saw” what it would be. Nobody but a programmer will be able to read this i suppose, but it’s fitting given my client’s profession.
The full phrase will translate as “We survive by remembering, but sometimes we survive by forgetting.” That’s a lot of 1’s and 0’s, so best get on with it! At least it’s simple stitches to do though: uncomplicated shapes, small and straightforward, no frills needed. This area will be around/by/below the figures.
Not really. The heat is OFF, damn it.
My third “batch” of fabrics are totally disappointing. The studio now is air conditioned, so things dry out much too faster. Every previous year i’ve been in there, i’ve sweltered and dripped, brought in fans while i was working, and didn’t worry about amounts of water on things. This year, HA. I’ve had to dump pints and quarts on things to make them work. Day three results are now actually day four results, because i had to leave things for 48 hours instead of the usual 24, and they were still SHIT.
Sigh. There’s going to be a lot of overdyeing. The largest piece was supposed to be for my res end exhibit piece, but i’ll have to rethink that now. I am reminded of my first res tip back in 2009: “Make a plan for what you’ll do, half it–and half it again”……………..
I guess i’ll be doing the majority of this technique at home in a hot sunny back 40, fighting the wind and bird poo instead! But there are other things i can do at the school stoodio, so with three months in this res, i’ll be trying a few different things. I have time to experiment and mess around, refine other processes, and just get dirty.
My deadline for Tabula Memoria is looming, the end of July, and while i have put in time with it, and am actually at a point where there technically is little left to do on it, it still needs to be worked on. (Phew, that’s one hell of a run on sentence…) I’ve been taking it with me to the fffFlower Mines (Day Job), and to the residency, so i can work on it—while doing the hurry up and wait thing!
The moon area was completed several weeks ago, and the standing figure is almost finished this week.
I can’t attach either figure until the other stitching is all done, because i don’t want to snag anything.
I started shopping around for a suitably sized stretched canvas to mount it on. The variance in prices is astounding! I’ve been quoted from $60 (seems way too low!) to $168 (way too high!) for a uniquely sized 41×43 frame, and might just end up building it myself. I do a wrap around technique, so though the actual work started at 48×46, stitch “shrinkage” had to be accounted for as well as the wrap around.
At the end of every Contextural residency, we have an exhibit of work (hopefully) done through the summer. (Some people put whatever they like in, done wherever and whenever, which to me is pointless…….but we won’t go there.)
Being as this is the 10th anniversary for Contextural, and even though i’ve only been a member since 2009 (though i missed one year), i thought i’d look at my own work done 10 years ago.
Seriously? Very little i did then is show worthy really. Futzing about with mixed media, extraneous details, overloaded with technique and colour, the only value they have now is as samples and whatnottodo-whatthehellwasithinking’s! ICK. Fortunately (?), most of them are photos only, lost, tossed or given and flooded away (2013), so i don’t have to store them 🙂
But i did find this:
Above, the finished page, below, in progress shots:
A page i had done for an international fabric art journal exchange, i could work with this. I can incorporate the indigo, ecoprinting, rust and potassium permanganate and create something new. Looking back can take you ahead.
