Dissertation & Ladysmith Exhibition

This is what my dissertation looked like last week - all of my notes, scribbles and jotting down of ideas organised according to the dissertation outline, in my trusty Pendaflex. Since last week i have been writing a chapter a day, planning to get the first draft complete by next week.

This dissertation is to be fully illustrated so i have been putting a lot of thought into the whole look of these illustrations and how i will make them.
I have been looking closely at the flowers on the afternoon tea cloths i am writing about. I went out to the garden to get images of the flowers that are on the tea cloths.

After picking some samples i pressed a few of the flatter ones and covered the rest in silica gel to dry them out.

I have spent the past 2 days in Ladysmith where I have been involved in hanging the first exhibition of work by the newly formed Vancouver Island sub-chapter of the Vancouver Surface Design Association. I was so busy with getting the work up and looking good, i forgot to take photographs - both days!
I'll do better at the opening on the 7th August - 5 to 8 pm if any of you can come.

MISSA

Some more playing around with techniques in Tony Bounsall's altered imagery class.
What a refreshing and stimulating way and place to spend a week.
I want to go back next year.

These lovely images were taken while I wandered the Moss Street artist hang-out event here in Victoria. The man is a master artist from Japan on a cultural exchange called JAM. He was at MISSA all week, along with other teachers from Japan.
This little girl and her older sister were watching him make pots on the wheel. He invited first the older sister to try but she was too shy. When he asked this girl, all in sign language, she nodded yes.
Not a word was exchanged between them and barely a glance, and together they made a beautiful pot.

MISSA Days 2 & 3

Day 2 at MISSA in Tony Bounsall's Altered Imagery class was spent doing terrible things to photographs, beginning with soaking them in water to loosen up the emulsion. Then we scratched, sanded, scribbled, brushed, waxed, sprayed and bleached them.
The above image is from day 3 when we were shown how to do gum bichromate printing. This is the wash tank.

We dry our efforts on the clothes line.

A couple of my compositions. Lots of layering gives interesting effects.

MISSA Day 3

Day 3 at MISSA I started another course. Photographer/designer/artist, Tony Bounsall, offered an irresistible course, 'Altered Imagery'.
Within the 1st hour he had us up on the photocopier rolling our faces over the glass after he had explained it was actually a slit camera. You can imagine the laughter coming form the copier room as 7 strangers produced distorted images of their faces. It was a perfect ice breaker for the new class, which showed Tony's skill and experience as a teacher.
We then went on to college these photocopies onto a board and worked them up with other media.
Here is my 'Grotesque Portrait'.

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Time for a quiet cup of tea in my favourite spot.

The next exercise was to transfer photocopied images onto paper. This is as far as i got with this one but it has potential.

I liked this technique so stayed behind after everyone else had left (I always work better when on my own) to continue working on this transferred collage.
I was playing around trying a few of the many options Tony had suggested, when i remembered the bottle of waterproof ink on our supply list. i had been impressed with Tony's demo so decided to try it. i opened my new bottle...squirt... it splashed out and flooded the center of the piece. Did i stop and wipe it up? No! I continued to spread the ink over the whole thing, making it all black. By the time i remembered i was to wipe it back it was drying fast. So then i got out a blade and started scrapping it back until I was gouging the original paper.
Hmmm... time to leave the room.

I decided to name this effort 'Unsupervised Play'.

MISSA End of Day 2

Another close up of the layers built up on the white silk with wax, dyes and screen printing, in Shannon Wardroper's class.

Cutting up the length of silk to put it back together again.

My first go at using the silk to make a wall hanging

While building up the layers on the silk, I was thinking of diving down deep in the sea. It was probably inspired by the floating classroom we were in.

MISSA Day 2

I had said I was going to post after my second day at MISSA (Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts) but a few things happened to stop me. I decided to stay on campus rather than drive to and from home for over 3 hours each day. The campus is isolated with no cell phone coverage and my lap top worked with a weak signal only when I sat on a bench outside the library. So here is a catch-up of my week at MISSA.
Here are the lengths of silk after day 1 in Shannon Wardroper's class.

This is a the view looking down on the floating classroom, a marine biology lab during the school year.

This is where I liked to have my afternoon tea, a sitting on a rock under an oak tree, looking down towards the sea.

A close up of a section of my painted silk.

MISSA

I have just spent the day out at Lester Pearson College. It is an International Baccalaureate High school, with students from 100 different countries, during the school year. Over the summer, it turns into MISSA -Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts.

Today I started a 2-day class, with Shannon Wardroper, where we learnt how to paint and resist layer upon layer of colour and design onto silk yardage.

Our classroom in the best one on the campus - the floating marine science lab. After each application of dye we stood out on the dock in the sun and breeze to 'shoot the breeze' while our cloths dried. Such a idyllic way to spend a summer's day.

Shannon has been wonderful taking us through the fundamentals were we practiced all sorts of techniques and methods for colour building.

Here is part of my yardage. It is getting very busy but I have been able to try lots of different things. I was a bit too heavy handed with the wax in the first few layers.

Here the wax is still on the silk. Tomorrow we iron off the wax, iron on interfacing, then cut it up.

I'll show tomorrow's progress next post.

Working Hard on Dissertaion

I have not visited bloggerland for nearly a month because i have been thoroughly immersed in researching for a dissertation, the module i am doing this semester for the BA (Hons) programme I am enrolled in.
Here is a picture of what my desk looks like. You can't see the piles of books i have on the floor either side of my chair.
The focus of my dissertation is a collection of 5 of my mother's embroidered cloths she worked in her teens/early 20s.
My mother came and stayed with us and in that time she wrote about her cloths and i was able to interview her. So i have lots of primary research material to work with.

The state of my latest stained cloth experiments tells me I have been very busy because I obviously left them too long and they have gone to the next stage of decay. Oh well, it was an experiment and I still got results.
The cloth above was soaked in soy milk first. A textile artist who follows my blog from Australia recommended soy milk to me. Thank you very must for the good advice.

The second cloth was soaked in tannic acid first, before being covered by leaves under a big maple tree. As you can see the staining wasn't as marked. So soy milk is the winner.
Now I am ready for the fall when I will put some cloths out under the maple tree just before it begins to drop its leaves. This is part of my on going dialogue with this tree.