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Saturday, May 25, 2013

When you get paid, is it still Graffiti?


When I travel I like to photograph examples of graffiti.
Here a person is marking a blank white wall with spray paint....

...through stencils.
Is this graffiti or art?

I guess it is art because it is on the right hand wall leading up to this building in Toronto ON.

A group of graffiti artists was commissioned to tag an alley in Fredericton, NB.
They were paid so is it art?

This woman is paid to paint over graffiti.

Her work clothes speak like art does.
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Monday, May 20, 2013

Learning to Multi-project


This past month I have been working on 3 very different projects - at the same time!
I don't know when it happened but I have learnt to have more than one project on the go whereas before I found I could focus on only one at a time.
Here is what I have been working on - knitting rectangles...

...finishing a series with a laced mounting...

...and making a form for a 3D work.
Not only can I handle it, it feels exciting to be moving each one along. It gives me percolation time and incubation time for each one so I know what needs to be done next. Now stalling time is minimal.

Something else pleases me - using up a spool of thread.
4 empty spools - this was a good week.
Does anyone else enjoy the satisfaction of making a spool of thread empty?
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Friday, May 17, 2013

Memorial Art


After the 2 recent collapses of Asian clothing factories resulting in loss of life, I was reminded again of walking through the downtown core of Christchurch in New Zealand this past summer.

On an empty lot where a church had stood there was an art installation of white painted chairs sitting on artificial grass.

The sign tells of the many times empty chairs have been given meaning by artists: Vincent van Gogh, the site of the Oklahoma Bombing, the NY 9/11 site. . .

The site is a memorial to 185 people who died in the Christchurch earthquakes.
People are invited to select a chair and to sit for a while.
It is a very moving and graphic work.
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Thursday, May 9, 2013

Cut Flower Bed


After the hyacinths, the next flower to emerge in my cut flower bed is the iris.

The flower heads look as though they will burst.

And they do...at night.

It is such a pleasure to check the bed each morning to see what has happened overnight.

I like looking inside the iris flower to see the complexity, the symmetry and the richness of colour.

I cut the best...

..to enjoy inside. The perfume is heady.
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Signs of Spring in Victoria


I have been living in Victoria long enough now to recognise the distinctive signs of spring.
The resident geese arrived back after their winter in the south, somewhere.

The hungry deer snacked on plants that over the winter they forgot they didn't like.

I barely got the irises in the ground before they were sprouting.

The bulby things a friend gave me, saying they were peonies, that I think I planted all up side down last winter, all came up anyway.

Mid March Ron and I had a stroll around Butchart Gardens to see what it looked like in the very early spring. All of the spring plantings were in but we were too early for any spring flowers.
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Friday, May 3, 2013

Life Happenings


A new lot of work is boxed up and on its way out to the world.
I spent most of a day wrapping the work, making boxes to fit, printing address labels and sealing them up before taking them down to the Greyhound depot.
They are on their way to Winnipeg for the first Articulated Materials: Bridging Waters showing in Canada. The exhibition will be in Cre8ery Gallery during the Embroideres Association of Canada annual conference in Winnipeg.
The exhibition will include work by Material Girls from the UK.

After the marathon to finish and package up the work was over it was time to go outside to see what had been happening in my abscence.
I discovered we have an area of camas lily - a valuable find because it is not as common as it used to be when the bulbs were a carbohydrate food source for the First Nations peoples.

Then I noticed a new flower in amongst the grass.

But it turned out fallen flowers from the Arbutus tree growing overhead had been stabbed and caught by the spears of grass.
I describe the grass with battle terms because I am experimenting with different ways of getting rid of the allelopathic grass so natives can grow in their place.
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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Synesthesia #2



I decided to go with low intensity colours.
Next step is sampling. I sample only enough to see if is giving the effect I want.
I really want to use the luscious piece of patterned silk but it is not working.

So I got out fabric paints to darken the value and to make the pattern less dominant.
This is the simple ground I decided to work on.

I sewed loose, wavy lines over the whole ground.
Then I added fabric strips starting in the top quarter of the ground.
 A large open zig zag over each fabric strip gave the dynamic feeling I wanted.

Synesthesia #2
I snapped this image in my studio. It is not a good photo but I think it shows the strong upward movement I was working for.  
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