MISSA

I attended the 1st week of this years Metchosin Summer School of the Arts out at the beautiful Lester Pearson College campus in Eleanor Hannan's "Compositional Cloth: The Face" workshop.

She showed us a number of ways to make stamps and patterns after a few warm up exercises to get us thinking about the face.

Eleanor showed us how to make a silk screen.

And how to make all the right sounds when using screen and paint.

The first marks we made on our 3 to 5 metres of cloth where to be bold and free.
I was not impressed when, with my first stroke, the too runny paint fell out of the brush to make a red puddle, a heavy-handed start  for my cloth. 

Snow and Cloth

During a break in a snow storm I ventured outside to check on how my art projects were fairing.
The cloths wrapped around the 4 trees were quite wet. If they are still damp during the next warm spell some interesting marks may emerge.

I am amazed at how well the men's suit jacket is surviving. It has been outside for 13 months now. It is made from newspaper bonded to a light cotton.

The cedar wrapped in cloth is in the forest where it is dark. There is lots of evidence of animals running over it and rearranging the loose ends.

Wrapped Trees

As part of a project for my studies, I wrapped 4 different types of trees, each in a length of unbleached cotton tied with jute string.

For weeks now I have been looking for some interaction with the cloth.

but there has been nothing, except that the cloth is beginning to fall off the tree, which is just gravity at work.

Some animal has been running up and down the left hand trunk of this cedar and left dirt marks but the tree has not left its mark.

We are nearing the end of the rainy season here so I'm not expecting anything more to happen to these cloths but I will leave them up until I need them for some other 'brilliant' idea.

When I walk past these wrapped trees, I am reminded every time of the many trees in Northern India with 5 foot wide painted bands around the lower part of the trunk. For the 3 weeks we were travelling in India, I couldn't work out why the people did this.

Turbans in India

In India it is amazing what a length of cloth says about it's wearer