Sprinkle Dyeing and Sun Printing at VISA, Victoria

During a Mark Makers' summer residency at the Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA) website we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and have a dyeing day outside.

We set up tables and brought out buckets of water to the backyard of the school.

I set up my sophisticated system for working with dye powder safely and gave a quick demo on how to fill salt shaker-type containers with dye powder.

While the air was still we explored different sprinkle dye techniques using Procion MX. 

Wet soda-soaked natural fabrics were folded, rolled and scrunched before sprinkling dye powder over them.

Eileen sprinkles dye on flat fabric.

Brenda sprinkles dye on a linen fabric already cut to shape for a garment.

This is a great way to use up old batches of dye powder. It works best with dyes made up from a mix of colours. The different colours separate out and migrate through the damp fabric at different rates.

After lunch, Dale gave us a demo of sun printing using transparent fabric paints on damp cloth. She showed us how many different resists will work to leave an impression.

With the sun overhead, we all got clear impressions of the resists. Brenda is using plastic shapes she has cut out and leaves as a resist on linen fabric she has painted with fabric paint. Others used flowers, grasses, bubble wrap, paper and cotton doilies as resisits. 

The dyed cloth was covered with plastic and taken home to batch before being rinsed and ironed.

'Aunt Flow Speaks Out' Has Been Installed

'Aunt Flow Speaks Out,' Kirsten Horel & Lesley Turner; size variable; cotton, silk, linen women's handkerchiefs, cotton thread, earth pigment, nails, notebook, pen; thrifting, laundering, ironing, lettering, painting.

This is Aunt Flow's official photograph.

'Aunt Flow Speaks Out' has been installed.

The Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria (CACGV) is commemorating International Women's Day with the art exhibition "Women Hold Up Half the Sky." It is in the Bay Centre, downtown Victoria, on the 3rd floor, next to Club Monaco.

The exhibition is on from February 25th until March 13th.

The Installation

The curators, Stepanie and Brin, have given Aunt Flow 8 feet. The ceilings must be 12 feet high so this is going to be the largest Aunt Flow has ever been. The bigger the better for Aunt Flow.

Step 1. The Template

Pin up the template and mark the wall through the holes.

The template is made from an on-point interfacing. The red dots are around holes in the template where I can make a pencil marks on the wall.

Step 2. Nail a handkerchief with a tag over each pencil mark.

Step 3. Place the plinth in the centre with the book and pen on top.

Complete.

VISDA Exhibition 'Garden Tapestry' at Portals, Duncan

Louise Slodoban, 'In An Artist's Garden' 

Photo transfer, procion dyed cloth, mono printing, screen printing, sun prints, machine & hand stitched.

Louise was inspired by a visit to Grant Leier and Nixie Barton's Studio Garden at Yellow Point.

The Vancouver Island Surface Design Association has an exhibition in the Portals gallery in the CVAC Centre of Arts, Culture and Heritage until November 10, 2015.

Georgina Dingwell, 'At Night in the Garden'

Printed surface with silk overlay and stitching.

"This piece is about the way we perceive darkness. The mind can take us to scary places even in the realm of beauty in a garden."

All artists worked within a 12" x 60" or 72" framework so there was uniformity in the size of the works. This serves to unify a wide range of styles, techniques, materials and ideas.

Elserine Sprenger, "karesansui" (dry landscape)

Handwoven, linen, silk, raffia, stones, madder, indigo.

"This piece is woven in a partial double weave structure and symbolises the strength and at the same time the fragility of Mother Nature; the stones that have survived millennia and the linen which so easily deteriorates when exposed to the weather."

 

karesansui (dry landscape), detail

Sarah McLaren, 'Joy'

"Own hand dyed linen/cotton blend fabric, hand appliqued with silk thread, machine quilted, wool batting, binding done by hand. 

Inspired by whimsical floral shapes, open weave linen, a love of colour subtleties and a passion for fabric and stitching, my intention was to design and create a joyful art-quilt garden tapestry."

'Joy,' detail. 

Sorry, the colours are way off in these images of the works. The gallery has the work well lit which makes for difficult photographic conditions.

Sarah beside her work. 

The colours here are closer to reality, but images of textiles never really do them justice. You will have to go to Duncan to see for yourself. 

The exhibition is on until November 10, 2015.

The gallery is open Monday through to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm.

Busy Weekend

Each day I have continued to repair the bead work on this dress.

The weekend started out warm and breezy - perfect conditions for laundering my collection of domestic linens, acquired over the winter.

Outside in the breeze until damp dry.

Then "polishing" with a steam iron.

This process took 2 days!

Art in Quebec City

Jean Paul Lemieux, Sketch for "The Ursulines"1951
This work caught my eye because we had spent a morning doing research in the Ursuline Museum.
Evidently the artist spent about 2 years working on this idea for a painting.

It's final form was a big change in style from his earlier works.
He entered it in the 1951 Quebec Art Competition and won 1st prize. It was bought by the art organisation.
In 2011 they also bought the sketch and were able to put the 2 together.
"Finally united, the two pieces provide access to Lemieux's thought processes at a turning point in his career".

We saw a retrospective of Leopold L. Foulem's work, mainly ceramics.
This teapot was my favourite.

Vanessa Yanow, 'Collaborer avec son histoire - Incarnation I', 2008.



It looks as though Vanessa used vintage iron-on transfers to place the motifs on the cloth imitating the embroidered table cloth but here the motifs are not placed in the conventional locations. She then embroidered the motifs in the traditional way using silk thread.
Glass embellishments were added.


The centre of the cushion is a mound of clear glass balls...

...filled with samples of the embroidery thread and transfer patterns used, feathers and pieces of transfer printed cloth.
This cushion was included in a very interesting exhibition of many different works made of glass.

Post Cards From Fundy, Port-Royal

The 2nd post card in the series is about the French who settled in the Bay of Fundy at various times from the early 17th century until the mid 18th century.
I visited a reconstructed French fort, Port-Royal, a national historic site, to find out what sort of houses were built and what  textiles were used.

Wool felt and fur

Baste fibres and linen.

I stitched a simple house on evenweave canvas.
This will be the stamp on the post card.

I went through the materials I had been collecting for the past 6 months...

...and sorted them by colour to find the ones that would work together.
All of the colours are low intensity because it was a period of natural and bleached colours of the materials and natural dyes.

Then I laid them out by value, light to dark.
 I  decided to go with the mid values plus black and white to put the work in the major scale.

Denise Jones BA(Hons) Embroidered Textiles

My poor quality photography does not show the exquisite embroidery Denise worked on each of the cloths.