Victoria College of Art Studio

My sister and I spent the day in the Lower Studio at the Victoria College of Art getting it ready for a new course I am teaching on pattern design.
This is the before shot.

Sister Donnel started with cleaning the wet studio.

The storage area had a pile of new tiles we found out we could put down in the main studio.

So with the help of Keith, the maintenance person, we moved all of the furniture, pulled up the old tiles, washed the floor, laid the new tiles down in a mosaic pattern (of course) and moved all of the furniture back.

Donnel wielded the staple gun and made the print tables then hung textiles on the walls, while I did photocopying and organised supplies and equipment.

Here I am, pleased to be ready for my class tomorrow.

Waiting for students

Rain Forest

Some close-up shots of the rainforest
Inside a hollow living cedar

The fungus growing on tree trunks is more colourful and interesting close-up

Sailing North

My husband, Ron and I went sailing again this summer. For 2 weeks we headed north ending up in the Broughtons. It was wet.

Most days it was wet. 

But is was to be expected because we were in rain forest country

There were enough breaks in the heavy rain for us to go ashore to walk through wet undergrowth.

Current Threads 11 Opening

The Vancouver Island Surface Design Association had the opening of their Current Threads 11 exhibition at the Ladysmith Waterfront Gallery on Saturday August 6th.

New this year was a collection of small works called 'Under Currents' at a set price of $195.

Artists: Elserine Sprenger, Linda Wallace, Barbara McCaffrey, in front of Barbara's work

Artist: Dale MacEwan, in front of her work

Artist: Susan Purney Mark, in front of her work

Artist: Susan Duffield, in front of her work

Artist: Susan Jones, in front of her work

There was a great crowd throughout the opening

MISSA Day 5

After completing a screen printing of a wallpaper over the whole cloth, I put on a wash of light blue paint beside the yellow. I put it out in the sun and manipulated it to get the right flow of soft lines.

I added leaves and flowers as resists - the same plants/shapes as the screen printed motifs

Linda working on placement of motifs on her compositional cloth

Judy cutting a stamp to make a motif on her cloth.

We ended this wonderful workshop with our instructor, Eleanor Hannan giving us a critique of each of our cloths as they hung in the stage area of the smaller theater on campus.
In the week everyone had completed their cloth to a stage where they could now add the final layers, whatever they needed to be. I'll keep you posted on how my cloth develops.
I will be returning to MISSA next year and I look forward to another class with Eleanor because among other joyous things, she gave us all permission to just play for a whole week - something I need more of in my life.

MISSA Day 4

Another layer was added to our cloths by freely brushing on the back with paint

I added some dry brush strokes with a tree stump under the cloth

While drying in the sun my cloth attracts some comments

MISSA Day 3

The 3rd day was spent mostly on silk screening on our 4 meters of cloth.

I wanted a wall paper effect so combined an alternating band made with a stamp and my silk screen pattern rotated 180 degrees each time. 

I didn't quite get the motifs in the right place to make the pattern interlocking but it worked well enough.

At this stage the 3 layers were looking a bit jumbled up in parts.
But there was lots more work to be done to pull it all together.

MISSA Day 2

We began day 2 by making different stamps and playing around with them.

The next step with our cloth was to establish territories on it. 

I used my stamps to define the different areas of an abstracted face. 

In the afternoon i sun-printed with ferns down the side.

At the end of the day i hung the cloth from a balcony so i could see all of it when i returned to the classroom the next morning.