Banff March 11

Yikes it is cold here. A couple of nights ago I was walking from our studio in the woods down the mountain to the dye studio. My forehead started to ache & my thumb started to freeze again. I realised it was really cold so I started to jog to get there faster but the moisture in my lungs started to freeze which made me cough. Anyway, I made it. The next morning I found out it had been minus 40.
We have finished our 1st week in the dye and print studios. Now I spend mornings in my room working on my BA(Hons) Embroidered Textiles studies. I had a phone tutorial with my tutor in England but had to call her 3 times before I got the time right. Daylight Saving is very confusing when calling internationally. I have to go through the logic again at the end of the month when the UK changes.

I spend the afternoons and evenings in the studio in the woods. This is my current work -inspiration, sampling & paper mock up which you can't see very well. It will be all hand stitched.

On the way to the dye studio I had to walk out onto the road to give a herd of wild deer space as they grazed in front of the indoor swimming pool. Last night when I was in the foyer of our accommodation building, I saw a vole. I propped open the door so it could run out but it ran straight past the door, which I would have done too because it was so cold out. Then I rounded him up, he shot out the door and straight into my bag the door had pushed over. A few shakes of my bag sent him off into the trees.

Banff March 10

On Sunday I took the day off. Ron came up to Banff and we planned to go cross country skiing but it was cold and a bitter wind made it feel very cold. I hadn't packed my really cold weather gear. So we settled for a walk along the river.

The scenery was looking beautiful until I couldn't feel my thumb. We turned around and went back to the car. The Penhold Trail will have to wait until things warm up.

The beavers are still busy. We went back to the Banff Centre and had hot drinks in the Kiln coffee shop to warm up.
At 6:00 we all met in the Other Gallery and took our work off the walls. We had called the exhibition No More White Walls so we returned the white walls.

Here is Donna plastering the holes we made. The next day another exhibition started moving in.
We will be back at the end of the month, Friday 27th, with an Open House (wine and food supplied by the Leighton Centre), with the exhibit continuing over the weekend.

Banff March 9

On Friday, March 6th we all attended Concert Night Out, one of a series of Friday concerts in the Rolston Recital Concert Hall . As resident artists we get in free to these concerts (We are treated so well here at The Centre). We were most fortunate to catch a very special concert. The first half we heard Linda Andonovska play solo on flute, then Cheryl Law on viola with Cecilia Lee on piano, then Nick Alvarex on cello with Kieth Kirchoff on piano. All wonderful, so young and so accomplished.
The second half of the concert featured a group from Japan who play contemporary Japanese music on traditional instruments. What an experience to contrast their music with what we had just heard.

I managed to get some after-concert images of the group Pro Musica Nipponia and some of their instruments. This instrument is played like a horizontal harp and appears to be quite a physical feat to play.

A tray of percussion instruments.

Those magnificent soul stirring Japanese drums.
So we had an uplifting night off after 6 days of work.

Banff Art Centre - March 6

Yesterday we spent most of the day in the dye and print studios. After Ingrid's demo on making a deconstructed screen with thickened dyes, I made one and left it overnight to cure. The next day I printed through it onto a length of soda ash soaked cloth. This is the first layer of colour with the 2nd colour, blue, ready to be pushed through.

This morning I rinsed it after it had cured overnight.

...and hung it to dry. I won't be able to see the complexity of the layering and colour mixing until it is dried and ironed. The stringy stuff in front is cheese cloth. I was wanting analogous warm and cool but the warm is too much like salmon so I will be over-dyeing it.

Banff March 4

While in the paper/dying studio, Ingrid gave us a demo on making a deconstructed screen for printing on fabric with thickened dye.

The screen needs to be left to dry before being used to push dye through onto cloth.

I soaked fabric in soda ash and hung it to dry in preparation for printing on. This is the view to the back of the studio where the bedrock has been left exposed. This studio is in the basement of the Glyde building which sits on the side of a mountain. You have to know where you are going to find this studio because it is isolated from the others. It is a great place to work.

Wendy made felt using fleece she had dyed and hand carded. The equipment behind her is used in paper making.

Banff Centre Dye Studio

This is the Banff Art Centre dye studio.
It has everything one could want when working with fabric and dyes.
This morning I put some fabric to soak in soda ash to get it ready to dye.

Banff March 4

Here we all are at Banff with more of the group to join us at various times through out the month: (left) Gloria S. Daly, Ingrid Lincoln, Lesley Turner, Donna Clement, Wendy Klotz. We are standing in front of one of Donna's works, All That Glitters Is Not Gold that we put up yesterday in Other Gallery.

This morning Wendy Tokaryk explained to us how to use all of the silkscreen printing machines, which was like a mini-workshop. The image above is the lounge in Glyde Hall that we use when we are working in the dye/paper studio and the print studio

Banff March 3

There was great excitement today. While we were in the Glyde Building having our WHMIS orientation (safety training) so we could use the 2 studios we had booked, we noticed the small gallery, Other Gallery, was empty! We asked Wendy & Mikhail (above), our trainers, who was responsible for the space. They took us to meet Ed Bamiling and within a few minutes we had booked the space from that afternoon until 8th.

Over lunch we discussed the hanging, then we collected up the finished work we had brought with us and took it to the gallery.

We laid our work around the perimeter of the L-shaped gallery.

Ingrid & Gloria eyeball a work to make it level.

Within 3 hours we had filled that space. We are calling the exhibition "No More White Walls".

Banff March 1

March 1st is the 1st day of Articulation's residency in the Leighton Colony at The Banff Centre. We checked in, had our photo ID Artist cards made up and picked up the key to the studio. The weather cooperated as we carried load after load of our supplies through the trees to our studio.

Ingrid

Husbands were a great help unloading the cars.

Then we took the remainder of our car loads to Lloyd Hall where we each have a hotel type room.

Teaching Fibre Art to High School Students

For the past few weeks I have been working with a grades 11 & 12 art class as they learn how to dye and paint fabric. They random-dyed and painted backgrounds then thickened the dyes to paint, print, stencil and stamp for the 2nd & 3rd layers.

This student is cutting out letters from a random-dyed background and is going to applique them onto the pink & blue piece above.
This past week we worked on stitching using straight stitch to add texture, develop a focal point, emphasise line or shape and to balance the composition.
They are a great group to work with. I am looking forward to seeing their stitching progress when I visit again in April.

Walls Talk

Walls Talk is finished - 120 hours of stitching!

John Dean is the photographer. He always does a superb job with my work.

There is lots of clear detail, which is important with this work, particularly because it is all about the materials. Click on the image to zoom in on the detail.
John can see light and he understands textiles are not watercolours. He deliberately sets up lights to make shadows. These images have shadows to show the texture which is one of the most distinctive elements of fibre art.

John's colours are true. Compare his images with my snaps in previous Walls Talk posts.

Walls Talk

Working on building up the focal point of the wall.

This is a large fossil form caught in the stone.


I will have to move the stone blocks around, remaking the wall each time to find the most pleasing arrangement.
Block #7 is having a bubble bath.
I used a lot of old yarns, worn clothing torn into strips and threads that have waited a long time for their day. Also, I dragged these blocks to many places to work on them whenever I could. One day, while sitting on a boat stitching, we both got covered by a salty wave. So they all needed a good wash before being blocked.