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.

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. 

Disperse Dyes at SDA

The 1st exercise with the disperse dyes Marie-Therese had us do was a sample of the different dyes. 

This proved to be a most useful reference through out the week.

I have ordered a set of dyes from ProChem and will repeat this exercise with them.

Dyeing with a resist

An exercise to see how many prints one could make from one piece of painted paper.

I made 16 and could have made more.

It is a most economical technique.

An exercise using cheap copy paper to make a stencil.
Marie-Therese showed us there are so many possibilities with disperse dyes

Marie-Therese Wisniowski

The 2nd week, after the SDA conference, I attended a 5-day workshop run by Marie-Therese Wisniowski, from Australia.

Marie-Therese is an excellent teacher. She opened up the whole world of diverse dyes and transfer for her students.

I had worked through the Double Trouble book 'Transfer to Transform' but wasn't able to take the technique into more developed work. 

Marie-Therese explained the chemistry of the process then took us through a series of carefully planned exercises that allowed us to build on our knowledge as the course progressed.

The poor images are of Marie-Therese's signature work. She has also curated textile exhibitions. This Artcloth one featured a number of the instructors and speakers at the SDA conference. Check out her blog to see more of what she gets up to www.artquill.blogspot.com 

Indian Textiles

oopps! the images didn't appear with my last post - so here they are

Indian Textiles

i love Indian textiles - just want to show you some close ups of some displayed at the Beyond peacocks & paisleys, Handcrafted Textiles of India and its Neighbors exhibition, in the Goldstein Museum of Design, University of Minnesota College of Design.

i had to walk passed the gallery everyday to get to and from the workshop i attended after the Surface Design Association conference.

i found myself in there a number of times over the week... just looking

thanks Hazel Lutz and Anna Carlson (the curators) for the experience and for the exhibition catalogue with so many close-up images and satisfying essays ...yes, i bought the book

Valerie Walker @ SDA Conference

During the few hours break between the conference and start of the next week of workshops, a group of us took advantage of an outing organised by Valerie Walker (on right) EspaceFibre.com, transmedia fibre artist, gallery owner, natural dyer, radio host, instructor etc etc - you know the multi-talented type.

She had organised a happening at her friend Cecile Lewis's place.

Valerie had hung her naturally-dyed cloths around Cecile's garden - behind these cloths is the gourd patch.

Valerie had started an indigo vat at the beginning of the conference but true to its nature, it was on its own timetable and not ready for dipping that day. 

So we spent the time exploring Cecile's dye garden, stroking her dyed cloths, examining the vat, and soaking up some much needed sunshine after being inside for the week.