Pattern Design Course

One session during the Pattern Design course I taught at Victoria College of Art, we explored the concept of Notan. I had been keen to find out if the point in a notan design where the tension between the light and dark areas produced an oscillating balance was the same point for each student. Group critiques of individual's designs proven there was a point when everyone saw it happening.

Another exercise was to find examples of the many different types of patterns we had examined.
Each example was analysed to work out how the pattern was made then it was documented in the student's Pattern Dictionary with a detailed description. By the end of the course, those bulging Pattern Dictionaries had become an invaluable design resource for each student.

Articulation Farm Study

Articulation is working on an exciting project. Several years ago, we all spent a week based in Regina while studying farms on the prairies. Leann organised our research week and now she is taking a work from each of us as part of Articulation's proposal to exhibit in many different galleries across Saskatchewan. I'll share the innovative details of the proposal with you later. I want to show you how my 1st piece developed.

This is the beginning of a work I called 'Roadside Weeds'

For this body of work I decided to knit the ground fabric.

There is lots of mixing of yarns to get the blended prairies colours

The finished work with lots of hand stitching on top of the knit ground fabric

'Roadside Weeds'

Gardening

I haven't posted for a while because my time has been devoted to lesson planning/teaching and to gardening. I want to learn as much as I can from my sister (the landscape designer - she calls herself a gardener) while she is staying with us. We have been putting many hours into the garden.

Here is an image of a earlier successful experimental plot where the blackberry and other invasive species were pulled out, the grass cut short then newspapers and bark mulch laid on top. Once the rains start it can be planted to convert it back to forest but this has taken a year to get to this stage.

If you look hard you can see the hose and little orange flags marking the new line of one of the cultivated beds closer to the house. We are making the beds a more interesting shape and reducing the amount of lawn because it is very expensive to keep a green lawn over the summer in Victoria.

Here is a bed that has been extended with Donnel's potent mix of layers to suppress the grass and build up new soil: a thick layer of wet newspaper/paper/cardboard, next - old grass clippings, then a layer of coffee grounds (yes, we have been collecting large bags of them from the coffee shops we frequent), then a layer of green weeds, and now we wait for a layer of fall leaves. The grass underneath is already turning yellow.

Here is another extended bed, though that ugly line on the right has to be corrected. 

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.