Thursday, June 9, 2011

Memory Lane: New Title

quick update while I write the artist statement/ bios that were due weeks ago!

Found the most perfect bed ever!! Thank you Craiger - you are the bestest person/ teacher ever!!

Now, the issue of naming that always comes up for me.  It's not my favourite part.  Sometimes when I know a name for a piece, I just know it.  If I don't though, it's a struggle.

Was going to "Memory Lane" with this piece, then as I wrote my artist statement realized my other piece was called "Ghost of a Memory" and my statements all talk about memory.  Too much memory (which, incidently is not an issue I have in real life - not enough memory is more my thing!).

So, brainstorming with K-unit as we speak, via facebook.
Possibles: For Your Eyes Only (although it's fairly James Bond-y), 4 ur eyes 2c, write back soon, comforting thoughts, remember us?...

something to do with memory, friendships, reflection, comfort, dreams, lying in bed, teenage yearnings, fading memories,

"Fading Friendships"?

Do you realize what just happened? You all just got front row seats to my brainstorming session.  Think I have something to work with here.  "Remember Us" or "Write Back Soon".   K-unit agrees.  Now it's just time to make a decisions (not my strong suit!).  Will keep you all in suspense!

Memory Lane... Is the End in Sight?

yyyyyeeeesssss.....  so it's a 1 am finish.  Or is it?

Here's a very first hand look into the creative world.  I am within MOMENTS of finishing this piece.  I've go the whole top sewn together, the overlay is laid out, pinned on, I love it.  I spent the last 2 hours putting together the backing, laying it out, pinning it up and around the edges of my blanket.  The only step left is zipping it through my sewing machine (and oh yes, I do zip) BUT I found the most absolute perfect blue broadcloth for my backing.  It's exactly what I've seen in my head for the last month or two.

And... here's what happens when you're making:
Perfect?  In my head yes.  In reality, no, not so much. 

What does this mean?  I'm not spending 4 months on something to take the easy but not perfect road out in the last hour.  So, I'll bring it to school tomorrow, set up my installation, then re-do the whole backing over the weekend.  Yaaay (is my sarcasm coming through there?)

I'll try some muslin, some tea stained muslin, and i'll try blotchily tea staining this blue fabric then decide what works best.

Friginoo.

Now I'm off to bed.

(It's just too new, and clean looking.  See??)



Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Memory Lane Pressure

So.... for those of you paying attention and biting your nails in anticipation: will she finish it? won't she?? I am officiall at T-minus-minus 12.5 hours into completion.  Meaning ya... it was supposed to be done at 10 am this morning.  But no worries, will be done for tomorrow (please dear goodness, let it be done for tomorrow!)

Anyway, no time to write a lengthy post (you lucky dogs you!) but the top part is all sewn up, with maybe a few changes to do when it's all done.  Now i'm sewing together the innards (had to Franken-innards it because I realized I couldn't rip apart my old blanket (read my second to last post to know what I'm talking about. no time to jump break it!) so I took some cotton batting I had that was too long & narrow, and am piecing it to make it fit.  Then the backing goes on.  I'm figuring I'll be done by 2am.  Anyone wanna make any wagers?

Here's a coupla pics of the progress so far!





Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Memory Lane Snag

It happened.
No, my bed didn't explode, taking my quilt with it, but because (I'm convinced) I said everything was going well the apartment gnomes decided to take off with my thread (or I misplaced it, or it rolled off my bed, whatever).  So, now what do I do?  I can go on in a different colour or tear my bedroom apart.  I was using the pink from my other grad piece, and the pink just worked so well with this one, but I suppose I could grab a blue or a beige. Or put together everything else and wait until tomorrow to buy more thread to sew it tomorrow night (officially 1 day late).  Blurgh.  Dunno what I'll do, but I swear, once I get a little ways in with sewing with a new colour, I'll find the one I want right in front of me.  This is not a new occurance.  I will sip a tea and ponder.

Update: After tea, starting supper, then some polite asking/ begging of the apartment Gnomes to bring me back my thread/ help me find it, it was found.  On the other side of my floor....

I'm glad too, the pink really does work best I think. 

Memory Lane

"Memory Lane" a possible new title for my second grad piece (thank you K-Unit for inspiring it!)

I'm down to my last 14 hours or so before we need to start setting up our show.  I'm still down one bed, but no worries, Craiger has a stand-in for me, and then hopefully I'll be able to get what I need on the weekend.

I am furiously sewing away, and thanks to my good friends C-Dubs & K-Unit have the fabric I need to back the piece (something I forgot about until a couple days ago) but alas (how often does one get to use THAT word in a sentence? love it!)  forgot to pick up batting for the inside while I was uptown and so have decided to tear apart a bigger blanket I made last year and use it's insides.  Franken-blanket may be a more fitting name for this piece!

I've been taking pics all the way through the process of this piece, but don't really have time right now to do a bunch of posts.  Will probably do that in the next week or so, once it's done.  For now though, I leave you with some pics of the hand sewing process, which to be honest, is going a lot smoother than I thought I would.  (Now, because I said that, my bed will explode or something taking the piece with it...)

More tea and chocolate will get me through me (lucky for me, David's Tea has many tea with chocolate IN them!).

hope you enjoy the pics!

Also, business plan update: Got it all printed and handed in to Craiger yesterday.  All 40 pages of it.  Have fun reading Craig!




I forgot my pincushions (all 3 of em) in the living room.  Rather than just get up and get one, this is how I roll.  Also - included all these pics cause close up I imagine this is what a forest made of pins would look like.

Forest made of pins gets a stiff breeze?

Seriously, if these pins were huge, and this were a forest, wouldn't you traipse through it? And yes, my brain is an original and scary place to live.  Pray you never have to traipse through it!

Monday, June 6, 2011

AH-HA!

YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!  DONE DONE DONE done done done done!!!!!

After two (or was it three?) weeks of sitting in a computer time warp, being cranky and going cross-eyed I have finally finished my business plan/summary thesis/ mentorship report thingy!  Wahhooo!

Ok ok, so it's not ENTIRELY done, but essentially is.  I just have to print out my intro & cash flow report, burn my power point onto 6 cds, photocopy my press from this year, and then make six copies of everything, and hand it in to Craiger tomorrow morning.

Lessons learned?  Maybe I should be a little less confident in my leave-it-till-the-last-minute-and-do-it-the-night-before-it'd-due-and-still-do-a-good-job abilities (apparently that left with my early twenties).  Also, it's generally a good idea to go over an assignment and get clarification early on, rather than emailing my prof every 2 hours the week something's due and then claiming my brain's about to explode.  Who knew?

At any rate, it's almost done.  Mechanical shark thingy, consider yourself slayed! Or slain? Slew?  (That little comment right there was a tipping off of my hat to anyone who read YESTERDAY'S post.  If you haven't, now you have to cause you're curiuos, sucka!)

One more raging cloud rhinocerous (yep, yesterday's post) left to go!  I've got basically 2 days to finish my last grad piece, find a bed frame for installation, and then get 'er into the gallery Wednesday.  So, I'm off to salute myself with a beer (better not forget to burn cds though) and then put a couple more hours into my grad piece, then off to bed, and tomorrow's another day.  It is, isn't it?

I'm a Crafts Person, and so I drink Craft Beer.  Thank you Picaroons for making such wonderful drinks!

Mason jars: not just for tea.


This beer is Man's Best Friend. Yes, yes it is.


Saturday, June 4, 2011

Grad Show & Mock Installation

Once again, I got called out for neglecting my blog.  Fair enough.  I've been devoting all my time to business plan writing, with very short creative stints in between, but I HAVE been photodocumenting these creative breaks.  I should I suppose also be taking blogging breaks, but don't want my blog to turn into a rant abt business writing.

HOWEVER, I should also not be neglecting it - so I'm going to try and do some short posts with pics, to keep everyone abreast of what's going on.  We're all gearing up for our grad show which is charging toward us like the Rhinocerous from James and the Giant Peach (one of my fav movies!) or maybe dragging us toward it like the giant mechanical shark thingy.  [Also - I would really like for the results of those links to be huge and daunting when you click on them, but alas, they're pretty small.  Feel free to make them larger yourself somehow, then stare into them if you want to REALLY know how I'm feeling. Bonus points if you do!]  As a result, we have all this writing to do, but also we have to hang out grad show (that's supposed to happen Wednesday & Thursday of this week), which means all grad pieces need to be done (yikers!), and of course I still need to find a wire frame day bed type cot thingy for my istallation, cause WHY would I try and make my installation straight forward? common!

Anywho, since there was a show up in the gallery, and we needed to try and sort out the space (we essentially have 6 different shows going up in one small space.  Honestly, I think it's going to be the coolest ever!) so we spent a morning setting up mock installations in the drawing room, that vaguely outlined our space, then measured everything and went down to the gallery to see if stuff would fit.

I'll be honest here  - I was skeptical as to the usefulness of this exercise (sorry Craiger!) but after doing it, it really really did help, and help us to get an idea of how much space we'll each occupy, and how to make it work in our gallery.  Well played Craig, well played.

Below are some pics of our faux installations (would have been more, but then my camera died).
The branch with the fabric hanging off it are a mock installation of one of my pieces (not my actual work), to see how much space it would take up, whether my hanging works or not, and what relation it should have to my other piece (represented by Craiger's army cot). In the background are ReBecca's mock pieces.

My branch & cot, and in the background are Michelle's nekked Judies.  Sassy ladies!

Another angle of Michelle's and My work.

Having no idea what ReBecca is up to for grad work, I was quite intrigued by her set up.  You can also just see some of Faye's work in the background.

Monday, May 30, 2011

The World Around Us: Olek

Just a small link to some pretty intense art/crocheting to keep your creative appetites sated, while I slog away at business stuff....

check this out!
Polish crocheter Agata Oleksiak (who now goes by Olek) takes the idea of a "cozy" (think tea cozy here peeps) to an entirely new level!  I've seen yarn-bombing before, but this is pretty intense!
Check out a short but awesome article on her here, and more photos below.
Thanks to Mel & Benita for always putting cool & interesting stuff on your facebooks that I can steal to make my blog look more exciting, and myself more cultured! ; )

Update: I just double checked this on Mel's facebook, and apparently I also appropriated her witicisms (as I hang my head in shame)...
Quote from Mel's facebook heading for this link:
"Taking the tea cozy to another level.  Bizarre."
Just another example of the detriments of business planning for two weeks: not only does it make me cranky, but also artificially witty. oooops.

Image from AutoBlog Canada

Image from Freshness

Image from According to G (also my fav here is the telephone cozy!)

Image from HighSnobiety

My Least Favourite Part of the Process...

HOLY CROW!! So, one of the unfortunately necessary bits involved with wanting to be your own boss, and do art making?  Business planning and proposal/ summary writing... Boooo uurns!
I realize how important it is, but I also realize how cranky sitting in front of a computer for the last two weeks makes me.  And, I think those around me are realizing it too.. (sorry friends!)
So, I've been typing away in front of my computer and finally have my first draft business plan done (check), now today need to put together my first draft summary,  tomorrow's resume, the next day final drafts of both that need to be done for Friday.
Another little tip from me?  Maybe it's NOT the best idea to leave the most important projects of your school year until the last two weeks when you also have to finish up your grad pieces.  Just sayin'.

(Another way ppl can tell I'm doing paperwork type stuff?  My facebook and email responses come within seconds.  Looking for something, ANYTHING else to do much? Yeeeeees.)

Will post some pics of the stuff I've been doing in btwn writing `shortly, but gotta get back at the writing.

Side note: I'm a bit addicted to blogger stats, and have noticed there are a couple readers from across the waters! Hello to you in Singapore, Germany, and Russia who've checked this out. tres cool!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Doilie Making!

One of my favourite new things to do, just for fun or a distraction from my work is to emboss heavy watercolour type paper with doilie patterns.

I have a tendency to collect doilies from flea markets, etc (I honestly don't know when enough will be enough) but there's just something about the patterns, the labour, the texture, feel, look of them.  Everything about them I love, I respect the work that went into them (I mean really - people used TINY threads/yarns for those things!), and there's something nostalgic about them that draws me.  It always seems to be people who're cleaning out their mother or grandmother's estate who have tonnes of them, along with stories about where they came from/ which furniture they were used on, and other memories.  That's what does it for me, as far as textiles go, I think - that strong link between textiles, touch, and memory.

Anyway, without getting too tangent-y here's some quick process shots for embossing.
Essentially, I soak out the paper in water to make it softer, then lay out my doilies in whatever assembledge I want on the paper and sandwhich it all together with newspring, and matte board.
My doilie-matte sandwhich then gets put between two layers of heavy industrial felt which lie on a metal slab that rolls underneath a huge metal roller.  Everything gets tightened up so it just barely squeezes through, and rolled 3-4 times back and forth (dunno how much I need to do it multiple times, but I like the number 4, so I do it 4 times).

When I take everything out, and peel the doilies off my paper has the imprint of all the stitches, and doilies are for the most part unharmed (maybe a bit squished but that come back to life again).

And VOILA! done.  Some I'm making household prints with, some I paint with pastels or ink, some get scanned & used for digital prints, some just live in my drawer.  At any rate, I think it's a nice homage to these ladies little labours of love (also something I love? Alliteration!)

(one more thing - to see some work I've done for these check out my post on the Alberta Printmakers Society Postcard Exhibition right..... here)

A very small sampling of my collection.


Doilies on paper.


Ready to be sammiched on the press.


If you notice the blue ones, they're dyed with indigo, and leave blue imprints on the paper.


You can sort of see the impressions made, in this shot.



The doilie used, and the impression on black paper.


Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Work in Progress: Menship & Friendship

I have one more grad piece to do for school, and the deadlines are starting to gun toward me at warp speed, it feels like. 

It's a huge relief to have one piece done, but I need to get this second one done in order to feel right about the grad show.  Not only that, but these two pieces are the start of work I need to produce and photograph to apply for the next ArtsNB Creation Grant in October.  Sounds like that's ages away, but considering I need 10 finished pieces to apply, and it's taken me roughly 4 months to get these 2 pieces near completiong... well... let's just say I'm going to be quite committed to my studio.

Speaking of studio, the Fox and I built a bookshelf for it.  The Fritz decided it was his new cat house.


So, I've been having a lot of studio days lately (to keep me sane while writing business plans, and summary proposals, etc etc) and it's quite refreshing.  I spent a few solid days cleaning out the storage room so that it's ACTUALLY a studio, and am reaping my rewards.  I was able to hang my quilt up on my wall, and start cutting for the top overlay.  This included a lot of computer time at school scanning old photos and playing with opacity.  More time was spent at home photochem transferring images to fabric, cutting pattern pieces, sampling with sewing methods, etc etc.

After laying all my white pieces (some with images transferred) on the bottom layer of the quilt, I started to feel like things were falling flat.  The white on white just faded together and lacked a striking quality.  I experimented with tea dying for a bit more of an aged feel.  I was feeling better about it, but still like something was missing. 

Anyway, I had a meeting with my advisor today and it always really instills in me the importance for mentors and getting outside opinions.  She made a lot of suggestions that just REALLY made sense (ie adding more fabrics in, ideas for textural prints, playing with different tints & tones) and really pushed me to make sure the top layer to make it as strong as the bottom, rather than relying on the printed letters to carry the whole piece.  It's so easy for me to get stuck in my own reasons for why I want to use a certain fabric, or colour, or make things uniform and often it takes a second opinion (or two, or three) to help me to consider a new perspective, or to offer a new jumping off point that I can then build on.  Anyway, that's going to be one of the challenges of leaving school - to no longer be in an environment where that input is automatic, and mandatory.  I think it's really important to remain involved in groups where you can bring your work in and get a critique from peers, as well as to put myself to work with mentors who are already at places in their careers where I want to be.  It's so easy to become insular, but so much more rewarding to stay involved with people.  People are where it's at.

There's some Deep Thoughts With Rachel Anne for today.

Below are images of my latest work in progress - menship & friendship.  On the To Do List?  Come up with a real name for it.

These images are from a couple days ago, and alerady with some changes in fabrics & varying colours it's looking a lot better.
Full size quilt (about 10-12 hours worth of just printing here) pinned to my wall for working on.


Overlay samples, with some image transfers.  White on white tended to just fade together though.


White on white looks especially bland from a further viewing distance.


Stitching experiements to see if it added any depth.


First tea dyeing tries.



The difference between the two.


Monday, May 23, 2011

The World Around Us: Space painting incredibleness!

Just "Stumbled Upon" this.
Brandon McConnell's incredible painting skills

Absolutely incredible!  At first I was skeptical but at minute 1:06 I was entralled!
Check it out!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

2010-2011 Advanced Diploma Summary

One of the things we need to do for end of school year is meet with outside assessors, show them our work, our progress, and our lifeplan and they can let us know if we have an idea of what's going on or if we're completely deluded. 
As prep, Cragio wants us to visually summarize what we did over the year and attach it to our blog...

So...... here goes! My challenge to myself: to not write a novel here! *deep breath* and GO!!
The semester started with me helping our AVA staff dequill a porcupine (unfortunately hit on the road, poor lil guy)

Next I worked on a submission for the Historica-Dominion Art From Memory Challenge, and created a piece inspired by the testimonials of this amazing gentleman, Fraser Muir, as well as the memory of my Great Uncle Dougal.
 

My submission, "Security Blanket". Photo credit to Jeff Crawford.
 
Detail shot (Jeff Crawford)

After that was all done I was experiencing a bit of a void: What should I do now? So I worked on sampling new techniques.  Featured here is dyeing with oatmeal resists.
 
Maritime Spinner's retreat in PEI.  Learned a valuable lesson on how important it is to take some time off!


100% NB fleece, washed & dyed with natural dyes, all ready to felt into a rug.
Experiment for possible made-to-order product, doubling as my sister's Xmas gift.

Detail shot of finished rug.

At about this time I decided my one of a kind work was getting shallow, I wasn't thinking things through, just making things for the sake of making.  I took a step back and spent a few weeks designing and really thinking out what I thought of as a show of 5 -6 major pieces that worked together.  (Realized later that was a lot to ask of myself, and they weren't as well resolved as I thought.  A LOT of learning happened this year!)

But also (to keep busy) I...
...took part in a bunch of craft shows, in late fall/ early winter with production lines.  Realized it wasn't my thing, and that I just wanted to concentrate on teaching & one of a kind, gallery work.

 In Nov I had work shown at the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, as part of a reception for award winners from the NBFA.  I was fortunate to be granted a scholarship in memory of Nel Oudemans, a legendary local weaver, and got to meet her lovely husband Jack Oudemans.  He made my night.

More to come after the jump!

Process: Ghost of a Memory

I'm thinking of working a wee bit backwards today for this post.  I've posted a sneak peek of my new piece "Ghost of a Memory" but I'd like to go back and show some in process pictures.

I may have mentioned this in eariler posts but this was a piece that I started, draped as a dress, and then didn't move on for a couple months.  In retrospect I think that's because I wasn't happy with the idea that I been thinking of as "resolved".  One day, after completely re-evaluating my past student work (more on that in another post) and considering what direction I wanted my practice to go in, I was re-inspired.  Like a strike of lightening I knew exactly what I wanted to do, how it would work together, and immediately got excited about working on it: generally a good sign when I'm heading in the right direction.

So, I got on the computer and prepared some text for transfer, more on this process and my brain in this post.

Once the printing was done, and ready to transfer was the true test of my resolve.  Sometimes, when making I can get so far on an idea and know that if I mess it up, or are unhappy with the results, or change my mind, it's still reversible, or at least something that can be salvaged.  But, there always seems to be this one moment where it's the cliched "point of no return".  Whether it's cutting into fabric that I have limited supply of, laying paint or marker on a half done piece, or any number of other things I just think of now, it's a terrifying, but exhilarating moment.  It's a moment of Faith, where I just have to trust my instincts and hope that things work out.  With this dress it was transferring the first of the text along the hem.  If I didn't like it, the dress (and all the work I had done up until this moment) was done, there would be no way to cut it off, or cover it up.  I'd have to start all over, or scrap it entirely.

Deep breath.

So, to minimize careless muck-ups of my piece, I meticulously laid out all the text, pinned it on the dress, and put it back on my dress form to see how it would fall.  After all the prep I could do, I just had to go for it, and start transferring.

Below are pics of the process which, once I started and was satisfied I was happy with how things were going, I enjoyed every minute of.  Once I started this, it was only about another week until the dress was done.


The dress I draped a couple months ago, then left.




My hem being circular, and my text being rectangular, I had to cut the text up into 2-3 line strips, place, and pin each piece, making sure the direction made sense when the dress was hung.




Text strips, cut and laid over my template to make sure they didn't get mixed up.

My tools for this project: pins, photochemical transfer pen, and a spoon. Yes a spoon (to help transfer the text from paper to fabric, once the transfer pens act as a solvent).



A few hours of fumes? Not the best thing.  And since I don't want holes in my nose, I went for the respirator (and of course, many Darth Vader moments).

More pictures after the jump!