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??)

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!

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.