27C (81F) – perfect! My summer art cabin is in full production. No hot water, no AC but lots of cool breezes to keep this worker happy.
No phones, m0 computer, just a small radio with an antenna that manages to pick up NPR from across the river. Oh, and the sound of gulls - divine!
Yes, indeed, Silk black in fact, Pro-Chem’s #610.
My favourite for silk cloth. Drop a little in a wet sink and look at all those colours! Add a bit more water and the colours merge into a rich black and all its various shades of gray, and best of all, they don’t split – no halos, no spotting, and no tell-tale under tones. Just black. This is specially important when I am over-dyeing a resisted item like the one below and I want a no nonsense black background.
OK, the heat is on - -
1) Quiltfest this week in Brockville. They want photos of all the quilts in the show…170+. I offered, they accepted!! Ugh, but a great way to hone my Photoshop RAW skills – the lighting in the hall was awful. It’s win win all around.
2) Quilts on the Tay - Kamloops to Halifax, an exhibition of traditional and contemporary quilts and wall hangings sponsored by the Lanark county Quilters Guild in Perth, ON. They want my stuff by mid-July. OK, I can handle that.
3) Marianne van Silfhout Gallery at St. Lawrence College Intrigue into the 1000 Islands.– this show runs throughout July & August. My work is already on sight. Piece of cake!
4) Ahh, then there is the Mallory Coach House. TIA’s very own gallery opens with a Strawberry Social next week: June 28th from 1 to 4pm. Thousand Islands Arts (TIA) finally has its vey own gallery: the Coach House!
It is located in a very old but beautifully restored stone house in Mallorytown Ontario. We plan to showcase the work of TIA artists and artisans all summer! We hope to attract day trippers and road savvy art enthusiasts to this delightful little town on the shores of the St Lawrence River.
All this wonderful exposure, means that I am busy pulling work out of cupboards, drawers, and off of shelves for review, dispatching and and shipping. In short, all real art work comes to a grinding halt…sigh.
I dutifully check out my stockpile of ‘mostly finished’ work, looking for any tell-tale ‘unfinished bits’, threads, pins, etc. I then mop up, dust off, sew, bind, sign, photograph, record and occasionally even redesign some of these…not too often, but occasionally that will happen. What can I say? It is another way to work.
And then, I look forward to the openings and the odd occasion to be interviewed and represent some of these events on TV. As it happens, next week in fact -- I will polish my face, put on my Sunday smile and head on up to Ottawa, to the CTV studios on George street, with work in one hand and speaking notes in the other. Hopefully the airing will not take place at 3am – but then, who knows? Some collectors are insomniacs…you really never know.
I love this time of the year. Warm sun, cool nights and ah yes, I get to open up my beloved little Art Shack. Every year, I happily lug several bags of dye & paint stuffs some 45 steps down a ragged cliff to what was once a garden shed, now a supreme surface design lab:
Normally I only venture down here when the temperature hovers around 20C (or 80F). MX dyes like a warm humid environment. Frankly its still a bit cold – but I am anxious to get this shop going as I have a lot of work to do, it’s like camping!
Before heading down, I like to mix up all the MX concentrates that I will need for the season, approx 20 weeks worth. I don’t have hot & cold running water, only a hose with freezing cold water, but I do have a fridge. Luckily, Ann Johnson’s Color By Design has the how to for all these concentrates.
I now colour code each 500cc bottle with its own colour and recipe # (I use them over and over). These ones are the best, they don’t leak! When I think of all the junk I had to drink to get this marvellous collection of leak free ½ litre bottles… it was worth it.
Because I plan to thicken these dye concentrates I throw in a tablespoon of urea and a couple of marbles. The marbles help create the friction necessary to keep the dye in solution every time I shake the bottles, and I do this often. I found this gem of a tip from Doug Wilson from the DyersLIST.
I have also learned to write everything down on each bottle. When I need more, the formula is right there. I picked this habit up the hard way from my own experience. I like to make 8% concentrate solutions (really really dark rich colours). For a 500cc solution, that means that I put 40gm of dye powder into each colour bottle. Here is what 40gm of Pro Chem grape 801 dye powder looks like. Seems like a lot, but it goes a long way.
More to come.
The third week in May has finally arrived!
Upin the North this gives us the go ahead to start planting, and wouldn’t you know it we have a frost warning for tonight, not fair…
Most days I can be found on my hands and knees mucking about in rich soft earth. BTW, this is the only time that I actually enjoy any of this. Given my fickleness with gardening matters, I know that this enthusiasm won't last long. The intoxicating ‘garden high’ I feel will soon pass and my poor garden with so much promise will eventually take on the look of an abandoned child, probably by the first week of August.
But late in May I am completely intoxicated with the smells, the colour, the fresh earth the gentle breezes. Ah, and my garden plan…this is not unlike art, my canvas being the rich black earth. I will add colour, line, shape and texture. I pick plants and vegetables based on how they will contribute to the whole, the look -- certainly nothing practical.
Oh, and then there are visitors to the garden. In the Spring I love them all having been starved all winter. Some I manage to capture with a help of a borrowed lens... this image captured last August was languishing at the bottom of my blog images bin and demanded to be featured.
You have to admire the exquisite complexity of the bi-wing span of this magnificent little creature. If you click on the image you will see what I mean. I have seen many a dragonfly done with fabric and thread, but I wonder if it is at all possible to really capture this?
OK, back to my plantings…
All this cloth I have collected this year... these were made to test colour relationships, resists etc. They sit, piling up and they languish on top of my dryer.
I feel the need to put them to use, perhaps cut them up and have them work together somehow. This green one below involved several processes to achieve the texture and layers of colour. Maybe I won't cut it up so much.
This is a multi-colour silk screen process. I have tons of this stuff, so I will cut away with little fear.
Here is more of the green. I really love this piece. It reminds me of a Canadian garden at this time of the year - full of promise.
Ah, my dot cloth. This swatch makes me want to go back to the silk screen and dye pots to make more of this in different colour combos.
See you all later...
I am was so proud to discover Andrée Fredette's work featured in the most recent edition of American Craft Magazine.
Andrée's piece Tunicates no.1 was juried into this Quilt National '09, which opens next week. The image published in American Craft (seen below) doesn't do justice the extensive and beautiful machine embroidery that floats over these large colourful panels.
For those of you who are lucky enough to be in Athens Ohio next week, you will be able to see the real thing as well as all the other 'best of the best'. For the rest of us QN '09's full colour catalogue will be released any time now. I already have mine on order.
Congratulations Andrée!!
Tunicates No. 1 © 2008 Andree Fredette
Dairy Barn Arts Center
Quilt National '09
May. 23 — Sep. 7 2009
Athens, Ohio
http://www.dairybarn.org
The beauty of stitching stands on its own in 85 quilts running the gamut from traditional formats to 3-D textile sculpture, realism to abstraction.
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