Back to School Update - Fibre 211: Printing on Fabric

This Printing on Fabric class was amazing. I knew little about the process before I began and learned so much. I am not sure how much more silk screening on fabric I will do, but many of the specifics such as dyeing, repeated patterns, and general design will transfer well. As I started working on designs, I came to realize how little I knew. It was also one of the most demanding classes I have taken. All I can say is thank goodness for the industrial revolution. 

The first assignment was to make a series of pillows using paper and photo stencils and pigment. The idea was to create a series of unique but coherent pillows. My original idea was to work with stencils of landscape objects and progress from a more representational scene to abstract. As you can see that idea evolved as I made mistakes and my instructor encouraged me to experiment with overlaying pattern a lot more than I planned. A very humbling but fun experience overall. 

The second assignment introduced dyeing and discharge to create an interpretation of a location of personal significance. I chose to do some wall hangings that I intend to use as a backdrop for my quirky felt sea creatures. The idea was to represent my take on the undersea scuba diving experience - one that is marvelous, fun, and surreal but a little edgy as well. The colours were chosen to match the felt creatures and I had a lot of fun experimenting with colour and design in way that I have never done before.

 The third assignment involved repeat printing, dyeing fabric, and printing with dyes. I started working with a maple leaf pattern on one yardage and then designed a second pattern that followed the seasonal changes of maple trees (brown yardage) to achieve a more striped appearance. Making a repeat pattern is a lot of fun but a detailed one is best suited to obsessive compulsives. Getting everything to line up and be clean looking is much harder than it looks. The other challenge is that you don't really know what the colours, and especially their intensity, will look like until the fabric is steamed. The orange turned out much brighter and the brown lighter than I intended, but I like it none the less.

 The last assignment was to create two objects of our choice, based on what we had learned. I decided to make a cotton table runner reminiscent of cave art for my own contemporary cave and and silk yardage dyed and printed with natural dyes to make silk scarves. The natural dyes were lovely but a little challenging to work with. I also learned that they faded with the washing requirements of the felting process so the final product was fainter than I expected, but still lovely to my mind.

Back to Art School Update ... Fall 2015 Done

Fall was another amazing art school adventure with four more second year studio courses under my belt! This was my third Fall semester. Once again I am taking the winter semester off to travel, do some independent art work and ... recuperate. I've mentioned before that when I started this adventure, I wasn't thinking about art school being a physical challenge, but it is certainly that with everything from carting rocks up stairs, struggling with getting canvas stretched on 4X4 sheets of plywood into the shower, dyeing cloth and silk screening for 14 hours at a time (think an incredibly intense old-school laundry day for comparison) etc. etc. - in the end, I ended up with a pinched nerve that caused me to have to scale back for the last month of classes, although I managed to complete all the assignments. This will be the last time I try to take four studio classes at once.
The other thing I have come to more fully understand is that the BFA emphasis at ACAD is contemporary practice. This seems to mean that in the crafts area (e.g. fibre, ceramics) there is an emphasis on concepts as well as technique - which is my comfort level. However, in painting and drawing (three of my courses last fall), the emphasis is heavily on concept and there is very little emphasis on teaching technique and the definition of these areas is very broad. You could probably get away without picking up any of the tools that lay people associate with drawing and painting. I have actually been advised to check out guilds, extension classes and U-tube in order to learn traditional painting and drawing techniques. I did learn some techniques from listening to critiques and seeing other students' work, especially in one of the classes, but I do think there has been an overcorrection with some of the basics being eliminated. I do understand some of the rationale behind this approach but it feels like there is a lot of emphasis on what you may want to express and all the possible ways to do it, but little emphasis on how to do any of them with skill.
I plan to give it one more try with a painting class next Fall, but I am leaning more in the direction of a Fibre major just because of this emphasis. I am also boggled by the titles of the classes - the three painting and drawing classes overlapped a lot and entitling them drawing or painting seems arbitrary and irrelevant given the content. However, each of the instructors handled the classes in very different ways, and because of this, they were very different and valuable experiences. This is probably all sounding a little more negative than I intend - I still really enjoyed the semester and would not want to discourage any one from pursuing this approach. I think I am just sorting through priorities and trying to find the best way forward - all good challenges to have.

Felt Sculpture: Combining Needle and Wet Felting

 I've been off on a tangent, branching off further from the techniques that I learned from an Andrea Graham workshop in 2015. I am really loving the new set of additional techniques that I am figuring out - they are great for dealing with some of the challenges of needle felting alone. Essentially I start with a close to finished needle felted piece that is firm but not necessarily as hard as in the quirky felted sea life - it just needs to be firm enough to hold when wet - too soft and you end up with a wet, soggy mess. In this little guy there is a wire armature (use wire that will not rust e.g. galvanized or copper) and a tightly wrapped core to provide support.

Gently add warm soapy water to the areas that you want to wet felt and carefully work the area with your fingers, guiding the fibres to do what you want. Use disposable vinyl gloves or a fine mesh to avoid moving the fibres too much.
The benefits are that you end up with a smoother surface, you can securely attach wet felted pieces as in the fairy wings below, and clothing feels much more durable without endless needling. If you are careful, you can also wet felt the whole piece to refine the shape of the body.

I bought some great bunny coloured alpaca fibre only to learn that it is not so good for needle felting. This little guy (my first attempt) took about 3 times as long as working with my normal fibre and was incredibly hairy and no amount of wet felting helped - he still needed a shave.

2 Dimensional Felt Pictures: experimenting with colour

 My studio is a little overrun with beautifully coloured wool and luscious fibres. On a related, curious note, one of the steps to create the smooth, wet/needle felted creatures I've been making is to "shave" them - the resultant brightly coloured nubbles and fluff were just too beautiful to throw away. All of this stuff has inspired me to get back to experimenting with colour and texture - florals are a great option for doing just that.

I also have a stash of prefelt that looks quite "quiltish." After flying over farmland and prairie many times, I tend to associate patchwork quilts with planted fields. I've been on a bit of a raven kick for a while so decided to include them taking a bird's eye view.  

After working on these fairly detailed pieces, it was a nice change to create a dominant, plain blended background, experimenting with feathering wool tops and white silk hanky fibres to create a sunrise. Driving around my rural area the other day, I was struck by the number of birds that are hardy enough to overwinter and greet our cold, late, northern sun rise. 

But no matter what I do, I always seem to come back to mountain landscapes. 

A hanging epiphany! 

These pieces are all fairly small (80 to 160 square inches). I decided to keep them as simple wall hangings. After years of experimenting with different hanging methods, I've come up with what I think is an elegantly simple approach. Earth magnets are concealed on the back within small cloth pouches. These suspend the pieces nicely on gridwall display structures and can be easily used on home walls - just hammer nails into the wall - leaving the nails (or screws) protruding  from the wall causes the piece to look like it is floating off the wall.