a few more workshop pix

As usual, I was too busy teaching to take many pictures but Jane took these. Beverly Hart, adding another layer to "butt ugly" fabric she has deconstructed, discharged, and which is now gorgeous.

Angela showing off her "new" t-shirt; Sandra working in the background.Answering a question from Rita.

Susan and a screen she is about to deconstruct. Click the picture to see her fabric on the left side of the wall!

Today and tomorrow we're going to shift gears.

Jane e-mailed me this picture this morning that she had taken on Monday when we were at the snow line. It wasn't THAT cold, actually - which is a good thing. And yes, those are my bare feet. Weather here has been iffy - big wind tonight and they are predicting storms (not snow storms, though) for the next two days. Good thing we are not having outdoor classes. Today was the second printing day and we worked with thermofax screens. FabricArtsStudio has a Thermofax machine and lots of books with copyright free images, so everybody made screens and used them to add layers to the cloth they had printed yesterday. Angela's deconstructed screen print became a background for these images. In fact, Angela was so taken with these stately Egyptians that she put one on her shirt.Sandra added a parade to her background and will probably add more. We decided that Jeanette's indigo-like work from yesterday didn't need anything else at the moment. She transformed some nondescript fabric from yesterday into something special but I forgot to take a picture of it. Tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow we shift gears to Jump-starting the Art Quilt - but if I know this group, they'll manage to sneak in a little printing on day two. Time to put my feet up for the night.

deconstructing the screen

Everybody had gone home and Jane and I were finishing the laundry: the last batch was in the wash and we were marveling at the quantity and beauty of today's fabrics. We spent the morning getting the concept and making the screens; afternoon was a printfest! Some of the people in the class were experienced art quilters/surface design afficionados. Others had never worked with thickened dyes before -- or even printed. But you'd never know it from the results. I recognized Beverly Hart the minute she came in the door. She had driven all the way from Spanish Fork, Utah for the class and couldn't get to work fast enough! She came with piles of dyed fabric and attacked the ones she perceived as "uglies" right away. She had brought a piece of gorgeous batik with her and wanted to make some fabrics that might work with it.Cathy Stewart, whom I also know from the Internet, was in class. This is her first screen... and here's how the first print looked. It is amazing - when you deconstruct the screen, it never looks the way you think it will. (actually, it always looks better).

Jeanette is evaluating her screen. You'll probably see the result tomorrow. It's a wonderful blue and white print. Gjeneve is already going back into a print, adding more color with the thickened dyes. She took her fabrics home tonight, so hopefully we'll see more tomorrow.Meantime, she treated her daughter-in-law Jenny, who is visiting from Milwaukee, to the class. Jenny claims never to have printed before, but I find it hard to believe. Susan and Angela shared space and traded tools but came up with very different things. Susan's work was still in the wash when I left tonightbut here's a picture of Angela's first screen and print. Maxine is a book and collage artist who works in mixed media. More of her work tomorrow. Some work hanging on the line this afternoon. A feast for the eyes.

More tomorrow.

land of contrasts

This morning I took a picture of the classroom while it was still tidy: it will not look like this tomorrow. When there are not classes here, people can come and quilt or do surface design at a modest cost per hour - and Jane has a longarm machine which people can come and use for their own quilting. After lunch we headed out into the mountains...you can see our destination at the top of the picture. The scenery changed as we climbed and it was as though we had flown (well, ascended) to another planet. Less than an hour away from Grand Junction, in the opposite direction from yesterday's trip is another landscape, entirely. Did you know that this part of Colorado was wine country? Apparently.

After the vineyards, more rock on our left and right after that, farms. Love this old barn, which could have been in New York State or rural Pennsylvania.

and couldn't resist this sign in front of it.

and after a while, we were near the top of the mesa: evergreens and aspens ahead of us.

When we finally got to a flat place, we stopped. Here is Jane taking a picture of me taking a picture of her - LOL. Jane took a picture of me in my shirtsleeves and Birks (which I haven't seen) And I took a picture of this stop sign in the middle of nowhere.

The road is buried beneath the snow but Jane says in the summer, this area is full of lakes and is a great place to come and cool off. We cooled off today. The snow plow came up the road on the side where we were parked, so we made a quick K-turn and headed back down the mountain. This was my favorite view on the way down. Contrast this with yesterday's pictures and it is hard to believe we were in the same state, let alone the same region. Magical! Tonight, Jane and I mixed thickened dyes and got the rest of the classroom ready for tomorrow -- and I am headed to bed. After midnight, mountain time and after 2:am eastern time.

Grand Junction is cold, too

But warm-hearted. I arrived safely with my carried-on luggage and although my brain and body are still on East Coast time, I have to post some pix from my grand tour of Colorado National Monument. Jane Aldoretta, who owns the wonderful Fabric Arts Studio in Grand Junction, drove me up into the mountains this afternoon for a spectacular visit. It was raining when I got here (it's not supposed to do that in the desert) but the sun came out after lunch, so we went. Bar-B-Que lunch and the place just shouted "take a picture of me!!!" so here it is. Salad for dinner, as you can imagine. After lunch, off we went - and one view was better than the next, so I'll just pick a few. This place does not look real, but it is. Click on the photos to get a really good look.The view from the narrow mesa road into the valley; can't you just picture the river that must have cut through those rocks once upon a time? These outcroppings all have names but I can't remember what they were. Look at that color! On the way down, we stopped here.

There were lots of these trees, which reminded me of driftwood or old cattle bones. I find them beautiful and mournful.The view from here was worth getting out of the car for.

There was more, but that's enough for today. Tomorrow we are going to take another sightseeing ride and then spend the afternoon getting the studio set up for the class that starts on Tuesday. I hope my box of supplies, which I shipped FedEx last TUESDAY, arrives tomorrow. Tune in.

it's 38 degrees in Denver

I'm sitting in the Denver Airport between flights and thinking about whether my blog has become less interesting than it was when I started blogging, almost 4-1/2 years ago. When I began writing, it was with the intent of sticking to the topic of A-R-T...but somehow, art and life have become intertwined and I am wondering whether this is a good thing or not. Or maybe it just IS what it is (whatever that means). It's easy to keep things in little "boxes" like those budget envelopes my mother used to have in the 1950's. She divided up the money my father handed her each week and apportioned the amounts into the labeled envelopes, the categories of which I don't even remember....cleaning, food, clothing - and I can't think what else. But I digress (as usual). Life is not neat and tidy -- at least not MY life -- and probably not yours, so the art and life lines overlap, criss-cross, and cross back again. No borders. JUst life/art/art/life. So this art/life is the ceiling of the terminal. Oops - we're boarding. Later.

recycle-reuse

While I was in a cleaning-redoing mood yesterday, I decided to tackle re-meshing some screens that had been ruined or just plain worn out. They had been sitting around, useless, for longer than I want to admit. What you see is the end result. As you know, I normally do things the quick and dirty way and this was no exception. My friend Helene tapes screens so beautifully that even the frames are works of art. But I'm over being intimidated by neatness and thought I'd show you how I recycle my screens just in case you want to try it yourself...(the quick and dirty way). You will notice that the screen above is not duct-taped on the front. I have given up doing that in favor of leaving the wood exposed on a new screen. I have discovered, after years, that if you tape the whole frame, all the gunk and water gets trapped under the tape and the wood sort of rots underneath. (Of course, that does not deter me from reusing it). If you buy good screens (I'll give you some sources later) they come already polyurethane'd. If not, you can do it yourself or leave the frames naked. When I redo the screens that have already been taped on the front, I leave it there because it is more trouble than it is worth to remove it, and then there is the sticky residue from the duct tape. I believe this was the first screen I ever made, a decade ago: stretcher bars and a $5 polyester curtain. Worked fine. This is the back of the screen. Yesterday, after I pulled out some of the rusty staples, I stapled another piece of curtain to the back side of the frame, and re-taped it on the front to make it look sort of neat. Now it is ready to use. This next one was a sturdy commercial screen that had some holes in it. It had come with 110 monofilament mesh (or maybe 12xx polyfilament, which is comparable). I have regular silkscreen mesh around somewhere, but I couldn't put my hands on it and instead, grabbed the fine mesh sheer polyester curtain. With the kind of non-detailed screening that I do, the curtain is really ok...and a lot less expensive in this period of art supplies-on-a-budget. I removed the mesh and then cut the excess duct tape out with a box knife.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture - I was stapling with one hand and shooting with the other. I used a heavier-duty stapler than I really needed, but it's all I had: it's really industrial strength for stapling sheetrock and I needed to use two hands. It's better to use a medium-weight one but these days they are made you-know-where and my last one broke. This one came from my father's store and was made in U.S.A many decades ago. It is all metal.If you use a medium-weight one, you can staple with one hand while you pull the mesh taut with the other hand. You really need to get it tight. The art stores sell a gizmo that will tighten the mesh but I find it easier to use my hand. Another fuzzy picture shows the stretched curtain that has been taped over the staples. Always tape the back of the frame.

Stunning, it is not. But I don't care -- it will do the job I need it to do. Anyway, who looks at the back of a screen? The screen police don't come to my classes or my studio.

While I used to recommend Dick Blick as the least expensive/best value source for screens, their prices have doubled - to my great shock and dismay. So, I've been on the Internet looking for other sources. Pocono Screens makes an excellent product - well finished..but heavy. If you want screens 20x24 and up, they are a good source. Victory is another source with a good reputation and good prices; I'm going to use them next time I order. Last night I was up late doing my screening/steaming routine and I went back into some I thought could use some more work. This one is unrecognizeable from what it was - and much more interesting. Thiox through a deconstructed screen and then layers of other screens. Ditto here: originally soy wax resist, then printed and discharged. Now I need to go back to packing and if I have time, I may print a few more scarves while I am in the mood.