An-ti-ci-pa-a-tion!

A chance remark by a Ravelry friend about happiness in tapestry clicked in my artmind, and before I knew it I was sorting a basket of the yarn I spun from the fleece I washed and combed and carded and dyed, plus some interesting ribbons, for an upcoming tapestry.

The work of a moment to climb to the third floor and fumble about in the studio for a frame and a ball of parcel twine, the frame being a set of stretchers donated some time ago by friend and fellow Unified Fielder, Stefi M., and the twine is to warp the frame. With tapestry, the warp vanishes into the work so it needs to be strong and smooth, but doesn't have to be fancy. Parcel twine is fine. Why they still call it that when twine has been outlawed from the parcel biz for years is one of those mysteries of the universe.

But at this point all is anticipation. It's perhaps the most exciting and dangerous moment of an artwork, when it's all to come and you don't know exactly what will happen, just have amorphous ideas in the part of the brain that's between words and pictures, neither one nor the other, and you know what texture you feel like using and what approximate color range will work but other than that, it's another mystery of the universe.

So I thought you'd like a picture of the first beginnings of a new work.




Then, while the cleaning people were here and I had to stay out from underfoot while they had one of those hilarious conversations with HP, in the course of cleaning the living room, I figured why not now, and I stayed in the studio and warped the frame.



It was marked up in small measurements from a previous work so that bit was done. Warping is not the most exciting thing, more the laundry folding of the life of art in a way, or maybe the rubbing of the ink block part of the work,but while you warp, your mind ranges over all kinds of thoughts and images and adventures to come on the frame.

And I found a ruler to thread through to lift the back warp bits to the front, to tighten the caboodle before I put in some establishing rows that will blend with, but not be part of, the design.

That Calvin and Hobbes New Year strip, where they are looking at the year and the new snow and all the adventures waiting for them -- that joy is where I am right now with this piece! at this point the work can be done in the living room, where HP will have my company.

I have worked very little in the studio since he's been totally dependent, but he loves to see me working on color and fiber. In fact that's one of the reasons I moved more into the fiber arts -- no fumes that could be a problem for an invalid, no stuff that could get knocked over tragically in an emergency, ability to stop and start for sudden needs of his, without materially affecting the progress of the work, these all filled my requirements.

I did the fleece combing and carding on the patio in sight of him, and the spinning in the living room. Dyeing (using very benign materials, Kool Aid, to be exact) in the kitchen where he can see me through the pass-through.

So that's the context. I'll let you see it as it moves along, or drags me along after it, as the case may be.

Food, nature's artform

I was cutting and chopping and slicing vegetables for salad today, and just had to stop and take pictures of the beautiful red cabbage, so like a precious stone when you see it in cross section, resting on a bed of celery slices, against the white of the colander and the steely color of the sink. Art by accident.








Cooking is an artform, and the colors and smells and textures of the food never fail us.

Out of ice, art, for you, Tarang!

I noticed a few minutes ago, after our ice storm, that the downspout in front of the house had a major chunk of ice stopping the draining, so I knocked it off, it fell into two parts, and I realized I had two lovely ice sculptures, courtesy of nature, in my hands. Environmental art, at its best, spontaneous, balanced, harmonious, fleeting.

So I took pictures



here, you can see the shapes, one like a crouching dog, one like a robed figure, on a weathered old bench

And here, a little adjustment introduces negative space into the composition.



So then, thinking, these are the gems of winter, I brought them indoors, and arranged them on red felt, like the jewels they are



Context is everything! and the pressure of getting this done outdoors before the camera froze, then indoors before the ice melted, is all part of the process of art. Life, too, when you think about it.




Already the subjects of the pictures are melting rapidly out there on the bench outside the front door, but they still exist, in these photographs, for us all to continue to see.

This is art that is kind to the earth and to us, too.

Artist's books

This is a whole area of fun for the artist. I've made many books, usually very flowing, loose kinds of approach, not the bookbinding world at all, but a more flexible kind of work.

I've learned a number of stitching techniques, and I just wanted to show you a bunch that have not been seen before, because they are still awaiting the finishing and putting in of the pages. But the covers are nice to see, and range from paintings on muslin







inside, see the handmade paper additions



outside covers

which I then stretched over cardboard and adhered, to paintings directly on cardboard



or canvas



or paper




I've given away many little notebooks which I created, and want to let you in on a neat notion I came across: you know when people get those lovely art cards with reproductions of famous paintings and you keep them and keep them and never get around to sending them as cards?

Just learn a simple stitching technique, then cut plain old white paper, insert it into the card, stitch it and you have a really nice little notebook which is better than sending a card, but not too elaborate to send as a casual gift. If you have a corner punch that will round off the corners, all the better.

When I first got a corner punch, I went mad with it, rounding off the corners of everything that didn't move. The cats steered very clear of me at this period, hiding their ears.

Another supposedly office-intended appliance is my little shredder, which I originally got as a shredder then realized it would make wonderful strips for paper weaving.




So I sliced up a lot of old photos that were surplus to requirements, and wove the results, glued the piece down on card, and they are awaiting their pages and a destination.

I've made some books with my own handmade paper, too, lovely soft and irregular stuff, great to handle and play with.



outside showing plant material embedded in the paper



Inside cover



outside cover


Most of the drawings you saw in my other entries are stored in these portfolios.



One was a giant book made for another purpose, in an exhibit, and once home



adapted to being a drawing portfolio. In this one, I did the Japanese stitching using brass chain.




Several of these pieces were originally exhibited as paintings, and now will be happy as book covers, big ones.

The Riddle of Samson

Do you know the riddle Samson set for the Philistines? I mainly know it because it was on the Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup cans I remember as a kid, complete with hokey graphic. The riddle goes something like: Out of strength came forth sweetness, out of the dead came forth life. The idea was that the Philistines were supposed to come up with what was happening in this riddle.

The answer was the body of a lion in the desert, in which bees had made honey.

It's a lovely concept, and I often like to think about it when a highly stressful situation (weather, danger to invalid, you name it, all explained in Field and Fen blog today) results in some art. It sharpens your vision when you have been on high alert and it's now down to just ordinary alert! Out of fear comes relief, out of strength of human spirit, comes the gentle vision of art.

So, after a massive series of storms in just a few hours, involving two major snowfalls, one ice storm, one thunderstorm with lightning, and one dangerous power outage considering the situation in this household, came great images of the snow, and the trees recovering from the onslaught.

So here they are. As often with my art, close to home.

Image Transfer -- the art that plays the artist!

I had a lot of fun with image transfer in the last few years, and I'm showing you a number of images which are a first: you are the first people outside the studio to see them, and I'm hoping to show them at some point, but this is their first view of daylight.

Image transfer is the literal moving of an image, just the image, not the paper or support, to another surface. We did it as kids when we pressed an eraser against the funny pages and got an image on the eraser which we could then press onto another piece of paper, very exciting stuff.

I did a whole range of ways of doing this, involving art that delved into itself, as I'll explain as we go along. I should mention at the outset that you should not be doing image transfer with anyone work but your own, if you plan on presenting it as your own work. These images are all from my own original art.

Some kinds of art, unless you have a studio with a fume hood, which I don't, are best done out of doors. In this northern climate, that means summer. Image transfer is a good example of this, since you use a solvent (I used acetone) to move the image and it's much better to be away from any risk of inhaling or setting fire to it in the process.

I'm fiercely careful about safety in art materials, never allow spray adhesive anywhere in my vicinity, never use spirit gum, never work with pastels indoors, since the dust that comes off is toxic, all that. So I like to emphasize the importance of working with solvents out of doors if you don't have a powerful suction type of fan system in the studio, and I don't know anyone who does.

So, cautions said, here's a wonderful experience I had incorporating film photography, drawing, environmental art, the kind of work that draws you in and you can't plan it ahead of time, since the work tells you what to do as you go.

All these pieces are small, since that's often the nature of image transfer, few bigger than maybe 8 x 10 inches in size. Big works in small sizes! And all are transferred onto Arches hotpress paper, wonderful paper.

The range of approaches I explain as we go, in case you want to try it for yourself.A lot of these images are taken from a very small radius around my house, since part of what I wanted to do was find the art of the neighborhood, without feeling you have to make an expedition to find subject matter.



Water shutoffs outside the building. This was a film photograph which I got developed, two copies, then assembled them in opposition to each other, then used solvent to move the image onto the hotpress paper. Photos face down on the paper, solvent liberally doused over the back, gently stroke the back of the photos to make sure the image transfers well.




This was a monotype which I created freehand, then photographed, doubled, and transferred.



Painting, photographed, and transferred



This tree filled with rocks was part of a series of environmental art pieces I created in the trees out behind the house, using rocks from around the tree, to make a nonintrusive art piece. There's a golf course behind there, and golfers wander about looking for stray golfballs, so they see these things.

One pointed this tree out to me one day, not knowing I had anything to do with it, and said, will you look at that? how do you suppose that could have happened? In the end between freezing and thawing and the assistance of squirrels, a lot of the rocks were redeposited on the surrounding grass over the next year.

I photographed and then transferred this. But I also made drawings of the tree and others, and photographed the drawings and transferred them, too. This make your art go through dimension after dimension, showing you interesting changes as it goes.




Continuation of the environmental pieces.




Shadows through the fence around the dumpsters!




One of the neighbors had these two chairs out on the porch, and they were so eloquent that I had to get a picture, and then transfer it, to catch a dreamy, soft focus feeling about it.




Much sharper image, because this is photography transferred.




This was one of those winter scenes where nature makes the art and you just get to record it. The patio after a big snowfall, photographed then transferred.




This scene you also saw in a charcoal drawing in an earlier post -- I made an entire series of charcoal drawings of this scene. This is the original quick snap I took at the shrub nursery, of trees burlapped for the winter, which I transferred. It's eerily like a crowd of people, even when you know it's shrubs.




Engineering art! one photograph of the top of the heating unit at our house, doubled, arranged in opposition, then transferred.




This was an ink monotype, but this time photographed and doubled before transfer.




This is two images, a comment on the similarities between flowers and shells, taken at the shore, the only piece in this series made more than fifty yards from my front door.




This was a monotype, which I created then photographed and transferred, to give it a soft focus, evocative feel.




This is a couple of electrical junction boxes, photographed, doubled, related and transferred.




The artist's hand shadow on an iron cover, while I took the picture with the other hand. Two images, related, then transferred.




This is a painting, made with soluble crayon, and transferred.




Another painting, same idea.




Flower pushing through a gap in the fence.




Another winter scene, this one the markings done by the cable guys after a snowstorm, and the flags they left after they'd done whatever cable guys do. Double image, related in opposition, then transferred.




Cable boxes again, I get a lot of mileage out of the local engineering. But they're beautiful, symmetrical with oddness too.

The Dollivers character dolls, and winter sports

I just thought you'd like to see some art in action. The Dollivers continue to thrive and seek adventure everywhere!

At the pharmacy, where the pharmacist obligingly put up Handsome Partner's urgently needed heart medication with the assistance of a Nurse Dolliver



And on the ski slopes



where after a large snowfall last night, there was fun for the more frivolous Dollivers while the serious professional nurse was busy at the pharmacy, and then jonesing for flowers as a reward for such dedication



Back at the ski center, these are not the beginner slopes, but then the little Swiss doll is an expert on skis




Unlike her Dolliver student who is finding this harder than it looks




And is glad of apres ski hot chocolate near a warm microwave