No Fear of Flying

As mentioned previously, I have been doing physical therapy on my hands for months now. So, what to do when one can't work a normal schedule? Well, my solution has been to reorganize both of my work spaces here in the house. My friend Ginny came over to have a look, and to give me her expert suggestions. The "blue" room, my office, has to accomodate my second laptop, a scanner, a pull-out futon for a guest bed, as well as inventory, collage papers and cardstock. I have also rearranged the blue room glass-topped desks to make room for my yudu screenprinter. I'll post pix when everything is clean and put away!


 In my last post, I showed you a silk rubbing from Mexico I had found while reorganizing my space. Here is another unfinished piece I found, a class sample of a black and white photo transfer on silk. I decided to make it into a collage, but I needed to paint it first, so that the bright white of the silk would blend in more with the cyanotype-printed fabric I wanted to use with it.

I used Jacquard paint with a watery brush to paint the transfer on silk.

The painted silk in the composition. I used cyanotype prints made
years ago, and created my collage from the scrapbag. The
wings are hand appliqued.

 

Here is a detail of the top of the composition, in progress.



What I'm Up To Otherwise: Getting Better

Finishing up some half-finished work uncovered while I have been rearranging my studio space. It feels good.


Detail, rubbing on silk


This piece is a rubbing on silk that I made while teaching at Hacienda Mosaico in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico several years ago. The owner, Sam Leonard, had a beautiful stone sculpture amongst her plants at an intersection of paths in the garden. I made the rubbing from that sculpture, laying the silk in place, and using oil pastels for the rubbing.


Here I have just started to paint the silk with Jacquard paint.
The oil pastels provided a natural "resist" edge to keep
the very fluid paint from spreading into other areas.

 To start painting, I stretched the silk rubbing with pins onto a large piece of foam core. I'm not quite finished with the painting, but almost. I plan to add some more layers of color in the center, right on top of the Sun's face. Here is what I have so far:

After the rest of the painting is finished, I will heat set it with an iron to be safe. Then, I guess I'll have to decide what to make out of this pretty piece of silk. Any suggestions?