Rusting Experiments

"It is not a fault in the iron, but a virtue, to be so fond of getting rusted..." - John Ruskin

Fresh off the loom

After a day at the beach

After a couples weeks in the courtyard

Some things I've been looking at recently:

Phoebe Cummings, Flora, Unfired Clay
Part of Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design at M.A.D.
(lots of great work in this show)

Stephanie Metz, Damask Crow (detail), wool through paper using a felting needle

Stephanie Metz, Avicular #7, needle felted wool and hair

Metz's work is on view at Penland School of Crafts' Focus Gallery

Natural Dye/Synthetic Dye Experiments

I have been working with natural dyes for the last few months and thinking about their tendency to fade and how I can use this as an advantage in my work instead of struggling against it.  I'm envisioning work dyed with matching natural and synthetic dyes that changes over the course of days, weeks or even years to expose hidden patterns or imagery.

For now I'm doing some simple experiments with a few of my favorite dyes to gauge how much time it takes each to fade and what the color change is.  And I also learned how difficult it can be to match the dyes exactly - this will take a lot more experimentation...

Dye Samples.  From left to right: no mordant, alum, iron, copper.
From Top to Bottom: Onion, Brazilwood, Turmeric, Blackberry.

 

I painted half of each sample with a synthetic dye, and also tried to match the color with an industry produced sewing thread.  All three layers were partially covered with a black paper resist so I would have a control area to compare to. Then the entire group was hung in my studio window to fade.  Its been a little over a week and I'm already getting some results:

Turmeric with no mordant sample before fading experiment began

Turmeric with no mordant after one week of direct sunlight exposure

Brazilwood with no mordant after one week of direct sunlight exposure
(bad matchup of synthetic dye to natural dye)

I'm not too surprised that the unmordanted colors showed the most fading first.  I was expecting the blackberry to be less fade resistant than the brazilwood, but its hardly faded at all.  Perhaps because it produced such an unsaturated color to begin with. I'm going to keep checking on the fading every week or so and will update the progress as I go. 

Studio Update: Jacquard

Cotton and Iron Wire: Woven, Rusted.

Cotton and Iron Wire: Woven, Rusted.

Cotton and Wool with Aluminum Wire

Open Studio Update

Well another half a quarter goes by with nary a blog post, I may have been a bit optimistic when I said this would be easier for me to update.  Ah well,  here's a little peak at what's going on in the studio.  This weekend the Fibers department had open studio with over a thousand visitors coming through. Here's my space set up before the start.

And here's a closer look at the slime mold upgrade I've been working on, its about to get much larger...

Catalogue of Undeliverables Exhibition

This past Thursday Ugis and I took a short trip up to Charleston to check out the two person show Catalogue of Undeliverables at Rick Rhodes Photography and Imaging.  The show featured Mixed Media work by Trevor Webster and Collages by my good friend Liz Vaughan.

The gallery described the show as "...based around lost or broken communication from emotional turmoil, heartbreak and short comings of social structures."  This was epitomized by a collaborative project between Webster and Vaughan in which they sent each other dozens handmade, drawn, mono-printed and written postcards, often working right over each others creations and sending them back.

The solo work of the two artists complemented each other very well, despite the different sensibilities in the work. 

Liz Vaughan, Tumbleweed Silos, Collage and Mixed Medi 

Vaughan's collages are comprised of imagery she creates using historical photographic processes such as cyanotypes, along with found objects, parts of maps, and even dried plants. There is a feeling of shared history and personal reflection in her quietly intricate pieces.

Trevor Webster, Psychodiagnostik, Mixed Media, Acrylic,
Enamel, Ink

Webster's mixed media work is laden with text and numbers, overlaid with Rorschach-esque monoprints and a thick, reflective coating of clear resin.  There is a sense of searching in vain through the layers to decipher some important message.  The careful and deliberate handwriting helps to convey this urgency for understanding.  The overall impression of Webster's work is futuristic, but it is the vintage future of the 1950's, idealistic yet ominously uncertain.

Studio Bits Part 2

Image of a Physarum Polycephalum Slime Mold

And My interpretation.  Machine embroidery on dissolvable interfacing.

   

I'm especially excited about these little end bits, I was afraid I would loose all the complexity when I dissolved the interfacing but they turned out just fine.