Crab Festival Art Show

These are two of my entries for the Crab Festival Art Show.  Opening Reception is Friday, May 27th 6:30-9:30 pm at the Kodiak Inn.  show continues through 4 pm on Sunday.

Circling 23.5" x 23.5"
Rockfish printed on commercial fabric.  Circle fabrics hand dyed.



Closeup of Circling.

Closeup of Not My Grandmother's doilie.

Not My Grandmother's Doilie. 23" x 26".  Hand dyed fabrics and doilie.

I have two other entries, but I guess I didn't photograph one of them.  The other, Island Spirit, can be seen here:  http://sallysartquilts.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html.

It all started innocently enough...

Actually it didn't. It started as a pout and went from there. I couldn't stop! There was ink that would be wasted, I wanted to try one more thing, try to get it better. But, 4 hours later, my prints are stacked in paper, and nearly all evidence of the fact that I decided to print today instead of do invoices is cleaned up. And I do still have time to do the invoicing! After I finish posting this!

I started here today, designing a border for this print.  It was printed with Speedball water soluble ink and is not at all permanent.  Do any of my artist friends out there have any suggestions for something I can apply to the print to make it permanent?  Looking at this photo, I can see that I have some work to do in developing the gradation for the border.  Not enough contrast in the dark area and a gap in the lights.

 My petroglyph print.  I am trying not to print right in the middle and not exactly straight so I have options when I get to the construction phase.  Anyway, it is hard to print right in the middle!

 A close up on silk that I got from my daughter, Kristin for Christmas.

 Another close up on fabric I dyed.  I think this is the best of this group.

My chickadees.  On this one it is very evident that I have carved all of my backgrounds much too deeply.  I did not get it, obviously.  I intend to cut away the background completely on this, anyway, but wanted to do an edition before I do that. Click here to see an example of a block printed after I cut away the background. Also, this is just the first step.  Stitching adds alot of dimension and hopefully detracts from my lack of printing skill.  I will continue on with even the less than perfect prints because it gives me something to practice stitching on, and to practice different finishing techniques, or beading.

 A close up on more of Kristin's silk.

 Another chickadee close up.

 This was my least favorite block after proofing, but now it is my favorite.  Arctic Terns, if it is not obvious.  On this one, I did get the notion of how to carve the background.

 I carved this in a workshop with Evon Gerbetz.  Everyone attending the workshop made an element of a 3-D piece.  I have not yet completed mine. 

 My best print of this series.

 Getting sloppy!  See the thread?

 I can do something like this...

Or like this. 

More King Salmon

 I worked some more with my salmon today.  I had a few more pieces of fabric to print, and then I added words.  I am really excited about the very long piece.  Above you can see them all on my design wall, drying.  I am using an oil based ink, so it takes a long time to dry.

King Salmon

I carved these blocks a few months ago and only now have found the time and the motivation to print them on fabric.  I am pleased with the way they look on my hand dyed fabric.  I carved 2 blocks-one headed in each direction.

My motivation came from a workshop with Evon Zerbetz on Saturday. My piece is not finished, but each of the 15 people attending carved a block, then all 15 pieces are asembled into a 3-D piece. Pretty cool. I will post a picture when it is complete.

More Small Work

I have been experimenting with some different finishing techniques with this latest group of small quilts.

This rockfish is, once again from a printing workshop I took last Spring.  I fused the purple organza before printing the fish.

I wish I had used a darker and heavier thread for the branch quilting on the outer part of the piece.  I got good texture, which I attribute to the wool batting.  I also thought the spray of beads across the piece is effective.

The fabric in this quilt is one of the first pieces of fabric that I dyed.  The mountains were printed.  I really fell in love with my Bernina quilting the sky.  My Viking ate metallic threads like this.  I was so happt with the way the machine was reacting, that I forgot to stop and change color of threads where I had intended. The image in the sky comes from petroglyphs of drawing by Kodiak Island's earliest residents.

Another Northern Lights quilt from the same piece of dyed fabric in the quilt shown above.  I quilted differently and followed the quilting motifs with beads.

One more very small Northern Lights quilt.

I did the same quilting on the outer border of this quilt as I used on thea bird quilt shown above.  Once again, a heavier thread with more contrast would have been more effective.  I am scared to use threads with high contrast.  I grabbed a piece of cotton batting when I layered this quilt and I think that the difference in loft is amzing.  I prefer the look of the wool batting to the cotton.  This quilt I sewed on rickrack to the quilt before I faced the entire quilt with a piece of backing prepared for fusing.  I am not entirely happy with the way the corners turned out, but with more experimentation, this will improve.  All of these pieces have fused backs, and with the exception of the final quilt, have fused bindings, which i have decided are great for very small pieces, but in the future, I will put a traditional binding on pieces that are 6" x 6" or more, like the larger Northern Lights pieces and the bird pieces. 

More Fun!

I finished the hanging structure for this piece last night.  I am having a blast using some of the less than perfect prints that I have done and trying out some different techniques.  I made the web out of blue perle cotton and secured it with size 8 beads.  Kindof went crazy on the beaded border.

Proofs

I am not nearly as happy as I was earlier today before I printed proofs of the new blocks that I carved.  As I said, I carved the background much too deeply.  I am going to eliminate the background on the fish immediately.  I trimmed them up a bit, but at this point I am afraid of doing more harm than good.  The chickadee was carved from linoleum; the others from some kind of rubbery stuff that I got from Daniel Smith. Although the linoleum is a bit harder to carve, I seem to have a better success rate with it. I am printing with Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink.  The bottom right shows some wine corks that I carved.  I would normally print those with paint but the ink was there.

It is a good thing that being a printmaker is not my goal, because I know my prints are far from perfect.  But once I add some stitching, maybe some beads, it will be fine.