More Art Quilts and Artist's Books

The project is nearing completion. Five of six quilts and books are now complete. One more to go!
While I mull over how I want the final quilt/book to look like, I'm submitting display proposals hither and yon. And displaying at local venues: last November on The Wall in Walkerton and tomorrow in Port Elgin at the International Women's Day celebration.

Comfort/Discomfort: 5 of the 6 Art Quilts

Behind the Facade.

This is How we Disappear.

It Began With A Handkerchief.

14 Reasons

Encaustic Myths. More encaustic and stitching..

Book front cover

I showed some of my stitched encaustic pieces in a group show in October and received a lot of encouragement to continue in this direction. So I designed covers for a unique hand made book of my husband's long narrative poem about Theseus and the Minotaur. From there I created some other mythic pieces.  I used cotton muslin that had been variously dyed in compost, rust or onion skins, and added inkjet printed imagery, some of which was then stitched or embellished with copper wire, metallic thread or upholstery thread. The pieces were finished with encaustic medium. The Atalanta pieces included collaged elements. Frames were made out of birch wood boxes, painted and sealed.

2 versions of "Atalanta" . Fabric dyed with onion skins with photo transfer and encaustic collaged elements.

2 versions of "Ceres". Fabric is compost dyed. One includes hand and machine embroidery in metallic thread and upholstery thread.

Icarus. Rust dyed fabric, photo transfer and encaustic medium.

The Labyrinth, with crocheted and couched fine copper wire on compost dyed fabric, glazed with encaustic medium.

Book back cover. Rust dyed cover with couched copper wire and encaustic medium.

Front and back book covers.

 Use of images in this series in accordance with copyright of the Trustees of the British Museum.

Rust Dye plus Stitching plus Encaustic

I have a fascination with the shapes and textures I see in rural barns and outbuildings. While planning  a fabric piece called  "Mended Barns" (more about this in another post) I started researching how I might capture the distinctive rusty patterns that develop in steel roofs and siding. There are numerous online resources on rust dyeing, but I found Kimberley Baxter Packwood's website and e-book most informative.

The move from rail to road transportation has meant the demise of the railroad. Many have been converted to walking and biking trails. Over the years I've walked a rail trail near my home, every time finding some rusted treasure: bolts and spikes and all kinds of metal objects that held the rail lines together. I have a big bucket of lovely rusty objects. I must have known that I'd find a use for them one day.

Canyon Study, 2009

My first experiments didn't generate anything that I'd use with "Mended Barns" but my results brought another one of my recurring themes to mind: petroglyphs, pictographs and ancient places of power. Here are two of my 2009 collagraph prints made after a memorable trip to the Grand Canyon:

Shamans' Gallery, 2009

And here are the first rust dyed, stitched and encaustic pieces:

Rust dyed cotton muslin

"Cedar Breaks"
Hand stitched and encaustic on hardboard substrate

Rust dyed cotton muslin, partially stitched

"Spirit Boat"
Hand stitched and encaustic on hardboard substrate

This may be the start of a series!

Nine books of poetry

I'm married to a poet. Over our years together I've been the subject and the recipient of many poems. I have just finished printing and binding them in 9 volumes. I won't reproduce the content here, but I will show you the cover art, including quotes from the poems that inspired the imagery of each cover.

Most of the cover papers for this series were made using a large collagraph plate that I printed in various colour combinations on my etching press. I use Charbonnel etching inks and Somerset paper.  After printing, I cut parts of the print down to size for the covers. The scraps are saved for collage or card making.

The plate was never intended to make a full sized print: just as well as it doesn't hold together as a large piece. Additional covers were made from paper saturated with water colour. Silver and gold foil was added to some covers.

Here are some images of the collagraph plate:

                                          Blind embossed collagraph plate

                                         Inked up and ready to print

Untasted Wine

Here

in the circle

of our separate arms,

Quench metal in cool water

hammer out

the bond between us,

fashion two

lives.

Spun From Dawn

Such tenacity and singleness of purpose

Such grim love of living

The tree explored its world while anchored to it

Try the Silk

sandstone dunes and minarets

risen cathedrals carved by the wind

shadowed depths that could

swallow entire cities

Smoke Sequence

I see hundreds

of small white-bellied fish

strung motionless

upon the pebbles

Silent Heart

tonight skirts of smoke waver

with shooting ripples

above the black horizon

The passion dancer

in the centre of the sky

unfolds her shimmering drapery

in silent white swirls

Touch of Lips

love's soul

burns bright flame

 Lovers Embrace a Falling Star

                                                                               image inspired by Patterson Ewen

The meteor burnt

a star

down

melted space

It fled to flower

on a winter's night

with alien fire

Starshell

May some turtle girl

from another myth

find him.

Wicked Face

gauze cured in moonlight,

eyes pink seashells,

brow,

cream memory.

The latest book: as much with the river as not...

"as much with the river as not" ventures further into the political and the ironic than I've previously gone. It's 6 inches by 4 and a half inches, made of hand painted Maidstone paper and bound with monofilament. The images are taken from my own photographs, manipulated in Photoshop and inkjet printed. The text includes lyrics from Van Morrison's 1974 Veedon Fleece and extracts from my community's Official Plan.

Shadow Box: Emily, Ted and Me.

In November 2009, the Grey Bruce Youth Literacy Council hosted a shadow box fundraiser. 50 Local artists were each given a 5" x 5" box and invited to create something to be exhibited and sold during the annual Words Aloud Festival. My box turned into an accordion book.



I made a lid for the box to which I affixed an encaustic collage that included photos taken on a hike over Haworth Moor to the reputed site of Wuthering Heights and a photo transfer of Emily Bronte. This then formed the front cover of the book. A second encaustic collage was placed inside the box to form the back cover. A poem by Ted Hughes - who grew up in that part of Yorkshire formed the text.





I was delighted that the piece sold on opening night.