Seamless Skin

Learning Curves, Fall, Week 3

Monday:  I skipped class today and instead cleaned up images in Photoshop and then headed to The Basement and made several thermofaxes for printing.  The images came from the homework in Visual Languages (Benn & Morgan) on negative and positive space.

Also, I browsed through an older journal looking at my face sketches and discovered I was partial to sketching faces with the eyes closed.  I selected one that I would like to work with on cloth and will make some samples for painting and stitching.

Tuesday:  Woke up with a scratchy throat and apprehension and vulnerability...for years more than I care to count up, the week after TG marks the season of bronchitis/pnuemonia.  The unseasonable warm temps paired with sudden drops in temps is what my great grandmama called "fooler weather" and always admonished me to "wrap up" or at least put something on my head and around my neck.  In my youth though, in spite of the chronic asthma and sarcodosis in my lungs at the time, I still felt I had mind over matter and the benefit of my youthful energy that I didn't feel pressed to adhere to her folk wisdoms.  But as my mother still says "a hard head makes a soft behind".  

My goal is always to get through winter without being hospitalized.  I think my record since the early 80's is 2.5-3 years straight without having a hospital stay.  (So you can begin to understand or be reminded of my dislike of winter months.) 

Image Transfer (McElroy) is the on the agenda for today.  Since I'm still waiting to order some transfer mediums, I'm only going to read.

After Tuesday:  I just blew the rest of the week off and will begin again on Monday, the 29th.

The next Artist Interview is scheduled for posting on December 1st.  The Artist is Penny Sisto.

Talking myself through the dark...

Yesterday I set up a test for the 3rd quilt for Crowbonics because the internal eyes and hands were working on it in spite of me wanting to do something else externally.  The 2nd-2nd quilt (second attempt on the second quilt) is not close to being finished but that didn't seem to matter to my internal eyes and hands.  Not having the energy to protest or object, this is what I started:

 torn papers layered under a sheer after medium applied but not yet dried

It is a small sample...about 10"x17".   I left it to dry yesterday and tomorrow I'll soak it in a bucket of water and scrap off the pieces of paper that didn't adher to the fabric.  The result will be a fractured image.  I applied more medium and more pressure on the faces.  I want less fracturing on the faces. If it works, I'll repeat with a larger sheer that will be a part of the actual quilt.

I also worked with redeeming a failed sheer lamination by cutting out the pieces I liked and then sewing them together.  I also wrote over the laminated sheer with a fabric marker as I'm thinking about what it would look like if the same images are repeated on all 3 visible layers: the paper, the sheer and the cotton fabric underneath.  I know, I know, I'm rattling on and talking to myself and not considering how tedious it is for a visitor to my blog to make sense of what I'm talking about...but a part of what I do here is like talking myself through the dark...

 

Taming Listlessness

While I'm typing this, Ade and Peter are intensely discussing NBA players and teams...they are always on opposite sides of the argument when it comes to sports, each one talking rapidly and overlapping speech...some father-son bonding ritual that gives me a headache.  In earlier days this would take place on some nearby street corner or neighborhood pub or some garage...but at the kitchen table over coffee and cereal seems invasive to my head.  I'm recalling a lecture given by bell hooks to architecture students (i crashed the lecture) that theorized to what extent outdoor and indoor spaces where claimed by gender. 

I woke up very early and sat on the balcony surrounded by Peter's tomato jungle and watched a teeny tiny spider bounce up and down, little by little, off of a vine, but I'm feeling listless.  To settle myself I printied on the fabrics that were soaked in the Bubblejet and Golden Digital Grounds that I mentioned previously...as I sip gulp my coffee I"ll upload the comparisons...hold on.

Visually, the difference is negligible .  The Digital Ground image is a little sharper and it makes the paper feel and behave more like art paper instead of cloth, stiffer but breathable, unlike using a gel medium.  Between the 2, my perference is the cloth with the digital grounds for the feel of it.  These are on cotton.

Last summer, sister blogger Marie, shared her results. (Click on her name to see.)

Daddy's service and beautiful and a sweet but short family gathering.  I loved two of the stories shared by one of his CB buddies, a Rev. Woods, who has lived in Michigan for the last eleven years and just so happened to be in Louisville for a family reunion.  He shared how my father, some decades ago, got him started with his CB passion and how much he loved talking to my father, Groundhog, via the radio.  The other older gentleman, told a railroad story and its what he left out that made the story even funnier for those who knew him.

I dreamt about him last night...he was dressed in the suit we buried him in but was in front of the casket carrying it with the 6 pallbearers.  He was walking down Broadway and when he passed 26th street he turned into this huge rugged field of gold and green patches of grass.  It was midday and my father was taking firm steps and said "people need to understand that patience is needed in times like these".  There was a huge, huge crowd waiting for him and cleared a path for him to enter a white building that sat back and off to the side in the field.  I arrived in a limo but had gotten off of work and into the crowd and was hoping that no one would recognize me.  I fell in step behind the casket after my father arrived.  I remember having the feeling that I wanted to blend in with the crowd but I wasn't a part of the crowd. 

When I awoke I thought, its just like Daddy to find something to do to keep him busy. :) 

The hugs and prayers are appreciated very much. 

Do I speak a languid language?

I'm getting close to believing that pre-planning induces a deeper anxiety in me.  I didn't know that I'd end up with such a long stretch of time in The Basement, but I did.  Flowing from one thing to another worked for me today.  Just pick up something and go with it flow is what I did.   While there I did some exercises from Finding Your Own Visual Language and Image Transfer Workshop...

The transfer techniques involved allowing the image to dry completely in the gel medium and then spritzing with water and rubbing off.  If a solid filled image is important to the outcome then the culprit can be air pockets in spite of burnishing the back to get a good adhesion.  The larger image is on stretched canvas and the small image is a page inside a moleskin journal.  The desert image was a magazine photo and the crow was a laser printed on common printer paper.  Again, a techique that I'll relegate to altered books.

And right before I left I did this collage with some ink-jet printed fabrics that I'm in love with...instead of using them for some heavy message ladened art quilt, I just cut them into squares and rectangles and put them back together again.  Now I want to print off more of the same fabrics and just keep rearranging them into collages.  Ade, my youngest, called it "languid"...he meant it as a compliment...no, really, honest to goodness, he did...I think this is what I will title it.

And I'm lacking vim and vigor also, soooooo I'm taking my languid self to bed...Peace...

Gel Transfers using ink-jet images.

The transfer technique using gel medium is too unpredictable. I transfered onto paper, cotton, and a stretched canvas.The application of gel medium leans toward a thicker application then I expected in order to get a better transfer.  In this case, for the outcome, the use of materials seems a waste.  This technique gets moved over to altered books, fabric postcards at best.

I'm now trying a similiar image with a magazine page and a toner-based imageon paper and the stretched canvas.