Spring

When the arrowleaf balsamroot  is blooming spring is officially here!

I love looking in the pot and seeing the color start appear.

And this is what happened! The scarf pictured is made with arrowleaf balsamroot and spotted knapweed. This one is featured in my Etsy shop and several went to Pottery Place Plus.

 

Summer is Here!

 Here are some links to events and classes (typing with one hand today, so this will be short) hope to see you soon!

Classes

Spokane Art School

Eco Printed Journal Class

June 28th

Eco Printed Paper Class

August 9th

Events

Terrain's Bazaar

June 21st, Downtown Spokane

Allied Arts Art in the Park

July 25th and 26th, Howard Amon Park, Richland WA

Sorry there are no descriptions here, but hit the links and you should be able to get your questions answered, thanks!

The Studio in Winter

 " A vision without execution is hallucination."

Accredited to Thomas Edison or being an ancient Japanese proverb. It's a good thought either way.

So, at this time of year I am not only wrapping up the old year (inventory, taxes etc.) but planning what  this year will look like. With everything that is going on the vision is pretty cloudy to be honest. I am thinking about what art fairs I will do, classes I will teach, and what art I will make. The only thing set in stone at this point is a solo exhibit at Pottery Place Plus, of which I am a member. We can rent out the guest artist space for a body of work that differs from our normal work we show in the gallery. I am thinking smaller accessories that may drift into some jewelry items, but we will see. My method for deciding is to make piles of materials and see what ideas come of it. A great activity for cold, gray afternoons. I watch the goings-on at the bird feeder while I sort out the fabrics that remind me of the sunny days they were made. I have until October to be done with the work for the show; It seems far off, but will be here shortly. 

In the meantime, if I am going to be able to do fairs this spring and summer I do have to get work done, even though it is the dead of winter here and there isn't much fresh plant material to work with. I was asked for an interview with our local weekly paper, the Inlander, so that was another poke to get busy! They needed pictures to go with the article. I started with yellow onionskins on silk. This is a method with rusty nails as a co-effector that creates something that resembles an animal print. This was a way to have something colorful in the background of the photos as most of the prints with dried and pressed leaves give fainter color than when they were green leaves. They can be overdyed with other natural dyes, which is what will happen to the pieces I did as soon as we are just a tad warmer outside. Stomping around in the outdoor kitchen in 32 degrees Celsius is much better than the teens and twenties we are experiencing now.

 So, I am also spending sometime at the sewing machine making new ideas for what seems like a ton of eco printed fabric piling up around here. I guess in this case the execution mentioned above is coming before the vision and at some point it will all come together.

Bundles of yellow onion skins and rusted nails steaming in the outdoor kitchen, this can also be turned olive green with a post dip in an iron pot .

This one is on my Etsy shop. While I am taking a break from ceramics to create space both physically and mentally, I still have a lot of buttons and pendants to post, so keep checking!

Happy New Year!

This could be filed under "Better Late than Never". I meant to put scarves in my Etsy shop for the holiday season, but then, after avoiding it like the plague for 4 years, I managed to contract covid. Perfect timing. Now, on the one hand, compared to what has gone on in the past, it seemed like a giant non-event for my husband and I. Neither of us got terribly sick. Just very, very tired. Really exhausted as a matter of fact.

So, here we are! I put up four scarves, but remember you can always hit the "message the seller" button and ask to see pictures of others. It helps if you pick a picture that is close, click on that one, then message the seller and tell me what about that particular one is close to what you want and I can go through what I have and take it from there. Hit this link to take you to the main page of my shop.

Merry Christmas!

"I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I am doing."

John Cage 

I have worked with poinsettia before. It works well on paper, not so much on fabric.

These pieces are with copper as the mordant, which I had never used for poinsettia on paper before. The prints are more diffuse, but the color is still lovely.

The top papers are with an alum mordant and the bottom row is with rusted water.

Yellow

 "Yellow is the color of the east, childhood, and morning."

Jeffrey D Anderson

A lovely use for spotted knapweed. The card on the left is using an alum mordant (along with some other plants) and the one on the right is using copper as the mordant.

The leaves of arrowleaf balsamroot also make a lovely limey to citrus yellow, see below.

It never ceases to amaze me that most everything starts out green!

The magic begins!

Arrowleaf balsamroot and spotted knapweed on silk

If you would like to see the yellow scarves in person I will be at the Manito Art Festival this Saturday from 10-6. Come by booth 37 and see all the pretty things!

If you are interested in eco printing on paper, I am offering an accordian journal class at the Spokane Art School on June 29th. 

Hope to see you soon!

Cheers!

"Every year you make a resolution to change yourself. This year, make a resolution to be yourself."

Unknown

I think that is about as good advice as any. I am sure by now you have received a million messages about making resolutions-or not. I don't make resolutions as I am an incessant list maker so therefore have too much to do already.

I have been focusing on ceramics and my Etsy shop as it is pretty hard to eco print in this part of the world as all the plants are asleep. Ceramics does have a meditative quality about it; I listen to books while rolling the clay out and cutting out the buttons or pendants. I did do some experiments with the mucky leaves in the flowerbeds, with mixed results, as expected. The thing is that by now most or all of the chemicals that produce color in the leaves are soaked out and washed away (leaves that have been saved and pressed are a different matter-more on that later), but here are some samples of what I did get:

The top picture is a maple leaf that must have travelled from across the street, over my house and into the backyard; the bottom is black walnut. The orange/rusty marks are onionskins. This was done on silk noil, a fabric with quite a bit of texture, so the prints aren't as crisp as they would be on something like crepe de chine.

We had a good Christmas, I got a wonderful book called "Blue: In Search of Nature's Rarest Color" by Kai Kupferschmidt. It goes through the history of the study of color and then has sections about plants, birds, animals, and sea critters. Oscar, as you can see, got a catnip pillow from a dear friend of mine in Portland Oregon. And for some deranged reason seems to be a fan  of the book as well, he has already managed to put teeth marks in it (see bottom right hand corner of the book). I practically have to lock myself in the bathroom in order to read it, otherwise he is trying to take it away from me!

So, January will be spent hacking away at the never ending to-do lists. Updating email lists, rewriting a syllabus or two, deciding on an art fair schedule, taxes, etc. We haven't gotten much snow this winter, which is a shame. Aside from needing the moisture, when chained to a desk staring out the window, snow is much nicer to look at than the gray foggy winter we are having.

Happy New Year! 

Waiting on Spring

"Despite the forecast, live like it's spring."

Lilly Pulitzer

This tiny little sprout will eventually become part of a scarf similar to the one below if we all hang on a bit longer.

Spotted knapweed and arrowleaf balsamroot on silk crepe de chine

 

Happy May Day!

 The flower for May (at least in my world anyway) is Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata). It is a member of Asteraceae or the sunflower family. It grows throughout the American west and is very prolific here in Eastern Washington. It just started to bloom and I have found that if I wait a few weeks the prints are much more vibrant and clear. And so we wait. I don't use the flowers (although sometime I should at least give it a whirl on paper), just the leaves. The scarf below was mordanted with alum and the print is anything from pale green to bright yellow. With an iron or rust pre-mordant it would come out olive green. It would also be possible to dip the yellow results in an iron post dip and achieve olive green also. As mentioned, the plant is very prolific here, but as with all plants in the wild, I approach harvesting with caution and common sense. I go where there is a lot of it and only pick one or two leaves off several plants over a large area; and harvest in a different area each time.

The pale green leaf down in the corner is the arrowleaf balsamroot, the bright orange is its malcontented neighbor spotted knapweed. 

Zen and Cats

 "I have lived with several Zen masters-all of them cats."

Eckhart Tolle

I have been rereading Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart, an advisable book in the middle of a pandemic that seems never ending. It is tempting to keep thinking that things "will get better when fill in the blank". I keep doing that to myself over and over. Not long after the year began I was reading an article on the Black Plague in Europe. It started in 1346 and faded out by 1351, or about 5 years give or take depending on who you ask. This may seem somewhat depressing, as it did to a friend who said something to the effect of-"But that was before modern medicine and electricity!!" But, really, I found it to be helpful. Especially with all the talk about lack of enough vaccine doses (for the first time in a very long time I am "too young" for something) and now teenage mutant ninja virus variants and all the rest. This isn't going away anytime soon, so it seems to me that it is better to have that expectation than to be constantly disappointed that things don't go "as planned".  There are just some things that are out of our control, and the pandemic has pointed that out in spades.

I especially started to put this altogether when I read the chapter in Ms. Chodron's book called "Nonaggression and the Four Maras". As to what is a Mara, the story goes that on the night when Buddha was to attain enlightenment, he sat under a tree. While there he was attacked by the forces of Mara (basically demons) but when they shot swords and arrows at him, their weapons turned into flowers. The Four Maras are described as Devaputra mara, seeking pleasure or partaking in activities that kill pain in a detrimental way, such as addictive or compulsive behaviors for instance; Skandha mara is our reaction to having the rug pulled out from under us; Klesha mara is reacting emotionally to a situation in a way that makes whatever bad thing happen even worse; and Yama mara is basically thinking that if you just do enough, you will be in control of your life, and when totally uncontrollable things do come along, like the death of a loved one or plans change due to a pandemic, you basically bring the other maras crashing down on your head. Read her book, she says it a lot better than I can.

So, while I was pondering all this I decided to work on some small collage pieces to be placed into Pottery Place Plus. I have some small stretched canvases (9" x 12") that were calling to me. I started with enough eco printed fabric to "slip cover" the stretched canvas, and let it go from there. There was a lot of digging around in the studio, not to find anything specific, but to see what looked like it wanted to be together. So these were a meditation of sorts.

I am also trying to take a page from this little sentient being. When I feed her in the morning I sometimes ask her what her plan for the day is. She tends to blink slowly at me as if to ask "Plan? Who needs a plan?" If the weather is good it might be a day to go have a walk about in the yard, if the weather is bad it is a day for sleeping on the bathroom rug in front of the heat register. This day she saw that I was changing the sheets, one of her favorite activities! Never miss an opportunity to chase the sheets around! 

I guess the takeaway here is that I am not sure when we will have art fairs again so focusing on my online stores is the way to go. I do have work in several galleries, which are hanging in there, so I have to keep them stocked. Soon it will be time to order silk to have things ready to go when the fairs start back up again, albeit fall or beyond. One day at a time.

Speaking of, you can see my eco printing HERE and my handmade supplies HERE. My work is showing at Pottery Place Plus in Spokane and Essential Art in Moscow Idaho and hopefully this summer at Entree Gallery in Nordman Idaho. 

Merry Christmas

 "My dear

In the midst of strife, I found there was,

within me, an invincible love.

In the midst of tears, I found there was

within me, an invincible smile.

In the midst of chaos, I found there was

within me, an invincible calm.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that

within me, there lay, an invincible summer. 

And, that makes me happy.

For it says, that no matter how hard

the world pushes against me, within me,

there's something stronger..."

Albert Camus

Poinsettia on watercolor paper treated with alum alone. Very Bright and zingy! The yellow is from the green leaves of the plant, the purples and greens from the red leaves of the plant.

Poinsettia on watercolor paper. Half the papers were treated with alum and half with a soak in iron water; then the papers were layered alternately so that both mordants effect the colors from the leaves. Some might say darker and more somber, but I think they are very interesting to look at.

A few years ago I did a post about poinsettia, such as its poisonous reputation etc., you can check that out here.

Have a wonderful holiday season, make the best of it any way you can while protecting yourself and those around you. Dig deep enough and you will find your invincible summer.

After the Ecstasy, The Laundry

 "Mystery is so ever-present that no one can know for certain what will happen one hour from now."

Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path

I actually love doing studio laundry, I get to look over each eco print in detail. This is a Golden Currant Leaf

Walnut

Filbert

Sunflower leaf

Peony with coreopsis

Walnut

My eco printing is now available online! CLICK HERE

Peeling Onions Part ll

 "Reality, it seems, is not a flat plane, but has as many veils as an onion has skins."

Johnny Rich, The Human Script

This is onion skin with no pre mordant laid out on silk dupioni. After laying out the onionskins and folding the fabric in thirds the long way, I put rusted nails about every 5 inches or so and then rolled the silk up jelly roll style. Then it was steamed for an hour and allowed to cool off. You can let it set longer for darker colors, but you run the risk of the rust "burning" the fabric. Everywhere the nails interact with onionskins, you end up with black stripes; almost an animal print!

Once the above procedure is done you can then dip the fabric in iron water-no heat applied in this case. It starts to change from orange to browns, greens and grays almost immediately, so keep an eye on it. I think this sample was about 30 minutes or so. You can either rinse it out at that point or let it dry on its own, keeping in mind it will continue to darken. Also remember that wet fabric appears about two shades darker than it will when it dries, so just gage from that how dark you want it to get.

Side by side-the tiger print and the jungle it lives in!

If you would like to see a real world application of this technique visit my page at the Pottery Place Plus Online Store.

Peeling Onions Part I

 "Life is an onion-you peel it year by year and sometimes weep."

Carl Sandburg 

We grow a lot of onions! We grow Candy Sweets as they are not readily available in stores and are really good. The dye material they are wrapped in is a bonus! We also grow a few red onions.

Just lay them out on the silk and roll them up. With no other plant material you end up with a kind of marbled effect. I used scraps of silk dupioni for these samples.

This with no mordant.

This is with an alum mordant.

This is red onion skin with an alum mordant. Love the shots of green!

Iron pot as a pre mordant, I filled the pot with water and a small touch of vinegar, heated it to boiling, shut off the heat, let it cool for an hour and then added the piece of silk. I let it soak for several hours. Then I rolled up the onionskins and steamed.

Here they are all laid out side by side. Normally I would just be adding crumbled onionskins around leaves, but I thought this was a good way to show different mordants and eventually I will use the fabric for various projects. The next post will show the effect of rusty objects as a co-mordant.

You can find my handmade supplies in my Etsy shop and scarves in the Pottery Place Plus online store.