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. 

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

Eco Printing on Paper

"One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else." K.L. Toth

All the News that is Fit to Print

"Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heros overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down."

Eleanor Roosevelt

New Online Store

Pottery Place Plus is starting an online store to help offset the complications of Covid-19. It is beautiful! Here is the link to my page, but while you are there hit the "Return to PPP online store" link so you can see the work of my fellow co-op members. Since we offer curbside pick up, shopping in store, and shipping options I have started off with the things I have the most of and are fairly repeatable, but more is coming soon!

 Classes

I needed something to look forward to, always keeping in mind that things may need to change depending on what is happening in the world. To that end I am offering two classes at Urban Art Cooperative here in Spokane. They are the "Alchemy with Plants" scarf make and take that I have offered in the past. Due to physical distancing requirements space is really limited, so get signed up soon. Full refund in the event Covid puts a kink in our plans. Click on either date for details.

Saturday August 15th from 3-6 PM

Sunday August 16th from noon to 3-PM

Experiments

Last year I got the deal of the century on packages of men's tank tops. While I already knew that the prints wouldn't be as crisp on cotton ribbed fabric as on a smooth surface, I figured it was as good a way as any to play around with barriers and blankets as any. I do like the results for the most part! All got a good scouring and then over the winter I did various soaks in whey protein and soda ash. Then I played around with rusted nail patterns. Left to right: black walnut, oak, and sunflower. I may have pushed the season on the sunflower leaves, they seem to work best when the plant has had some flowers go to seed, mine are just starting to flower. A trip through an iron bath should darken up that print.

Publishing

I have a little upcycling project in the return issue of GreenCraft, out now!

The Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour

Coming up September 26th, click HERE for details!

If you need supplies to finish off all your quarantine WIP go check out my Etsy shop for handmade buttons, pendants, and papers. 

January

"January,

The first month of the year,

A perfect time to start all over again,

Changing energies and deserting old moods,

New Beginnings, new attitudes."

Charmaine J. Forde

I had planned to turn these tank tops into shopping bags by sewing the bottoms shut-but now I may wear them! 

Working on fabric for some landscapes I am making. I ran out of long pieces so I just threw in a little a bit and that, rolled them up and hauled them out to my stove-only slipped on the ice once!

This is what I mean by a little of this and that; cracked leaves out of the miscellaneous leaves box, St. John's Wort flowers, and whatever dried tree catkins were left in that box. I love the freedom in making random pieces of fabric, I lose that urge to "design" and learn so much from the serendipity of it. I also sometimes end up with pieces I can't make myself cut into, so I have learned to make lots of them! 

This is a piece of cotton canvas from a session a few days ago. I had "abused" it in several different ways (coffee dye after rusted nails and I can't remember what else) so I was really surprised that the onion skins (that would be the mass across the top of the picture) printed green. I figured they might end up almost black.

Eco Printing on Gourds

"Inspiration exists, but it must find us working."

Pablo Picasso

Eco printing with walnut leaves on a gourd. I was messing around with eco printing on porcelain and then decided to see what would happen to a gourd, since I have a lot of them. I never had figured out exactly what I wanted to do with them-maybe this was the idea that was supposed to come along.

I soaked the gourds, the plant material, and the wrapping all in iron water and used leaves that usually work well with iron, kind of stacking the odds in my favor. Getting a gourd to actually soak is kind of trick-they want to bob around. As long as they don't have any cracks or holes they do not get mushy.

Trying to figure out how to keep the leaves attached until I could wrap the blanket around it. This worked pretty well.

Wrapped up and getting ready to steam. Needless to say the lid wouldn't go on the pan, so I made it a foil tent and steamed it for an hour. Since we have now officially run out of summer here (13 degrees last week-yikes!) gourds will have to wait until next year. I am getting some things together with the porcelain, pictures soon!

The holidays are coming! As promised I did put some scarves in the Etsy shop, along with many new buttons, pendants, and papers so be sure to check that out.

Summer Colors

"Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependant on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is."

Mark Vonnegut M.D. 

Coreopsis foliage with pre-applied rust mordant.

The orange is the coreopsis, again just the foliage, on silk with alum mordant.

Here is the plant, the flowers also print well.

Green Season

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others'  opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

Steve Jobs

Arrowleaf Balsamroot.

Geranium, arrowleaf balsamroot, and knapweed.

Cooking away!

Gnarly looking.

Arrowleaf Balsamroot print.

Knapweed print.

Eco Printing from the Deep Freeze

I hope you had a lovely holiday! But it is time to get back to work. Trouble is, when everything is covered with snow and the plants are asleep, it can be a bit of a challenge to get anything done.

What with art fairs and then my husband's mishaps last summer I couldn't get to all the iris, so I froze them by taking the flowers apart and placing the petals between layers of wax paper and sliding the little packets into upcycled plastic zip bags from the kitchen. As you can see they start to bleed as they thaw, so it is advisable to wear gloves and work quickly. You could probably press and dry them, I haven't done this with iris, but I have with hollyhocks and the color is not quite the same. Freezing them gives a result more like fresh flowers. There always seems to be enough room in the freezer for our food and to tuck in a few flowers here and there. The fabric is silk crepe de chine with pre-applied rusty nails.

I also used some spiral eucalyptus from the florist and left over poinsettia leaves, both red and green. Iris petals don't print, but do dye the fabric

So with a little pre-planning it is possible to eco print when the weather outside is frightful.

Have a wonderfully prosperous New Year!

Banishing Ghosts

Normally, I like the look of eco prints all mixed together. It reminds me of the way nature really is. The fabric reflects flowers floating in a mixture of foliage in the garden or individual leaves that pop out from the visual mass of the tree. Sometimes however, the pattern of the individual leaf becomes the most important thing. In this case I am working on lampshades and other lighting ideas and so a clear background becomes important so that the light shines through the individual leaf print. In order for the leaves in one layer to not "ghost" through to another layer a barrier must be used. This leads to a fairly controversial topic-barriers. The controversy stems from the fact that the name most people use for this process is "eco printing"; meaning ecologically sustainable or sound. So, there seems to be something inherently wrong about using plastic sheeting, a petroleum product. The problem lies in the manufacture of the plastic itself and then there is the whole notion of steaming or boiling it.  It will put off fumes that you may or may not be able to smell, possibly creating a danger to yourself. Also, there is probably no way to get the petroleum molecules off whatever your finished product is, thus making it possible, in theory, to have the petroleum seep into your skin from the finished wearable. I don't want to get into the middle of the fruckus, but I do wonder if some of my nasal issues are from making those hair flowers using melted polyester-so I chose to avoid use of plastics whenever possible from here on out.

Hollyhock, Filbert, and Coreopsis, along with plenty of "ghosts".

So, what could be used instead? Since I already did a post about using layers of fabric in between the folds, I thought I would work with some aluminum foil. Trouble is, I get so into things when I am doing them I forget to take pictures. Earlier this week I decided to just set up some "stunt" fabric to show the steps clearly rather than a hodge podge of unrelated pictures. First off, imagine the fabric in the pictures is wet. It is silk dupioni with rusted steel wool as mordant.

Lay out plant material, remember that most leaves print out the under or veined side of the leaf.

Cover with foil. At first I thought cheap dollar store foil would be fine, but decided that heavy duty could be reused or refolded and was easier to work with without tearing it.

Fold over one layer of fabric, in this case I am working in thirds as I want the pattern straight down the middle of the fabric. Ponder what you want as your final effect and fold/layer accordingly. In this case I will just fold over the right side and proceed to the next picture.

Put on the last layer of foil. If you don't, you will have the ghosts of the leaves down the the last layer of the fabric in the bundle. Roll around a stick and tie it up for the steamer pot.

Ready to go!

As I said this was stunt fabric. The following is one of the actual examples I made, and then didn't take enough process shots for it to make any sense. This is silk noil with steel wool as the mordant, using black walnut leaves and marigold petals on both pieces. Raw silk is thick enough that you don't get as much ghosting anyway, but there is a definite difference in the background color and density. 

With no barrier layers

With a foil barrier. The background is clearer and the color of the walnut leaves more intense.

One important thing to remember is that aluminum foil will act as a mordant carrier blanket. It isn't terribly noticeable but you do get different colors than you would without. I am playing around with the whole carrier blanket thing and will post more about that later. The foil is mostly reusable if you get the wet plant material off right away and it can be refolded with the clean side out for reuse. Foil is kind of expensive but it is more effective than multiple layers of fabric. The interesting thing about using multiple layers of fabric is you get that fabric to use for something else.

Decisions, decisions.

The Blues

"Particularly with the blues, it's not just about bad times. It's about healing the spirit."

Taj Mahal

Since I work with the seasons, sometimes it looks like I only work in one color. In this case, blue. Most of the blue you see here comes from Hollyhocks, although there is some petunia as well. Weirdly enough, I like ironing. In the studio, anyway. It gives me a chance to look things over and see wonderful details and surprises. Here is what I discovered today.

A little oak leaf hiding amongst the Hollyhock.

On the left, the main print (bottom of the leaf), on the right, the echo. I love the hollyhock on the left, almost photographic.

Sumac floating over rusted nails with a little bit of black locust for some green.

Another oak leaf, this one turned plum by its hollyhock neighbors.