What does an Eco Printer do in the Winter?

From the looks of this blog, not much! Actually, in addition to activities like cleaning the studio and the show truck, catching up on book work and housework, I also catch up with other art forms and friends. I have been hanging out at Urban Art Co-op, a ceramics maker's space in Spokane. Mostly, I have been doing pendants for future eco print projects, but I did get a chance to help with the holiday fundraiser and that was fun.

This one is a raku pendant with an eco printed scarf, it took me forever to figure out how to do the clasp, but I finally found the right parts, I am happy with the way it came out. When my Etsy site comes back from holiday vacation, it will be on there.

These are pendants that will get put onto lariats eventually, lots of experimentation with glazes, this has lead me to a lot more ideas, so I had better get on it!

I had done all these little hand pendants last winter and never knew what to do with them. Voila! Handbags! These are currently available at Pottery Place Plus in downtown Spokane.

The next thing I will be doing is cleaning the plant material out of the freezer-I got "the look" from my husband the other day as whatever he was searching for in there was buried by bags of frozen flowers. Can't have Mr. Man on a tear, now can we?

Thought for the Week

"I am erecting a barrier of simplicity between myself and the world."

Andre Gide

Sunday Night Thoughts

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

John Cage

Student Work

I had to show off some work from my class last summer. Merrilyn Reeves is a potter, mid-wife and herbalist. You can see her pottery on her website at www.wildwoodpottery.com

She took my eco printing class at Urban Art Co-op in August, then took it a step further and worked on paper-and look at the results! Wow!

We are both members of Pottery Place Plus in Spokane, come by and see our work the next time you are in town.

Thoughts

"We are not meant to be perfect, we are meant to be whole."

Jane Fonda

Monkshood

Time for another plant with a creepy sounding name from days of yore. I tend to buy plants off the "half dead" table at the local home center, so the labels are usually gone. What ever this thing was, the plant itself looked like a delphinium, but the flowers were different and it bloomed in the late fall. A couple of weeks ago it was the only thing left blooming out there, so I decided to throw the last of it into a scarf and see what happened.

While it was cooking away I plopped myself down in front of Google to see if I could figure out what it was. After not too much surfing, I discovered it was Monkshood. It is poisonous (of course) and thus the deer don't like it (good enough reason for it to stay in the yard) and it blooms in the late summer and fall which is also a selling feature for me. By the time we get to late summer everything else is cooked in the heat.

I used a smallish piece of silk crepe de chine with steel wool as the pre-mordant. The flowers did impart the smoky, blue/purple to the back ground, I suppose if I used enough of them it would dye the whole background that color, which could be nice. I did throw some of the leaves into other samples, but nothing came of it. At any rate, it was a nice experiment for the last blooming plant in my garden. Now there is a layer of snow out there and everything has gone to sleep for a long winter's nap. 

Happy Thanksgiving

"It is not joy that makes us grateful; if is gratitude that makes us joyful."

Brother David Steindl-Rast