Late in August, Canadian artist Shelagh Keeley offered a drawing workshop to CTS members and friends. This was my third and last workshop of the summer and the perfect follow up to Maxine's class. The environment was once again most amiable and the hours soon saw us building up to different exercises in drawing. It was fun and substantial, with relevant handouts and visual aids. One way or another, we all benefited from diverse and sometimes unconventional ways of drawing, all of which rendered very auspicious results.
Some of our drawings on the table.
In the end, we all managed to reconnect with the joy of letting the hand glide freely on the paper and respond to various visual and tactile stimuli, leading to the creation of a significant number of marks that eventually transcended professional backgrounds and most importantly, expectations.
A closer view of our drawings.
Fully recharged after this workshop, September found me back in the studio with a new goal: To fully resolve and print one [new] design a week. I continue to draw as often as possible, but so far, the two designs that have been produced these last couple of weeks are from my drawings during Shelagh's workshop.
From left to right: Original drawing for "hecha nudos" (in knots). The right-most is a turned overprint.
Hecha nudos, infinity scarves.
The left image is the original drawing for "esto no es un chayote" (this is not a chayote). The right one is printed on a fabulous cotton/hemp canvas in three colours.
"Esto no es un chayote" in pillow form out for a test drive at home.
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Continuing on the subject of trying new things and making them work, I find the following merge of talents intriguingly successful. How did this ever happen? And it's been six years! It is September, let's continue the creative celebration.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Gone, Gone, Gone. Rounder Records, 2007.
Every term, our CTS Co-op offers splendid workshops related to the field of fibre arts. This summer I was able to participate in three of them.
The first one, Natural Dye Printing, took place in early June as part of the CTS's Sustainable Design Series and offered by former member Thea Haines. During these two sessions, Thea delivered a clear and very engaging introduction to various basic, yet rich techniques within the discipline. For a few hours that weekend we became alchemists deeply involved in the processes, discovering the gentle nature of the materials while achieving surprising and alluring results.
We started by reviewing the very important steps of pre-treating (better known as mordanting) the fabric so that it could easily "take" the dyes (1). We followed by creating very useful colour charts with the aid of "thickened" dyes (such as pomegranate, black walnut, osage orange, madder and Brazil wood, to name a few) plus iron and allum as "colour changers" (2). The last step consisted in "steaming" these charts to "set" the colours properly (3).
3-The charts were rolled in muslin, then coiled and later placed in the steamer.
Steamer. A large rice bamboo steamer worked perfectly.
After carefully studying the charts, the final choices were made, and so the printing started by using different mark-making tools, blocks and most certainly, silk screens.
Some mark-making tools and blocks (commercial and hand-made) provided by Thea.
The following are images of one design I'm just taking out for a "test drive" for which the natural dyes worked perfectly!
The first image is a close up of the screen against the window, I've
always loved how light filters through the screens. The second image is
of cloth dyed with logwood and "discharged" with citric acid (!!!!). The
back of the fabric shows how thorough the colour extraction was. The
third image is of my favourite print resulting from these two days. The
perennial considerations: editing and end use.
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RESOURCES
Instructor: You may look up Thea's blog and website by clicking here and here.
Suppliers: Maiwa, of course. And from my end, while in Asheville a couple of weeks ago, I visited Earth Guild and as expected, it had pretty much everything.
Another voice: Please visit our CTS Co-op's blog, where our own Roohi Qureshi writes about the workshop while showcasing more images and a fun video of her print! A very complete resource guide is offered as well. You may check it out here. Book: The most recommended was Wild Color by Jenny Dean.
