Oops! That Pesky Earth Pigment – Carl Green Green

So it looked good a couple of weeks ago on my soy milk treated linen scarves from Beautiful Silks. Granted the Carl Green Green was a bit gritty but there was lots of color there and it went on easily in a paste of pigment and soy milk. All the colors looked good then…looked like they might take.

So last Friday I took one of the small scarves and rinsed it out. I found a bit of a hole where one of the green dots were.

The loose weave of the linen was not conducive to holding onto much color but the reds and yellows showed promise if I left them another week. One scarf and one shawl left on the table to wait.

Showing different things to the Art Group on Sunday, I included the linen scarf with the small hole and said that I would just put a patch of something over it and maybe stitch more remnants on the piece. I told them it could be quite interesting and soft. Might even look like it was pulled from a mummy…..which is something I would be more interested in wearing than something new.

But this morning I got to thinking that maybe it was not a good idea to let them sit under the penetrating green pigment too much longer, so I “rescued” the other two. Good idea. Here is the green patterned end of the second scarf.

And here are some images of the shawl.

Those are pretty big holes because I made large circles or squares with the green pigment. But I have to admit that I like the feel and the tatteriness of them. So I will sacrifice the least holey of the two smaller scarves to patch the holes of the other two…..especially the large shawl. I might also add some scraps of contact printing from leaves on silk/wool just for more interest.

I made this a few years ago with the spare parts of more or less ruined shirts. I love this scarf and wear it often. And it never fails to get compliments and questions.

Of course those tattered scarves do remind me of the middle stages of some of my shifu papers using earth pigments.

I think that there is something very appealing in the raggity look. My spell check did not like that word “raggity”…..suggested “fragility”…..which is where these linen scarves are right now out there drying in the sun. They look rotted and dug up from the earth. I think there are possibilities abound with them. They could be fragments in a book or wall piece but I think right now I want to wear them. And I am trying very hard to not make things that go on walls and require framing, glass and a place to show.  Of course now that I have said that and started thinking about it, pieces of the scarves and unspun shifu  would be very interesting worked into collage with prints and more pigments……

Anyway just an early blog on the latest development here in the studio. Maybe next time I can have them patched and stitched….at least one of them anyway.

Til then.