Five Days of Making and Experimenting

Posted on by Sandy Webster

The past five days I was working on experimenting with materials. Sunday a friend and I tried coloring cloth and papers with eucalyptus leaves in iron baths and steaming. The steaming worked best for getting the intense color. And silk fabric worked better than cotton, linen and papers. And the intense orange that colored my large silk piece was quickly given to my friend because she loved it and I did not. Way too orange. The dull greys from the iron pot seemed more appealing. Could be I am tired of looking at botanical print images on cloth and/or paper. And that likely is because I have some that turned out so beautiful in Australia that it is hard to duplicate that here. The folios, though lovely, just sit on a shelf waiting to moved beyond what they are….nice colored leaves blurred on pages.

But Sunday night we started our workshop with paper maker/artist, Claudia Lee. I took a seat close to the door in case I might like to escape early. Dipping in pulp and trying to easily get it off the screen onto a felt to be pressed and dried….and then all that waiting to be able to do something with it seemed like an endeavor I was a bit reluctant to do. It was the “stitching” part of the class that drew me in the first place, so I was thinking sewing bits of paper together…..maybe into a shirt.

But I got the hang of it. Made some nice long narrow sheets of abaca, some with hemp and more with a combination. Then came the resisting with wax, the walnut and/or pigment coloring and of course the indigo vats. We even rusted several sheets in old pans.

Above are a sampling of some of the many sheets I made. Some from scratch in the vats and some of my printmaking papers taken in to experiment with. I was thinking of using them as backgrounds for block prints. But they are so beautiful on their own, that it is hard to see them other than as book covers and screens and lanterns. And that is what Claudia does. Hers are stunning and my colored papers though terrific looking, looked like hers. So most of them will be cut into small pieces to be stitched with shifu sections and journal entries, etc into larger pieces so they are not so much about the paper but about what they have become as part of something greater.

BUT when I made the kozo paper in the Japanese style vat that Matthew made and saw the crude results of my efforts, things changed. Would this thin barky paper cling not only to itself but to a structured form? Would it shrink like the model airplane coatings for tissue covered ribs does? Just how far and how much could I expect from the new to me material of koohiyaki be pushed?

The next two days was given over to making this boat, the fish with shifu lines attached, the one oar, bundle with a small golden bell enclosed, a scroll, navigational tool and the batiked and colored rock that sits inside as another metaphor for the inevitable.

I loved making this. The long rectangular rock just in front of my car in the parking lot made the perfect finish for this piece. It lifts the bundle up and makes it easy to pick up and give it a shake to hear the bell as in memory jogging…”oh, that rings a bell.” Arranging the entire piece in a curved orientation is a reminder that things will continue to go round and round. A single oar just about guarantees that to happen. It also pulls at other things like the fish who join in the vortex of what is happening. Yes, I really did love making this while the others went on making and coloring paper.

I stayed with my idea of pulp on thin cotton and ended up with some pieces that can be used sculpturally in my studio. They were so ugly and cloggy looking while drying but became just what I would have wanted after the wax and walnut.

And here are some more of the papers and cloth.

And of course one of the best things about being in a class is the people around you. They were wonderful, supportive and interesting. Claudia Lee is the most amazing giving, sharing an certainly knowledgeable instructors I know. Her paper making skills are extraordinary and if you ever get a chance to take one of her classes, do it. Register as soon as possible.

More next week on whatever happens after cleaning up the mess we made here and in the studio.

 

A Catch Up for the Week

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I just walked down to the mail box. It is about four hundred steps one way. The daylillies caught my eye. These must be some kind of double ruffly kind. There are several along one side of the drive. And on the other side are leaf shadows on the pavement.

They look like a visual poetry to me and I think I will take more pictures of them as the shapes change along with the light. Something good for later when words will come easier.

For three days I worked on adding more to the Specimen Journal. Dick in the Art Group said I should go a bit wilder, more strange in color and subject. It occurred to me that any discoverer trying to understand what he was seeing might just do a bit of dissecting. He might also watch his subjects over a period of time to try understand how they got there. So here are the next few pages with only four more to go and the second signature is finished.

And before I went into the paint box to do these, I spent several days sorting through the fabrics and getting the sewing done.

First thing pants from Dairiings in Australia with an top made from two shirts and some Japanese scraps of cloth from a long time ago.

Two more tops, one altered from a bad Flax pattern and one from scratch using my favorite shirt pattern and more fabric from Dairings.

Two more pants, the black one’s from some nice twill cotton found in storage and batik patches on another favorite old pair of linen pants.

 

Now it is getting on in the week and I will work more on the Specimen Journal, maybe the Lethe Map. But mainly I am going through the silks and cottons that are just white and have been purchased to do some contact Nature printing.

My friend has collected leaves to see how to do it. I have the equipment and a tiny bit of experience, not to mention India Flints books. So if we have time before and/or during the paper making class we are taking this next week, we will give it a go. We are doing some indigo dyeing and using pigments (hopefully earth pigments) to color papers to then stitch into and alter in some way. It sounds like I can do that and still slip out to check on things at home. And it will be so much fun doing this with friends in the new paper studio at the folk school.

Hopefully next week I will have lovely pictures and something more interesting to say than this week. So far this Spring and Summer have made me feel a bit like a BB in a boxcar. I just need some crevices to drop into to think a bit before being jarred out and rolling on to whatever is happening next that demands attention.

I will say things are getting done and that’s good. But I am looking forward to some cooler, dreary days to put words to those leaf shadows. Even though today has been lovely.

 

My Mind This Week

Posted on by Sandy Webster

We are having some beautiful skies this week. It is the Summer Solstice here, Winter Solstice down under where I see they too have exquisite sunsets happening. It seems I am more in touch with what is going on down there than here according to my facebook feeds. It is the shared frustration with our politics as well as our interest in the arts that keep us in touch. The fears of “otherness” has put deep scars in not just our two countries but the world as well.

Ever since the seventies in the time of “free love” I honestly thought that we were headed toward a more enlightened way of seeing. Naive at best. And maybe it is being an artist, caught up in my own passions to visualize an awareness and then wanting to share.

It was sad to see an article by the BBC about how the truly American expression of quilt making has become so divisive here in this country. Conservatives squaring up against those who use the quilt form as expressions of opposition to our present government. How can that be justified? Objects, large objects made from the very medium that covers our bodies and “protects” us has always been one of the most expressive materials to make us think. Just think the Aids Quilt to start, then the narrative quilts of Faith Ringgold and others like her. I remember being so impressed to meet the young woman who was making quilts depicting the threatened owls of the Northwest through deforestation.

It is the responsibility of artists to use whatever medium is at our disposal to make a point. Whether the viewer likes it or not is hardly the point. I made this one after one President Bush left office and we were in the middle of another one. It is titled, “Lost Peaces”. The base cloth scraps were from canvases I had painted and collaged about the peace and calm of tai chi movements. Onto them I shaped fragile paper birds starting with the dove of peace coming in from the top right only to be shot down and added to specimen drawers full of his predecessors. Each of them tagged on the leg with a small excerpt from a gardening book why certain plants need to be kept away from other ones so as to avoid contamination of species. It is also filled with rusted nails lined up like armaments. It hangs behind me here in the office right now and only had one public showing. A textile show in Asheville where it was kept off to one end away from those that were more about cloth and surface design.

I will probably take it to the landfill after removing all those wonderful rusty nails….but not yet. It seems more important this week after reading the BBC article.

On another subject this week I just want to give a nod to the women who have touched me in ways few have. I am thinking of only three right now. One who is always there at the end of the phone or in person to remind me to laugh. She is always there before I knew I needed her to be here to listen, just listen with a scotch in hand. Another called last night, again with scotch in hand. She lives in Canada and we have known each other since graduate school twenty years ago. Her call was to commiserate about our pitiful state of politics in this country and how we have allowed ourselves to become so fearful and easily manipulated. Of course they have what most of us would consider the ideal leader sitting in their capitol while we have whatever this is…a combination of all the worst when there is such an absence of integrity.

And another who my thoughts are with as she struggles with perhaps the final stages of cancer. I never knew her well but I wanted her to know just how much I needed to hear her answer to a question I had asked myself for years, “Am I doing enough and am I doing it right?”. I would ask every older woman artist that I respected if they were constantly nagged by that question. Most said they never gave it a thought. One time a friend and I asked an online ouija board the same question and after several minutes…it spelled out “maybe”. How silly was that! But this woman who I spent little time with and so admired her artwork told me, “Sandy, it doesn’t matter.” I stopped asking the question after that and wanted to thank her for her simple bit of insight that had escaped me.

My art group meets here this weekend and I am forever grateful for their willingness to talk and listen to the things that matter. This week they will see all the specimens framed and the journal I am working on. And they will also understand the deep importance of the Land of Lethe map still tucked into its blank journal waiting for words.

So finally in this rather rambling blog are more of the specimen journal pages.

One signature is finished and I am well into the next one. It has been a great distraction working on this, an imaginary place to go. It works like tai chi and some yoga stretches. You come away from it refreshed and ready to tackle whatever is next.

The next few days I will be sewing clothes. Taking two shirts or more to make one I would wear. Sewing up fabrics I just had to have from Dairings in Australia and throwing out scraps that at one time seemed important and now have no reason for being here.

Til next week. And if you have a friend who drinks single malt scotch, you have a good listener, a good friend.

 

The Specimen Journal – Signature One

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I did work on the Specimen Journal this week. Here is the title page when the wooden cover is turned back. There is a language to it but I have no idea what it is. It is doodling “letters and words” to look right in places one would expect to read information. I could not resist and used a bit of metallic watercolors for the title. I also figured that it would be the most handled page of the book, so lots of smudges. Next is the first page of the first signature in the book. There are three folios to each signature and therefore twelve pages to illustrate in one way or another.

Here is the title page turned.

There will certainly be something in that large blank space because I suspect the author/illustrator/discoverer had a minor case of kenophobia or in art terms, horror a vacuii.  Both translate to a fear of empty spaces.

Now the next two pages:

On these pages we are introduced to the dragonfly like specimen. And admittedly I am influenced by Australia in my choice of trees and blooms. There is a close-up of the mating ritual to the left side of the right hand page and an explanation in something we cannot read.

I actually remember seeing dragonflies do this. It was one of those Annie Dillard moments where you feel compelled to look closely at what Nature is showing for a brief moment only. Otherwise I think she would be disappointed that I squandered the opportunity. Annie Proulx makes me feel that way when I don’t watch people closely enough. Both of them make me feel like a gawker.

And that center fold that I started with. Now there is a bit more to it. I added a butterfly and some more green to a bothersome empty space. The female is laying her eggs.

And then the page after that is where I have gotten to date. Before I introduce the life of another specimen I think I will return to location where the discoverer is. Some plants and rocks to finish off this signature. Maybe even a fetus look inside the dragonfly’s egg.

A predator would be nice. Something that might go for dragonfly eggs since once they have hatched, like in this illustration, they are as safe as their parents.

There is one thing I am noticing while doing this. My illustrating skills are just about the same as they were twenty years ago. If I was doing this on a daily basis I would expect some improvement. So maybe by the end of the journal it will look like the discoverer improved or he just handed the whole thing over to someone more competent.

It also really does remind me of the Voynich Manuscript, full of rather naive little drawings. I will keep at it and promise not to devote endless blogs to this project. There are lots of other things I could be doing and talking about and next week I can maybe show something else.

Til then.