Driveway Messages – Resolved – for now

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Remember that I did not like the work I had done the week before. It did not have the layeredness that I wanted. That idea of receiving messages while pursuing messages. So I took all the etched plates, inked them up and tried different fabrics and papers.

The tiny plates of asphalt patches went onto several types of cloth and paper. I liked the cotton ones made from rusted bits from here at home. There also was this sheer fabric in a pale blue and soft burnt sienna. I have had that cloth for years thinking it would make nice overlays in books. It was one of those lovely things you touch because it was rolled up and tied with a pretty ribbon and popped out of a barrel in a shop called Pettygrew or something like that. All very charming and successfully staged toward purchasing something….anything.

The etchings of tree shadows and my own shadow were printed on more odd bits of cloth and paper. On the right are the scraps of an Egyptian cotton that I made pajamas out of. On the left is just plain tracing paper. Center is more of that rusted cloth. I even found some cotton cloth that I demonstrated earth pigment coloring on using soils from here….actually the driveway…..so very appropriate.

And after they had all dried on the print line I took them down and began cutting them up and piecing them together to get the layers of mixed messages. And in the middle of putting bits and pieces together, especially the shadows of leaves, I remembered the samples of contact printing done in workshops as demonstrations of documenting place. These too were added into the piecing.

At first I tried hand stitching overlaps of the pieces with black thread. It looked way too “loving hand look.” So I had gone from the coldness of using just scanned images of etchings overlaying shadow photos to fabric with hand stitching. They were one hundred and eighty degrees from each other and neither one was looking like what I wanted to say.

But because it was a day for mending and the machine was sitting there waiting for something else to do, I started stitching the paper and cloth together like I was a piece quilter.

I ended up with four finished pieces that now have newly delivered frames. Here is one of them.

I like them. They are the messages of leaves, shadows and marks that I step over daily on my way to find other correspondences in my mailbox.

The challenge of working with a limited palette on such a variety of materials was good for me. Then how to finish the backs and mount them….more challenges.

It was surprising how quickly I went through most of the etched cloth that hung on the line just to get these four. I would like to do more work like this. But in a book form? I think that will have to be made of something else.

For now I have cleaned the studio and just plan on stitching into the dementia shawl. Funny how those same stitches look fine on the cloth shawl and perfectly lousy on these little pieced Driveway Messages.

Til next week.

A Waste of Time? – Rethinking – Stalling

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Okay an update from last week. I spend days trying to figure out how to get the shadows of leaves over other shadows. Thinking about the marks on the driveway. I made several transparency images in deep black to tape under the thin etching plates. Here they are keeping company with that deplorable pincushion that has escaped the company of like kind in the toilet paper drawer. But only to allow for daily jabs of frustration at his carelessness and stupidity. But I digress here, sorry.

And of course when I get a plan, I always assume it is going to work out just fine. So why bother to test out the theory with only one etched plate?

I make four the size of the image to be printed on the page. These I can use in different directions to look different. Then I make four small ones to use over text from a letter. These are tracings from asphalt patching marks that look very much like writing. And the good part is that I decide to use my Dremel tool to carve and scrape into the thin plates. There are going to be no clear lines, just shadowy blurs, which I thought at the time was a good thing.

They have to be taped onto the press bed because they are slipping and miss being directly over the photo image on the paper being passed through with them.

This is messy and very blurry and not always well lined up. But several sheets later I manage to get something that made me question why bother.

If I want the black image over the grey image, why not just do it all on the computer? It would line up easier. It would all be so much simpler. But it just misses that layering of messages that seems most important to what this book is about. And I think I would like to physically layer the marks on the page with stitching and/or cloth. What I have so far seems too cold, too letter press, too distant from the hand, the touch. So next might just be using those plates on cloth to fragment and stitch. Hand stitch the text….maybe.

So I am letting ideas percolate while I go back to other things. The plates are still laying there, handy and reminding me to find a perfect fabric. Also reminding me to just do a test page first and not assume just because it is a good thought, it is going to be a good product. Seems that is a hard lesson for some of us.

So I went back to the Specimen Journal pages.

This last image got me to thinking about the journaler’s tools. Here he is using the tweezers and magnifying glass. So the next several pages are all tools.

Besides all of this, I am watching the approach of Irma, trying to read a book called The 36 Hour Day about living with dementia, finishing off the latest Louise Penny Inspector Gamache novel, thinking about the pile of mending, getting involved in Australian students projects for next March, scheduling short times away from home, and wondering if I have lost the art of focusing.

Next week I am sure something more will get done and hopefully it will be done right. For now I will concentrate on just taking it a day at a time and make something even if it is only dinner and some cookies.

Til next week.

Trying to Decide the Marks to Make

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I am back in the studio thinking about this limited edition book about the messages from the driveway. The images have been selected, adjusted and sized. Etching plates have been cut to the same size. I was thinking etchings in black line over selected parts of these shadowy images. But what kind of marks to make the etchings? What do the marks mean? Are they extrapolations of marks already there in shadow form?

Several prints on paper have been made while I draw in ink over them to see what looks right. So far…nothing. I don’t want to give up on the idea. There would be only an edition of ten books to make, but anything over one requires more planning.

I played on the computer more with the images…adjusting the contrast and darkness. The shadowy grey seems to be the best so far. But marking the etching plates is a hang up. How dense should they be? Should they be half on the image, half off? Should they be placed so as to read as text? And why does any of this matter?

It just plain matters to me. I want all the marks and image to be cohesive and address the content of messages from the driveway as I traverse it back and forth to retrieve messages from my mailbox. Just drawing something or writing about it is not right. I can draw and I can write but I want the images to speak for me.

So I looked through work to see how I make marks, what ones come naturally that seem autobiographical in some way. I found lots of marks and lots of ways to make them. So here are some.

Stitching into embossed and torn marks, then adding other objects.

Plaiting into an image.

Maybe just draw something found along the way to and from the mailbox. Just an etching that looks like an ink drawing of something just laying there. It could be sticks like the drawing above has or rocks, or…..whatever.

I would need to keep the marks simple like these done on fine paper, painted and sandwiched between two pieces of silk organza with varnishes and shellac. I wouldn’t do the messy part. I am just looking for marks.

Maybe stitching needs to be added to the print.

I seem to do it in lots of two dimensional work. There is something about this layering that seems a possibility for the messages from the driveway.

 

There is more of that here on another layered painting where I reuse a canvas by simply selecting the parts of the old I want to show through and then painting again…a different theme altogether. Here is the original of that piece.

And those time marking – tally marks – that I am still using. Maybe those should be in the messages from the driveway.

Or maybe a crow. They are always the messenger. We have loads of them here.

Like I said if this was not a small edition, but edition none the less, I could be more free with the layering, stitching, adding in bits.

Now I am thinking that chine colle might be just what I need. It would give the extra to the shadow image, the etching and the texture that for some reason, I think I am after. It certainly would add to the layered idea of hidden messages.

Anyway I need to stop. I need to think and maybe I need to quit looking at other works. Maybe I just need to experiment and not worry about wasting time and materials trying to make something look right.

If I get any further with this I will post it.

Starting on the Land of Lethe Journal

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Here is the opening or “Title Page” of the small leather journal. I had private students here for a few days and I worked on this when not needed to lend a hand. One of them reminded me that those marks of four slashes and then a diagonal one across is referred to as “tally marks.” I had forgotten that and really like the name. It has always been a favorite doodle mark for me….just marking time is how I thought of it…not really counting things by five….just like doing it.

I wove a bit of shifu thread that had been colored with soil from some place special to me and then tied it onto the page. Here is the back of the next page that is a weaving made by making slits into the paper and then plaiting through strips of more Thai kozo paper that were colored with a greenish soil. The back of the title page was not so interesting….just the ties and back of the tally mark stitching.

At the base of the green paper weaving I did some more stitching with favorite threads and then cut a hole to make another weaving with shifu threads over warps that have been stitched into place. These are two of my favorite tools for doing small weavings with paper. One is the bone needle that a basket maker in Tasmania made (I have several because although I buy them for gifts, I find I can’t part with them) and the other is a small comb that I purchased at Wafu Works in Hobart. It is so perfect for picking up threads and lifting them out of the way and then packing them into place.

Here is that page finished.

And the back with lots of tally marks on the next page.

I like the backs and will likely go back into them with more memory marks. This heavy print making paper is nice to pierce and then stitch through. Like the old learning to stitch cards that we had when were very very young….just put the bright colored yarns into the eye of a very big needle and poke it in and out of the holes. I think we were supposed to be making something by following the direction lines, but I am quite sure that I just filled the entire surface with yarn until I could not get the needle through.

And the back of this tally page with some small coppery scraps stuck in place. On the right is a small knotted shifu thread basket holding a small flat round stone.

And then the last page of a patchwork cloth of shifu weavings sewn together.

I have made a start on this journal. This signature now has something on each page. It is a signature that used slightly smaller folios than the other five signatures.  It seemed that they should all be treated similarly. I will continue to back into them before starting on the next set of pages. It could be that I am avoiding writing on the pages and will just make marks using cloth and stitch. I might put scraps of our clothing in it.

I did that with this very large wall hanging when we were married for thirty some years….about the year 2000. It is made up of coffee filters with comments written on them, spun into threads and holding scraps of our clothing together. Coffee filters were also used in the block-like quilt designs to make up the calendar month of October. On the square where the 27th would have been that year is a copy of a picture of us before we were married that my husband kept in his wallet all those years. This year will be our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Anyway this piece hangs in the guest room and I think needs to be put away soon….maybe harvested for parts.

It covers one wall almost completely as each square is over twelve inches in each direction.

Here are some details. It all had to do with how marriage works….some days things are held together nicely and some days a bit messy.

I liked doing this piece but maybe it is time to take if down from the wall of the guest room. I never gave it a thought that some people staying in that room might be wondering what in the world it was. I do like these details though and may just cut some up to put into my Lethe Journal. Put some coffee stains in there too because we still start our day with that….sipping coffee.

Til next week.