Using the XCut XPress With New Bed and Botanicals

Posted on by Sandy Webster

While in Asheville I purchased a cutting board at a kitchen shop for $11.99. It measured 13″ by 19 3/4″ and I had Lee cut it down to 8 1/2″ by 18″ because there was a cut out handle near one end. I had already cut a mylar piece for keeping the surface easy to clean and although it was 8 1/2″ by 20″, it was easy to chop off the two inches. I use my board shear to cut the mylar but tape both sides where the cut will be so as not to shatter the plastic.

Next I took the still damp leaves from doing contact prints on the scarves and placed them into the press between various sheets of papers. Here is the first using Stonehenge printmaking papers.

I like the softness of this and plan to use them as they are in pieces for new work like the Australian Travel panel I finished week before last. Here is a reminder of that piece. New works for the exhibit at River Gallery in Chattanooga next April will be similar to it and the small Messages from the Driveway series.

After trying the leaves on printmaking papers, I decided to just use copy or office papers that are about 24 lb.

I am taking advantage of the new longer length bed we made. I must say the bed is not as thick as the one that came with the XCut XPress but only by 1/8 inch or so, and it was easy to pack in the difference and increase the pressure.

I will use these softer prints to try some of my dry point etchings over. Especially since I have so many etchings of Eucalyptus trees, leaves, and pods.

The embossings are nice and not so easy to see in these images. But they invited me to try another tack with them.

Drawing in with pencil, after trying and failing to get silver point to adhere to the surface. If I gesso the surface before imprinting leaves, silver point would have worked. Next time. So I softly used a graphite pencil to emphasize the natural leaf marks. And, of course, water colored the leaf. This was fun and they will be used as well in the new works with prints on cloth and other dry point images.

My final play for the day yesterday was using my iron water on the papers and then placing leaves and blooms in between. Rolling through twice was not such a good idea as the smaller leaf created its own shadow. But these I will stitch into and disguise that….I think.

What I learned is that it is messy bringing those wet smelly leaves into the studio. Trying to sort out the ones that were flat and trying to not get too much dampness on the papers was a challenge. I have already stained my new longer cut felts. I will cut new ones from felt that I bought to make those despicable little pin cushions in the likeness of a despicable little fingered man….but that is another story.

Today I will do some more drawing and printing into and over the papers I amassed yesterday. And I will get out my local and Australian earth pigments to do some coloring into the botanical contact prints.  I must say the hard part is picking out which side of the printed papers to use. The easy answer is to turn them into a book so both sides of the paper can be seen….but isn’t everybody doing that already with their contact prints?

More stitching and coloring is the try for today….next week maybe some gessoed papers to do silver point on after printing.

Til then I am cleaning out all those dead leaves and giving them a toss. There happens to be bunches of fresh ones in the foyer waiting til I want to work with Eucalyptus again. And then there are all those ones that I used my burning tool on that will find their way into this new work. Remember these?

And my new frames came yesterday so I can cut the museum board the right size to start planning on the layouts. I just have this next week to play before I have private students taking over my thinking (which is a good thing) and my studio the following week.

So I had better get to it.

 

Those Dead Dried Leaves Scarves

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Here the two of them are unwrapped, rinsed and laying out. There is considerably more orange than I thought would come through. Most of it is from the dried California leaves.

But some from the small little stem-clinging Eucalyptus from Trader Joe’s.

All of it looks a bit “messy” for my taste. Not many clear outlines of leaf patterns.

They sort of look like what they are….lots of leaves tossed on cloth with a hope for the best. Actually “the best” takes more work than what I put into these. I don’t really like orange that much so my favorite parts are the ends with string resist marks where iron crept into the cloth.

Dry now they are a bit better.

The details are the best views. I will press them and then put them away for gifts or something. The ones I did last March in Australia at the Botanical Studio were so much better. The Eucalyptus leaves there are simply stunning on how they transfer to cloth. If I can possibly work in a day there dyeing or just work on them while in country next March I will, but time is tight to say the least!

Today I returned from Asheville and bought enough felt to make many, many trump pincushions. My friend Marla has downsized the pattern for “pocket pincushions” and we are thinking that since we are being asked, we might just do them up in trade for donations to Planned Parenthood. We will discuss it over Christmas when she comes here. I will try to have everything cut out and ready for the machine. There is such pleasure sticking pins into its body.

And I arrived home to a phone call asking me to do a show in Chattanooga next April. So just ordered more frames for the etchings and botanical prints works about messages and travel.

That’s it. I just promised images of the dead leaves on cloth and here it is.

A Good Week at Websters

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Friends I have known since 1988 arrived this week. Ed hiked the Appalachian Trail with a group each day and I collected Carlene to work with me in the studio. I wanted to get started on my piece about my travels in Australia and she needed to work on some assignments in embroidery studies.

First off I made the prints from the etched plates and only used fabrics colored in Australia. They are four different images of my shadow on the land there. Then I collected all the etchings that I had done there or at home using photos of gum trees as inspiration. Next came the pile of botanical prints made on paper while at Beautiful Silks last March and some of the handmade papers I made in Claudia Lee’s class last July. The palette was exactly what I was looking for.

Several pieces of Thai kozo had to be pieced together as I wanted the work to measure one square meter. Above is the first strip of pieces placed together. The botanical and dry point etchings had to be sanded down to make the papers more pliable. I added scraps of rusted papers done by a method I learned from Adele in Australia. It was like putting puzzle pieces together and Carlene had such a good eye for helping with the placements.

These are my “walkabout” tracks across the land into the country. The problem was that I needed to cover the pieced seams of the kozo paper and placement was not where I would have wanted it. So, logically I changed the size from one meter by one yard, using both measuring systems as it is about my being there and dragging my own sensibilities with me.

I pinned it to the wall on Wednesday just before a dinner party with several friends.

And here is the table with loads of BBQ ribs and veggies.

And Lynda’s kale salad that was the best!

The feed back was good from the textile women who were there as well as our artist neighbor who had been watching my progress with the piece I have decided to call, “Walkabout”.

Here are some details:

I intend to use the spun paper shifu threads that have been colored with the soils of Australia and some of the watercolors made from pigments gathered there to work in older tracks onto the background. Not sure about that yet as right now it is all about the stitching my own tracks into place. Keeping with the theme of being there I am punching the stitch holes five millimeters apart.

And of course the thread I am using was purchased in Hobart at Wafu Works. It is a lovely loosely plied cotton with a nice sheen that slides easily in and out of the holes.

So today I will punch and stitch the last of the six tracks in place and begin thinking about the tracks that came before me flowing over the ground below.

Til next week…..and I really hope it goes as well as this one, full of friends, food and fibers.

Remembering Lin

Posted on by Sandy Webster

 

We met in a workshop I taught about ten years ago on placement of memory. After that it was private time here in my studio to work on the things she needed to express through her hands and materials. So many things arrived with Lin, rusty bits, antique dolls, foundry molds, papers, leathers, bibles, paints and pens and tools.

Every bit of space in my studio that could be, was cleared to accommodate Lin and her friend, Shay, who came to explore her own ideas visually or in writings. They were heady times starting as soon as breakfast was over and going often into the night with only brief breaks for lunch and dinner. We would stop at four or five in the afternoon and I would bring out my legal pad to see how closely they were adhering to their plans for the time here or were they getting sidetracked, seduced by materials, losing interest. We drank wine and ate medjul dates stuffed with walnut halves and talk about the importance of what we were doing.

For Lin the work was either about war or putting stories from the Old Testament into sculptural forms using dolls and found objects. Often we would have to travel to antique shops to find just the right doll from the period of her childhood and before. Mostly we came home with even more rusty things that in Lin’s hands became the perfect addition and necessary part of her visual stories so easily recalled from her childhood.

When not working on these pieces that were carefully rendered and resourced with the passages often written on their bodies, Lin worked on statements about war.

Lin worried about how the work would be interpreted if shown in a South that had strong views on religion and patriotism. As far as I know it has never been shown….only the artist books or works that could easily be sidled next to other people’s artwork.

I photographed the work before it left the studio. Most were hard to get a good image of but at least she had a picture of how they were to be put together if ever there was an exhibition. I gave her a cd of the images I took so she could have them for reference later.

The only “later” we had was about six weeks ago. More work on war. And like all the other work I helped her pack it into boxes to put into the car and take home. And there it would join the rest unopened and unseen.

Work does not need to be exhibited. It is the doing that matters. Lin’s last words to me were that here in my studio, doing her work, is where she felt most alive. It was the same for me having her here, lending a hand, a tool or just the right piece that she did not happen to have in her vast stash of materials. There is nothing like seeing something that matters come together guided by your own hands. Then stepping back and saying, “That’s it!”

Over the years there have been absolutely countless pieces completed by her hands here in the studio. Even recently with the cancer treatments taking her sense of touch, Lin still managed to make her work and tell her stories. Many of those stories were about God always being at the table while she and her brothers grew up in a religious household.

I would really like to think she is now in his household making something from whatever caught her eye on the way there.

I bought some medjul dates and walnuts the other day. Later I will have an Australian red and some of those in a quiet time in the studio, the studio where she will be lingering for some time to come.