more reliquaries...

despite harm (2009), 4½” x 4½”, cast paper, washi, silver, tangerine tree thorn, ink

despite harm (detail)


thwarted (2008), 7½” x 7½”, cast paper, beech seed pods, waxed linen cord

thwarted (detail)

seeking tenderness (2008), 4½” x 4½”, cast paper, silver, washi

seeking tenderness (detail)

washi washed

A wash applied to washi; ink added; left to dry accentuating wrinkles; sewn lines applied.

black and white

I loved this technique. Apply glue to paper and dip into sand. When dry, pull a foam brush with ink over the paper, picking up the texture. When the paper was dry, I ripped it into fragments and created a collage with it. Despite using lots of colour during my paper course at Haliburton, this is where I really feel right with myself...black and white.

sanguine yearning

Red Alert - Week 1 opens today. The vernissage (opening) will be the evening of Valentine's Day. I've called my piece sanguine yearning. Sanguine refers to blood but also to optimism and confidence. I will refrain from saying what the piece means to me. My hope is that it will evoke personal associations and emotional responses from those who view it.

clotting

Motivated by Red Alert, an upcoming red-themed exhibition in which I am one of the participants, I've been mucking about with plaster bandage and sanguine ink. I started to experiment and ended up creating what I have come to consider as small clots, but they are essentially nests or vessels (of course!). Below are some glimpses of my materials and process. The show opens in a few days and I will post some photographs of my finished piece when it is done. I'm always finished at the eleventh hour...

clickables

OK...now that Lynne has unravelled the mystery of making my photos clickable, I feel compelled to re-post my ink drawings so that you can see them full size in more detail. Please click away! Here they are, mounted for cards:

not in the cards

Thanks for all the encouragement for finishing (and starting) my cards but perhaps cards are not in the cards for now. Yesterday almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. My cast paper fragments that I cast on Thursday night were not dry (except the two pictured above) and are still not dry this morning even though I've had heat and fans working all night. When I realized that I could not work with cast paper yesterday, I tried making some ink drawings with some new inks that I have. As I mentioned before, I'm not very experienced at drawing or painting except in an intuitive way, so I just experimented and had fun with them. I enjoyed making them but made very few. I realize now that these will not be very cost effective, selling them as cards. It takes too much time and people will not pay much for a card. It's a lot of work and energy for a few dollars. I may be better off framing them as small ink works. Here's the dilemma (that most artists face)...I could go into mass production and make some very cute and quick cards that would sell well but would not be "me". Or I could stick with my style and my vision, take the time needed, charge what I think is fair, and those who like the work will buy it, even though the work may not be a big seller. Yup, that's what I will do. So no cards today! But I will do my cast paper demonstration today so I'd better go and get set up! Below are my ink drawings.