Happy Earth Day!

Here's hoping Earth Day finds you healthy, inspired and outside in the beautiful Spring weather!

CitraSolv has announced the winners of their 2010 CitraSolv Art Contest and yours truly got an honorable mention with this piece, a paper collage on masonite:

You really should go take a look through the gallery of winners... there is some very cool collage art displayed. The contest was graciously juried by Cathy Taylor, the mixed media artist whose Cloth, Paper, Scissors article on using CitraSolv Concentrate as an art tool sparked a frenzy of experimentation in the paper collage field. Thanks for the effort, Cathy, and congratulations to all the winners!

Cosmic CS Collage

 

CS. NO.7, 2.23.10, 16" x 18"

Are the stars out tonight? Can you tell if it's cloudy or bright?

 

(detail)

These papers lend themselves to thoughts of the cosmos, and that's where I went this week. Yes, in my universe, some planets are oval-shaped.   

As usual, this collage was created using NatGeo magazine pages "melted" with CitraSolv Concentrate. If you'd like to know how it was done, you can check the most recent issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors, or go to this post of mine and scroll down about halfway.

The Dyed Silk Blahs

Well, sometimes when you goof, you do it on such a grand scale that it takes your breath away for days. That's what happened to me this week. But since it's a little depressing, we'll get to that last.

Last week, I saw a program on Ovation TV called Art Or Not? and in it, they covered an artist who worked with Shiva sticks on large canvases. He made tiny marks all over the canvas with the paints, using them like crayons and adding layer after layer of colors until the whole canvas was covered. (I wish I could tell you the name of the artist, but I don't see it anywhere on their site.)

I was inspired and thought it would be a neat technique to try with fabric, so I wacked off a large hunk of white muslin, pinned it to my wall, and drew on it.

 

36" x 52"

(detail)

It was an awful lot of fun and while I don't know what I'll do with it, yet, I'm sure I'll be able to find something neat it can go into. 

I did another kind of crazy thing this week- I used a piece of breakdown printed fabric and one of my "melted" papers from my CitraSolv/NatGeo collection (to find links to this technique, please see the left sidebar for the link labeled "CitraSolv Concentrate") to create a quilt.

 

 12" x 24"

I adhered the paper to the fabric with a very thin coating of gloss medium applied to the back of the paper and then, when dry, ironed to the fabric. It has a nice, soft hand, despite using gloss medium. 

I was really pleased with the "tunnel" stitching I did on the top of the piece. 

 

(detail)

It gave it a great texture, I think.

Also, this weekend, I negotiated a solo show for the month of May at a Houston business, a restaurant called Mo Mong. I've done these shows before- in fact, I spent three years curating such collections for several different businesses- and quite frankly, I swore I'd never do it again. However, this is a very high-profile and busy restaurant, and the owner asked for my work sight-unseen, which was flattering. I'll let you know how it goes; hopefully I can sell some of my pieces!

So, onto my silk blahs...

A very expensive batch of veils arrived last week, along with twelve pots of acid dyes. The idea was to parfait-dye them in a large vat (bucket) with all twelve dye colors thrown into the mix. For those of you not familiar with parfait dyeing, it basically means to LWI dye by scrunching a piece of fabric into a tall, narrow jar, pouring in one dye color (I always start with the lightest color, usually in the yellow family), scrunching another piece of fabric into the jar on top of the first piece, pour in another color of dye and so on until the jar is full. Batch and rinse as usual.

I had it in my head that I would do this with large silk veils, but first did several different experiments until I was happy with the results.

Unfortunately, those experiments didn't really help with the mess that was to follow when I did it on a grand scale. My dyes clotted before they could be poured onto the silk, the silk refused to scrunch enough to get even the slightest patterning, and the dye, rather than blending on each piece in a nice melange of colors, refused to blend at all, so I got several red veils, several blue, several green, etc. I didn't even take photos. They're not unattractive, just boring as hell.

This week I will try to spruce them up with some screen printing and fabric painting and if that is successful, I'll be sending them to Lynn Krawczyk, who has generously chosen Art Now For Autism as her designated recipient of her annual Breaking Traditions fund-raiser this year. My scarves, if they turn out well, will be given to participants of the auction fund raiser as thank you gifts (and if they don't, I'll be donating some of my hand-dyed muslin, instead).

Look for this week's CitraSolv/NatGeo collage in the next couple of days. In the meantime, happy creating!

CS. NO6

 

CS. NO6, 2.16.10, 16" x 18"

This week, now that the sun has finally come out again, I find myself craving spring. So I just couldn't help but break out the spring colors for this week's CitraSolv/NatGeo collage.

The NatGeo pages were adhered to a masonite blank in my new favorite manner: I paint the masonite and the backs of the pages with gloss medium and once they're all dry, I iron the paper to the board. The heat of the iron melts the medium and the pages adhere flatly and smoothly to the surface of the masonite.

Then I broke out my spring leaf stamps. These stamps are hand-made by adhering cut fun foam to pieces of foamcore. I painted each stamp with titanium white acrylic paint to act as a resist to the wash of color that came next.

Once the paint dried, I washed the entire surface in Sun Yellow (primary) and Turquoise (also a primary) Dye-Na-Flow and then to seal it, I covered the whole thing in a final wash of more Sun Yellow mixed into gloss medium.

 

(detail)

No. 4 & A New Batch

This week I kept the Citrasolv/NatGeo collage simple and used only contrast to tell my story.

 

CS NO.4, 2-2-10, 16" x 18"

Because I don't want to use up all my WonderUnder on this series, to adhere this collage to its masonite substrate, I coated both the surface of the masonite and the backs of the papers I wanted to use with gloss medium. After they dried, I was then able to use my hot iron to collage the pieces down. 

I hit it with one coat of satin finish varnish to seal it. 

 

CS NO.4, 2-2-10, 16" x 18"

I've been going through a lot of papers to make this series and I still have six or seven re-purposed masonite pieces left to collage, so today, I melted another magazine. 

  

  

  

 

With this batch of papers, I learned from a couple of my previous mistakes and some slight adjustments yielded spectacular results. Last time, I got a lot of pages that were mostly black, and a lot more that all looked very similar to one another.

This time, I was more discriminating in picking my magazine- I sought one with a lot of brightly-colored photos, rather than one with darker photos and pages. Those dark, rich photos may look luscious in the magazine, but once the ink in them melts, they can become very black and indistinct.

The second thing I did, which took only a couple of minutes and, I think, made the biggest difference in my results this time as compared with the last, was that I went through the magazine first, page by page, and removed all the pages that had a lot of text and/or black areas. This helped to keep too much black ink from permeating every page in the melting process, and kept my colors bright and strong, and the patterning on each sheet sharp and clear.

CS NO. 3 (Collage)

CS No.3, 1-25-10,  16" x 18"

This was a fun piece to construct and went together fairly quickly, once it decided what it wanted to be. 

As usual, I started with a  piece of masonite (I love to recycle), which I covered with two layers of Wonder Under. Onto that substrate, with a hot iron, I collaged several whole sheets of melted magazine pages.

Wanting to change the background color a bit but also wanting to show the beautiful patterns and peculiarities of the original papers, I created a glaze combining a 50/50 mixture of gloss and matte mediums with a hint of Golden acrylic paint in dioxazone purple.

Once it was dried, I embellished the background with textile foil in copper. I continued to collage more cut pieces of magazine pages, again using Wonder Under as my adhesive.

 

(Detail)

(NOTE: for the Citra Solv/magazine trick, please see the most recent issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors or my first blog post about it (scroll down about halfway to find it.)

A New Collage, And Silk

This week I want to talk a little more about a mixed-media piece I finished, and a little less about fabrics- but if you can stay tuned until the end of this post, I promise to help you get your silk ya-yas on!

As I stated in a recent post, I spent an enjoyable afternoon playing recently with a product called CitraSolv Concentrate and several hapless National Geographic Magazines. The resulting product- reams of fascinating papers to use in mixed-media projects- excited me. I determined then to do one collage a week out of these papers either until they run out, or my substrates do.

Here is week twos' collage:

CS No. 2, 1.2010. 16" x 18"

Like the last piece, this one was created by fusing solvent-melted magazine pages- this time in torn strips to help emphasize the unpredictable nature of the process used to create them- to a piece of masonite board with Wonder Under.

As I added more and more strips, the collage began to look like a cross-section of the Earth's crust, an effect I found very appealing. In order to help reinforce that earthy feeling, I wanted to add one of my own nature photos somewhere in the piece, a desire which led me to consider incorporating something else I was playing with last week- a product called Sheer Heaven.

Sheer Heaven is a synthetic paper with unusual properties. Unlike other synthetic art papers such as Yupo, which is opaque white and smooth to the touch on both sides, Sheer Heaven is somewhat translucent, and one side- the "right" side- has a soft, suede-like feel to it. This is where you do most of your work, evidently.

It arrived only a few days ago, so I haven't had a lot of time to really put this product through its paces, but the results I've had so far have been interesting, and the product itself is just fun to play with.

I started by running a few sheets of Sheer Heaven through my computer printer, printing out some of my own photos. On the Sheer Heaven web site, there's a brief tutorial for photo transfers using your injet printer and 70% Isopropal alcohol. The tutorial covers transfers onto watercolor paper, but I wanted to test the technique with fabric. My results were less than thrilling- I didn't even bother photographing them- so more testing is in order.

However, a really fascinating thing happened with the SH paper- after I transferred this photo:

 

...to the Sheer Heaven, and then onto fabric, I noticed that a good deal of the original photo was still visible on the SH paper, a faded version that had great texture. I started to wonder- could I treat the SH paper as if it were a dye-charged silk screen as would be used in a deconstructed silk screen technique? Maybe if I kept layering photos one top of another, discharging just once after each run through the printer, I could just keep discharging layer after of layer of ink.

I ran the sheet through the inkjet printer again and printed this photo on top of the first now-faded image:

For this attempt at discharging, I used the same piece of fabric that I had discharged the first photo onto, hoping to get a more complex impression. Again, the fabric was a failure- but the SH paper was magnificent.

Both the image of the Spanish Moss-laden branch and the cardinal sitting on the fence could be seen and yet the paper was still sheer. Even more fascinating was that the images had now taken on the look of the weave of the muslin I'd try to use for discharging! I knew then that I didn't want to run this piece through the printer again, I wanted to use it as is.

Because of SH's translucence, though, the CitraSolv/masonite background was bleeding though the birds' breast and face, an effect I didn't like. To combat that while still allowing the background to show through around the shape of the bird, I turned the SH over to the back and painted in the outline of the bird with two coats of gesso. Still, I wasn't totally satisfied with the muted appearance of the cardinal's coloration... in the original photo, his feathers had been brilliant red. I wanted to revive some of that color.

Out came the oil pastels and ink pens. I used the oils to brighten up the red and black feathers in his body and make his feet a little more prominent, and then I gave him a soft outline with ink. I brightened the area directly around his head and body with some pale umber pastel in order to draw attention to him and make him a real focal point. I liked the way the pastels blurred the bird a bit, so I didn't go back in and add much more detail.

I brushed the background with a quick wash of burnt umber liquid acrylic mixed with semi-gloss liquid medium, which not only sealed the piece, but helped to softly unify all the colors.

This collage wound up taking a lot longer than I plan on these pieces taking in the future- I want them to be "jump starters" to creativity, not works of fine art, but even still I think it was worth the extra effort.

Evidently, the CitraSolv folks noticed a little activity coming to their site from mine (thanks, readers!) and in response, they sent me a lovely letter thanking me for my usage of their product. They have also offered to feature me on their artists' page and, because I was so determined to find their product the first time, they say they've sent me a little thank you gift, as well! A very nice lady named Melissa has been emailing with me about it since last week. Thanks, Melissa!

Also on deck last week, Mom and I put the new wet studio to the test and did some experimenting with silk dyeing.

 

I'm hoping to come close to reproducing the amazing effects I've gotten with parfait (cotton) dyeing except on silk, and towards that end, I've been purchasing small amounts of it to putter with. I purchased two 8mm habotai silk veils and Mom and I cut each one into four pieces. We soda-soaked the eight pieces as if they were cotton (a suggestion I got from several reliable sources), scrunched them one by one into a coffee tin, and poured quarter cups of dye solutions in eight different colors onto the silk pieces, one at a time.

Then the whole coffee tin was covered and the silks allowed to batch for about 6 hours. Finally, I zapped in the container in the microwave, allowed the silks to sit in it until cooled, and washed each one out with synthrapol. I wrung them in a towel to remove most of the moisture, and ironed them on a low setting to dry them and bring back the silky hand.

Pretty, but not what I'm looking for, so I'll be doing more of this in the future and you can expect to see discussions of it here soon.

And finally, today's down-and-dirty of a piece I've already begun stitching this morning:

Happy creating!

Mixed Media And A New Studio

The garage studio remodel is complete and I now have the wonderful, brightly-lit wet/dry studio I've always longed for.

This is what I started with:

 

It's always been a wonderfully workable space that I've filled with my art supplies and tools, really my favorite room in the house, but even so, it had serious problems. For starters, it was a typical garage- poorly lit with just two naked bulbs overhead, no insulation to speak of, and prone to catching dust, dirt and leaves blown in from outside. The uninsulated garage door had large gaps down each side between the wall and the door, so all the cold air in winter, all the heat and humidity in summer, and all the bugs in the universe had a standing, open invitation into my work space. It made creating art in there challenging, but I still I did it for many years.

Now those problems are history. This is the space today:

It may not look that different, but trust me, it really is.

Let's start at the top and move down... the bare bulbs in the ceiling are gone, replaced with three sets of track lighting, each with four halogen bulbs. Two of the tracks light my work table and the walls, and one set is aimed at what will become the design wall. (That part of the job hasn't been finished yet, I still need to get the supplies for it, but it will measure about nine feet across.)

(And speaking of my worktable, I added a carpet pad to the top to make it easier to stamp, screen print and DSP. No more carting small padded surfaces from the painting studio where they live, to the garage studio and back again.)

I also tasked the electricians with giving me wiring that provides more current in the hopes of later adding a mini-fridge to store my mixed dyes. They installed four new plugs with all that wiring, two for me and two for my husband.

The plumbers came in and added a desperately-needed, deep, 2-sink laundry tub.

On the wall above it, you can see the new air conditioner/heating unit. This is a relatively new technology that allows you to heat and cool up to 4 rooms with ductless, wall-mounted units. Of course, it needs professional wiring and plumbing, and the compressor unit, which sits outside, is sizable but still smaller than whole-house units.

None of these improvements would have made much difference, though, if I hadn't insulated the space, too. I had a heavy, insulated garage door installed (with a door opener, for hubby) and had insulation blown in the attic space above the garage.As an added bonus, the garage door has four small windows, so for the first time ever, I have natural light in there during the day.

It feels like a whole new room added to the house, although my husband's side still contains typical garage items- tools, household chemicals, lawn gear, etc. It will still serve all the functions it did before, but in a climate-controlled, well lit space that is a joy to be in.

To celebrate, I did a little mixed-media art, something I don't spend much time doing anymore. An article in the newest Cloth, Paper, Scissors offered something I didn't think I'd ever find again- a new way to play with paper. After spending years and years making, altering, painting and destroying paper, I thought I'd seen it all, but I was wrong.

 

 

3 examples of papers made with CitraSolv

In "Creative Spirits- Transforming papers To Make A Unique Painting Surface" (pages 18-20), artist Cathy Taylor shows us how to use a de-greasing product called CitraSolv Concentrate to "melt" the ink of a National Geographic magazine in order to create amazing papers for use in mix-media art.

The process is simple- paint each page with CitraSolv, squish it around a little and after about 20 or 30 minutes, peel the pages out and lay them aside to dry. Here are some of the pages I did after removing them from the magazine.

So that you all can learn from my mistakes, I'll tell you a couple of things the article didn't mention. For one, evidently this is the only product that will achieve this particular effect. I didn't have any CitraSolv and couldn't find it in the two grocery stores I checked, nor in either Lowes or Target. I thought that one citric de-greaser is probably about the same as another, so I tried it with Goo-Gone. Didn't work. I just wound up with a soaked, unhappy-looking mess.

Fine, I thought, this is such a unique technique to me that I'm motivated to make it work. Off to the web I went in search of CitraSolv. I bought some, anxiously awaited its arrival and then dove on it when it showed up. Another sopping wet National Geographic magazine later, I realized that I had NOT bought the product called "Concentrate", I'd purchased some other CitraSolv cleaner.

I really wasn't happy with myself, but I gave it one more shot, bought the correct product and used it. And yeah, it really works! The Concentrate melts the inks, which, when you peel apart the pages to dry, slides around the paper, mixing and making great patterns. Some of the lettering can still faintly be seen, and ghostly remainders of the original images can also show up. It makes an entire magazine's worth gorgeous of paper.

Which brings me to my next caution: if you do this, be sure to have LOTS of flat surfaces to dry your sheets of paper on. If the papers touch one another, the wet inks will interact with each other. That can form great edges and such, but for the most part, you'll want to dry them separated, and a typical NatGeo magazine has about a hundred pages in it. 

Another interesting tidbit that I found after doing some research into the subject is that National Geographic coats their paper first with metallic gold paint before printing on it. This helps to give their photos that iconic glowing, high-quality look. But it also means that when you melt the ink off, the metallic becomes more obvious, so all the pages now have a lovely sheen.

I decided to use some of the papers immediately in a collage.

CS No. 1, 1.2010, 16" x 18"

(detail)

I used a masonite scrap left over from a shelving unit we built several years ago as the substrate. I didn't prime it all. I fused Wonder Under to the backs of the papers and then fused them right to the board. I may play with it a little later on with paint or somesuch- or maybe I won't, just not sure.

I did make a small commitment to myself, however. I have ten or eleven of these masonite scraps and dozens and dozens of magazine pages I melted, so I'm going to create quick and simple collages once a week with them, until I run out of masonite. You'll be seeing those posted here each week.

The fabric painting tutorial is almost finished, though it might end up being posted a little later than I was hoping- if you don't see it here tomorrow, look for it a little later in the week. Mom arrives tomorrow to stay for a few days and we're going to experiment with some silk dyeing, so it may take me away from finishing it up by tomorrow evening. I even hope to offer the tutorial in a clickable .pdf format for free download. Wish me luck figuring out how to do that. (Hubby says it's easy.)

Until then, happy creating!