Here's what I've been working on....

Hi Everybody!

I wanted to catch you up on what I've been doing since I last blogged about art, art making and living a creative life.

So first, we go back to Christmas... for my friends up north, just look out your window at the ongoing snowmageddon; it won't be hard to think back to Christmas time.

Stocking for Amanda

In our family, the Christmas Stockings are kind of a big deal.  My son's girlfriend was visiting for Christmas, so I decided to make her a stocking.

I thought and thought about what I wanted to do, but was feeling very uninspired, until I remembered a painting that I had started (right) and then rejected because I had put in too many trees.

I thought it might make a perfect, wintery stocking, and the original painting was done at the same time and in a similar way to a painting I had done for Duncan [the boyfriend] (below).

Uncle Vanya, For Duncan

Stocking for Amanda detail

Hung and waiting for Santa

The footprints that you see tramping through the wood and spelling out her name - I imagined those were Duncan's...

It was a very merry Christmas!

After the Holidays, and inspired by the first polar vortex, I continued to explore the cool colors that seemed to be everywhere.  I decided to do a large silk painting using a very limited palette of grays, black, and deep blues.

The Sea of Tranquility 60 X 36 X 2

At left (and in the detail shots below) is "The Sea of Tranquility," an imposing painting rendered on silk ribbon.

I began with two action paintings on the silk, which were drip dyed then woven together in a stair step pattern.

Many of the paintings highlighted in this blog, including "The Sea of Tranquility" are currently available for sale; please contact me if you are interested.

The Sea of Tranquility in process

I wove and rewove this painting many times to get it just right.

That was a fun process, trying to figure out not only what kind of pattern I wanted to create with the ribbon, but also adjusting the layout to best take advantage of the individual "paintings" created by the weaving process.

Fortunately, silk always feels wonderful slipping through my fingers, so I honestly never mind reweaving my pieces.

The Sea of Tranquility (detail)

In spite of the constant forecast for wintry mix, I did use other colors (besides gray, blue and white) since my last posting.  Here are some examples:

www 22.5 X 14 X 3

www (at right) is made from formed copper wire covered with tubular action dyed silk, and embellished with copper disks and square glass beads.

 Before the Deluge (below) is silk with acrylic, exploring yet a different weaving pattern and the addition of tiny dots of acrylic to the surface before the weaving began.

Before the Deluge 40 X 25 X 2

The Red Eye 36 X 15 X 2

I wanted to keep on weaving, but I wanted to explore using a different kind of ribbon.  

I ordered some black velvet ribbon, and tried it with what I use on the silk.  It was awful.

Then, I experimented with my acrylic paints.  That was better, in a rather Elvis sort of way.  I liked the effects that I got with the iridescent paints, but they seemed too thick and sludgey to get the effect that I wanted.

After an hour or so at the art supply, I found something to try.  Thin, semi opaque iridescent inks.

Booyah!  But even after finishing the painting and weaving the ribbons, something was still missing.

So I looked around in my studio and found something that was wacky and strange and in that iridescent color family: a package of flat multicolor sequins.  With the addition of a bugle bead to anchor each sequin, I got the kind of space agey feeling I was going for.

The Red Eye (Detail)

From a distance, the painting, which shimmers as it catches the light, looks much like the view out of an airplane window as you whisk overhead; sitting, (as Louis CK puts it) "in a chair in a box in the sky..."

Unnamed Painting 32 X 14 X 1

I also have a few other works in progress.  

Unnamed #1 with ribbons

 In this one, I am playing with using additives to stiffen the ribbons so that they can be sculpted, molded and bent to my will.

I am still considering the background.

I very much like the effect of the interplay of colors of the ribbon in the detail below.

Unnamed Painting (detail)

In the next work in progress painting (below), I am playing with couching, and I am (again) trying to interject dimensionality to this conceptual piece.

White Velvet painting with Couched technique

The final image is of a mere detail of a large piece, which I am calling "Sequence."  Instead of focusing on curvilinear lines (as you see above), I wanted to keep this piece very straight.  My inspiration was my GPS "blue dot."  I was thinking about all of the intersecting lines on all of the virtual maps in any given city on any given day in any given moment.  Sometimes those people pass one another, sometimes they intersect, and sometimes their journeys are obtuse or parallel.   I am hoping this piece will provoke some thought about the road not taken, and the serendipitous twists of life that are no longer even explored.  

small detail of "Sequence" 40 X 40

And that sums up the end of December, January, and half of February.

Please let me know if you like this work, or hate this work, or even if you saw this work in the far reaches of the vast internet machine.

Thanks,  until next time.

Catherine