Night Dream oil painting

Night Dream
22"x28"
oil on canvas

detail of Night Dream
22"x28"
oil on canvas

Fool in Silk

"Fool" 24" x 36" was made for our fiber group's "It's All In The Cards" exhibit

this September at The Art Place in Mountain View in North Metro Atlanta.

My card picked was the Joker, and instead of a literal translation

I did an abstract depicting the foolishness, the naivety

 the there are no limitations in life,

and just go swirling around into the unknown aspects of the "Fool" in the Tarot Card.

A few of the circular motifs actually turn.

It's supposed to be a fun piece.

Nothing serious. 

Fool
24" x 36"
silk, acid dyes, embroidery threads
mounted on stretched canvas

detail

Three Silks for Mini SPIN Festival

These three works are at the Mini SPIN (silk painters international) Festival in Tallahassee, Florida, this week.

Tree With Moon
Silk dyes on silk crepe de chine
wax etched
embellished with French knots

detail

Autumn Tree
Wax etching silk dyes on silk
embellished with French knots
mounted on silk dupioni

detail of Autumn Tree

Koi Fish With Plants
silk with acid dyes
embellished with embroidery
mounted on silk dupioni

detail

Procion MX dyeing on cotton/linen fabric

I've decided to dye linen/cotton with Procion MX dyes using soda ash and do some experiments to see if I like this process. Below are four pics of my first attempt at ice cube dyeing. It's on linen/cotton rough weave medium to heavy weight. The colors aren't as strong or bright as  I had hoped, so next time I will sprinkle more dye.

This one has "freckles" where the dye powder did not get as wet and just sat on the surface of the fabric.

Ice cube dyeing is putting ice cubes on top of the fabric and sprinkling dyes on top.
The cubes slowly melt moving dyes around and the dyes strike at different
times as it hits the fabric.

There is a spot where the dye powder was still dry on the fabric and did not get wet.

Below is a hexagon clamp resist piece and leftover dyes were used. The darker spots are navy dye that had a lot of Superclear in it which was hard to rinse out. It back-dyed on some areas.

Below is a hexagon folded but not clamped piece using leftover dyes again. Both the one above and this one had intense dye on them (not as diluted) so the colors are more brilliant. Both are the same medium to heavy weight rough weave linen/cotton fabric.

Using the navy mixed with SuperClear (not straight solution but 50/50 with water) I stenciled onto the same fabric. It was hard to get the dye all the way through at first. Notice how light some areas are where I didn't continue to rub the stencil brush over and over.

Dye didn't go all the way through the stencil. Light areas can be seen here.

The Superclear was hard to wash out and I wanted to see if I wasn't careful how much would dye-back onto the fabric as can be seen below. I may try rice paste or some other medium to stencil with.

Back-dyed spots on the right hand side.

Back-dyed spots.

The reverse side of this medium to heavy weight linen/cotton fabric didn't get dyed as well. Needed to work the dye through the stencil some more.

aprons, aprons, aprons .... potholders

My daughter requested aprons as gifts for her bridesmaids. I needed to make 7 plus one for her. Twelve plus reversible aprons later.... my OCD is forcing me to continue making them! Help!

They are all completely reversible, pockets on both sides, adjustable buttonholes, faux piping on the straps.

They have been fun to make.... and the scraps became 9 plus funky potholders. I love the running silhouettes fabric.

And the lobster print! And the deviled eggs print... so much fun but enough is enough.

Published! Calendar this time

Four of my 12"x12" pieces are part of SEFAA's 2014 Calendar. One of them is the cover!

Click SEFAA's website to purchase calendars to buy one and support SEFAA

Inspired by the Canadian Pavilion 1970 Expo

Sneak peak of a large piece I'm working on
at the moment ... turning, turning, turning ....
inspired by the Canadian Pavilion at the 1970 Expo in Osaka Japan.

Published!

My Mask on the cover

The article. There is also another article on how I teach in this same issue.

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Spinning Silk

Silk Rayon top I'm working on. The fabric obviously inspired the piece below:

hand dye painted silk and embellished
mounted on persimmon orange silk dupioni
A small "sketch" piece.
81/2" x 11" wrapped and mounted
on foamcore.
$50 plus shipping.
Please email hellenne@live.com.

Last Weekend's Workshop in Rozome

We had a wonderful master silk artist Kiranada Benjamin come to Atlanta for a 3 day workshop on Rozome, Japanese wax resist. Although she was able to only show us a few techniques in that short time, her 40 plus years of experience impressed us. Her work is gorgeous Kiranada Benjamin's Website and how she quickly did a bokashi (blending) demo was like magic. Especially after each of us tried it on our own. This is going to take a lot of practice... and very special handmade Japanese brushes.

My favorite brush is this one. It's tanuki hair (don't know if American raccoons have the same type of "hair") and is stiff, dense, and I get much control with this. Worth every penny! Yes, it's super expensive.

Here are some of my practice samples of bokashi:

This is going to take years of practice. Notice I couldn't even make a perfect circle.

We also crackled the wax resist and also etched on the thick wax. Here are some more samples: