Studio Work ABOUT my art & others

  Cant wait to see what happens with these.  I took my indoor plant - Fatsima Japonica - and planted it outside next to the creek.  She is very happy there, doubling up each year, and this is the first year i noticed these berries.  They were harvested and wrapped up in the eco dye cloth - surprises in the unbundling - maybe tomorrow !. Fatsima Japonica last Spring

I began here 3 days ago. Day 3 and the third pass. I am losing exactly where i am at as i am now mixing it up.  Some of the first lot of cloth i have kept as is, others i have taken from the onion pot into the avocado pot and then, some of that lot back into the gum leaves and many of all these cloths, including some dry ones have gone into a copper pot. A few pieces are also already stitched works mainly monocolour and/or white on white.  I am using a repurposed urn and interchanging the buckets to heat them up.  It is fast becoming a dirty pot but i am liking a lot of the effects and colours that are coming up. 

I grabbed an armful of WHITE cloths, scraps and a blanket, soaked 3 separate buckets, 1 with onion skins, one with avocado pits and skins and a third with gum leaves from the forest.  I decided to commandeer my studio coffee urn (i will get a kettle!) and started heating up a brew.  (above:  a table runner - onion skins) Planning now to keep going with more white cloths but also to see /experiment with citric acid (as a bleacher) and copper sulphate to adjust colours ... fun!  loving the woven cloth and how the different textiles pick up the colour. that cloth to the right of the woven piece is a lovely rich colour. more lovely rich colour- waiting to see how it dries this was an overdye but nothing seemed to have happened so it will go into another pot today this piece started out well but its got a bit blotchy from the onion skins - will look at another process to adjust this one loving the beige colour in the blanket and the rich oranges (onion skin) although i di...

When i began this piece I didnt know what the story was. It evolved overtime and with each decision made, it became. As many of you know I am in the studio every day and it is at night, when I go up to the house, I do slow stitching.  This piece was set aside many times over many months, where each stage brought with it a 'what now?' or a 'what if'. Slowly it became 'Under a Big Sky'.   This is how it went.  I began by creating little squares from my shibori scraps, brought in white and eco printed cotton, silk and linen, ironing the little squares around a template i created. One evening, from the box of 'little squares', i began to lay them out in what was a pleasing arrangment to me.  Sewed the squares together into a single cloth and then i tacked it to a calico cloth backing, extending the borders. After it being set aside for many months, i came to the orange stitching idea - a stacking stitch created within a circle. This image shows the stitched ...

these little pieces on Japanese papers are trials/play in the studio this week - enjoying switching to oils after months of monoprints using acrylic on the gel plate.  see previous posts here and the 'what if' premise, here   

I ordered book board - archival acid free - but got the thickness wrong (no surprise there).  It was so thin i could not use it for book covers at all ... so i went into my default 'what if' ... and a book idea percolated to the surface of my brain.   here it is in progress. working on another 'what if' book idea - for a workshop - going to finish the idea first and then send out information on a workshop to make the book (contact me if you are interested in getting update email regarding the workshop and details)

Two prompts crop up in my practice, every day.  PLAY and WHAT IF?  As part of a series i am currently thinking through i focussed on a a vintage vase  - this one.          >>>> It started with a simple drawing  then explored on a gel plate. It went off in other directions .... 'play' Going back to the geli plate I went to 'what if' AND play. Looking again at 'what if' and the next one. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK .... any questions ?  thanks for being here. (gina)

  I started this piece a year ago, picking it up now and again.  The small squares were created first  The small squares are of eco dyed silk, indigo on cotton, indigo on blockout curtain materials and a very old hardanger which was an embroidery I began in my teens.  That is a long time to hold onto cloth. My mother and father used to visit their friends and play cards while my sister and i would read or listen to the radio.  More often than not I would take some embroidery to do. Now it is  woven into a whole of newer memories. It sat like this, in this format a very long time because, as happens more often than not, I didnt know what to do next. On one of the many creek walks i take from the studio to the bridge in our front yard the idea came to me as i was musing on the sun reflecting on the water.  And so the stitching began - my way of working is mostly intuitive and in this case, apart from drawing the circle on the back,  The stitches are...

Ferns collected by the creek and printed on the gelli plate and mono printing, digital prints, chemigrams & textile prints. I made  a short video of this prototype for the fern book. LET ME KNOW what you think. 

Pulled out the basket from the creek and after 2 weeks in the flowing water the cloth and white blanket look like this. a lot of hosing and washing out to come. previous post & video here of cloth in the creek in the early stages of setting it up.  here is one of a series on you tube of the basket (ongoing) idea of it sitting in the creek for a few weeks. another video here showing the first time the basket with cloth went into the creek and here another video here checking on the basket in the creek after a few days. stay tuned as i check again from time to time.