Presentation of work

I consider my latest piece to be finished. It is currently resting, like a good roast, and time will determine whether it has indeed reached the end of its road. In the meantime I am considering its presentation.

I have been giving quite a bit of thought to presentation this year, and have made some observations while on gallery crawls, mostly to art exhibitions ie not textile exhibitions. It has been an interesting exercise and I think I have now come to a new possibility.

First I had to do some experimenting and used an earlier piece of work which I don't intend ever to exhibit. I decided to use a heavy canvas (in NZ called calico duck) for the backing piece, and paint a border using a low sheen, water-based interior house paint.

Initially I felt I needed to prime the canvas, so did a test with textile pigment and a house paint undercoat. Once painted over with the colour I decided neither was necessary - see centre portion of test which shows paint coverage without any priming.

I painted a border around another piece of canvas. Because I had not washed it prior to painting, the border area shrunk which made the centre area pucker. Not good!

I repeated this experiment with a pre-washed piece of canvas. Success, it remain flat! The dyed art work is to overlap on to the borders. I did mount the rejected artwork on to this and was pleased with the outcome.

And here are my borders being painted on a very large piece of canvas, to accommodate my latest piece. I have already hemmed the top and lower edges, before painting, but left the sides raw. I painted the front side twice (to get a perfect coverage) and an underside border just once so that if the edges curled they would reveal the same colour.

Next I will get metal eyelets punched into the four corners. I get these things done professionally as it is very hard to get them perfect with equipment here at home.

Good news

From July 9th to August 7th, the works from my exhibition last year (those unsold, that is, plus a couple of new pieces), held at Expressions, Upper Hutt, are to be exhibited again at the Art Gallery Papakura, 10 Averill Street, Papakura. I am looking forward to seeing everything displayed again, in a different setting, and to a new audience.

Yesterday I received news that a grant application to the Creative Communities Scheme Pakakura District, has been accepted. This will help in couriering the pieces to and from the gallery, and other additional expenses in preparing the work. This certainly helps with the overall success of the exhibition. Very pleasing indeed.

Herewith a couple more details of the latest piece. It is almost finished and I am preparing for the mounting processes.

More lino prints

Have made good progress on my piece this week and feel I am nearing the end. I have added some Inca house ruins, seen at Machu Picchu and elsewhere. They seem to have the same basic stone structure but minus their thatched roofs for obvious reasons. I did another quick lino design which worked out well.

Inca houses printed, then the top window spaces discharged to give some contrast.

Machu Picchu and some Inca house ruins, without roofs, top of photo. The delightful baby llama was less than 24 hours old!

A restored thatched house, bottom left.

Grand-daughter has been here again this weekend so more progress on 'the dress'. Curved hem on skirt caused some concern so Nana is to replace it with a hand rolled hem, as any Nana would do!

Inca Woman

This week I have been working on my lino print and I am very pleased with the resulting outcome. There is something therapeutic about quietly sculpting the lino and watching the design slowly reveal itself. It didn't take too long either. The next exciting thing was to do some test prints. I did several of these on paper to fine tune the results, then worked on fabric. I used black textile pigment for this printing. Printing on the fabric leaves a slightly different texture than on the paper, but I decided I liked this. Then it was the nerve wracking process of doing it on the latest piece. Whew, fortunately it worked!

I often feel I am too tight with some of my drawings and a lino print, by its very nature, seems to loosen things up a bit.

The actual lino cut on the left, and one each of the paper and fabric test pieces.

And here she is, quietly making her away across my new piece!

By now you should have gathered that this piece features Peru.....

Busy Day

Eldest grand-daughter (almost 16) is to attend her first school ball in a few weeks. Needless to say this requires a new dress! Last weekend I helped her buy a pattern and the fabric, and yesterday we cut out most of the pieces and now have the bodice almost completed. She is doing the work and Nana, of course, is guiding and watching closely; she is a willing student so all is well.

I have sewn my own clothes since about her age (a very long time ago) and am able to sew a garment without following instructions, relying on experience and intuition. However, when I was preparing for her visit I started to read the pattern instructions only to find myself somewhat challenged! What a lot of decisions to make, and all seemed complicated to interpret. Enough to put any newbie off making clothes!

In the meantime I have made good progress on the latest piece.

Another small detail.

I want to put a lino print on this piece and here I am beginning to sculpt the lino.

Looking good so far...

Two detail images of the progress on my new piece today. Things are looking good so far.



Yesterday I screened two sets of masked off stripes on to this new piece with my BIG silk screen. There was some surplus thickened dye left on the screen following this and I was in no rush to wash the screen as I knew it would wash out easily, even if the dye dried. By the time I had checked what I had printed, the surplus dye had migrated. It looked so good that I decided to let it dry fully and I plan to re-print sometime with some soda ash in clear sodium alginate (Manutex).

This week I attended the AGM of the Friends of TheNewDowse, a major art gallery here in Lower Hutt. I am now on their committee. I have been avoiding such commitments for quite sometime as I have been on committees for many years, and had decided I had done my dash. It amuses me that here I am again! However, I am looking forward to being involved and working with a new group of people. I am already The Friends Archivist and last year sorted all their papers since their conception in the early 1970's.

Peru again. Machu Picchu from a distance (centre, up a bit to the left). A quiet walk around to the Sun Gate (original entry/exit of the Inca Trail) gave this panoramic view back to the settlement. Note zigzag road up from the village of Aguas Calientes to MP itself. Buses speed up and down this road delivering and returning tourists.

Starting again.....

Life soon returns to normal, almost too soon, after travel, and I am back working again. This time I am not going to show you the whole piece as it progresses (sorry!) but will show some details, when appropriate.

This is to be a large piece; I prepared the silk/linen mix fabric 115cm/45" wide x 2 metres/79" length.

Using thickened dye I painted on some swipes of colour.

Then I decided to overdye the whole thing. Orange was the colour which came to mind and here I have painted over the original colours (on paper) to get some indication of an outcome.

Overdyeing worked well but then I decided that the colours were too strong for additional applications so put the whole cloth through a discharge bath. I do this often!

Ahhh, much better. All the colours have been 'knocked back' and give a better base from which to work further applications.

Nature's security works well in Peru! These cacti are planted on top of the stone wall.