A couple of details....

Working away quietly this week building up some details. Not quite 'there' yet but pleasing so far.

An area of discharge work, lines created by rolling a small paint brush loaded with discharge paste, over the cloth. Printing through canvas grid in bottom border.

Figures are taking shape. I am contemplating more here...

And from the Haystack diary: spent some 'time out' visiting Bar Harbour to see Craft Directions - Maine's Craft Show. Impressive, much more professional than NZ shows, well displayed and work of good quality, though pricey. Not many people there so viewing was easy. This was written in 1988. I think NZ craft shows did develop into a better quality over the 1990's and early 2000's. Alas, they seem to have regressed since then. We do not have the population in NZ for the high edge quality shows that feature in the USA.

Rocky progress...

More progress again this week. I have concentrated on adding more background colours and also ended up with what somehow looks a bit of a mess. It was not quite as I intended but it has opened up some opportunities. This is what I love about this method of working, although it can be challenging at times.....

I screened colour over some resist patterning on the screen. Somewhat of a fright...


Then added some more background colour and it is looking better.

The start of introducing the figures which are to appear in this series of work. Still further to be done here....

Photo from Haystack website.

Another Haystack moment. Haystack School of Crafts is built amongst the rocks and trees on the coast of Maine, USA. One balmy evening a few of us walked along the coast. I sat on a rock and watched the beautiful sunset, realizing that the sun was heading to the other side of the world towards New Zealand, where my family would be welcoming it. A little bit of me went with it that evening....

Creating spaces...

Quietly making progress on my new piece. Starting to create spaces and introduce some background colours.

First application...

... a wash of blue to further build on at a later date. Both photos taken at an angle.

And on another matter, every so often I get enthusiastic about sorting through 'stuff'. I do this for three reasons (a) things have gotten untidy, (b) I am bound to find something that I had forgotten I had and, (c) some stuff just needs to go....

In this current wave of enthusiasm I came across a diary, written in 1988 when I was attending Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deere Island, Maine, USA. This was a live-in, on site, three week experience. I took a workshop with Ana Lisa Hedstrom of Shibori fame. I have re-read this diary and thought I would share with you some of my comments written 22 years ago!

Ana Lisa Hedstrom's shibori garments are incredible, the weekend after attending Haystack I was in Chicago and met a woman who owned five of Lisa's garments! I was so impressed!

The Haystack kitchen was just about as famous as the learning environment. It introduced me to many new dishes that up until then I had not been familiar. I found the following comment in the diary would love a 'plain' cup of tea - there being available only herbal teas.

Photo from Haystack Mountain School of Craft's website.

Black Saturday for NZ...

It goes without too much saying that we are all reeling from the devastating earthquake which struck in the early hours of Saturday morning in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. And then later in the same day a plane crash which killed nine people. The earthquake was the same magnitude as that in Haiti. Fortunately, its timing, our building regulations and low density housing avoided such a tragedy, and no one has been killed. There will be tremendous on-going recovery for the months ahead. Fortunately my region did not suffer.

Along with listening and watching events unfold, I have quietly made a start on my latest piece. I decided to start with a stack of the house shapes. These were drawn to scale on some freezer paper taped together to get the size I wanted.

It took some effort to get everything drawn correctly, after which I quickly painted the shapes so that I could get an overall visual on whether they looked correct.

I cut out the lines and ironed the remainder on to the prepared fabric. Then painted the lines with a textile paint/pigment. This image is taken side on as it is flat on my printing table and I am not able to get a full angle front image (unless I suspend myself from the ceiling!).

After removing the freezer paper I decided that the colours I had mixed were too strong so....

... instead of ironing to set the paint, I gave the lines a scrub and a wash. This removed some of the intensity of the colour.

Gazing into space....

Lots of gazing into space this week. I could be accused of not doing anything but in fact I am working through ideas on what may be my next piece. Occasionally I jot something into my sketch book. An idea is definitely brewing and I am making preparatory moves.

I have worked out some proportions in my sketch book but I still needed to make a visual to confirm that proportions look okay. A simple newsprint cut out works just fine.

This is just one side only of the house image, it gets mirrored on the other side. I have sinced trimmed the left side (in reality the centre).

On another level I have, over the last few months been knitting a charity blanket from my own surplus knitting wools, and those donated by others. This finally got finished and I delivered it to the local Women's Refuge on Monday so that it can be passed on to a family in need. I have enjoyed working on this commitment as it is a pleasant thing to do while watching TV in the evenings, and in other relaxing moments. Years ago, in another life when I was doing embroidery, I always had some hand stitching to do, but not now and this is a very satisfying replacement.

Quiet weekend

I had a fairly quiet weekend here after having finished my latest piece. The final presentation of this piece will be decided sometime in the future, no rush to make a decision, it can wait. I plan to take it off my wall today and place it out of sight.

In the meantime I have been working on my annual major sort through and tidy up, of some of my stuff. It is spring time here and I seem to be hard-wired to do such things at this time of year. I will blog about some finds in the near future but in the meantime.....

Karen made a great comment on my last blog when I showed my completed piece Connections. She stated that she didn't always like what I was doing while I was working on it, but that when it was completed, she thought it was great!

I confess similar sentiments while working many of the stages a piece goes through. I do start with some sort of plan but this somehow moves over and I soon find myself going with the flow following each application. This allows me to concentrate on the unexpected, and to develop everything to a (hopefully) successful outcome.

I appreciate that this is not at all how we are meant to do things, but it is how I work and it keeps the piece alive, and challenging. I often describe it as painting oneself into the corner of a room, and then having to get out of it! The frustrations and love/hate relationships with a piece are part of the journey. I am stubborn, get bored very easily, so this way of working works for me.

Final tweakings....

During the last few days I have been quietly tweaking my latest piece and now feel I can stand back and declare it finished! Somehow there is a moment when this happens, just as there are moments when I know something else has to happen to a piece before it is 'finished'. Being able to recognise these moments is important. They depend on old-fashion gutt feeling which is worth nurturing.

A detail showing some of the final tweakings.

While working with this final stage I adjusted the whole piece on my display board so that I could work on a specific area. In doing so I quickly pinned the piece up without bothering to hang it straight, or flat. At some point I turned to look at it and viewed it as if for the first time. The piece looked relaxed, the irregularies in its hanging seem to lift it into another dimension. I liked it! So at this point in time I will leave off any mounting and hemming etc and revisit it again at a later date to see how I feel about this presentation. In the meantime, here it is. Obviously I can't crop the piece so some background is unavoidable.

© Connections, Diana Parkes, 2010; 165cm x 115cm / 65" x 45"; silk/linen cloth, painting, printing, discharge; dyes and textile paint.