Open studio this weekend

...and that means there's lots to do. I just did the e-mail blast. Now I've got a small mountain of stuff that needs to be ironed and labeled.

Surely I must have said this before--but just in case--I share these words of wisdom. Given a choice between pursuing and a call to an art form that involves laundry & ironing and one that does not, think long and hard before you say yes to the laundry & ironing option. Just a little reflection.

Busy in the studio

I've been busy at the studio, busy at my "real" job, busy at home--just plain busy. Everybody's got the same story. It's good to be busy. It takes my mind off of the fact that I lost more money in my 401K this year than I made in my entire first year out of school.

I've been pushing myself to work on some larger pieces of art cloth--around 2 yards. There are lots of advantages to working big: large composition space, room to move, etc. The downside is that if you make a technical mistake the you make it in a big way. I'm working to finish a piece that I started out loving but has since become a bit of a problem child. This is what it looked like in it's first state, still wet (I posted this picture a couple weeks ago). I wish I could have just frozen it that way.

Several layers of dye resulted in some really subtle colors that don't show up here, but are (or were) nice. So the problem is that I had a little discharging mishap. I used Sunlight Dishwasher Gel, which is really great stuff. It takes color out very well. The new version (sorry no pic yet) has a better value range (light to dark). Unfortunately, I now realize that I only hand washed the cloth between dying sessions and did not neutralize the bleach. That probably left residual bleach in the cloth. When I steamed and washed today I lost lots of red and blue.

So you see, big cloth means big success or big failure. Right now I'm doing a little pouting.

My first Open Studio

Last Sunday was my first open studio. What fun, but what a lot of work. All of the Artists in Residence at the Community Center participate in an open studio on the first Sunday of every month. I missed last month because I was away. I hung up a few things and sold one scarf (my very first sale!!!).

This month, because I was actually going to be there, I decided to put in a bit more effort. I sent out e-mail announcements as shown below.

I went in on Saturday and spruce things up a little. In this shot you can see the series of scarves that I've been working on for fun.

I was really delighted by how well they were received. I ended up with a steady stream of visitors, many of whom got a jump on their holiday gift purchasing How very nice for them and for me! It was a real pleasure to watch people enjoy looking, trying, and selecting. Making these scarves was great fun for me. On some level I thought that was it. I wasn't entirely prepared for the added pleasure of sending them out into the world to be a part of other people's lives.

And finally, here are a few shots of individual scarves just to give you and idea of what I'm up to.

If I remember correctly, this was soy wax on white cloth, low water immersion, overdye, discharge, and black extruded dye.

One of my first rust prints. The photo does not do justice to the golden glow this produced on the 8mm habotai fabric. My old wrenches are almost re-rusted and ready for another batch!

One of a number of really great results from the "scrunch and pour" method that I learned from Carol Soderlund. To the left you can see part of another batik piece.