From Byopia Press: How To Make A Heart Bookmark

https://byopiapress.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/how-to-make-a-heart-bookmark/

Dear Threadborne followers and readers, 

Welcome all! And may I extend new year greetings to you, even if it is already February. My first post of the year is a reblog from Cathryn at Byopia Press. Cathryn tells us how to make some sweet things for Valentine’s Day. You will find some really interesting stuff there, especially about the Book Arts.

 I’m unable to give time to new work of my own right now because my Beloved is very ill with adrenal cancer and requires a lot of care at home.I hope I will be able to post better news about Shlomo next month. If you are praying folk, do please spare a prayer for us. 

You know I love to make and write about my passions but for a while, I will perhaps concentrate  on fattening up some of those skinny pages on the menu bar above since I cannot get my head into artmaking just yet. The writing will be my art therapy. 

Having said that, I have to tell you that Shlomo, despite all,  not only got his head into making art, but his hands, too. Today, he and Dylan our 6 year old grandson, made a three-branched candleabra. A fitting oeuvre for the week past in which Candelmas was celebrated.  Sorry for the  blurry pic – first time doing that with the iPad camera into a post. 

A la prochaine, mes amis/amies

Wendy

 

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” Twas on the moon of wintertime…

…when all the birds had fled” , sings the Huron Christmas carol. Indeed, the birdies have fled:

 

Blogging today from my husband's room on the fifth floor of a local hospital where he has been since Christmas Eve as the medics sort some health issues. So I have plenty of time at my disposal to work on organising photos for one last post before the new year comes in.

December has been Artist Book month in my studio. A workshop on sewn board bindings with Archives Canada conservator, Lynn Curry; some “Use Up These Prints” books made from studio gleanings; and some little books made from the grandchildren's art papers. Outside in The Kaleyard, autumn said a long and languishing “Goodbye”, delivering temperatures as high as 15C last week! A crazy, green Christmas – but it will be a sober, white New Year's Eve.

So first, goodbye to fall and the statuesque kale: lovely textures and colour with grey Lamb's Ears and blue-grey sage.

 

First dusting of snow:

 

In the kitchen, thoughts turn to cranberry chutney, companion to the seasonal turkey: cranberries with half and half Marsala and blackcurrant syrup to cover; fresh rosemary and bay (from indoor plants); and a generous heap of fresh gràted ginger; boiled to the stage of setting. Good with anything.

 

In the workshop ( later, I made more such bindings at home in the studio) the sewn boards binding which produces an elegant raised spine and encourages the use of contrasting coverings of paper or cloth:

 

 

The spine is free of the boards at the head and tail and all along the edges. So the book can flex and lie flat nicely.

 

I made others at home with more of my handmade linen book cloth that I had printed earlier in the year with rust and indigo:

 

 

Note the separate spine pieces:

 

The text block is coptic sewn then glued and placed under weight ( wood boards with a covered brick on top)

 

Other little playthings made this month: an indigo printed single sheet of watercolour paper folded and cut into a book structure; and my monthly “Magnificat” mass book folded into a sculpture ( one of several made so far)

 

A delightful piece evolved from one of six-year old Dylan's paintings that has artwork on both back and front. We cut up the artwork into two strips, accordion folded the strips, taped them together to make a longer accordion, then found a figure in the brushstrokes and outlined it in black pen. We tore the top edges and “gilded” them with metallic paint.

The back of the piece is also evocative.

 

I have saved many works on paper done over the years by my children and grandchildren. And they do tend to accumulate ( art papers as well as kids…) Why leave them in a box? (Not the kids…) Hence the idea this Christmas season to use the kids's art as material and content for Artist Books.

A few sheets of humble newsprint, painted by the grandkids with kids' acrylics a few summers ago, were next coated with Liquitex matte medium (three layers). These were to provide the books' covers. Following that, all kinds of papers were assembled to make up the signatures: saved scraps of all sorts, small print sample off-cuts or proofs, handmade papers…whatever gave strong interest and variety in texture, colour, print design, technique etc. I made four books, one for each grandchild, with each book containing between 15 and 20 signatures consisting of at least four folios of various sizes held by guard strips which allow for attaching more pages later. A major goal was to include signatures with expandable pages – fold-outs or accordions, for example. The signatures were handsewn into the spine with long stitch binding; the covers were sewn along the cover edges with machine stitching: a cloth pocket with flap was sewn into the both back and front inside covers. The pics:

The art work to make the covers:

Signature samples with guard strips for eventual additions of pages:

Page and fold-out signature samples:

 

 

The collection:

 

Some printed samples:

 

The longstitch binding (Note the fragility of the newsprint for stitching…layer on lots of medium)

 

The finsihed books, ready to receive more art on any and every page:

 

Last little piece: a canvas cover for a book. acrylic painted:

 

The spine of the canvas cover book (long stitch over tapes) and another canvas book cover, soon to be sewn:

 

Happy new year in art and life to all. Thank you to all the new readers for joining us.

 

Wendy

 

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October Studio

September has passed in a blur of sun, studio-time and a mad race to prepare for the annual studio tour of two weekends. As I have spent most of the post-tour week cleaning up, it occurred to me that you, dear Reader, might like a peek at where I do most of my art work.

My studio is in the basement of our house and it comprises areas for sewing, cutting, painting, bookbinding, printing, dyeing, laundry, garden planning and the hoarding of art supplies, books , sewing machines, seeds and the kids' artwork, plus sentimental “bits and bobs” as the Brits say; and not to forget the occasional mouse… The floor lists dramatically to starboard ( or is it port?), the ceiling is less than eight feet (that's OK for me, though – I am nowadays less than five feet tall) and one needs the lights on at all times (daylight fluorescent bulbs). It will never be featured in that Spiffy Studio mag but it's real and it's a Place of My Own.

Especially it works for West, my studio assistant….he is grandson Dylan's marmalade kitty who stayed over a few days this week, dined on the mice, then pooed in the bathtub…When not sitting in my tool box, West was on my keyboard watching the scroll bar go up and down…

Please come in! The Ikea chest of drawers would not go up the stairs so, boo hoo, I had to keep In the studio it to store my eco dye stash…

Facing you in the above pic as you enter is the dye cupboard (half empty because the rest of th supplies are still outside at my outdoor summer dye station.)

Left of the open door at the entrance and in the foreground is the wet station (sink, dye vats and mordant baths) , printing and book binding area; straight ahead on the left at mid-ground is my cutting and general work table with the paper etc. cupboards nearby. On the back wall are the painting supplies and various new canvases etc. We sourced all the furniture and cupboards at Habitat for Humanity or at thrift stores.

A closer shot showing what's on my table this week: Some more eco prints to frame; a couple of bricks covered in paper to use as weights for flattening book pages. Plus my coffee, of course.

My sewing area with the Sacred Stash (of textiles, naturally). I like to arrange the textiles into small collections or WIP projects; I put the collections in labelled, see-through plastic boxes – easy to find and to shlep back and forth. The second chair is for the grandkids…

My toolbox: The needlecase was the VERY FIRST free motion project I did. I learned free motion stitching quite by accident one day – I somehow read the chapter on darning with the sewing machine and had an epiphany! (What If the engineer who wrote the sewing machine manual had written How to Make Art With Your Sewing Machine? In the next few posts I will be doing a little retrospective on my embroideries since I am hoping to be able to add to the older series. But that is for later.) Just now:

A box of paper and textiles offcuts, awaiting their new assignments as art material:

A mordant bath and an indigo vat ( plastic boxes work fine! )

On the Inspiration Shelf: work in progress – Artist Books that never got finished for the tour! They are to be coptic-bound.

Shlomo put up this sonnet by Shakespeare for me to read while doing the laundry:

Some other work that is still in progress and never made it to the tour:

Eco print with indigo on silk dupion

Indigo, rust and tannin prints on linen and cotton – also WIPs

A few more rust print WIPs:

 

“May Gardenista” on the work table, WIP:

My mass book “Magnificat” recycled as an altered book – almost 400 pages folded! The cover of the mass book beside it shows a work by Odilon Redon “The Flight Into Egypt” (Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus, refugees, resting on the road). The colours in the painting are similar to the ones in “May Gardenista”” don't you think?

 

 

And now to show you some of what emerged from the studio in time for the studio tour this month:

 

 

 

The candleholders are by Shlomo who also participated in the tour with his metal art. They go well with the rust, tannin and indigo prints, I thought

 

Most of the work above is on paper or cloth dyed/printed with indigo, rust, plants and tannin.

Last pic:

I found this print when sorting stuff for the tour. I bought it many years ago and I cannot find the name of the painter. Does anyone recognise the work? It looks kind of Klee-ish. I had been in Canada only two years when I found it In the shop of the National Gallery of Canada, a repro of course. I felt it was something of a self-portrait, me wrapping myself in my British flag, missing my old home. And check her hippy headband.

 

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Rust and Indigo For A Chinese Thread Book

Thanks to the delightful kindness of Kit Tyrrell, one of my blog readers in the UK, I have received two booklets by Ruth Smith about folded books that can contain many compartments. One such book is the Chinese Thread Book (AKA the Miao Dong thread-and-needle case) that I mentioned in my last post. Kit had found the booklets at a textile show in the UK and had made the needle case using soft Japanese paper. She was so generous in sending them to me to have a go, too.

One of Ruth Smith's instruction books:

(You can see the thread book on the far right of the cover pic)

The traditional Miao thread and needle cases can have up to thirteen folded 'containers' stacked on top of each other and enclosed within covers that shut like a pocketbook. Miao embroiderers kept thread, needles, patterns, etc, in these “pockets”

For the annual CBBAG (bookbinding) swap ( themed “Envelope” this year) I was looking for an interesting way to bind and/or contain a collection of 20 artistically-made 'envelopes' containing creative enclosures.

We were encouraged to explore the 'Conceal-Reveal' concept inherent in the theme. I had in mind to make a multi-pouch container based on the traditional needle-and-thread cases made by the Miao people of South West China. Their needle-and-thread cases are usually made from paper, often handmade, and decorated with symbols and designs of cultural significance. (In fact, the Miao designs are a principal means of handing down their history since until recently, the Miao people were 94% illiterate, having no written records, relying instead on oral and graphic-image storytelling and record-keeping to transmit and preserve their ancient culture)

Instead of paper, however, I decided to use my (pre-reduced) indigo and rust dyed fabrics (stashed from last year) because of an indigo connection: the Miao people are famous for growing indigo (three species) and for indigo-dyeing their handwoven hemp clothing that they later applique with exquisitely skilful embroideries.

In addition, I thought that placing the CBBAG Swap envelopes inside still other 'envelopes' that also 'conceal' then 'reveal' seemed another appropriate and enriching concept to explore, and one that links to the curiosity, excitement and mystery we might experience in turning the pages of a book.

This is what my Chinese Thread Book looked like when it was done: I needed four larger compartments each topped with one smaller 'box' or 'envelope'; the eight compartments are mounted on cloth-bound book board covers. Each of the larger 'boxes' contains five art envelopes (about 5″ square) with an enclosure; the smaller box on top contains small cards bearing the name of each participant in the project.

But first, there was many a trial and much mess and often, confusion…More books of instruction and also You Tubes were gratefully consulted…

After the confidence-building reading and video-watching, on to the trials – playtime!

On the studio table is some rust and indigo dyed cloth laid out for auditioning as book cloth (cloth backed with paper to use in bookbinding)

Some trials with paper – origami folds to make a box:

 

The vintage linen (below) dyed with rust and indigo was successfully backed with thin mulberry paper to make book cloth. I adhered the cloth and paper together with Heat 'N Bond and Steam-a-Seam; no wet paste or glue for this application, though I have used it very successfully before. But wet glue had been a mistake in a previous trial with another kind of cloth). Lessons learned from paper trials and the cloth-wet glue trial led to success with the first of the four folded cloth 'envelopes' AKA origami-fold boxes:

Smaller boxes are stacked (glued with PVA) on top of the larger ones and open up to reveal their contents:

The paper layer of the bookcloth of which the wee boxes are made is painted with indigo; the cloth side is rust printed cotton. Some of the thin mulberry paper tore but I fixed that easily with acrylic glazing liquid – in fact, giving the whole mulberry paper layer a thin coat of glaze which serves both to enhance the indigo blue colour and to strengthen the paper. (The Miao people varnish their paper). One has to give some thought to the colour of the paper that lines the cloth before adhering cloth and paper together and folding it – something I failed to do! The result: a lot of unwanted white showing! So I made a wash from the indigo and CAREFULLY painted it on the white paper/outside of the boxes…though after the thread case was finished, not before, which would have been safer.

Inside the wee box, a little card for each artist with their name:

 

Inside the larger folded boxes five 'envelopes' with their enclosures:

 

On top of each of the five 'envelopes' inside the larger box I placed a lid made from my hand made and hand dyed indigo and rust paper. I intended the 'lid' to conceal the contents briefly even after the box is opened…you lift the lid by a wee loop.Each of the four lids is different:

 

 

 

 

This box shows my own CBBAG 'Envelope' inside:

 

The case for the folded boxes is covered with rust-printed linen and furnished with ribbon ties: It looks like a hard-cover book.

 

The covers fold flat to keep the folded boxes flat inside, and they are wrapped around with a ribbon:

 

And a final protective 'envelope' : one to slip the ” Envelope” case inside, made of indigo and rust printed cotton and linen; free motion stitched label.

 

Next time: A look at some of the envelopes and their enclosures!

And maybe some Philip Taafe ( I must stop making that promise…the truth is that I took some photos at the gallery where his show took place but have not received permission to use them…so until I do….I did write and ask for permissiom at the gallery but the answer I received was not clearly a YES or a NO…so I have to clarify…I do believe an artist has the right to the work being represented by images that he or she wants so I cannot go barging ahead to publish my own little snapshots without a clear OK…But if I cannot use my own photos, I know I can use theirs)

And thank you once again to Kit Tyrrell who, through her amazing kindness, provided me with the necessary instructions for this interesting and challenging bookbinding project

Wendy

 

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Back from Brooklyn

February in Ottawa is Winterlude, AKA The Deep Freeze at minus 35…

The Kaleyard looks lovely, though, with dye plants snug under the snow billows:

Can't help thinking about what will have survived its first year in The Kaleyard, and if, come spring, it will look like this again:

While we were in Brooklyn/NYC, I found some lovely areas of winter beauty, and in some unexpected places. E.g. : A gentrified part of Redhook outside a big supermarket, giving me my only view of the Statue of Liberty on this trip:

And at the icy waters near Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan:

The High Line is my favourite NYC park to visit in the great city. Over the years, some abandoned railroad tracks raised above city streets became informal host to wildflowers and wildlife when left to wind and weather and wild critter. When the railroad was threatened with demolition, the local community rallied to save it; now it is an artfully landscaped haven of natural native plantings among the skyscrapers. Native plantings and sculptures, boardwalks and benches make the High Line endlessly interesting in every season.

Sumacs and the Flag on the High Line:

Grasses and milkweed: i love the winter colours and forms of the plants.

Mahonia and winterberry. There are many berry-bearing bushes and trees on the High Line to feed the wildlife and aid propogation.

The recent High Line extension landscaping has allowed plants to volunteer and to selfseed without specialist planning:

Sculptures along the extension: impermanent, weather-susceptible, fleeting, temporary…this one is formed by soil, rock and rags:

A city profile, from the High Line

And after the park, a hot lunch in a NY deli:

…plus a game of Deli Tic-Tac-To with grandson Dylan (aged 5) :

Iconic NYC views nearby:

 

Views served up with art advice:

And a history book to read on the subway. Now that I have an American grandson, I owe it to him to learn his history- why not from a gardening perspective? (And we watched some episodes of the West Wing on Netflix, too..plus noticed cracks made about dorky Canadians, too…)!The author of The Founding Gardeners shows how the Founding Fathers used native plants on their properties as statements not only about the natural beauty of the American landscape but as symbols of a necessary attachment to the principles of hard work, self-sufficiency and political independence in the new country. A fascinating perspective on the use of native plants in ones's garden!

NYC has some great doorways and I was checking them for colour.

The Brooklyn Flea (market) doorway. I noticed a lot of blue and blue-grey paint paired with Brooklyn red brick…I am enjoying that combo…Thinking I might try it for my house this spring…This doorway was of The C-l-e-a-r-i-n-g Gallery in Bushwick, where “Green Calvin”, a show of green ceramic chicken faces on identical green canvases by Calvin Marcus took place. I loved the doorway.

And inside our rented walk-up apartment (VRBO) near the Brooklyn Museum, a charming old interior dec:

 

As for the weather: you may have heard about the snowstorm that grounded the flights in and out of NYC in January: Here, Dylan and Shlomo are walking home from the subway at rhe Brooklyn Museum. I liked the colour combos here.

 

 

And for the art I have come back to in my studio, here is a quick peek: Some painted canvas to cover a chair.

This month, my project was to create art envelopes with enclosures for the annual book arts swap at CBBAG. I used a basic palette of primary red-blue-yellow to decorate paste papers, mixing colours on the surface; then used vintage textile fragments in secondary colours as envelope inserts:

A collection of envelopes

A couple of envelope examples:

 

More next post about art in NYC (e.g, at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Bushwick for the Philip Taafe exhibit – Philip Taafe is one of my faves and a master of pattern and colour; plus Al Loving and Sam Gilliam at the MOMA who have worked in textiles to create abstract art and who are being brought out of mothballs basically by the current in-crowd of art curators at the MOMA. (Mothballs and textiles, you say…?)

…and some of my ongoing art projects in the studio.

Hello and welcome to all the new followers of Threadborne. And to all vistors, old and new, thank you for stopping by and for your comments.

Wendy

 

 

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Paper Diversions: Rust Prints, Fresco Papers and Fancy Doodles

Paste papers and rust prints are among the mark-making adventures on my radar this month, along with the trademarked 'Zentangles' (Since I am unable to insert the R copyright/trademark symbol using this iPad keyboard, I must henceforth refer to thIs topic as 'The Z Word')

One of my rust print excursions (below) is via Canal paper (artisan-made by Saint Armand in Montreal) and features vinegar-splashed iron chunks sprinkled with Assam tea for blue-black tannin marks:

Next is something I have never tried before; pedantically, I was thinking it was just a fad, basically the 'Pet Rock' of markmaking:

The Z Word

Throwing prejudice aside, I bought a wee kit for my daughter, who, seeking some artistic diversion to offset the pressures of work, was ready to give these fancy doodles a go. We both tried; for my effort, i gave myself zero, having broken the Fancy Doodle Rules (use a pen, no ruler, no eraser, start at the line, etc. ) and not having filled in the whole three and a half inch square required:

My daughter, on the other hand, became enchanted. This is her first Z Word:

And her second:

She ran off home, excited to do more Z Words, plus try more spirograph from Michaels (she and Dylan, aged five, play with that together) plus a fancy old-fashioned kind of spirograph from Lee Valley Tools that architects used to use and that Google knows nothing about. Thank you, Z Word, and please accept my apologies; you are not the Pet Rock of the art world after all.

'Fresco' paste papers.

Paste paper was the next experiment. The textured surfaces of papers coloured with pigmented paste seem fresco-like; so my aim for the overall look of the paste papers became: abraded surfaces – pitted, peeling and faded, ancient walls…

I have enjoyed making paste papers in the past, painting more or less traditional swirled and combed patterns and using mostly natural dyes ( I have reported on the paste recipe, patterns and results in a previous post.). Favoured by book artists, paste papers are usually coloured with a home-made wheat or cornstarch or rice paste (sometimes wallpaper paste or methyl cellulose) mixed with acrylic paints or other pigments.

Paste paper was a kind of side activity traditional with bookbinders, a frugal way to use up the leftover paste used in book construction. The paste (wheat, corn, rice, etc., depending on cultural traditions and era) was mixed with colours and painted in simple but effective designs on paper that could be used for book decoration. Today, many bookbinders make paste paper for its own sake and as a way to obtain beautiful and unique materials for Artists' Books displaying complex, painterly designs.

Really, you could just use straight acrylic paints instead of going to the trouble of making coloured paste. Still, making paste papers nowadays is perhaps more about rediscovering and emulating the long-ago customs of bookbinders and connecting yourself with the history of the craft. But allowing your creativity some contemporary licence. The resulting art papers can be used as pages, end papers or covers for Artists' Books, as background for book content or even as the book content itself.

For my 'fresco' papers, I chose acrylic paints by Golden for their high pigment load. ( Wheat or cornstarch paste tends to thin out the pigment so paler prints can result from less concentrated paint colours). My preference is for a basic palette I can use to mix the colours I want, either by layering colours on top of one another on the paper, or by mixing them before application.

For this batch, I chose Hansa yellow, Cadmium red, Ultramarine blue, Cobalt blue, Green Gold, Cadmium orange, Titan buff (instead of stark white), 'sludge' by Tri- Art ( a factory mix of leftover paints that offers a cheap, brownish substitute for black that gives a more faded, antique look to the darks on the page) and Interference red, a metallic paint I used as a resist before the paste layer, and as bit of shine on the surface, brushed on straight.

Some of the paste papers were printed in two or three layers of colour, and dried between layers so that a wet top layer could be wiped, scraped, rolled or printed off in areas to allow the under colour to show through. Textile scraps (coarse linen strips, crochet lace, netting, heavy weaves, etc.) were pressed with a brayer into a wet paste layer, then removed, leaving their impressions like stamps and lifting off a lot of the surface colour, creating new texture and revealing the underlying layers. The textiles can also lift off bits of paper, too! The abrasion was not hard to achieve…Other marks were made with carved rollers, combs, etc.

I took several monotypes from the 'host' paste painting by pressing a clean, damp sheet of Canal paper on top of the painted page (or two) and pulling a secondary print. In some cases, as in this first image, you can see that layers of paper were pulled up from the surface of the paper along with the coloured paste, creating a look of broken plaster.

 

 

This image belpw shows the monotype I printed off the 'host' paper, above, with bits of paper pulled off the surface and adding to the 'fresco' effect.

The Interference red used as a resist before painting the first coloured layers changed colour to purply- grey when the 'sludge' was rolled over the top of the yellow and red layers. The metallic worked better on the top surface in this paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time!

Wendy

 

 

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Works In Progress

Summer Solstice is fast approaching and my garden is almost ready to meet the longest day of the year! It has been a month (and some! ) of long days for me in the new garden. For what is an eco printmaker and dyer without her plants? It was a matter of the utmost urgency for me to rearrange the existing botanicals at least by the solstice so that eco dyeing and printing could resume…With the addition of some new plants and a few transplants from my old garden (though, sadly, most died in the harsh winter 2013 – 2014) I am almost there! So here are some pics of the garden, back and front, and the progress to date.

The front garden from the porch.

The specimen red Japanese maple (an eco dyer's delight) is underplanted with various shade lovers moved from the back garden which became suddenly very sunny due to the over-winter demise of a sugar maple. No more grass, just pea gravel now with field stones plus brick edging that will disappear from sight as the edging plants (for example: geranium, thyme, dianthus) grow in:

 

 

Along the sunny fence, I have planted old favourite cottage perennials, many of which give colour in the eco dye pot. More are to be added, like tansy and goldenrod.

 

 

Ferns, Solomon's seal, Siberian iris, daylilies, hostas, lupins, mint, variagated weigela and dogwood:

 

Before I made it my own, the gardens back and front were already rich with interesting native plants like Eastern cedars, Bloodroot, American smokebush (Cotinus obovatus) redberried elder, wood poppy, ostrich ferns, American bittersweet, goatsbeard, virgin's bower clematis, Virginia creeper. But as you know, one thing always leads to another in a garden (Didn't Adam and Eve set us some examples?) First, the mature sugar maple that died rendered areas of the back garden inhospitable to some shade plants. Then, installing a walkway in the front occasioned the transplanting of three mature evergreens- two yews and an Alberta spruce – which I couid not bring myself to chop down…We will see if they survive among other native plants installed along the shady perimeters of the back yard. Some images:

In the back, a native prairie grass, big bluestem, with rocks and vessel to break up the gravel “lawn”

 

Natives along the back fence: Pagoda dogwood shrub (back left) and Joe Pye weed (centre right) with fave green immigrants greater celandine (back right), sweet woodruff (under the dogwood) and hostas (foreground). I have planted the native celandine (aka wood poppy) elsewhere in the woodland area.

 

Native serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea or laevis, not sure which…the tag said A. canadensis but that is a cop-out name…)

 

Ostrich fern, Black Chokeberry(L), Solomon’s Seal and American smokebush(R), natives all.

 

Wonderful native sumac, Rhus typhina. With iron bedstead as Sugar Snap pea support and as eco print assistant later this summer…TBD!

 

The loud purple smokebush, brash and brazen, wonderful hybrid, fronted by enormous bloodroot, a native dye plant. Set beside Shlomo's garden candelabra, hand-wrought iron.

 

The Black Chokeberry in bloom, early May, beside red-twigged dogwood. Shade-loving natives. And another iron sculpture by Shlomo, “Peony” .

 

The greater celandine, green immigrant, which gives lovely greens and oranges when smooshed onto paper:

 

Smooshed thus:

 

In May, before some plants in this area were transplanted to the front garden. The whole candelabra – sculpture by Shlomo. The bedstead was garbage-picked.

 

“Canadian Pioneer” sculpture by Shlomo in the “woodland” garden of native plants alongside a few respectable green immigrants. (I am into native plant gardening but am no purist…Live and let live, in life, in gardens and in art, say I …Am I not also an immigrant, a stranger and a sojourner on this earth? )

 

Now for a little Non Native Gardening: I am growing these in pots for now:

Woad. Weld. Indigo. Japanese Indigo.

Just because. Reports later in the season!

 

 

This is the Persicaria tinctoria (Japanese indigo) in planters:

 

Native baptisia australis, AKA Rattlebush because the seed pods rattle when drying. This plant fixes nitrogen in the soil. I have put a weedy “Northern Lights” (bright orange blooms!)azalea close by to fatten her up…

 

Pods:

 

Coreopsis verticillata. Red dye from every part. Not the prairie version which is a native but a respectable relative. This image shows all that survived the Winter From Hell in Ottawa:

 

A hybrid of the threadleaf coreopsis above, in the front garden, too.

 

 

Good old tagetes, red, orange, yellow from the blooms and green from leaves and calix.

 

Precious wee pansies, even if they are not real Johnny-Jump-Ups. Blues and teals and turquoises in the dye pot.

 

Foxgloves and chives. Not sure about these in th dye pot…foxglove is risky!

 

Hybrid chartreuse sumac as companion to the red Japanese maple. Colour in the dye pot: TBD

 

Siberian iris (blue and green dyes) with pollinator plant, Canada thistle (L). Not natives but useful – to me…

 

Ostrich ferns, black chokeberry, Solomon’s Seal and smokebush, all natives. All eco-printable.

 

Sumac in June…growing nicely!

 

Red-painted bamboo poles as climbing supports for Hubbard squash in pots: nicely tied with copper wire by Shlomo (copper thrifted from a cable)

. Expecting the squash will cover the pergola while we are waiting for the grape vine and arctic kiwi to grow.

 

And after all this art in the garden what about art in your dye pot or at the printing press or at your bookbinder's bench, you may be asking.

This collagraph plate is part of my new series about a venerable elm that stood near my old house. I have collected photos of that elm for over 30 years. So now I have another way to say goodbye to our old home.

 

The “Elm” test print on eco printed paper:

 

Another collagraph plate created from some of my super-textured embroideries:

 

A third plate, also an “Elm” collagraph plate, yet to be proofed and printed. Report later. It has a kind of Wuthering Heights look to it, all windblown and broken…

Some of the prints from these plates will be on exhibit in July at the gallery associated with my printmakers’' group. Report later.

Next, on the topic of book arts:

“Unbound/Debride” is an exhibit of books and boxes by the Ottawa Valley chapter of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, held at the gallery of the lovely City of Ottawa Archives building.

Here are my eco printed box (L) and Shlomo's “El Anatsui” box (R)' with works by our colleagues Maggie McGovern (front), Paul Champion Demers (R), Beatrice Lourtioux (centre) and Holly Dean (back)

 

A funky selection: Genevieve Samson (L front) , Spike Minogue (L back), Shlomo (centre), Madeleine Rousseau (R) and Holly Dean (top). (This book by Holly appears in my article about book arts in the current issue of Fiber Art Now. See below)

 

My eco printed box and book with a coptic-bound, wooden-cover book by Paul Champion Demers:

 

The poster for the show:

 

Finally for this post, I mention two of my articles recently published: one about eco dyeing (with tutorial) in the current issue of the UK Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers and one featuring Canadian book artists in the current Fiber Art Now.

The work of Sandra Brownlee (winner of the 2014 Governor General of Canada award), Martha Cole, Holly Dean and myself appears in Fiber Art Now.

 

Happy gardening! It is a great joy. And it entails many other joys.

 

Wendy

 

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Blooms, Books and Bylines

Gardening season is finally upon us here in the Frozen North, still only barely unfrozen

I am spending most of my daylight hours sorting my new garden and contemplating my options for a redesign that features native plants suitable for eco dyeing and printing. I am actively researching so more plant info will be coming soon!

Meantime, here is what I have been up to since last blog entry: eco printing in the microwave, book binding, writing articles for magazines and painting. And a little Studio Dec.

I have installed a new feature in my new, pared-down studio space: artworks display shelving made from a recycled kitchen cupboard. So instead of hiding my artworks under the bed, I can place them where I see them each time I enter the studio. I will try to change the display monthly.

 

The box and the book (top right) are by my Shlomo who also belongs to CBBAG, the Canadian Book Artists and Book Binders Guild. He also printed the maple leaf which I cut out, holes and all. The little blue HotWheels was snuck in by Dylan, our grandson for he considers no surface well dressed unless HotWheeled (or Lego'd). Completing the vignette is a dish of vintage glass African trade beads beside an Indian printing block from Rajastan where Hannah (the Bride of two years ago) was on a work assigment earlier this year. The rest are my efforts in various media, both current and older.

For example, on display (middle shelf) is my first eco print of this season. For this first print. I tried a method other than long steaming in a pot on the stove. For plant colour, I used Icicle Pansies from pots in the garden and red geraniums from pots in the house. I deadheaded the plants, rinsed the blooms, put them (wet) between sheets of watercolour paper, zapped the package in the micro for ten seconds inside a plastic bag (the watercolour paper was first quickly dipped in alum acetate water), then I pressed the little stack overnight under weights. BTW, see my Reference page for info about eco dyeing in the microwave, in particular, in an article by Karen Leigh Casselman, teacher to India Flint, and Canadian Diva of Dyes.

A wonderful range of blues and greens appeared from the pansies with deep magenta and rich lilac from the bright red geraniums (pelargoniums):

 

 

These colours recall the blue iris prints I made last June. Note how a face colour (e.g. blue) present in the plant can separate into constituent colours as a result of the eco print process.

 

This purple from the pelargonium is abundant and compelling even without the other colours leaking through from the pansies:

 

The eco printed work below was done last summer, 2013. Coreopsis verticillata- and sumac-printed papers were used to cover a box made for a box exchange at our last CBBAG meeting. I enjoyed making the closures! Linen thread, crocheted to make a loop, and printed watercolour paper, rolled, to make a bead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookbinding workshops again this spring! The April workshop was about Secret Belgian binding. We used the papers our instructor provided – some were lovely, handmarbled sheets. Yellow is so Spring!

 

 

 

 

Finally for this post are three references to articles I have written since January about eco printing and Artist Books.

You can read my article about eco printing with native plants in the winter issue of the Turkey Red Journal, another article on more or less the same topic in The Journal For Weavers, Spinners and Dyers (U.K.) in the summer 2014 issue, and a third article (on Artists' Books) in the summer issue of Fiber Art Now magazine (U.S.) (See below for the web links). The Turkey Red Journal is free for readers and available online. The other two are paper publications and are on sale as subscriptions and/or on newstands. Fiber Art Now pays a modest stipend for articles published while the other two magazines rely on volunteers.

And here is a little painting distraction that I permitted myself this winter. I glued watercolour papers to the inside covers of the binder that houses copies of articles I have written for various publications. I then painted the papers with my personal logo, a figleaf. (The Bible refers to Adam and Eve sewing clothes for themselves out of figleaves when they lost Paradise. Threadwork and plants are thus mythically and perhaps spiritually connected)

Inside front cover:

Inside back cover:

 

Article references:

http://www.turkeyredjournal.com

http://www.thejournalforwsd.org.uk

http://www.fiberartnow.net

 

Until next time! I will report on the CBBAG show of Artist Books at the City of Ottawa Archives (April, May and June) Several of my Artist Books are in the show, including those made in Italy at the Arte Studio Ginestrelle residency last October.

Wendy

 

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” O, to be in Blogland, now that April’s here…”

Dear Reader,

Finally, I feel settled enough in my new house and studio to blog! Let me begin with these words of blessing. (I am also substituting “blog” for “hous” ) Not sayin' that I haven't cursed a bit in the past few months but now I am speaking a blessing:

I found that page, loose in a book I picked up in a thrift shop. I have no idea who composed it or when but I like the sentiments.

What have I been up to since my last blog entry, many moons ago, you may enquire? Well, we moved house last November and a big change it has been.

For my December birthday, Husband made this birthday candle for me:

 

It took me many weeks to get over the pinched nerve and wrecked muscles in my Sword and Pen Arm and I still have to watch my posture a lot. The injury, studio still unpacked after our move last November and all kinds of reno meant that no art got done.

But I did manage to write a couple of articles, one about eco printing and another about the book arts, soon to be published if the editors do not change their minds…will keep you informed.

My studio, meantime, almost habitable:

 

This is one corner of the studio. The “Kandinsky” now on the wall turned up when I unpacked a few old boxes- done twenty years ago when I thought it would be instructive to copy my favourite painters. I got bored by the time the top right hand corner was to be filled in…I still think it is a good exercise to copy a painting from time to time to keep one's hand in. And keep one's ego where it belongs.

Husband has been finding it hard,too, not to have space to work at his art. But he did manage these industrial-vibe candlesticks:

 

My textiles and artist books returned safe and sound from Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Italy in January after the exhibition in Assisi (from which my heart has not yet returned). I gathered some of my artist's books together to pet them while waiting for my little artmaking place to be ready. I very much enjoyed our reunion:

 

This group shows the collection of botanical “scrolls” made in my last house and in the Subasio, in Assisi. The orange colours are rust, tea and coreopsis, the blues and greens are from iris and the blacks from iron with maple. These days, my chief interest is in printing and dyeing with regional native plants on papers and textiles.

This scroll below dyed with June blooms and leaves: iris, coreopsis and sumac mostly, with a few Prunus cistena:

 

This scroll was printed with dried coreopsis and tagetes. The stalks are used to make the spine of the book and are from the dried coreopsis.

 

Rusted paper making the accordion spine, with iron-dyed thread attaching pages inside the folds.

 

Another view of the scroll collection:

Looking over my old work helps me get back in the zone after I have been away for a long time. Blogging helps, too!

Though unable to work much in my own home, I have been able to take a few workshops. Here, I am using a photo I took of a favourite tree and transferring an abstract version of the design onto an aluminum plate using a Sharpie marker that acts as a resist to the etching fluid:

 

I made the aluminum plates in a non toxic studio set up using Akua inks.

 

This is the etched plate which I will print at home, results TBD:

 

And here are four Japanese stab-bound books we learned how to make at a workshop given by the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild. Next post, I will have a photo of the beautiful wrapper we made for the books. Our teachers, so competent and knowledgable, were Mary MacIntyre and Genevieve Samson. Mary is the national president of CBBAG: both she and Gen are conservators at the National Archives in Ottawa.

Some less fun activity:

Wonder if I can use this as a design? Smashed by ice from my neighour's roof sliding onto my car in the driveway…had to get a new windshield and a new roof on my car…but we will keep the neighours, they are nice!

 

Snd because it is spring, at last there is the dye garden to think about. I have not much idea of what has survived in the pots I brought from our old house and little notion of what I will find already in the garden once spring really arrives; the garden is still under two feet of snow and more snow is forecast for this week. A long, cold, icy, white winter. We have lost a maple tree, boo hoo, and the tree guy could not get in last week to cut is down because the gate was frozen closed…

Meantime, I grow seeds in the house: hope springs eternal…

 

The Japanese Indigo is for the dye garden, but that will remain in pots because she is thought invasive in many parts of the gardening world.

 

That is it for now. I am working on a review of my lists of dye plants so that will be the subject of a post on the near future. I am planning to focus more on plants native to my eco zone.

And, BTW, we had a leak in our roof – water came through the dining room ceiling because of dammed-up ice…this is been a most brutal winter, the winter of many discontents…but many consolations, too, as you can see above!

Until the next time

 

Wendy

 

 

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