My fabric creatures are very excited about the upcoming Artists in Our Midst exhibition.
They are hoping for many visitors.
Author Archives: mary
Jamdani Dyed with Indigo and Rust
Jamdani Silk Dyed with Indigo and Rust
Silk Jamdani dyed with Indigo and Rust.
This is a piece of silk Jamdani fabric that I brought back from Calcutta last February. Jamdani weaving is found in Bengal and Bangladesh. It is a supplementary weft technique of weaving, somewhat similar to tapestry. The standard weft creates a fine, sheer fabric while the supplementary weft with thicker threads, in this case metallic red and gold threads, adds the pattern. Each supplementary weft motif is added separately by hand by interlacing the weft threads into the warp with fine bamboo sticks using individual spools of thread. The traditional art of weaving Jamdani has been declared by Unesco as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Indigo
During my recent trip to India I bought a number of exquisite silk scarves, mostly from Calcutta and Bengal. I’ve dyed them with Indigo plus a bit of Iron Rust and Lac.
I made an organic Indigo vat using rotting bananas as the reducing agent.
Michel Garcia’s recipe. It works well!
Persimmon
Lately I have been working with Japanese Persimmon Dye. It produces a gorgeous chestnut brown that combines beautifully with Indigo.
Persimmon Dye involves a lengthly process to achieve the darkest colours. The dye is painted onto the fabric and left to bake in the sun. During the first day in the sun the fabric turns a very pale pinky brown. With each succeeding dye and sun exposure the fabric becomes increasingly darker.
More Scarves
I’ve been dyeing more scarves using a combination of logwood and pomegranate natural dyes on silk/rayon devoré and a silk/cotton blend made in India.
Some of the scarves are now for sale at Circle Craft on Granville Island in Vancouver
Silk Scarves with Natural Dyes
I have been dyeing a series of silk scarves with combinations of Indigo, Rust and Blood Root/Sanguineria Canadensis.
DETAILS
Indigo
I spent an amazing 10 days in May at Bryan Whitehead’s in Fujino, Japan. japanesetextileworkshops.blogspot.ca
During my stay with Bryan we visited the workshop of Noguchi san, a Katazome master in Tokyo, who hand prints lengths of indigo fabric for kimonos (13 metres X 36 centimetres). He uses traditional stencils cut from mulberry paper, hand prints a rice paste resist onto the fabric and then dyes the fabric in indigo vats. Pure magic!
Embroidery: Dappled Things
This embroidery sampler is based on a drawing I made in my garden. It was inspired by the poem “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise hím.
November Hydrangeas
I’ve finally finished the painting “November Hydrangeas”, oil on canvas, based on an iPad drawing I made in my garden over a year ago.
Landscape Paintings
HERE ARE SOME PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY THE ITALIAN LANDSCAPE. I SPENT A MONTH STUDYING ITALIAN IN TODI, A GORGEOUS LITTLE TOWN IN UMBRIA. THESE ARE VIEWS FROM THE CITY WALLS LOOKING OUT OVER THE COUNTRYSIDE.
Women and Gardens
SOME PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY WOMEN IN GARDENS
January
The witch hazel is blooming and it smells divine!
August
Such a contrast at this time of year between the dark shadows and the intense sunlight.
More Encaustic Paintings
I’ve been working on a series of small (6×6″) encaustic landscapes.
Encaustic Paintings
I have recently begun to paint with encaustic wax. The hot, liquid wax must be painted very quickly onto the wood support. I’m enjoying both the spontaneity of the process and the deep saturated jewel tones of the encaustic pigments.
Bouquet
One of my first ipad drawings. Sitting in my friend Karen’s kitchen in Oxford, chatting with her and learning how to use the Brushes app by drawing the bouquet in her window. Here it is.
Another Window
And here is another iPad drawing. My kitchen window at home.
Peonies Words/Drawings
December 1st, I had gone to the market in search of tulips, needing a reminder in the darkest, deepest days of autumn that spring would eventually return.
But then, there they were. The surprise of them, out of place, out of season. Bright, almost obscenely crimson peonies, their stems drooping slightly from the heaviness of the petals. Lush, sensuous, the Marilyn Monroe of flowers, brash and vulnerable at once. And oh! the perfume.
I’ve taken the peonies home now, placed them in a vase, and I’m beginning to draw them. As I make my first marks on the page I’m thinking about the differences between visual and written forms of expression, between a word and a line.
I think the essential difference is between the immediacy, almost fleetingness, of visual observation and the much more prolonged and drawn out evocation of memory offered by words. Perhaps it all comes down to their relationships to time.
When I draw the flowers- my hand and eye and the blossoms and stems and scent all become one. I need to inhabit the same time and space as the flowers themselves- to feel their exact weight, form, colour. A drawing is a map, made in time, of what I experienced in looking at the peonies. And if I have been honest and true in my observations (even in an abstract drawing) you will be able to retrace your own way through my map. An exact map is not good. You need to be able to take your own directions, twists and turns along the way.
If I chose to write about the peonies I could take you on a travel through time and memories. I could tell you that I have a red peony in my garden that comes from a root that my great grandparents brought from Ireland during their flight from the potato famines. I could use words to construct a story around their hunger, upheaval, painful voyage, surprising arrival in a new land.
But I will leave you with my drawing of the peonies and let you fill the drawing with your own stories and memories.
Dreaming on a Summer’s Day
Image
Silk Fusion and Embroidery
One of my favourite summer pastimes is lying under a tree, looking up through a canopy of leaves at a blue summer sky dotted with a few fluffy white clouds. In this work I want to evoke a sensation of dreaming, of drifting and weightlessness- the feeling that you are looking up through the leaves at the clouds- but also that you are floating in the clouds looking back down at yourself. I combined the silk fusion technique with actual leaves from my garden. It seems strangely fitting that each silk mawata square is the product of one cocoon produced by one silkworm from the leaves of the mulberry tree. My palette of lemon yellows and turquoise blues is an attempt to capture the sensation of the shimmering and reflections of the leaves, light, sky, air and clouds.
IPad drawings from Mexico
Drawings from my recent trip to Mexico.