Gelli Plate and Haiku

I am in the middle of creating a book.  The pages are pages that I cut out of another book I picked up at Goodwill.  I cut the pages out and printed them with my Gelli Plate.  Then I created Haiku poems from phrases I cut out of books and magazines.  Haiku is 3 a line poem with the first line being 5 syllables, the second has 7 syllables, and the last contains 5 syllables.  I will do a bit more collage work on each before I bind them into a book.  Here are a few examples of my poems.

This one is one of my favorites.  I am an introvert and when I am at a large gathering, this is what it feels like to me.

A Deconstructed Silk Screen Play Date

Beth is majorly in love with deconstructed silk screen.  I am less so.  She likes the spontaneity of it and I dislike the lose of control.  But we had a play date this week where we both did deconstructed silk screen.  We set up our screens very differently.  I am sure Beth will post about her work on her blog so I am just telling you about mine.  And I am posting to Nina Marie.

I set up 4 of my screens with thickened dye squirted in lines.

The last screen I applied the navy blue thickened dye in thicker lines by pouring it on the screen.

Unfortunately I stacked the screens one on top of the other to dry and the top screen in the stack was the navy blue which dripped on all the screens, as you can see in the top picture.  Then, to make matters worse, when the dye was mostly dry, I set the screens upright to finish drying.  Yeah, they were not as dry as I thought and all of them ran.  See below.

Oh well.  Not the  plan but they still  printed.  I used thickened dye paste with dye and soda ash added to deconstruct the screens.  Most of the fabric I over-printed for more complexity but I loved the graphic nature of the last piece and only printed it once.

Here are pictures of the 4 pieces of fabric I printed. The first two are yard long pieces and the second two are fat 1/2 yards.  All were dyed before since I don't really care for white showing through deconstructed prints.  There are detail shots after each whole piece.

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

Do you have a favorite fabric?

Hostages

Went to Beth's for a play date yesterday.  As usual, I left something behind.  This time it was a pile of hand dyed fabric.  Beth sent me an email titled "Hostages" containing the above picture and this text: 

"You know what to do!

​hahaha!!​"

Beth, I have gone to the quilt police and they are on their way to your home.

Mark Rothko

Remember my prints that were in the student art show?  Here is the link.   My inspiration was Mark Rothko.  He is my current most favorite artist.  I like his later work as a leader in the Abstract Expressionism movement and am in love with color field painting.  When I won the print division I received a book of his work.  I was thrilled.  But I had never seen a Mark Rothko in real life until this summer.

I went home to Indiana for the family reunion.  We just wandered our way to Indiana and then back home to Maine.  We didn't plan any stops in advance of each morning when we'd choose how far to drive and book a hotel room to stay at the end of the day.  At one of the rest stops in Upper New York, I picked up a brochure for an art museum associated with the PrattMWP College of Art and Design.  It wasn't far and it boasted modern art, my favorite style, so we stopped to visit it.

Wow!  Jackson Pollock, Norman Lewis, Dali, Picasso, Frankenthaler, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothenberg, to name a few of the artists, and a Rothko.  A ROTHKO!!  I saw it out of the corner of my eye when I entered the gallery.  I thought it was a Rothko but didn't look close.  I slowly cruised the gallery studying each picture and inching my way to the picture I hoped was a Rothko.  Finally I arrived and let myself take a good look at the picture.  Yes!  It was a Rothko.  I sat on the bench in front of it and enjoyed it for a very long time.  Little copies just don't do the multi-layered colors in his large paintings justice.  Here is a Rothko for  you to enjoy till you can see one in person.

Batik play date with Beth, Ellen, and Abby

On July 5th my daughter, Ellen, and her daughter, Abby, joined me at Beth's house for a play date.  Ellen lives in Ohio but was visiting with her in-laws who live in New Hampshire.  They left the rest of the family at the in-laws and continued to Maine.  Beth and Ellen had become friends when Beth stayed at Ellen's house while taking a class at Nancy Crow's barn.  Abby and Ellen made batik silk scarves that turned out very successful.  I would have been happy to claim them as my work.

I used a couple of tjaps I bought from Dharma several years ago.  They had sat on the shelf for a long time unused.  This batik play date seemed the perfect time to try them out.  I used them on some fabric that had already been died multiple times, getting uglier with each new layer.  I figured I had nothing to lose.

The first piece is a yard long piece that has been died twice before.  I like it now.

And a close up.

The second piece is about 1/2 yard and it has also been dyed twice before.  I like it more now but it needs another layer before I will call it finished.

And a couple of close ups.