After finishing my arts degree end of last year I spent the first months of 2017 getting my arts career started. This means making work for art galleries in the North Island, designing workshops, running my first couple of workshops, getting the paper stuff sorted, beginning a new Body or Work, networking with artist fellow artists, galleries and customers.
No wonder I needed a break! I was missing the ‘play time’ as a student, when you just explore, experiment not worrying about the outcome or failures (and generally something great comes out of it anyway).
So I gathered some plant materials such as eucalyptus, bark, loquat and osage orange, sorting out some silk scarves – some already naturally dyed, some not really successful. I over dyed with natural dyes, used some random shibori techniques, and basically just had some fun! Here a few images of my explorations. It was definitely worth it, inspired by the results.
peach leaves soaking in a copper vessel
silk dyed with osage orange, different mordants – changing hues
osage orange silk partially dyed with loquat leaves – gives beautiful oranges
partially over dyed silk
merino dyed with barberry bark, over dyed with eucalyptus
silk/wool fabric previously dyed with cochineal, over dyed with eukalyptus bark – detail
a mix of shibori techniques with indigo, marigold and eucalyptus leaves – detail
silk dyed with marigold over dyed with eucalyptus leaves – detail
silk dyed with cochineal and eucalyptus – preparing for third dye pot
same piece just removed from the dye pot
result
loquat dyed silk over dyed with eucalyptus – left to dry creating the crinkle effect
detail
Ko Ōtaki toku awa
100 Day Journey – day 56
Felt Making for a Vibrant Community
in-visible threads
Back with a new look!
Encaustic – hooked
Spending a week learning the art of encaustic with Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch in Wanganui (Fibre Arts New Zealand) was a fantastic experience of experimenting a totally new art medium using hot wax in combination with oils, pan pastels, charcoals, inks – basically anything you can imagine to make marks, plus the addition of fabrics, shellac, plaster and tar.
Back home, I couldn’t hardly wait to get a few basic tools and materials to set my little encaustic space in a corner of my studio, which guess what – took over a big part of my studio in no time…
I found I am more drawn to materials like concrete, plaster, tar and rust that can create beautiful textures, and even applied to flat supports like ply wood or paper the final look feels three dimensional through lots of layers of chosen materials.
These are some pieces I did in the workshop
Not that this enough, I signed in the 100 day project, an independently run event of repeating a creative task over (guess) 100 days. Because encaustic is such a wide field I limited myself to a square of paper (as canvas) 13cm x13cm using rust, concrete, tar, plaster and some oil sticks. A perfect way of daily material exploration!
These are some of my first works, see more here!
Shibori/Natural Dye Workhop – Winter 2017
flyer 19.8.2017Winter Workshops 2017 – Harakeke (flax) Weaving
I am happy to run a few more weaving classes. New addition: making puti puti (flowers) from harakeke. Small groups for best learning outcome!
flyer winter 2017Playtime
After finishing my arts degree end of last year I spent the first months of 2017 getting my arts career started. This means making work for art galleries in the North Island, designing workshops, running my first couple of workshops, getting the paper stuff sorted, beginning a new Body or Work, networking with artist fellow artists, galleries and customers.
No wonder I needed a break! I was missing the ‘play time’ as a student, when you just explore, experiment not worrying about the outcome or failures (and generally something great comes out of it anyway).
So I gathered some plant materials such as eucalyptus, bark, loquat and osage orange, sorting out some silk scarves – some already naturally dyed, some not really successful. I over dyed with natural dyes, used some random shibori techniques, and basically just had some fun! Here a few images of my explorations. It was definitely worth it, inspired by the results.
peach leaves soaking in a copper vessel
silk dyed with osage orange, different mordants – changing hues
osage orange silk partially dyed with loquat leaves – gives beautiful oranges
partially over dyed silk
merino dyed with barberry bark, over dyed with eucalyptus
silk/wool fabric previously dyed with cochineal, over dyed with eukalyptus bark – detail
a mix of shibori techniques with indigo, marigold and eucalyptus leaves – detail
silk dyed with marigold over dyed with eucalyptus leaves – detail
silk dyed with cochineal and eucalyptus – preparing for third dye pot
same piece just removed from the dye pot
result
loquat dyed silk over dyed with eucalyptus – left to dry creating the crinkle effect
detail
Summer Colours with Cochineal
When it comes to natural dyes, it is sometimes hard to get a bright and strong red colour. The main sources for a range of reds are madder root and cochineal. I had this jar of cochineal sitting in my studio for about two years with the intention to use it one day. That day has eventually come.
Cochineal is a beetle which lives on cacti in Middle and South America. Only the female body (!) gives the dye when it is dried out and pulverized. The substance is called carmine and can also be found in food and cosmetic industry. In the past centuries cochineal was a main dye source for red dyes, today its often used by artists and artisans in their work, who are helping to keep this traditional knowledge alive.
dried cochineal beetles
in pulverized form
For my dyeing session I prepared a couple of silk and wool fabrics, using the itajime shibori technique (clamps).
the dye pot
Here are some images of the finished pieces, the colours raspberry like on the wool, a bit more pink on silk.
I wonder why I haven’t used this amazing dye source before, I am pretty sure this source will be one of my favorites in the future.