Dots Return and Find True Love

Blue and Yellow with Dots

It's hard to believe but this piece, or at least part of this piece, has been floating around my studio for more than 18 months. I first wrote about the yellow side side of this diptych Here and Here.

I loved the yellow tinged with orange and the way the black dots floated on the surface. I added bits of the same fabric cut into squares as well as randomly cut bits of black fabric which I hand-stitched with rice stitching. The effect of the combination of those elements is very rich however I felt it needed a second panel to make the composition work. I tried a number of approaches to creating that panel including a canvas panel with painted elements in a variety of sizes and a solid fabric with stitched bits but it just wasn't working. I introduced the Yellow fabric to every piece of fabric I had but no matches resulted. I put the yellow piece aside.

As time moved on the yellow piece would surface and I'd study it again, my desire to pair it with a good mate still strong. I sound like a marriage broker. Actually it is similar in that I had one wonderful element(a girl) that wanted to be in a long-term relationship with another element(a boy).

Prince Charming

Prince Charming finally arrived in the form of a hand-dyed piece of fabric on which I had painted dots, discharged dots, discharged a connecting line and re-applied dots with a type of ink made for graffiti artists. (Isn't that funny. Graffiti go out and buy special art supplies so they can put their art on other people's property.) ((By the way, the ink worked nicely but I'm not sure that one day these black dots won't just fall off or eat holes in the fabric.))

So, one day as I was sorting some fabric I found the blue piece and put it next to the yellow piece and it was Kismet! They belonged together and I proceeded to invest in another round of rice stitching. It's a lovely little piece and I wish them a long and happy relationship.

So what did I learn? Sometimes you just have to wait for the right answer to appear....but it helps to have some awareness that you are still asking the question.

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My Process for Hand Dyeing

Hand-dyed Fabric

Like many of you, when I began working with fabric I used printed commercial fabric. As my vision grew in regards to what I wanted to do with fabric, I realized I wanted to learn to hand dye my own fabric and my search began.

I own and have read many books on the topic but after experimenting with many processes I have settled on one that suits me and gives me great results. This process uses many standard mixes and processes but perhaps not in the exact way that you will find in print.

My Process and Materials

Kaufman Prima Cotton fabric - Kaufman no longer manufactures this fabric so I'll be fabric shopping soon. You will want to purchase 100 percent cotton fabric which is PFD which means it has no surface treatments such as permanent press. Scour the fabric by washing it in hot water with 1 tsp synthrapol and a 1/2 tsp of soda ask. You can was several yards at a time.

Soda Solution - A mix of 1 gallon warm water and 9 Tbs of soda ash. Place this in a bucket with a lid as it will keep and be used many times.

Dye Concentrate - 1 Cup Warm Water + 2 -4 Tbs Granular Urea + 2 Tbs Dye Powder (double this for Black) Make your concentrates and store in plastic bottles. Unused concentrates can be kept in the fridge for sometime before it loses it's potency.

Chemical Water - 1 cup warm water + 7 tsp urea. Place this in a plastic container. It also can be kept and used as needed and it is not necessary to refrigerate.

Dye Solutions - I am not going to cover exact dye mixes here - but using your dye concentrate and chemical water you make the quantity of dye solution you need for each piece of fabric you plan to dye. Example: 1/2 C dye concentrate + 1/2 C Chemical Water = 1 Cup dye solution for 1 yard of soda soaked fabric.

Painters Plastic Pail + 1 Baggie per piece of fabric you will be dying

Scour the fabric and then immerse it in a bucket of Soda Solution to soak for a minimum of 10 minutes. When it has soaked, remove from the soda solution and squeeze most of the liquid out of the fabric. Place the fabric in a small holding pail.

Prepare enough dye solution for each piece you will be dying. Each will be in it's own small container.

Using a 3 gallon container, place the fabric loosely in the bottom.(remember, the fabric has already had most of the soda solution squeezed out) Pour the selected dye solution directly onto the fabric and squeeze, swab, press, swirl, etc. the fabric in the dye solution. This is not a gentle swishing of the fabric, it is a workout on the fabric to make sure the dye gets into the fabric.

When you have really worked the dye into the fabric, squeeze most of the dye out of the fabric and place the piece into one of the baggies and then into one of the pails. The pail is placed outside in the sun to batch. If it isn't sunny, put the fabric in the bag without the pail in a heat box which consist of a 30 gallon storage container with a lid and a 60 watt light bulb inside the box. The fabric is allowed to cure for at least 24 hours.

When the fabric has cured, give it a rigorous hand washing in cold water and synthrapol and then hot water and synthrapol until the run-off is mostly clear. The fabric is then washed in hot water in the washing machine.

This process does not produce perfectly flat color. There will often be dark areas but it does eliminate heavy texture. Some dye colors are more prone to making the dark areas than others.

I do not know Ann Johnston but I recommend her two books on dying. The information is very clear and in both books she presents many options for dying fabric.

Color by Accident

and

Color by Design

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Easy Technique for Dying Values

Samples of 8 Values of One Color

Creating your own hand-dyed fabric is one of the joys of working with fabric. Mixing the dye solutions for a full strength dye solution isn't difficult but sometimes it can be confusing when you beging to think in terms of a range of values for a single color.

With that in mind I want to share a process for dying 8 values of a single color.

Equipment and Supplies:

1 Large container that will hold double the amount of dye solution to dye the size cut of fabric you are working with - in these directions we will dye 1 yard in each cup

8 cups that will hold the amount of dye solution to dye 1 yard of fabric

Dye Solution - Mix twice the amount of full strength dye solution needed to dye 1 yard of fabric or the size cut you have choosen

For this article I am not going to discuss an exact dye application. Use whatever technique you like best.

PROCEDURE

1. Mix the amount of dye needed to dye 2 yards of fabric a dark value. Put this amount into your large container.

2. Pour half of the solution from your large container into Cup 1. This will be used to dye your first yard of fabric.

3. Now add enough plain water back into the large container to bring the amount back to the original amount.

4. Pour half of this new diluted solution into Cup 2. This will be used to dye your second yard.

5. Again, add enough plain water back to the solution in your large containe to bring the volumn back to the original amount.

6. Continue this process until you have dye solution in all 8 cups with each successive cup being more and more diluted.

Once you have 8 cups of dye solution you are ready to dye your fabric. There will still be solution in the large container but it can be discarded or you can dye another piece of fabric that will be the same value as Cup 8.

This card shows samples dyed from a blue but I chose to dye only cups 2,4,6 and 8.

This card has samples of all 8 values as well as samples of two fabrics which were dyed and then overdyed in a second color.

I am not a technical dye artist. I do keep notes but it is seldom my desire to replicate a color precisely. This process suits my way of working and I encourage you to try it out.

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Lamination Exploration

Work In Progress

I just returned from a trip to see an exhibition by California artist Mark Bradford. The show was at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. It was a fabulous show and I came home happy to have made the long trek.

Before leaving on the trip I began work on a new exploration. I had never tried lamination as presented in many books on the topic. Lamination is basically a transfer process that can leave all or part of an image attached to another piece of fabric, paper or substrate of some type. Mixed media often use this process and I have done this myself but never with fabric.

Acrylic painting on Masa Paper

I choose to make a painting rather than use photocopies, newspaper or pages from magazines. I used acrylic paint on Masa Paper. This paper is very soft and fuzzy on the face and slick on the back. It is a rather sturdy paper and may not of been the best choice as you will see. The painting was placed face up on my table and covered by polyester voil fabric. I painted a good coat of Liquitex Acrylic Matte Medium over the fabric so that it soaked through to the painting.

Face view of fabric laminated to painting.

As you can see in the above image, it did attach with lots of air pockets which is nice, however, I did not like the milky appearance of the fabric.

Another view of face of painting with lamination.

I flipped the piece over and found that I liked the back much better but it had a very thick layer of paper fuzz which needed to be scrubbed off.

The fuzz is very visible in this shot.

Back of work which is now the Front of the piece and the scour pad.

Scour pads, a stiff brush and lots of elbow grease were used to remove the unwanted paper residue. As I scrubbed, the paint layer that was not attached to the fabric because of air pockets came off. After you apply the Acrylic Medium you allow it to dry and then iron the piece. I had forgot to iron until I had started wetting and scrubbing the piece so I stopped, let it dry and ironed. I could see a big difference in the stability of the acrylic paint layer.

Detail

I really love the details of the acrylic surface. You can see that some of the paint layers have come off revealing the next paint layer.

Detail

Detail

The piece is now hanging on my design wall and I am contemplating the next step.

****

Nancy Natale is doing a series of artist profiles called The Questionnaire. You are invited to pop on over to her blog and read the one she has posted on me.

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Counting Your Peas and Carrots

Richter Inspiration Fabric with Zigzags

Have you ever observed someone eating who has a "thing" about making their food come out even so that they have the same number of bites of the various items on their plate? I call this the Peas and Carrots Syndrome or PCS for short. I'm not sure if this is due to enjoying the taste of the food items together or maybe they have been told to "clean your plate" and this becomes a little game to make everything more fun.

I don't have PCS in relation to food but I do have it in relation to dye concentrate, print paste and soda soaked fabric. Yes dear reader, after I have concluded my planned dye work I often have leftovers and for some unknown reason I feel compelled to "clean my plate" and use as much of these items as I can before giving up and putting things away.

So here is how it went today. I had a large stack of failed mono-printed fabric I made during cold weather. Last week I soda soaked them and today decided to revive them and paint them all with black stripes. I completed this and realized that I had lots of dye concentrate still on hand...too much to waste and not enough to put in the fridge (not really but that's how my mind works). I still have a few pieces of the Richter Inspiration fabric I have been working with so I took a small piece of that and painted some zigzags. Then I decided I needed a companion so I pulled out another piece of failed fabric....this one a deconstructed number. I didn't have enough dye and print paste mixture so I made some more and painted the second piece. I liked it and had an idea for another piece so I pulled out a third piece but had to mix more dye which I did. This was followed by a fourth piece but I decided to mix a different color. I put too much dye on it so I then had to find a 5th piece which I laid face down on the fourth piece and made a print.

Companion Piece - Too much dye.

Deconstructed Failure with Print Paste then Thickened Dye Applied on top.

I pulled a plastic fork through the paste and dye which makes the striations.

Detail

What you see here is actually the back of piece number 5 which is laying on piece 4. The dye and the markings you see have soaked through from Piece 4.

Mono-printing fabric to fabric!

This may a new technique : )

This picture might give you a better idea of what is happening. I am pulling up the corner of the top piece of fabric and you can see the bottom corner of piece 4.

Wow! I have 5 small pieces plus the larger planned pieces. I used almost all of my print paste, all of my mixed black dye and a good portion of a couple other things......I still had to put some items in the fridge but not as many as I might have had to do were it not for my PCS.

The great thing about this is that when I work this way I feel totally free to experiment and try things I might never have thought of. Often the fabrics are what I call "special" as they have been processed two or more times. They have accrued value through use of material resources and my time but if I don't invest a little more of each of those things I will never use the fabric.

The jury is out on my 5 experiments. One looks like it will bleed to black and the others...well, we'll just have to wait and see. The aren't great as they were very wet and laying flat under very bright lights but I hope they allow you to have a peek at my "Peas and Carrots."

Thank you for dropping by. I love hearing from you and home you'll come again.

Gerhard Richter Inspiration: Stage Two

Stage Two - 28" H x 25.5" W

Deconstructed Printing, Monoprint, Stitched

This is my third posting relating to work inspired by Gerhard Richter. I began by monoprinting a 45" x 45" piece of fabric which has been cut in a number of pieces and I am making new work from that and incorporating additional fabric. My use of the idea of "Stage One" and "Stage Two" references the ongoing use of the original fabric.

In "Stage One" the fabric was presented in relation to a very dramatic fabric with heavy black painting and I used intense stitching on the "Richter" fabric to emphasis shapes and colors. For "Stage Two" I am using a larger cut of the fabric and I have combined it with a light fabric with a rough spiral design. The second fabric was made using the Deconstructed Printing process. This relationship is more unified in that it is more likely to be read as one rectangle rather than a diptych. The surface of the work is very active but feels light and the many layers of dye and dye markings are emphasized by the stitching.

I choose to quilt the left side with straight line stitching and the right side with organic free-motion stitching. I wanted to acknowledge the differences in the two fabrics but still keep the stitching "in the background" and allow the surface and color be the most important of the composition.

Detail 1 Stage Two

Free-motion quilting with multiple colors of thread.

Detail 2 Stage Two

Straight-line stitched with off-white thread.

Due to the slightly larger size of this piece, I have decided to use a facing rather than frame the work as I plan to do for Stage One. I have begun to add the facing but as I look at the image as presented here, I may go back and alter the composition by removing a couple of inches from the top. It just doesn't look comfortable yet. I'll let you know if I do that.

I still have more of the Richter inspired fabric so there is more to come. If you haven't visited his website please do. It is wonderful work.

Thank you for visiting and I love hearing from you.

INSPIRATION: GERHARD RICHTER

First Section - Terry Jarrard-Dimond - unfinished

Internationally know painter Gerhard Richter is a German born artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany. I have been aware of his work for some time and while looking through the March 2010 Art in America saw an ad for the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery who represented Richter's work at The Armory Show - Modern this year.

The advertisement featured a detail of a work entitled Abstraktes Bild. The richness of color, texture and layering is a visual feast. I am not showing that work as I do not have permission to do so AND I want to encourage you to visit his website: http://www.gerhard-richter.com/

Here you will find extensive information on this visionary and enormously productive artist along with wonderful videos of some exhibitions. Look at the range of sizes of the work from massive to very small. Enjoy the galleries as they are huge. It's fun because you can hear what it sounds like to be in the spaces and the commentator is very good.

After several days of studying the image in the magazine I decided to monoprint a piece of fabric and use the colors and general layout of the work. Of course there is the issue of opacity which dye does not have but serves painters very nicely. I have seen flickers of the illusion of opacity with dye on fabric but certainly can not intentionally reproduce that lush surface at will.

Layer One - It appears green but it is an intense yellow.

Layer Two - Fuschia

Layer Two - Detail

Layer Three - Intense Blue

Layer Three - Detail

Full View of Fabric

The color of photograph is not just right but you can see the general idea. Rather than do anything with the piece as a whole, I decided to cut the piece up and try to do something a little different with each piece. One of the things I found of interest when I looked at the Richter videos was a small series of painting on glass where he presented each work in relation to a second slightly different work. I often work in a diptych format so I may try to find or create a companion for each section that I have cut.

Another example of a section.

In the coming weeks I will share the results of this process here at Studio 24-7.

Thank you for dropping by and please feel free to comment. I love hearing from you.

More Deconstructive Screen Printing

Deconstructed Screen Prints

I believe I can now officially say I'm having fun with this interesting process. Deconstructive Screen Printing is not new but it is new to me for sure.

I still had a couple of 43" x 43" dry cuts of my cotton fabric which had been soda soaked from last weeks adventure into printing and I decided to make a screen and print them off. I began by drawing a design on the screen using some print paste and black dye which was left over from last Sunday. I was not sure the dye would be any good but I hate throwing materials away so I used what I already had mixed.

The print paste I mixed with the black dye was really too thin and after I finished the design I realized the lines of the design were running together. I set the screen in the sun to see if that would stop the bleeding but the black dye just kept spreading out until there was very little open screen. It also ran down the face of the screen before it dried so there were drip lines all over the design. I was not excited about this development.

I was tempted to wash it all off the screen but opted to bring it back into the studio and add another design layer on top of the first using thicker print paste. I added some lines of yellow and some of green. I allowed this to dry and then printed.

What happened was a total surprise. The first print was a white design with a black background. The print paste I was using had no dye so the black came from the original design and the yellow and green design acted as a resist. Print 2 was much the same but more color began to show. Prints 3 and 4 were much lighter with more yellow and green beginning to show along with the black which continued to print. You can clearly see the drips. In the first two prints they are white. Then they are black.

Prints: 1 top left, 2 left bottom, 3 top right, and 4 bottom right.

Detail of Print 1

I then decided to introduce a dose of yellow into the print paste. I was able to print 4 full images and 2 half images before the resist areas began to break down and I ran out of space to print.

I am very happy with what happened and I my understanding of the process is a good bit better.

Prints with yellow dye added to the print paste.

Detail of an area where I used the print paste with yellow dye.

My idea is to print a number of additional designs to be used with this one to see if I can actually complete a piece with this. I would love to be able to repeat the interesting effects that developed in these pieces. It is such a different way of thinking and very exciting. I am enjoying the richness of the marks, the textures and the color.

Thank you for stopping by and I welcome your comments.

Deconstructed Screen Prints

Click on the small gray arrow to view.

Last Sunday I drove down to Athens, Ga. and spent the day with Elizabeth Barton learning something about deconstructed screen printing. Today as I pulled a few shots of my efforts onto my MacBook I saw the slideshow option and decided to put the pictures in that format.

The results of my experiments are modest but I learned a good deal. In order to bring the fabric home on Sunday I rolled them up while they were very wet and they bleed a good deal.

What you are seeing:

1. A yellow and black print where I attempted to pickup the texture of a woven plastic onion bag. There is a second image of this at the end which has been washed. It held the color very nicely.

2. The drop cloth from under several prints. The color here is very strong....go figure.

3. Several versions of the 4 unit spiral before washing and then there are some of this screen after washing later on.

4. Green and yellow print again trying to pickup texture from the onion bag.

I think the most important points I gathered from this day in the studio were:

1. Let the prints dry out before covering. I never understood just exactly what that ment. The work really needs to feel dry to the touch.

2. Use a screen that is the correct mesh such as 10xx or 12xx (you should verify this information) I tried printing from a screen that was too dense and it was a total waste.

3. Don't put the thicken dye on too heavy. I made this mistake on the dense screen so I had a double bad whammy and it was a waste of effort. The prints are very sketchy. I haven't washed them as yet so they are not pictured.

I have no idea as to how I might use this fabric or if I will use this fabric. I was simply experimenting to learn the technique. When I see a need for this process I hope to be able to use it successfully as I love working with the screens and dye and I will be trying again.

Thank you for dropping by and I love hearing from you.

Flour Paste Resist With Marti Plager

Fabric with flour paste applied and overpainted with 2 shades of thickened dye.

Recently I published an article on flour paste resist and asked anyone who gave it a try let me know how it went and if they like the results. Marti Plager of Louisville Ky. answered the call and sent along pictures to share as well as some notes on how she used the process.

Marti wrote: Here are pictures of my exercise. I was trying to get the effect of tracks in snow. I love the fabric but I should have done more manipulating of the image for whitness and brightness but I didn't take the time.

I read Jane Dunnewold's article on flour paste in the Feb/March 2008 issue of Quilting Arts. She uses a 1 to 1 ratio of flour to water. I used your instructions and ended up using more flour so the ratio is probably 1 1/2 c water to 1 c flour. I had doubled the recipe and had plenty left over. The fabric measured 20 x 65 inches.

The technique is amazingly fun especially in warm weather. Now to use the fabric in a piece of art.

Marti says she is excited about the process and loves that it is cheap and available and will head to the grocery tomorrow to buy the cheapest flour available. She said I could quote her on that!

This shows the piece of fabric after it was washed and dried. Notice how good the resist is. The edges are very dark and the part that Marti did not draw into is very white.

I like the idea of using more than one color to paint the piece. I did that on my last piece but the two greens were too similar and it did not show up. I also concur with Marti that this is the time of year to be doing this. The warm weather not only helps dry out the resist but helps set the dye. A win win.

Thanks again Marti. Looking forward to how you use the piece in some of your beautiful work.

To see more of Marti's work click HERE.

Loving Instant Potatoes

Finished Fabric

My last post featured the beginning process of using Instant Potato Flakes as a resist. It was messy but the results are beautiful!

Dried Potato Resist

Here you can see how the paste has dried. It took 3 days including putting outdoors in the sun on the last day. Notice now the fabric has curled. I had it pinned down but the tension from the drying pulled the pins out.

Notice how irregular the marks have become. As the paste dries it pulls away from the fabric around the edges and makes beautiful markings.

Once the potato paste was dry I applied the thickened dye. I used a Pro Chem Black 609 and a very thick print paste. Due to the extreme texture of the surface, I had to use a short bristle brush and dab the dye paste on.

You can see how the dye is seeping through the marks made when the paste was dry.

This picture is still the back of the unprocessed fabric but it looks the way I thought the piece would look when finished.....not so.

After 48 hours I folded the fabric up and baked in the oven set at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes. The entire house smelled like mashed potatoes.

Finally I just could not wait any longer and decided to wash things out. It was cold and windy outside but that's where I had to go for this job. I laid the fabric on the grass and soaked it good with running water. I used a plastic spatular to scrap off the paste and finally resorted to the bondo scraper as this paste really clings.

We have had very chilly weather and I don't think I had kept the fabric warm enough as there was lots of dye run off and it back dyed the fabric but the color is beautiful. Look at the exotic marks. I see all sorts of little people, animals, plants etc.

There are lovely violet markings as well. I have been working in such a loose way that I never know if I can repeat something but I'm planning to work with this more and see what happens.

So here we are back with the finished fabric. I'm not sure what is next but I do plan to make this into a finished piece. I'm thinking it needs friends.

Thank you for visiting and your comments are very welcome!