painting – Daily Fiber

Hello, I’m back home after a spring break trip to St. Louis. While I’ve done a bit of knitting, I am way behind on the 100-day project. My knitting will be detailed on Monday. For now, I’d like to share a bit of what I saw at the St. Louis Museum of Art.

Fortunately for me, the museum has a very liberal policy on photography. And while it is not huge (we easily viewed nearly all of it in a 2-hour span, despite the presence of a 4-year-old in our group) it has a very nice collection. Lots of it is American art. I was able to photograph a handful of works that impressed me. Here are some examples.

In the American gallery, 19th and 20th century paintings:

Loved the depiction of light on the water in this gorgeous oil painting.

Georgia O’Keefe – my perennial favorite painter.

Moving on to sculpture – first, an ancient Chinese stone carving of Buddha

Next, an 800-year-old carving of Christ.

This sculpture was commissioned by the museum and fabricated from local limestone.

And finally, as fiber artist, I couldn’t leave until I had seen some examples from the collection.

I have a lot of free time in the up-coming week and so expect to re-double my efforts to make art. Check this space in a few days for the next installment of 100 days of art inspired by Bill’s photographs.

I have been waiting for the right weather to try my hand at heliography. In this technique, a color wash is applied to the damp fabric, and then various objects are laid on the surface and the piece left to dry in the sun. The weather must be just right – clear sky, not too cold and no wind. Today’s weather met the mark, so out I went into the garden to paint. I learned this technique from Cindy Walters, who presented this technique in a class on craftsy.com, aka Bluprint.com. https://www.mybluprint.com/ It works because the fabric under the object will dry more slowly than the fabric exposed to the sun. With Jacquard Dye-na-flow paint, the faster it dries, the darker the color. Here are the results of today’s experiments:

**A nice assortment of leaves, violas, and a few twigs**

First I determined my arrangement. Once the paint is laid on, you must work fast.

**Objects on dry fabric. I am using a square of white cotton bedsheet.**

Here is the arrangement laid on after painting:

And here is the finished fabric after drying:

My next experiment used pebbles, marbles and rice.

And lastly, I used a bunch of fallen pecan twig, with flowers attached.

This was a lot of fun, and only took me about an hour. To make the color fast, I’ll wait a few days, hand wash in cold water, and then machine dry at high heat. The fabric will then be ready for whatever technique I want to try next.