The middle picture, which shows much of the current composition, indicates there are troubled areas where I'll need to rearrange or break up the blocks -- particularly on the left side, where the central piece wants to break out of its frame and tumble into space. That's why I find it so useful to post pictures of work in progress -- it gives me distance. (Sorry also about the blurring, my camera doesn't deal with detail when the lighting isn't right.)

from the moon

"What we can learn from the moon is reflection," wrote Jude Hill, and because the moon is very possibly one of the inspirations or themes for my current piece (which has formed in its attributes quite influenced by Jude's own work) I am Taking Note.

The moon. My project has colors in it that are both washed out (except for the reds) and prone to sudden contrasts, and to glimmers -- like colors under bright moonlight, the yellows and greens completely absent, lots of light and dark, and occasional reds (which escape the dumbing-down powers of sunglasses too, I've noticed.)

Washed out. I'm using "laundry leavings" as materials here, dryer lint and ragged ends and soforth. Worn bits, wads of paper smooth like ocean pebbles after being left in pockets and washed and dried, etc...

and because there is a nest (a nest with three cat-hair eggs inside it, more wads from the washer), I now have two resting songbirds in the piece as well...
where are we heading, this piece and I?

The moon, and laundry, and birds. And an overall Asian motif, the results of my fabric choices.

How in the world (or above it) will this all come together?

The moon above...and birds. But laundry is a decidedly earthly process. Hmm.

Posting pictures separately from the text to see if that makes for better formatting. Seen below (earlier images posted first) -- Two days' work on a new piece, inspired by laundry leavings and...something more, as yet undetermined.

Dryer lint, cat hair in wads and other detritus picked from the lint trap; layered on wool batting and felt, beneath strips of tinted organza. Metallic threads, raveling strips of cloth. Then adding some hand-printed and vintage cotton, upholstery textiles, etc. I admit to approaching this with Jude Hill's work in mind, hoping to achieve some of the mystery of her "slow cloth" pieces. The nest-eggs in the lower left corner, the chrysanthemum/lotus on its long stem -- or something like a path, the corner of a maze -- I like where the piece seems to be going, though I couldn't describe the destination. Asian dryer lint? Chinese laundry? Something foggy and fragile...

I like walking in a place where I can't see the end of the road -- or more than a few feet in any direction. We were out at Wood Lake yesterday, and the boardwalk was surrounded by tall green cattails waving and undulating in a strong breeze, hypnotically repetitive. And I like a fog too, on the rare occasion that we see one hereabouts. I even appreciate a really bad head-cold, the kind where you walk around half-deaf for days -- all the world's sounds are muffled, senses dulled and calmed by congestion and cold meds.

Somehow, amusingly, interestingly, this is somewhat the same. I'm thinking of this as a place.

laundry leavings - beginning

Once again, blogger seems confused about how and where to place the images when I upload multiples.
The first image is the book's cover, by owner/artist Theresa Petermann of Pulaski, WI.

These are the latest from the Altered Book Round Robin, part of the Visual Journal Collective at Minnesota Center for the Book Arts. The second image is Out of Chaos (the second). It was produced first as a collage; a photo of the collage was downloaded to the computer, altered slightly (text added etc) and then printed onto Extravorganza. The fabric print was stamped (bird image in silver) and painted (watercolor), then glued to white tissue paper, which was in turn glued to white drawing paper. This gave the piece a somewhat translucent but bright base; the Extravorganza doesn't hold a very intense image. I sewed the resulting piece onto a page in the book, added some embellishments, and made a pocket behind it to hold some related ephemera (including a tag used in the original collage.)

The piece with the silver leaf "cloud" and the feather is Out of Chaos (the first.) This is just tissue paper and mylar on a drawing paper base, with some white acrylic paint around the edges. The feather is in mylar; the silver leaf is on the page behind the mylar. Two pages were removed from the book to make room; you see the remaining tabs to the left of the image. It's a Blue Jay feather.

Two pages in a book about "winged creatures," both titled Out of Chaos. The original volume in use is a style manual, and the title comes from the chapter heading for one of the sections in which I worked.

The lettered index tabs were added by the owner of the book.

a little more catch-up

"Ash Wednesday" front and back. 8x14" 2006.