circling around

looking through older work the other day I noticed some things in the piece below...

the varying whites with a strip of grey

do you see those tiny curved lines in that grey piece, on the righthand side?

that fabric is a light silk painted grey with watercolour and those lines are crease marks that remind me of the ice lines of the river I've been inspired by for months

in fact, this whole piece speaks to that

hmmm...

in no time materials were gathered - varying fabric along with textured and painted papers, and a piece of actual resolved work has begun

all the sampling I've done, the things I've tried, the materials used, previous work - including this one, have all combined to finally give me all I need to now do the work and make the piece

no more sampling, just the doing

and as that was all getting sorted out and the working materials organized I came across this piece from a few years ago...

also inspired by frozen water, only then it was branches embedded in the layers of ice in the little lake here in Salmon Arm

this one is a small sample using paper and silk to form the layers of ice with painted paper cut in thin strips to resemble the branches

or perhaps they're the trees that lost their branches in the winter windstorm... I never did decide which

looking at it whilst thinking about the Yukon River had me thinking about the pilings, with the frozen river behind

and another thought was forming...

there's lots here to work with though I have a few other ideas of things to incorporate into the pilings so with this one there will definitely be some more sampling and experimenting

I wasn't looking to do either of these but when inspiration strikes there isn't much that can be done about it other to ignore it or go with it

I choose to go

I've been looking at this icy work for so long now, trying different ideas, testing materials

never knowing if or when any of it would lead me to finished piece of work but yesterday I could see both of these, done and hanging

I've never had such a feeling of clarity, never been this sure of something

I have sketchbooks and boxes of various experiments and samples, all of which I have loved doing and learned so much from but nothing had ever pointed me so firmly in a direction to a finished piece of work until yesterday

and then it happened twice, in less than ten minutes

can't say no to that

Making Plans

making plans, making lists, making adjustments

there's never a clear path with creative work, neither in making space for it, nor in the doing of it

still, i plan

I've come to know that if I don't plan to do something I'll never choose a "when"

this week I had the plan and the when but things happened and the when changed

but not the plan

the burlap printing-plate I made a short time ago finally hit the press, not once but four times

the first inking was a bit messy as I'm a bit rusty

still pretty good though 

and I'm delighted with the detail

all those raggedy threads in all their printed glory

the second print (same inking) was better

still good colour but the dark patches evened out a tad

the last, a "ghost" print

the ultra-pale effect pleases me greatly... good for layering I think

against my usual "jump-in and do it" nature, this session was full of note taking and documenting

press pressure noted, the different print-making papers used, notes on the brayer, the effectiveness of tamping ink on with a rolled up felt

I also realized there are economies of time to be had... standardizing plate and paper sizes for printing on the small press would streamline so many aspects of using it

years ago I wouldn't have had any of that idea but now I absolutely see the value in it

still though, one can't be too rigid with creativity so it will be more of a guideline than a rule

in the meanwhile, I'm still working away at different samples of ideas to bring in to the on-going work that stemmed from the kintsugi experiments

much of it is "in-process" but I did finish one the other day

ink-painted paper

petite brass staples spaced around a circle

the spaces filled in with dark brown straight stitches, criss-crossing back and forth

the paper, though beautiful, is too soft for stitching and peeled away here and there

a navy blue Sakura pigment pen sorted that out well enough but lesson learned

I was inspired to look for brass leaf though, but couldn't find any though I did come home with copper leaf

a new sample in the offing... 

and one of the week's Haiku:

carefree summer days

with a lightly blowing breeze

laughter on the wind

on being a child, on the beach at the cabin...

playing on the sand

a start

a few ideas for titles for this post ran through my mind just now

"pressing matters"

"pressed for time"

both have been true this week, and not in a print-making way

that's all done with though, things have settled back down again and I managed to make a start

since I wanted to do some blind-embossing with the plates I made last week I started with with the small flower plates

as ever I learned a lot

the one above was my most successful

the flower is fairly even in relief so I got decent prints which might improve if I experiment a little more with the pressure

laying the print along two of my joined paper pieces let me see how things may or may not come together... eventually

I'm still in no rush to decide the end point rather, I'm enjoying the journey through a few techniques that appeal, trusting the rest will come

the next one embossed well but was a plate used a long time ago, not a new one and apparently there was still some ink on it

oops!

this next flower was less successful though if I increase the pressure a bit, with ink it may work better

the other flower I made a plate with was just too thin to print so something else to remember

I suppose it might work in a mono print but as it was too thin to work here it's doubtful

it was a happy few hours, prints made, notes taken, different materials gathered, and I'm keen to get back to it on Monday, this time with the bigger plates, first blind embossing and then ink

in the meanwhile I have a small book on making collagraphs to read

probably would have been a thought to read that first but... when an itch needs to be scratched there's no sitting still

the haiku continue, today was poem #50

here is a recent favourite:

broken reflections

shards of land, sky and water

current disarray

looking at the reflections of trees in the Yukon River, when seen from a short distance they look somewhat whole though still distorted by the river's current

when seen from a distance, they begin to look fractured, splintered horizontally, something I always find fascinating

below is a picture taken by a friend that illustrates the effect

until next week

jillayne

a side-step

it's been a mixed-bag kind of a week

weaving, gardening, exploring stitch to join paper, trying a sealer coat on the silver leaf, writing Haiku poems, and prepping for some print-making

for years I have wanted to learn print-making... years and years

decades

I've dabbled at it here and there, making stitch-printing plates (a technique from one of Cat Holmes' books), mono-prints, gelli-plate printing, printing with fresh and pressed botanicals and so on

I love the simplicity that can be achieved with the technique

as I was working with the Haiku poetry, reading up on Japanese art and design,  kintsugi, and so on I thought I would like to incorporate prints into the work, hence... the side-step

 I've had a few ideas that have been brewing for a while and this week I did some of the prep

below are examples of the first step in making a few printing plates, some very small and two quite large

a fragment of a burlap sack I found washed up and mostly buried on the shore of Lake Bennett in the Yukon along with a small plate of a pressed flower, also from there

I also made one from a piece of birchbark that was literally dangling from a tree in Dawson, also in the Yukon

I've had several thoughts on working with the prints, ways of combining them with photographs along with the work I've been doing lately but first I need to see how the plates work, what the prints will look like

can't get too far ahead of myself because sometimes the results are a tad unexpected, and for me, usually in a good way that sends me off with another thought...

in the meanwhile,  the poetry writing is going well... I do it every day and am learning a lot about words... the words I choose, the ones I dodge, how wordy 17 syllables can be when you're craving simplicity of expression

I've come to understand that when I want to explain a thought that has great meaning for me I really want to do it in the fewest words I can

I suppose I think it will have more impact in brevity

and on that note, here are are two recent ones:

cloaked in winter's fog

frozen words lay on the ground

still the silenced land

in the yukon, when the temperatures drop below -40 ice fog can appear

I love ice fog...the world is cloaked in silence, it's as if the moment a noise emanates it freezes... you can't see more than half a block and silence prevails

the colder it gets, the more ice fog there is, and the quieter it gets

and this one:

solitary shore

calm water, soft-sighing land

evening quiet dawns

when I was a child we went to the family cabin on a lake not far from Whitehorse

it was invariably windy most weekends, from when we got there,  but Sunday evenings around 5:00 pm, when most people had gone,  it almost always calmed... the wind would quiet, the lake turned to glass, the seagulls settled down and the whole place seemed to take a deep breath and become quite still

I remember always wanting to eat my dinner on the beach, alone, enjoying the peaceful solitude and I wondered if the lake enjoyed it too

when we all finally left  and it could be what it was always supposed to be... not a playground, nor a place for boats, or noisy chattering... 

just a lake with wind and birds and blue sky

studio barometer

over the years I have come to notice a few things about myself and the way creativity happens for me

it cannot be forced

the spark can fade quickly if not acted upon

notice the state of the studio

specific to that last one,  there are degrees of disorder in there but sometimes it gets downright messy, referred to as:

 "the piles are piling up"

if the room is neat and tidy not much is happening 

but when every surface has several stacks of paper, thread, cloth, books, drawing materials, half-done things, etc. etc. - that's when I'm in a "full-on, the fire is lit, my hands can't move as fast as my thoughts"state of working

and since my last post the ideas have come thick and fast and my sketchbook has several full pages already... and there are many piles... many

first a straight stitch join, then the staple version

I have a stapler that uses small brass staples that quite lovely but trying to line them up for this was a challenge

I've figured out a method of getting them mostly lined up but it's definitely a challenge

next I trialed several different binding stitch patterns from a book I have to see what they would look like as a design element for joining two pieces of appear together

the "snowshoes" one is a nod to the Yukon

several more I want to work with but then a different idea struck, and yesterday I went back to the silver leaf

I'm on a texture quest, along with a few other ideas, so I started with this...

letting the brush lines show has some interesting possibilities

as does piling on the adhesive medium, building up the layers

bumpy layers to be exact

there are definitely a fair few ideas stemming from this one

and in the midst of all that, when I thought I had parked the ice texture inspiration that had me fired up for much of the winter months, I noticed a few random torn pieces of paper (one of said "piles") that had happened to land in a manner that looked like the ice so before anything got disturbed...

multiple pieces of torn paper laid against a scrap of my ink-painted paper and I was off again

the layers are tacked together with a dab of glue 

next comes stitch

thinking I'm liking this better than the fabric...

and so it goes in my world

the 100 Day poetry project is going strong

35 and counting...

a Winter Haiku for you, in honour of the ice:

unyielding river

with flashes of summer blue

fights the icy grip

on being led astray

I knew it would happen... 

sooner or later the writing of haiku poetry was bound to pull me further into Japanese art and design

I've always had a love of the aesthetics of their art, the simplicity of it so not much wonder, but I was also given a good nudge from Nigel Slater's new book "A Thousand Feasts"

in it he mentions a few Japanese potters and craftsmen and Google led me astray from there

one of the places I landed was an article with beautiful examples of the art of "kintsugi", mending broken pottery with gold

much as I would love to learn pottery, now is not the time... 

but...  I did think I could try reinterpreting kintsugi on paper 

and so I've had a go, using some of my ink-painted paper

first, a "crack"

on the blue paper it could be thought a lightning bolt...

it came out rather flat though, not enough silver leaf medium I think

short straight lines

thinking of "broken silver lines" from one of my poems though these aren't quite what I had in mind

a soft bush and too much pressure created more of a channel than a line, evidenced by the thin dark line in the centre of each mark

little dots, like rain

different sizes dry at different rates making applying the silver leaf at the right time a bit of a challenge

consistency is key, and perhaps a different brush for removing the excess silver leaf

my favourite

more of a "join" than a decorative mark

a different brush, thicker line and as I went over it, adding more medium, I did it in a rope-like mark

it's a bit lost in this close-up but in the next photo you get a bit more sense of that

some interesting trials but more I want to do

the materials are all on my worktable, waiting for tomorrow

more line practicing for sure, and perhaps I'll try a few different tools to see what kind of effects I can get

as with everything I do, the busier my hands get with something new the more my head starts to get involved; what I'm doing feeds what I'm thinking

I'm not done with my Japanese art and craft investigations though

the website that had the kintsugi instructions also has a video or two on sumi ink calligraphy

at least I already have the ink... and the paper... and a brush

writing rain...

the world is upside down and i'm struggling

there is a meanness that I don't  remember ever being as prevalent as it seems to be now, though I suppose if I sat down and thought about it I would have to say "no, it's always been there"

still, it feels worse

as a child, when my parent's were divorcing I worked through a lot of things by writing

I remember so many times my writing began with "I'm so mad..." and for the first paragraph I would write every hard feeling I had, words pouring quickly on to the paper,  all the frustrations, anger, sadness coming out in a torrent

after that first outburst, my thoughts were freed from that weight and the rest of the page would be filled with quieter ponderings, either philosophical in nature or about nature itself

seemed those were my two favourite subjects to write about

ever since then words are how I have always found my way and writing them is down is how I make sense of what I'm experiencing and how I'm feeling about it

when I set myself the challenge to write 100 Haiku poems about the Yukon for the 100 Day project I thought, among other reasons, it would be a good distraction from the woes of the world

and it has been that

based on nature and inspired by the Yukon, I have written 22 so far

the first subject I chose was rain

we didn't get a lot of rain when I was growing up - summers were rather dry, the Yukon being classified as a "semi-arid" region

because of that rain was special, and it still is a delight to me so it made sense to begin there

this first poem was inspired by a drive to Dawson last summer... passing by a still-burning forest fire, it was raining lightly, the land shrouded with a mist

in some areas of the burn you could see the green already emerging, a stark contrast to the blackened land

its reassuring how quickly nature recovers

this one is a nod to the early spring ritual of my brothers and I scrambling through the forest on a quest to see the first sign of Spring crocuses on "Crocus Hill"

in typical Spring fashion, there was almost always sun and rain and this poem is a remembering of that

and another favourite memory ... in the Yukon I grew up in, scattered showers were the norm and it was rare for the sky to be completely covered in grey rain clouds and to pour rain steadily from morning to night

 (it's a bit different now as the climate there is changing)

instead, there was blue sky, clouds and scattered showers

the beauty of that was often, when the grey rain was falling, a shaft of light would break through the clouds and shine on the rain, changing it from a dull grey to a sparkling rain shower

we used to call them "sun showers", as if thousands of drops of sunlight were falling to the ground

simple, quiet reminders of things I noticed that mattered to me growing up... 

the things I am writing about are not unique and will be common to many, especially those who have lived close to nature

they're simply about my experience and what I noticed

and pleasant reminders of that