surfacing...

I recently read "Surfacing" by Kathleen Jamie

a quick, delightful read, it's a most interesting collection of personal experiences and explorations around subjects that embody "surfacing" in some way or another

it naturally led me to think about how "surfacing" presents itself in my world and likely the most common way is through my creative work

the ideas and techniques that strike me the most seem to have a way of circling around and around, eventually coming back to the surface to be worked at another time

at least once

often more than that

(I like what I like)

what is occupying my thoughts, time and hands these days is something I trialled a few years back when exploring all things "icy"

I was investigating different ways of depicting river and lake ice, particularly the layers that are created as it freezes and thaws at the beginning of winter and then again when it breaks up, most especially in a swift-flowing river

more especially the Yukon River

one way I had sampled that effect was to use silk cloth and paper, cut into rectangles and stitched into sections 

I wasn't really trying for realism rather, I was more in pursuit of abstraction at the time

they didn't fit into the final work but my interest was piqued and they have stayed close by since

this week they are inspiring my work once again

one version of the previous trials is a regimented ordering of off-white rectangles of different silks and paper, the other has shapes that are little less regimented and a few flashes of blue along with a tempering grey silk

it's the one I'm most drawn to 

I began today's work as before, working in sections but decided fairly quickly I would rather it wasn't that lined up so have already begun changing out some of the pieces I had pinned in place (the top left one in the photo below is since changed as well)

still the same colour palette, mostly the same fabrics and papers though I may have to paint some soft blue-grey paper as the ones I had are down to one or two small fragments

this time I'm working on a much larger version - the base fabrics are cut 3 3/4" x 25" and there are two of them

I have a plan, a loose one and it involves a section of "open water" in between them... we'll see

in my usual fashion I'm beginning with what I know for sure and the rest will sort itself out from there

I hope!

making to make

I don't remember what day it was, just that it was late November... not sure why this has to begin with that but it does

I don't remember and it strikes me as odd that I don't as it was such a day; walking along the Yukon River, past the Depot (train), past the pilings and the ways, the old rusted I-don't-know-what... part of a paddlewheeler from a century ago

Shipyards Park, the site of Sleepy Hollow, where we once lived

places and things assigned to history, reminders of an earlier time but all I noticed that day was the river and the sky

a cold wind, high

the clouds hung low, purple-grey, and heavy

it was early afternoon with a thin winter sun that hung low in the sky, it's light slanted, skimming the surface of the water

in the shadows the water was dark blue-grey, where the light touched it was like molten pewter

swiftly, silently, it moved, swirling, curling... ripples that blurred the reflections of trees along the opposite shore

it was a winter river, one I had never really seen before as when we lived there the river was almost always frozen by that time of year

the current was mesmerizing... the ripples creating the most wonderful surface and I continually zoomed in and out trying to capture what I was noticing, what struck me

I took many, many photographs that day but what I really wanted was a sketchbook so I could try and draw them as I was looking - it was the first time I was overtaken by an urgent feeling to capture something I was seeing with my own hand

the feeling of disappointment at not having pen and paper to hand has remained

but...

I have been working with these images for some time now and will continue to do so for a long while, their influence has been invaluable even without the added reference and understanding of an actual drawing of them but on Wednesday they inspired something else

I have been doing a lot of reading lately along with working through an online course called "Sensing Place" by Debbie Lyddon, an artist from the UK

 information has been pouring in and there have been some good revelations but one thing I read or heard lately caught my attention in a big way and gave me pause

(I'm sorry I can't provide credit as I neglected to make a note of it)

"when out and about in a special place record and notice any and every thing but afterward hone in on what was the one thing that really caught your attention, that grabbed you" and won't let go 

(the last bit out of the quotations is my own addition)

I've been thinking about that ever since I heard it, thinking that when I'm there, in the Yukon, I rarely am able to sketch outdoors as I'm always with people and somehow I can't convince myself that it wouldn't be rude to ask to stop and sit a minute so I can record something - I find myself reaching for the phone camera instead

anyway, it occurred to me that if the point of this is to capture that one important thing all I really need is a little book and a pen

and so a little book I made

3" long by 2" wide, it's a little chunker of a book at 1 3/8" thick

reclaimed leather for the cover 

(my first leather book and I'm smitten)

handmade headband (which you can hardly see)

the pages are khadi paper

thick and ruffled, perhaps not the best for drawing but oh well - I love the feel and mayhap that will be the catalyst to get me to use it

a flash of blue fabric

the original plan for a closure wrap was a strip of fabric scraps reinforced by stitch but a chance online encounter with a book about medieval bookbinding led me down a different path

reading about the first book led me to another book "The Codex and Crafts of Late Antiquity"

a book about how the earliest book structures and binding techniques were developed from existing textile crafts of the time

and that led me to a video presentation by the book's author which was nothing less than completely fascinating

 in the end I changed the fastening plan to one used almost two thousand years ago that was developed from how sandal straps were made

I loved making this book... it's a delight in the hand, filling the palm completely, the leather soft against the skin; holding it feels as though I am cradling a small realm of possibility

water, water everywhere

painting cloth has been an interesting and absorbing process though it feels like the more I learn the less I know

water has been my focus for the past two weeks, both still and moving

the sample below is the one that intrigues me the most... it has an atmosphere of both lightness and heaviness to it, in both the air and the water

as if sound can only fall noiselessly back to earth as the air is too oppressive to carry it

a stillness that is absolute

 below, the water is blue and the sky a pale misty blue-grey, as if there was high humidity and the colour has been lost to it

interestingly, I think it also works in the inverse

in the orientation below, the blue is the sky and the water a limpid silver, as if in the evening when the sun is diffused by cloud and the reflections are long

I used a granulating water colour called "forest grey", folded the cloth in half along it's length and painted on the colour in a fairly dilute, watery wash

when it was almost dry, with just a hint of dampness remaining I opened it up and this was how the paint had settled, the gold-brown pigment creating a horizon line all along the fold

of all the cloth I have  painted over the past few months this piece, in it's simplicity, is my favourite

below is a shibori-style piece with the gathers running through the centre length of the cloth, to emulate a river

not a terrific success - it would be better if I had not done such regular rows of shibori but...

turned on it's side it's like tree bark - very like the poplar trees in the yukon with their long grooves or the cottonwoods here

an unexpected but interesting outcome

and last another pale water piece painted with the same forest grey as above bu this time scrunched up a bit so the gold pigment settled into what look like pale cracks 

I've also made two more squares of linen with stitched "ice cracks", ready for whatever might come next

so, the work goes on, the quantity of prepared cloth increases and I need to start thing about how it will all tie together

not sure how, but when in doubt, keep making samples and eventually the ideas will come... trouble is, sampling can only take me so far and I'm keen to take this further now...

considerations

a lot of thinking happening these days

looking, thinking and then looking again

mostly at cloth

below are three pieces of soy milk pigment painted cloth from my first attempt, each interesting to me in their own quirky way

the gold coloured one was laid over some of my pressed flowers and leaves from the Yukon, the mottled one was a mop-up rag used to clean the excess pigment off the vinyl after the cloth had dried and the bluish one at the end was painted from the "dump pot" (the receptacle where the paint dregs leftover from each of the day's painting trials get dumped and a piece of cloth gets painted with them at the end)

I'm thinking of combining them in this way though not in these proportions so some mulling going on about that

below is a piece of linen painted with watercolour paint, crumpled slightly and left to dry in that state

it was a granulating paint so the pigments have settled in an interesting way - this one is pale as I want to print on top of it with a piece of driftwood I found a while back - the bark is still attached and it's cracked and and textured in a most interesting way

I've sealed it with varnish and now just waiting for that to dry - in the meanwhile I'm debating whether to print with paint or ink... and with what colour...

the final considering is focused on the cloth below - a shibori-style very small piece of linen

the colour is rather regular across the surface of the cloth, the pigments didn't settle out along the folds and dips though the cloth has retained the texture of the process

I pressed it with the iron but it wouldn't flatten at all - I suppose it will eventually but I'm thinking now of leaving it as it is

the pattern is like diamonds and the way the light hits the folds emphasizes that

painting cloth, either with soy pigment paint or watercolour is an imprecise process, with each pigment behaving in it's own way, usually because of it's weight

you can make some adjustments for that but there are still enough other variables like the weight of the cloth and the warmth of the day that will have their say in the outcome

and that is usually where the magic is