round and round I go

it was the coldest, stormiest of days

blowing snow, the kind that sticks to your "nose and eyelashes"

a friend and I had planned to meet up at the riverboat and walk the Millennium Trail that winds it's way along the Yukon River, crossing it twice

a beautiful 4.5k trek through the forests that line riverbank at that end of town

when I left the house I hadn't checked the weather and it turned out nor had she and when we arrived at the meeting spot downtown we were somewhat surprised by the snowstorm that had descended on the town

being the hardy Yukoners we both are, we set out anyway

the photos I took that day have a beautiful softness, the thickly falling snow acting like fog for the camera

 the features of the landscape were shrouded, the snow deafened sound and the world seemed incredibly quiet

my favourite image of the day was of the riverboat

a few winters ago, on a warm sunny day, I took other photos of the boat

the one below is of one of the large cargo doors

(you can just make out the three of them in the photo above though it's really just the windows you can see)

I've always loved architecture and the lines of these doors along with the textured glass have a strong appeal for me

not to mention the weathering! 

 

last Spring I did a few drawings, a few ideas of ways to interpret the river, the winter ice and these doors, the things that struck me the most that winter

the other day I came across the remnants of a piece of work I had made several years ago - narrow strips of linen stitched together and then covered with white gesso and watercolour paint 

it was rather wrinkled so with nothing to lose I tore the strips away from each other and was rather pleased with how they looked; the paint had taken differently across the piece so within in each strip the colour was fragmented

it all reminded me of some fragmented ice trials I had done at the same time, with random strips of linen, silk and paper

 I began assembling small pieces of the torn linen into little collages, thinking of both fragmented ice and boards

 

next is a sample I had made last year, working on a  version of the cargo door based on one of the above drawings 

again, strips of linen and gesso, with watercolour paint to distress it a bit

the centre is done with paper and grid stitching, then the piece is immersed in water

once the paper is good and wet it's all rubbed and scrubbed until some of it starts falling away 

after it dried I coated the fabric, thread and paper with gesso and then added the paint

 

and in the vein of how we start to really notice things that relate to what we are interested in, one morning after dropping my grandson off at school, I came home to see the light in the garage spilling out the frosted black-trimmed windows

looking like the rippled glass of the cargo door

I'm thinking it has a kind of encaustic look to it

hmmm

and here I go again...  

it's all black & white

a few good days in the studio this week, 

feeling like I've finally truly found my way back

a fun session of painting paper with acrylic ink, achieving some interesting textures with a balled up piece of paper towel

I always find it interesting to take a "frame" and look at some potential crops

it's surprising what can be found in a limited view

the work I enjoyed the most came about from an experience I had last summer in the Yukon

arriving in Whitehorse on a rainy day last June, I noticed a raven perched on the peak of the house watching as we pulled into the driveway

they stayed there, in the pouring rain, as we unpacked my luggage... every so often it called out whilst looking down at me 

I stood in the rain for almost two minutes, watching it walk back and forth over the peak, calling every so often

finally I thought to take out my phone and take a photos, realizing later the last one happened to be a video

it's short, just one second, but the call is clear

this week, working on the Sound Module in "Sensing Place" I attempted to draw what I heard

drawing sounds is an exercise in abstraction and before I began I resolved I would do several iterations, each building on what I noticed in the first one

that day I only had time for two, tomorrow I plan to do a few more

my first thought was that the sounds were somewhat "circular" in trajectory, it felt like they were curving around, like a warble in the throat

making the mark in the way I was hearing the sound, looping around and down, dropping slightly to begin the next

a curving swoop then, not a circle

black ink, because the Ravens are

I chose a dip pen, wanting an uneven, scratchy kind of mark, like the wobbly warble sound it made that day

the first one had a little "tuft" spring out from the lower right, a little "jog" of the pen I think - it reminded me of the scruffy look of the feathers in the throat area so I worked to include that in each mark

some parts of the sound seemed larger, louder - more volume, so I varied the size of the marks

and then there was the persistent sound of the rain

("when the raven called me home" is a riff on the last line of the Spell Song Blessing" - you can listen to it hear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg1xFYpXuWA )

the next version had me acknowledging the calls in the video have a slight space between them so this time I spaced out the marks, making some less complete than others to illustrate the variations in the sounds themselves

I also changed the rain - in the first one the long marks seemed more what I saw than what I heard

at first this felt a bit of a daunting exercise but I like how it makes me think about what I'm hearing in a way I never have before, bringing me closer to nature and more importantly, looking at these birds in a new light

they are the territorial bird of the Yukon, symbolizing knowledge and transformation among other things, and being greeted by one in this very engaging way was a truly transformative experience for me and one I'll never forget

fitting then, to experience it again in a new way

add water and stir

sitting on a large rock in the middle of an empty lot 

three years old, feet resting on a small ledge in the front of the rock, knees up, a notebook propped on top

pen in hand, I made waves of "writing" across the page, line after line, page after page

I've never stopped

lately I've been reading "The Way of the Fearless Writer" by Beth Kempton

trying my best to follow all of the writing prompts

I have learned over the past couple of years that the path to mastery comes from doing, not reading, so even though at first some of the prompts seem uninteresting to me, I do them anyway

and thank goodness for that

the latest one went something like this:

on a piece of paper, write about an experience that was very hard for you

put the paper in a heat-proof container

burn it to ashes

add a few drops of water and stir

paint or draw a symbol of sorts on the page 

write about the experience over top

sigh

not a fan of that kind of writing - I do enough thinking about difficult things I rarely need to write about them to gain clarity and perspective... I usually either have it in short order or decide it really isn't worth the bother and just move on

so after a bit of dragging my feet (or my hand, as it were) I gave in and wrote about the day many years ago when we left the Yukon to move to BC

it was a small piece of drawing paper, about 3" x 4 1/2"

black ink in my fountain pen, I filled both sides, first horizontally, then vertically

into an old canning jar, lit it on fire

the flame took hold and licked up the paper, edges blackening and curling... I watched it with interest

two small pieces didn't quite burn up but I left them in the jar, let it cool, added water, and stirred 

rather than draw a symbol I did a light wash of the ash "ink" over the whole of the page... like the grey fog that filled my heart that day long ago

then, on an impulse, I splattered some ash-ink on the paper... droplets here and there, like tears

the symbolism of that captivated me and I was off, writing forgotten... I rushed to get out more of the drawing paper (a beautiful Hahnemühle drawing paper) and found myself splattering the ash ink on both sides of 8 or 9 sheets of it before I ran out

some of the drops have an almost metallic sheen to them that the camera doesn't pick up

the colour of them ranges from a very light beige to a darker grey - the ash didn't really mix all that well, or perhaps I was too impatient

I splattered and over-splattered

the plan now is to make a book with these papers, one I can take to the Yukon on my next trip and draw and write in whilst there

for the cover I'll use one the "sidewalk" linen pieces I painted with earth pigment paint

it's a perfect colour match for the ash ink and is a nod to the wooden sidewalks of my childhood

 pages that are already marked with meaning feels like a wonderful way to eliminate blank-page syndrome and imbue the book with love and longing before the very first word is written

even if I am the only person that knows it

the surprise was that one of the pieces of paper that did not completely burn before the flame died looks very much like the shape of the Yukon Territory

how perfect is that?

land translations

many days walking by the river last November and December yielded many photographs

this week I chose a few that I was especially drawn to and did a few things...

December 10, 11:45 am

Pilot Mountain

first a drawing... not trying to make a true representation, not looking at the photo at all, just drawing from memory

and then, using papers I had painted a while back, a collage

still not looking at the photo

and then I did it again

December 12 at 10:37 am

looking across the river from downtown

December 6 at 12:44

same view

December 8 at 12:57

same view, cropped

a couple of drawings

and a collage

again, not trying to follow exactly what I saw, just the impressions I was left with

and one more time...

November 25 at 1:12

The Clay Cliffs Whitehorse

a drawing

and a collage

the freedom of not trying to duplicate what I saw lets me do what I feel like, take a notion, follow an impulse

lets me learn in a way that working rigidly to an ideal can't

and then of course there is the limitation of working with papers made long before these photos were taken

good fun, learned a lot

moving on

narrowing it down

continuing on then...

finding a pattern in the way I'm working, a widening, where I gather ideas and materials freely, almost overwhelmingly

and then a period of looking and reflecting on what I have in front of me

and then finally a narrowing

again and again

it often feels like I'm just wasting time, reluctant to make a decision on the path I want to take

in recent days I've come to understand it is precisely the best way for me to find it  

in spending time looking at the work above and below I'm finding that for the ice I'm more drawn to the textured layers of tissue paper and other cloth than to the smoother folded papers below

and then a piece of English "scrim" with strips of torn paper, machine stitched and then folded along the stitched lines - another option for the ice

this is the "right" side

and below, the reverse

finding I prefer the "wrong" side

(seems to be a recurring theme these days, wrong over right)

and here laid against some painted water

it's alright, though in the original photo that inspired all of this the water is actually more of a silvery-grey in colour

and then I tried something else...

a massively cropped image of trees along the Yukon River with the machine stitched straight lines on crinkled silk piece laid over top

this intrigued me greatly

especially in the photo below... 

the trees at the bottom, as enlarged and cropped as they are

 at first glance they are almost reminiscent of a watery scene, a creek with it's banks maybe - a tangle of water and forest, light and shadow? 

or perhaps I'm just seeing what I want to see

it is giving me some things to think about though

 I'm beginning to lean toward the simplicity of the straight lines paired with the complexity of the "water" below it

it feels less literal, more of an abstract impression

a kind of "take the idea, the imagery, and see what you can do with it" 

 how far you can stray?

what's the range, before you're too far away for a glimmer of what inspired you to remain?

not sure, but I'm about to find out

I Went Looking

looking through drawers and boxes, for work done before that could inform work being done today

images of folded, painted paper floated through my mind

textured silk with machine-stitched parallel lines followed

as did those of rough linen

more stitched lines, this time with two strands of thread

first the back

below, the front

these are what I think of as "base lines"

a first pass with a thread that matches the linen

next will be another pass over top, this time with something different - a slightly different colour

to add depth and shadow

papers painted a while back

folded and stitched

by the time I basted them all I decided the stitching flattened the folds and if I add textured stitching 

(as on the fabric)

the fold lines may disappear and it will be as if they were never there

letting the idea and the thoughts sit for a while...

textured silk, with machine-stitched lines

 failed pin-tucks from a while back, kept just in case

not sure I like the straightness of the lines but when I'm developing an idea I like to consider all that comes to mind and this is more about using textured silk as a base fabric than the use of straight lines

though you never know

 looking at the textured silk made me think of some tissue paper collage I had also done a while back

the look is very similar to that of the silk though the paper somehow lends itself more to looking like ice than the silk

there is also a "fragility" to it that I like

but that also makes it more difficult to hand stitch

which then led me to did out a piece I made where I combined small pieces of scrim with the tissue paper

similar look, stronger result

much to look at, and to think about

I like this stage of the process but I can also easily get caught up in it and try all sorts of things and overwhelm myself with options

knowing that, I plan to keep myself somewhat on the straight and narrow

try a few things, make a decision, get on with it

before the ice melts and my interest floats away with it