dusty roads

a very inspiring blog post i read a little while ago reminded me of a print i had ordered of my icy branches trapped along the shores of our little lake -  printed on hahnemuehle bamboo printer paper,  it's been languishing in a drawer for almost two years

i'd intended to use it for a book cover, hard-backed, but had never got around to making the book as i couldn't decide on the orientation

the idea of small pamphlet-stitched booklets as in the linked blog post was very appealing so i dug out the long-forgotten prints (there were actually two copies) and set to work, cutting the paper so i had two landscape booklets and two in portrait-style

two of the booklets have a fine drawing paper for the pages and the other two have sea white cup-cycling paper, a nice drawing paper made from recycled coffee cups

love how the image spreads across the booklet when it's fully opened

being very inspired, i printed one of my favourite icy winter images of the yukon river taken this past winter and made a fifth booklet with it

for an extra bit of detail I added either a sliver of a photo or piece of painted paper to the inside cover(s)

when the prints were cut down tiny over-looked details gained in prominence - here the markings on the ice resemble two hearts, nestled together

the image below is my favourite of all, that hint of red-brown bark is such a delight

working with these images brought to mind a small envelope of old photographs of my dad as a young child that i keep on my worktable

whitehorse was vastly different in the early 1940s, before the army came to build the alaska highway... before any roads were paved, when the town was still very small

dad loved to fish in the river but more than that he loved to wear his papa's hat

there is nothing like riding a bike an old wooden sidewalk... uneven boards and curled edges make for a slightly bumpy ride that is far more fun than concrete or pavement can provide

(the sidewalks were still mostly wooden when i was young so i had the great fun of riding my trike on them too)

in this next image I'm fairly sure dad and his friend had picked armloads of fireweed - the leaves and stems look right

these images have always made me think of dusty roads and wooden sidewalks

kind of sounds like the title of a country music song doesn't it

for decades i have wanted to make a book of poems about childhood in the yukon using these images as part of the illustrations

first i had to learn book-binding, then calligraphy, then drawing and painting and whilst i'm not a proficient at any i think i'm capable of now of bringing my idea to life

one more thing added to the "to do" list then

"are the colours that arise with the first light of dawn beautiful if nobody is watching?"

a beautiful question and one i've gone back and forth with several times - odd how something like this can sit in my mind for a very long time, eliciting answers that are often negated as quickly as they came to be

my first response was that of course they are but then i thought beauty is a perception, not an absolute and so yes, there must be someone to see them and feel that

but then...

and so on, and so on

what it does do very well is make me notice and think of the colours that "arise with the first light of dawn"

for the past week i have been waking in the pre-dawn hours, when it is still dark and as i never close the blinds to sleep i can lay on my side and look out the window at the hills and watch the darkness begin to soften as the first light emerges from the horizon

 in those early moments, the sky becomes a light misty grey, the clouds, if there are any, are always painted in varying shades of grey ranging from dark, stormy greys to muted pearlescent ones - the trees are black-green, sometimes the leaves are a smoky yellow-green

as the light grows the colours of change, the sky shifts from pale greys to soft blues, the clouds lighter in colour and the trees brighter greens; it's beautiful, but it's the earliest moments of light and colour i am drawn to

a scrap of paper with this writing was floating around  my work-table last week so I wrote it out in my wabi sabi sketchbook and found a small piece of painted paper which portrayed the colours of dawn here so perfectly

i'm quite enjoying matching words to images; it's a beautiful yet informative way of capturing the essence of a thought

lost and found

mark-making is something that has always fascinated me but have found very difficult to do

a few half-hearted attempts left me wondering what it was that really appealed... the marks other people made were so intriguing whereas my own were somewhat... blah

they felt contrived

same with all of my attempts at expressive calligraphy but this week there was a bit of a breakthrough 

instead of trying to follow a set of prescribed exercises i worked at finding my own way instead

in large part it is thanks to the incredibly generous gift of renee mueller's online course 

"found"

won through her birthday giveaway

the first module focuses on working with writing as well as mark-making and while she does demonstrate her take on both you are to do your own thing and so, finally, i did just that

the interesting thing with the handwriting was that it fell right into the path i'm on in the course

"expressive calligraphy"

which i've dabbled in now and again over the past few months, mostly during my morning writing

this time what i did was completely different different than anything i've tried before

writing across a large piece of drawing paper that has since been cut up to preserve the parts that intrigue me the most, i found there were a couple of areas where the wiring was rather angular with a strong slant - very different from any previous attempts which were upright and curvilinear in nature

below is the first word, easily recognised as "the"... somewhat expressive, yes, but also quite distinct

the writing definitely got more expressive as i relaxed into it and by the end there was some that pleased me greatly

some was done with a calligraphy marker, some with pointed pen and then additional marks with a stick and finally the broad end of a skewer

(the stick brush was made last year in the yukon, with both the stick and the pine needles gathered from the forest behind the house we used to live in

buoyed with that happy outcome and enjoying most the work done with the stick and skewer i continued with them

flowing lines and variety in tone and shape achieved by constantly twisting the skewer in my hand as i drew it across the page

another crop taken from the calligraphy and a variety of mark-making trials, all done with the stick, alternating which end i used as i went

the piece below reminds me of the markings on the poplar trees at marsh lake - trembling aspens i believe

and yet more...

many of the off-cuts are in box of collage papers but i couldn't resist putting together this little one before tidying everything away

and so, a good beginning

how does your garden grow?

 there is not an awful lot to show for the past two weeks... it's been busy in these parts with the heat of summer upon us already

usually the transition from winter to summer takes time, allowing me to settle in to the changing seasons and adapt my routine to new ways of working

not this year - we've gone from winter to summer in a heartbeat and as far as the yard and gardens go it's been nothing but a huge challenge though i seem to have finally found my footing

the chives and chamomile are in bloom as are the raspberries, the roses are just about to and the lilac is finished

whilst waiting for more to bloom in the yard to work with in my sketchbook,  I've been playing with a few different ideas 

the first came from a book i borrowed from the library

Folded Book Art by Clare Youngs

it wasn't exactly what I was expecting but there was an example of a book page with embroidered flowers that I really liked so it thought i'd give that a try

loosely following the provided design, picking and choosing the elements i liked and softening the colours slightly, i used an old letter from france, written shortly before the great war on "ministère de la guerre" stationery

 backed with an ultra lightweight iron-on interfacing, it was surprisingly sturdy to stitch into

the letter was from a young man to his family and though i can understand most of what was written i decided not to try and do a proper translation... one hundred years and more have passed since it was written but it still feels rather private and i like that my stitching has obscured it somewhat

it's now taped into my studio trials sketchbook with the caption

"before the flowers were all gone"

which came to me just as i finished the last few stitches - and how very appropriate a title it is

i have several more letters written to his family so even though this was initially done as a reference for  stitching flowers on paper i am thinking there may be something here to think about and perhaps pursue a bit further

next, a pencil sketch adaptation of a watercolour painting from another book had me thinking more about yarrow, and a desire to stitch some in the brownish-gold dried stage rather than in full summer bloom

wanting to reinforce the idea of age and decay i prepare a base using a piece of the "greige" 110 year-old hand-spun, hand-woven linen from the netherlands topped with a piece of painted, waxed and burnt silk chiffon

once the edges were burnt the charred bits were rubbed away which was a VERY messy business that resulted in black flecks all over the place, including the chiffon which added greatly to the aged look

this sketch is just a warm up though - i'll be going out in the coming weeks to find a real-life version at the appropriate point of decay to sketch, photograph and then stitch and make it my own

if you click on the image of the linen/silk stitching base you'll get a better idea of just how grungy it is

and finally, a pink version of the white queen anne's lace card i posted a while back

 the effect of the stitched flowers on the faded tapestry-like fabric still holds a strong appeal for me and i'm thinking about what flower to tackle next

in the meanwhile, a trip to the garden centre this morning for a new watering can also yielded a white and a pale blue delphinium along with a pinkish-coral dahlia

i've a strong urge sketch dahlias and stitch delphiniums so we'll see how that goes

there are a few others on my list of flowers i'd like to tackle in one manner or another so the garden is an ever-evolving subject for art in the making and I'll be trudging off to the garden centre again before too long

there are kitchen gardens, cutting gardens, cottage gardens... why not an art garden?

a constructed landscape

my worktable has been strewn with papers for two weeks now... printed images that have been edited and cropped and cropped and edited and printed on a variety of papers of varying degrees of transparency

 i am not a proficient at editing but iphoto makes it fairly simple and when i get something i love I stop and hit "save"

(it's also how i know when a piece of work is finished - when i love it, it's done... rather simple really, at least for me)

last week was all about layering the printed images, trying various combinations in varying scales

a few were good but two stood out

the first is the simplest... the background piece was a cropped enlargement of an image of the side of the klondike sternwheeler taken on a rather brisk day this past march

(it's getting some restoration work done so i feel fortunate to got have several good photos of some the weathering along the sides)

the image placed on top of that is of trees at marsh lake taken last summer when i was there for a campout

again, heavily edited: cropped, reversed, and changed from colour to silver tone, then printed on some rather transparent tracing paper

(for reference, the original image is in the centre of the contact sheet ifurther down in this post)

the layered image makes the weathered boards of the ship look a bit like water

the trees, boards to build the ship

the trees, fuel to run the ship

the ship ran on the water 

the water weathered the ship

and decades on, there are paddlewheelers along the river rotting back to the earth, feeding the growth of new trees

this next one is comprised of three images: the top portion is a failed acetate print of the quonset hut layered over a cropped image of the clay banks that line the yukon river with a scrap of wave action at marsh lake the bottom... kind of a stylised shoreline view and that was when "a constructed landscape" popped into my mind

i like that - it's kind of a guiding light in a way... something to hold in my mind as i work

i turned it on it's side which abstracts it somewhat but prefer it the other way

the contact sheet i made from some of my favourite images... seems it's always sky, water and wood

after finishing those two collage pieces i realized i was getting way too attached to making good meaningful work and that, along with the whole of it just making me miss the north too much has led to the decision to put this work aside for now... it's summer and i want to do something lighthearted, to play and experiment and not get caught up in the outcome

the flowers are blooming and nature is calling so i'll take the techniques i'm keen to explore like mono and gelli-printing, photo litho, and embossing/intaglio with my wee printing press and try them out with all things floral

today i started warming up with a few sketches and tomorrow i'm making a plan... kind of an outline of what i want to do and the order i'd like to do it in

kind of like summer school...

a new sketchbook...

letter writing... not a common thing any longer, at least not the "written on beautiful paper with a fine pen" kind of letters, but my friend christine and i do write each other letters, twice a year

hers are so lovely to hold in your hand, the papers she chooses have a beautiful softness to them and the ink clear and dark...  christine always begins each letter by telling me the type and origin of the paper followed by a description of the pen and ink

i love that

 i've had a thing for fine writing paper since a friend and I began collecting stationery at the age of 12... my understanding of fine pens began in high school with a parker 57 given to me my grandfather when he retired

the description of paper, pen and ink not only informs, it also causes a pause whilst i look closer at the pages, running my fingers over them a while before settling in to enjoy the letter itself

i've always saved them - letters like this must be saved but a couple of weeks ago i took a notion to make something with some them...

in need of a new sketchbook,  a search at the two stationery/art shops in town yielded nothing, nor did i have any paper suitable for what i was wanting

fingers tapping on my worktable, i cast my eyes around the room

and then i saw the latest letter with it's corresponding envelope...

picking them up, turning them over in hands, looking close at the grain and how the ink sat on it, feeling the sturdiness of the paper I thought that if they were given a light coat of gesso they would be perfect for sketching

and the envelope could be trimmed, reinforced with other paper and used for the cover

so i set to work

a scrap of blue mineraux paper christine used to wrap a previous gift is a favourite so it would be used on the cover somehow

for the front-facing cover i used a failed acetate transfer print and then glued the mineraux paper to the inside of the envelope flap for a wrap-around cover

below you see first page - enough gesso to obscure the handwriting, not obliterate it

and those beautiful deckle edges

acrylic gesso does have a bit of a plastic feel to it but it has not significantly changed the way the paper feels in the hand

I'd like to find a more natural one but not sure it even exists

using nine pages, i made three signatures with three pages each

a button and a twisted cord to tie it closed

 i'm going to enjoy using this over the coming days and weeks as i do some summer sketching... a reminder of a day several years ago when i was in england and christine and i sat in front of the derwent dam and sketched on a sunny spring afternoon

on the go

one of my little grand-daughter's favourite things to get hold of on the days she was in my charge was my cell phone and every so often she would grab it and set off about the room rapidly tapping the screen with her pointer finger

one day she managed to open the camera and through her tapping took this picture of the blinds with the floor and bottom edge of the loveseat

the image is fractured, most likely because she was moving at a rapid pace, trying to get away from me retrieving my phone

when it came up in my photos application i thought it looked rather interesting so decided to play around with some photo editing to see what I could see

haven't done anything else with it as yet though i've been toying around with a few ideas - it has certainly sparked an interest in abstraction of interiors so i was delighted on arriving home to find a good friend had gifted me with a beautiful photo book for my birthday

"BLACKWELL

WITHIN

a photographic

evocation"

by

Graham Murrell

words by Sarah Hall

small but packed with beautiful images that "balance the geometry and detail with the play of light and shade, reflection, texture, to create a counterpoise between the solid reality of the house itself and the evanescence of the passing moment within it's spaces", it's a photographic essay of captivating images of the interior of a beautiful estate in the lake district of the uk

on the go again, this time to Edmonton for a week to visit our son, i packed a few drawing materials and at the last minute grabbed this book and a very few scraps of fabric and threads that were laying on my worktable

in the spare moments of the last few days I have begun four small textile-based pieces drawing from some of the compositional elements in a few of the photos

not to make exact replicas

rather, a start point for simple geometric pieces that along with added stitches will hopefully create works that will have a sense of the images, both in their geometry and atmosphere

not sure i can pull off the latter but for now i've made a start at the former

the fabric choices aren't necessarily the best but i had less than twenty fabrics to choose from so making do was the only option

trying to capture a sense of the strongest elements though not through direct representation

simplicity at it's best here...

this last one is the only one i'm not sure about - it's very literal but i'll keep on with it just the same as these are to be a set and perhaps this one will have a duty only to complement the others

apologies for all the wrinkles but alas, no iron

we head home tomorrow where all will get a thorough pressing and then on with the stitching aspect

when i travel it's difficult to get stuck in to any one thing but in odd moments here and there this has been a joy to take up and work on

and as ever, it's feeding new ways of looking, of thinking and of working