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

shuffling paper

my worktable this morning was covered with at a hundred or more pieces of 

 photos printed on paper, gelli prints etc. and I had a happy few hours playing at layering and composition

not looking for any kind of finished work, rather, i'm combining things based on colour, pattern and visual texture and looking for interesting combinations which will hopefully generate ideas for the way forward

a few came to mind whilst doing this along with beginning to understand what I am drawn to, what resonates,,, how I can take these images of a place that is so completely wrapped around my psyche and tell a story with them

 a few favourites emerged and have now been glued into my sketchbook and next will be some written reflection and thoughts of where to go next

this first one combines three things: two cropped photos, both of water and an acetate print of a branch

and again, that favourite crop taken from the quonset hut photo, on acetate again with a water print behind - the effect for me is snowy mountains through a window

next came painted paper, part of an image of branches on water (heavily edited) and a fragment of tissue paper and scrim, collaged, painted and machine stitched

a fragment of the kandik map of the yukon river, hand drawn in 1880, a different version of the branch on water photo, this time printed on acetate and more of the painted paper

there are other smaller combinations that for now will languish in the scrap pile until i know whether or not they are done with... meanwhile, note-taking is what i'll be doing which should then lead to some mark-making and drawing

my thinking is taking form now and it's almost all to do with the river, it's ebb and flow, continuing on through the years, taking people to and from the gold rush, and still the same after all those years... flowing by,  as time itself does

 there are the riverboats... vessels of people, hopes and dreams as well as loss... the shape of the planks encasing it all

a tinge of yellow for the gold found in it's creeks, the falling down cabins and trading posts along it's banks, indistinct shapes

maps for how to get to the place of dreams 

and maps for how to leave

as time fades memory and memories fade to dust the river runs through it all

a mash up...

this has been a good, good week... think i'm finally hitting my stride

since there was no way to choose just one area to work on there was nothing else to do but choose many, and even though on an ordinary day it would probably be overwhelming it's actually helping me settle back in to being here

it really all started in the yard... raking gives me lots of time to think and as my mind wandered into thoughts of what to plant in the flower and vegetable gardens this year it kind of went like this:

"dahlias... i want to do more sketching of flowers this summer so dahlias would be good, and daisies... delphiniums too- there has to be delphiniums and I bought those seeds in whitehorse - didn't i get those different calendula seeds too? and bee balm - yes, there was bee balm and also evening-scented  stocks... where did i put the seeds again?

should plant the woad soon too, if i'm going dye with it  - no, no woad

 there's already more blue fabric and thread than i'll use in five years of stitching so no more woad

what was that new book on plant dyeing i saw online the other day - what was it called? 

"ourneys in natural dyeing" or something like that? by the person who wrote the one that had the beautiful photographs of plant material with the dyed fibres... have to search that out...

so no woad but i'll do some dyeing anyway - was it the carrot tops that gave me that nice green last year? i didn't write it down - don't remember half of what i did with any of it - really should have written it down as i went... such rubbish at taking notes

need a dye journal - and one for ink and paint too

an ink, paint and dye journal then - and i can sketch the plants in it

no... no sketching - too much work, just needs notes and samples, nothing fancy

ok but i also want a wabi sabi sketchbook and i haven't started it yet - well, start both then... 

have to make katja's birthday card before starting on any sketchbooks - should make it with the dried flowers from last year as i haven't done anything at all with them - if i get busy using them i can press more this summer and the roses will be out soon 

maybe i can put pressed flowers in the dye journal instead of sketching?

maybe"

and on and on it went but i'll spare you the rest

over the past week i worked on all of the above and then some

the first two images are from the wabi sabi sketchbook

i've done a bit of research on the seven zen principles of fine arts, below are two of them

the painted papers are from painting trials a while back

I added them to the pages for interest but did not trim them - they went in as they were 

wabi sabi

below is the first page of the dye section in the ink, paint and dye journal... i've done six pages already and quite a few in the ink section as well

i'm so glad i finally got going on this - it will be such a great resource and a nice record of my putterings with plants and pots

and hopefully it will put an end to the mysterious colours

next is the card i made for my niece's birthday... black watercolour paper for the base sets the flowers off beautifully but every adhesive i tried showed on it and careful as i was there was some visible in a few places

i tried concealing it with black markers but no luck and then i remembered I had some ivory black watercolour paint so i tried that and it was perfect

these are all flowers i pressed last summer in the yukon

i kept trying to compose the arrangement on a separate background thinking i would take a picture of it to use as a reference for when it came time to gluing things down but the flowers kept jumping around and nothing was staying in place

it was exceptionally frustrating as i thought i needed to plan the whole thing out before beginning but that wan't working and so i glued down the tall green grass stem first and went on from there

it went surprisingly well from there

and to get a jumpstart on the sketching flowers plan  i bought a few from the local flower shop

photographing them on painted backgrounds will let me play with sketching petals long after the flowers have died

but... i've been to busy with the yard and the journal and sketchbook to do any sketching... maybe tomorrow...

in addition to all this i've finished two christmas cards (yep, i'm starting early!), working on another card of queen anne's lace on a faded floral tapestry print fabric, basted seven boro-style bookmarks and reorganised my linen scraps, ribbons and sketchbooks

busy, busy, happy days

time and distance

home now... five days on and it still feels more than a little odd to be here and not there 

wandering in to my studio a few times each day,  slowly unpacking the small box of supplies taken north, trying to familiarise myself with what was being worked on in the months preceding

it's so been so long, november really, since i've worked in this space... picking up where i left off seems rather difficult at the moment so instead i've spent some time flipping through sketchbooks and looking at work from the past year and a half or more

it's been an interesting walk down memory lane... 

a painting of old pilings from the shipyards in whitehorse on a letter from a friend who always uses the most beautiful and interesting papers to write on

wind-downed twigs found on the sidewalks that reminded of letter forms... trees have their own way with words

tissue paper collage 

plaster pushed through a floral stencil onto a painted background

small stitched samples... fragments chosen for texture and line

a preliminary sketch for a wedding card for our daughter

designing, making and using my own stamps for block-printing

painted snowy mountains

inking up pressed leaves and flowers and using them as stamps

collage... this is the piece that made me realise how much i love black

and this one from last September that looks surprisingly like something from my last post

through time and distance, the things that interested me then interest me still 

  now to decide whether to begin something new or continue with something from before... just these few photographs have given me ideas to work with in either vein

there's a hopeful fresh feeling in the air... and it's not just spring

snow day

this last week here has been spent doing the things not yet done... walking old neighbourhoods, visits with friends and painting with snow

still wanting backgrounds to work further into and using the graphite and gold paint I bought here, the quest was for something simple... paint dropped in to water and moving how and where it would followed by spatters of gold, sometimes mixed with the graphite paint, sometimes not

this next one with a bit of french ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, then the graphite and gold

when it dried I was reminded of the placer miners, scrabbling in the muck of their claims along the creeks - may just leave this one but a sketchy cabin could look pretty interesting on it... hmm

the last tissue paper collage i did got a wash of gold followed by the graphite - thinking about hitting the high points with something dark, perhaps charcoal here and there and then see where they'll take me next

the sketches on the work from the last post have begun and will hopefully be finished before i leave as well as the cabin i mentioned above

it's been a long slow progression with all the works done here but a most enjoyable one - no need to feel like things had to move along quickly... life slows down in the presence of little ones and that way of being seems to have found it's way into my work as well

i definitely want to "pack" that way of working to take home  with me