Spring!

Last week was Spring Break!  My girls and I went to Galveston for a few days - we picked the best ones!  You never know what you are going to get with the weather mid March.  We had gorgeous weather for the beach. :) 

Christina and Sabrina

   Christina in the kitchen

Christina's back at UT now.  But she'll be home again for Easter - I hope!

Rosie and I went to the Bayou City Art Festival yesterday.  Also perfect weather! 

There were some interesting performers......

Tree Man

Stilt Walker and Dancer

There was a figurative artist named Joan Rasmussen from Atlanta who allowed me to take a photo of her booth.

This photo doesn't do justice to her work - it's wonderful!  See it here:

http://www.joanrasmussen.com

We also found a wonderful fiber artist from New Orleans named Kate Beck.  She has the most beautiful shawls and scarves!  I had to have one of her scarves......

Here I am wearing my beautiful new hand dyed scarf with flowers

Rosie bought one of her flower hair clips and here it is in her gorgeous curls:

Kate Beck also sells her work through Dutch Alley Artist's Co-op in the French Quarter, New Orleans.

Challenge Piece

Last Saturday we had the unveiling of the challenge pieces at our TAODA meeting.  Here's mine:

The challenge was to create a hanging work, based on or inspired by music.  The original inspiration for my piece was "Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby Stills Nash.  You'd never guess it by looking at it!  It sort of took on a life of its own and went in its own direction.  The only thing resembling the song is the harlequin costume.  The figure was going to be a man but when I added hair he became a little boy.  So my initial title of "Hoping" was not going to work.  A couple of artists at the meeting suggested "First Love" and I like that so I've decided to combine the two titles and call it "Hoping: First Love".

The large tree in the foreground, and the trees in the background are made from the gray silk I dyed last week.  The face on the tree and the heart faces are paperclay.  The boy is cloth with needlesculpted features.

The background was created in a process called confetti landscape quilting.

"Hoping: First Love"

Dyeing Silk

I dyed silk yesterday for a new project I'm working on.  We are doing a "challenge" in TAODA of dolls based on a piece of music.  I won't say what mine is until it's completed, but it involves a tree.  I've been doing trees lately.  I'm actually working on another piece with a tree - a commission - similar to "Pixie Capers", which also has a tree in it.  More on that later....


Anyway, the tree for the challenge piece will have bark made of silk tussah.  I wanted gray tones for the bark.  And I also wanted to dye some silk gauze and habotai at the same time.

Silk gauze is on the upper left, habotai on the right, and tussah roving is in the center at the bottom. 

I wanted the silk gauze to be darker, so I put it in the dye bath first.

Then I poured the dye into a plastic tub and added the habotai.

After removing the habotai I added the tussah roving.  I poured more dye over some areas so that there would be lighter and darker shades of gray within the roving.

It was a sunny day so I took everything outside to dry.  There is my dog Sabrina in the background.

Here is Sabrina in "her" chair, keeping an eye on things.  You can see from the picture of the drying silk that practically everything in my yard is dead.  Everything except the pansies.  Thank goodness for pansies. :)

And now, the lovely gray silk:

Next step, silk fusion.