Building a Surface with Beverage Cans

Getting towards the end of this beverage can assemblage. The piece contains digital prints on beverage cans—looped and attached with crocheted wire. 

Detail

Tiny Squares

These tiny squares from digitally printed beverage cans are on their way to a larger piece. The spontaneity of their cluster is beautiful in itself.

Working with Printed Metals

One of my new favorite things is using prints of printers plates, metal mesh and the usual beverage cans and mixing it up with other elements.  I have also been toying with metal mesh printed and then assembled into squares.  I'll show you the cube thing later, but for now here are a couple of the mesh pieces I have been doing for studies.

 This first pic is the study for one of my 2 ft x 4 ft book pages. Created with printed beverage cans-the base is a beverage can in a bark pattern, the next layer is a different can print attached to the top of the base can. I put the cans together with a crochet strip of a paper wrapped metal that I get from a bead store here in Prescott.  This makes the connection pliable and bendable.  Each square has hemp that connects it to the crochet.  I will be printing cans in the next few days to make a similar piece for my forest book page.

 This piece is created in a random manner.  It contains beverage can pieces and metal mesh pieces woven through a piece of black hardware cloth with copper wire.  Yes it is time consuming but pretty much most of what I do it.  Case in point is the piece below.

This has 3 layers- bottom in aluminum hardware cloth in its original silver state.  Over that is a piece of aluminum window screen attached to the hardware cloth with beads and stainless wire.  The top is cut out from a digital print on a printers plate.  The cut out has been wrapped with the same stainless wire that connected the beads.  This is a detail of the piece.

Texture with Digital Prints on Beverage Cans

One of my favorite elements to work with are pieces of beverage cans that have been digitally printed.
The surface is beautiful when printed and after cutting the surface and weaving pieces together it has a inviting textural look.  Handling the work has the feeling of chain mail to me.  This piece is small at 29" x 14".

The yarn in the picture is the beginning of the bottom layer.  This layer will be crocheted with the depicted dyed silk yarn.  Yummy stuff this yarn, it's from RedFish DyeWorks.  These girls are great and have beautiful Yarns and fiber.  I met them at the Handweavers Guild of America in Albuquerque this July.  Once this piece is finished, there will be more places in my work to use their fiber. Even thinking of adding some of the silk yarn to the encaustic layers as I experiment with that medium.  See my Encaustic and Digitals post on my KathyAnne Art Blog.

Forest Surfaces 17, 29" x 14"

Digital prints of beverage cans, digital prints on metal mesh,

waxed linen, crocheted fine silk yarn 

Crochet as a Main Textural Element

Crochet is something that appears in my work often.  When I was 7 my mother taught me to make my first ripple afghan.  While the ripples were not exactly in the same place in every row,  it was a great learning experience.  Of course now I know the experience taught me to stay away from patterns and ideas that were measured and you could visually see the mess ups. but when I was 7 it was frustrating and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get it right.

These textural surface were created with alternative digital prints that have been cut and then crochet has been used.  The first piece (above) has digitally printed beverage cans, strung on thin hemp and randomly crocheted with a double crochet stitch.  The piece measures 5" x 9".

This piece is created with a base of crocheted paper wrapped wire. There is an added element of a cutout of digitally printed watercolor paper with hemp crocheted encasing the cutout.  It measures 4" x 8".

The other part of the watercolor paper cutout from the proceeding piece, was encased in crochet of heavy hemp and mounted on painted board, with a digitally printed cutout on watercolor paper.
It measures 4" x 6".