Sensual Surfaces

Currently I have some work in a fiber show at the Phoenix Airport Museum. The show is in Terminal 4 and my work is at both ends of the terminal. While these may not be the pieces in the exhibition, they are from the same series. The top layer of the pieces are digital prints on alternative surfaces. The layers underneath are textural in nature and there are around 5 layers stacked throughout the pieces. Once the pieces are stacked they are sewn together with large stitches of embroidery thread. They layers are attached to metal screen for hanging.

These pieces were the beginnings of my foray into digital printing on alternative surfaces.












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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".

Digitally Printed Cheesecloth Skins

Last weekend I taught a workshop "Expanding the Digital Print on Uncommon Surfaces", at HGA's Convergence 2010 in Albuquerque New Mexico.  It was a great group and even in the constraints of the short time of the workshop, the class produced some awesome results.  One of my favorites is always the cheesecloth skins.  The spontaneity of the cheesecloth grid creates a wonderful textural surface.

 Cheesecloth skin ready to print

Detail of printed skin

Printed cheesecloth skin

Cheesecloth skins, created to be thin and have the look of it falling apart

Nature's Textures

Texture from nature.  Do you ever stand with nature and look at what is growing around you and marvel at the visual components? And each plant grows with it's colors and pattern and all it's elements time after time.  Amazing!

Randomly Pieced Canvas

As my work grew to embracing more texture, it was enjoyable to use a beefy canvas that was dyed, cut in random strips and sew the strips back together.  This gave me a new fabric to work with that created a more interesting textural surface.  Once the fabric was back together, it was recut and spontaneously sewn into a new composition with raw edges and random shapes.  This piece has been constructed in that fashion, but is not in its final incarnation yet.

Hand dyed canvas attached to canvas with large random stitching

Textural Pages

Funky stuffed books or journals intrigue me. Could be the nostalgia of my grandmothers old recipe books, with papers attached everywhere.  Notes, new recipes written out, all sorts of joined treasures inside the book as the pages overflowed.  This is probably my obsession towards textures in my journals and art books.  Assembling them is a free and flowing experience.

The subject of this textural post depicts the sides of stuffed and collaged journals.  Always a bit of texture that explodes from the sides of the journal.  At the end of August, exploration will start on textures coming alive from the side or journals using paper ceramics mixed with my digital textural surfaces.

Experimenting with Texture

Doing the textural thing seems to be a habit in my work.   Everything is growing texture.  My focus is to build layers and look for ways to build textures that are similar to forest environments.  There is a feeling and an experience built on texture that is alluding me.  In these pics you will see compositions built with digital images printed on alternative surfaces.  

Layers of Texture

This digital textural piece was built with layers in Photoshop CS5. The way this piece was created is part of the "Digital Collage Workshop", that will be posted for members later this month. For a sneak peak, I have included the layers that are blended in this piece.
















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Real Texture to Digital Texture

Using a piece from a textural page in a journal, I separated the picture of the page element into 3 layers in Photohshop CS5, textured the layers with some of my patterns, then combined the layers for the final images.

Paper as a Textural Base

Trying this to see if I can figure out how to blog from my iPad:) not sure about the image size in the post, but here goes.

This weeks texture comes from a piece of handmade paper. This paper was printed for a journal. The image was combined with blending modes from 2 images. The first image the paper and the other image a detail of a page in Book of Forests 2.


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Location:Phoenix Airport