Amaryllis play

I have been playing with the photos I took of a blooming amaryllis. This one was solarized and I like what happens with the areas of the petals that are more transparent. It makes the ruffly red edges pop. There may be more amaryllis experiments in the next few days!

Water Colors exhibit hanging in progress

Today I spent 5 hours with photo intern, Amber Benson, hanging my Water Colors exhibit for 4th Friday. It went well but hanging 16 pieces is a LOT of work, hanging plus lighting plus labels, artist statements, postcards, email sign up list and other assorted materials needed to be dealt with as well. I think it looks good. Here are a few photos from the hanging. If you can come out to the Starline Gallery in Harvard, IL on Friday, January 24 from 6-9 pm it would be great to see you and I guarantee a good time!

Gallery space transformation

 This is the way the gallery space outside my studio looks today. Tomorrow I will be working with the 4th Friday interns to hang the 20+ pieces in my water reflection series for the featured artist show at 4th Friday at the Starline. I will post photos tomorrow of the transformed space.

Kaleidiscope App play

I have a new addiction. I loaded an App on the IPad that creates kaleidscope images out of anything you point the camera at. I have been walking around with the IPad shooting everything in sight.  It is so much fun to see what different objects become in the App. I see all kinds of fun projects using these images.Here are a few of the many, many shots I took.

New postcard

Off to the printer! I just created a new postcard using Line Dance, Tree Ring pattern, var. 5 as the image. I think it works well as a postcard and I hope to have them in time for my solo show on January 24 but I may be just a little too late in ordering them. Life goes on.

Junichi Arai – A National Treasure

Linda Dawson here.

Junichi Arai was born in the early 1930s in Japan to a family of weavers of kimono fabrics.  Followed in his family’s tradition, he grew to love fibers and helped bring the ancient art of shibori into the modern age through the use of new and experimental materials which embraced metals as woof, warp or both. He has grown from dyeing with indigo and other natural substances on cotton, silk and other natural fibers to applying disperse dyes on poly based fibers woven with fine metal. Visit his latest exhibit in Japan through the wonders of the internet:  http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2013/03/25/arai-junichi-tradition-and-creation/ and the slide show here is great: http://www.operacity.jp/ag/exh148/e/gallery.html#7  The knowledge and skills he developed through years of study and artistic creation has earned him the designation of National Treasure and he is revered throughout Japan for his contributions to the arts.

I first became acquainted with the his works sometime in the 1990s. My friend, Mei-Ling St Leger, attended a Surface Design Association Conference in Kansas City where she attended a workshop he conducted.  She learned the technique of melt-off using lame’ fabrics. She taught me the basics and  I really fell in love with the process. The process I am using here to create my melt-off requires a lame’ fabric which is a combination of nylon and aluminum. Part of the aluminum is eaten off which leaves just the nylon in places. The cloth is then dyed with wash fast acid dye.  Here is a piece I created for The Red Show at the Hillsborough Community College Ybor City Art Gallery.

 

This photo shows the piece hanging from the ceiling at the gallery. 

   

  
 This is a close up of the inner layer showing the melt-off. I use silver lame’ and over dyed with mixture of red and yellow wash fast acid dyes.

  
This picture is of a 6 yard piece I created for a show at the Art Center Manatee. This one was created from gold lame’ which was over dyed with chocolate wash fast dye.

               

 This is a close-up of the chocolate piece.

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Here are two pictures showing the gold/chocolate piece during its creation.
The first one shows the piece wrapped and clamped ready to go into the stripping bath. The second shows the piece after it came from the  dye bath and before the wrapping and clamping were released.

 

And finally here is Mei-Ling with one of her pieces.

 

And these are her Chrysalis pieces.

I offer this technique to you today to add to your tool kit. It is a simple, but elegant, technique. You must use a lame’ that has aluminum for the metal which is usually woof and nylon for both woof and the warp. Since this is a shibori project you should manipulate the fabric in any of several shibori techniques. The fabric is then placed in a solution of water and soda ash (scant 1/3 C soda ash to 2 gallons of water) which has been brought to a simmer. Two things will happen. The nylon will become permanently pleated due to the heat and the alkali solution will eat (melt) off the aluminum. Simmer this for 8 to 10 minutes, but watch closely as the aluminum will suddenly be gone and the alkali solution can penetrate the resist. You will then be left with a piece of nylon. Remove the fabric and immediately rinse with tap water. I do this outside complete with Darth Vader mask to keep the fumes out of my house and away from my cat. And I have the hose ready to go immediately to stop the action of the soda ash and begin to cool the fabric. The fabric is now ready for an acid dye bath. You can either leave the resist in place, remove parts of it or remove it all before dyeing. ProChem has wonderful directions for the wash fast Acid dyes at this site: http://www.prochemical.com/directions/Acid%20Dyes%20PDF/WF%20-%20Immersion.pdf I usually use the white vinegar since it is so readily available. Please take GOOD HEALTH precautions and use rubber gloves, a good mask, preferable a Darth Vader type, and always rinse your fabrics with water between techniques to prevent the accidental mixture of a noxious gas.

Keep watching, as I am ready to start some experimentation with the melt-off technique and will be posting further results here later in the month.

Water Colors exhibit

Coming too soon is my solo exhibit at The Starline Gallery. I will be showing about 18 art quilts and art cloth pieces from my water reflection series. Some of these pieces have not been gathered together in quite some time. I just received Reflections, Venice, var. 2 back from its sojourn at the U. S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos.  More information to come as the I get closer to the date. Now it's time to clean studio, make labels, finish poster, get work ready to hang and ......

Sorry!

Hi everyone,
Apparently my last post decided to download a lot of my blog rather then just the address to get there. Though none of that showed up in the Preview. I apologize for any problems you might be having with download. This was not my intent!

BarbaraSchneider-artist.blogspot.com start up for 2014

Hi all,
I have begun posting daily (she says hopefully) to my blog again. I decided that the daily practice of posting a photo is something I miss. It keeps me focused on looking around, it "encourages" me to work in Photoshop and learn more and keeps me in touch with others. And sometimes great ideas for art work grows out of these daily exercises.

So if you have time to follow along go visit:
www.barbaraschneider-artist.blogspot.com

I have put a link to Art Cloth Network blog on my blog as well.

Barbara Schneider