When Visitors Create Art....

About 10 days ago I was part of the Moss Street Paint In, you may have read about it in previous posts....I was asked to 'engage" with the public and decided some "mark making" would be a good way of inviting people to make marks onto my fabric! while adults were a little more reticent, the kids got into this in a big way! No surprise there!

I think there was a total of 6 panels produced and I've heat set the paints and photographed them. They will be used in my art at some point, I love some of the cool designs that were made!

 This one is my favourite.....

Did you miss seeing me and getting your mark on the fabric? Come to the Sooke Fine Arts Show on Monday, July 31st! I'll be doing a Squiggle, Line & Dot Demo, I hope to see you there!

No More Ships

I've just finished photographing my latest art quilt, measuring the dimensions and setting it up into my online gallery. Those are the detailed tasks that are always a pleasure to do, bringing some closure to a piece that has consumed a lot of my physical and mental efforts over the last couple of months.

Now it's time to send it out into the world....the first stop is the TD-Art Gallery Paint In, more commonly know as the Moss Street Paint In this coming Saturday. No More Ships will be the feature piece, it's the largest art quilt I've ever done 44 1/2" x 59". It's my intention to work large (for me) in the future, after visiting a couple of high end art quilt shows recently, I like those larger works....going to give it a try!

No More Ships is the latest in my ongoing series Inspired by Structure which focuses on the abandoned buildings of the Burrard Shipyards in North Vancouver. I'll be continuing to work on this for the foreseeable future.

The fabrics I used are either hand painted (the sky) or dyed and painted. I tried some of the painted fabrics and then decided they were too stark so toned down the contrast with some textile paint!

The sleeve and label will be sewn on this afternoon and then it'll be one more item checked off the list for the weekend. If you're around Victoria, please stop by at Booth #114, south of May Street.

Here's a detail shot of the building:

Why Was I "Left Behind"?

While working in my current series that uses "structure" as my theme I made a piece titled "Left Behind" that was inspired by the photos I had taken at the Burrard Shipyards in North Vancouver. Here's the picture:

 I cropped the photo and made it into grey scale:

For some reason I thought I should incorporate the modern building in the background and make that part of the design. I think it was a mistake, while we can identify it as a component in the photograph, in the quilt it didn't make any sense....

In fact it was turned down from two juried shows.....it was Left Behind.

So yesterday I masked off the "good" areas and painted over the background with a sponge roller. One of the things I like about the effect is the texture created by the quilting, lots of areas of lines and shapes in there. At first I used pure white paint, which seemed a little stark, so I then reapplied a light grey over top to tone it down.

 A much better result, I'm happier with the quilt now and I will try entering it again. Maybe it won't get Left Behind!