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By Jackie, February 1, 2011 11:28 am

I’ve been working new smaller wall art to sell at the Art-is-in-Market Gallery. In my stash there has been an old log cabin quilt. I’ve mentioned it here before.  The thing has been falling apart for a long time and isn’t anything you would want to cuddle up with. Well, I’ve been dismantling the squares and layers then surface designing the heck out of them. Throw in a little beading and a few buttons and new pieces out of old begin to emerge.

Here’s a few squares just after they’ve been printed with Thermofax Screens. I made a screen out of one my grandmother’s old handwritten recipes. Turned out really cool. Also shown here is a little sewing machine action. Needed to keep the fabric from fraying itself into nothingness. I like a little fray, but some of the fabric needs to stay in place.

Once these get are done being stitched up I plan to attach them to little 8 x 8 canvases that I’ve covered in black gesso. Yes, black gesso! My new favorite tub o’ magic. Less expensive than your black acrylic paint in a tube, its thick and covers really well. When it dries it leaves a lovely matte finish. It does take longer to dry but I can deal with that.

I plan to extend the design onto the edges of some of the canvases with pen, yarn and paint or whatever else wants to play. Here are some images of the process.

Each piece is unique and lovely in its own little way. Hopefully some folks shopping at the mall will think so to!

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By Jackie, January 20, 2011 10:59 am

I am pleased to announce that my artwork is for sale at the Art-is-in-Market North at 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan.  The store is 6000 square feet of amazing artwork from all over the great state of Michigan. This is the first time I’ve ever gone retail and it is really exciting. And yes, I officially I have a reason to make new artwork other than to feed my soul, which hasn’t done much to feed the bank account.

I have a few new projects I’ve been working on that I will post soon. Everything has happened so quickly! I’ve been busy designing and ordering up new tags and stickers for my artwork at the store. Love Moo.com. They do a great job printing up my images onto little mini-cards (which will serve as my sale tags).

There is also another cool thing in the works that I will post soon.

Otherwise, I’ll be in the studio!

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By Jackie, November 15, 2010 8:09 pm

We had lovely autumn weather last week. So one of those days I decided to do a little batch of dye work with the MX. I broke out the supplies, three shades of blue and set up on the picnic table. Dressed in the grubby work clothes, rubber boots and bright orange kitchen gloves I set to work making my neighbors wonder what the heck I was doing.

The main point of the dye job was to see how well Plaid’s Simply Screen paint worked with fabric dye for Lynn’s Thermofax Screen Print Shop. Yup, it works great. I also was curious about dyeing some pieces that I had screen printed with watercolor crayons and matte medium or Golden Screen Print Medium.

Earlier this summer I acquired some used restaurant containers. They work great as dye buckets, a soda ash water container or whatever else you need. Here’s the batches of fabric and dye basking in the sun and the other is my little helper water logging the fabric before the dye was added.

Just keep life exciting, the microwave I use for dyeing blew a circuit in our garage. And it wasn’t just flip the breaker kind of fix, an entire outlet needed to be replaced.  I’m not allowed to use that microwave anymore.

The watercolor crayons and matte medium screen prints came out pretty cool. The mediums acted a bit like a resist. It made some otherwise boring pieces interesting again.

Here’s the watercolor crayons and Golden Screen Print Medium. Also just as interesting. This bird and tree image was pretty washed out before I dyed the fabric. This medium does leave a mark on the fabric, but it’s not as apparent as the matte medium.

And here’s the pieces from the thermofax screen prints and Simply Screen. No issues, works great.

So there you go! Break out the screens, mediums, crayons, paints, dyes and make some creative mayhem.

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By Jackie, October 31, 2010 8:56 am

For a few years now Lynn has mentioned that she had a Thermofax Machine to make screens for printing. I had heard of this thermal…thermo thing but I couldn’t conceptualize what the heck it was. I’m just one of the those people who needs to see and do something to understand it. So a few weekends ago I joined a few other people at the Northville Art House for a workshop on Thermofax Screen Printing taught by Lynn herself.

Well the whole process is fun and addicting. Except for maybe the cleanup, but when is any kind of clean up fun?  I did know enough about the process to bring along lots of darker, hand-dyed fabric to create cool prints with. We used Plaid Simply Screen to print the images.

This one came out pretty interesting. The fabric is a hand-dyed muslin with several colors used to make the swirly vine print. Metallics are cool.

This one was a screen made from a grave stone photo. I was trying to used colors close to what was in the fabric colors.

Here is a lovely hand-dyed fabric from my big project last summer. I used the elusive Birds on Wire screen that was in Lynn’s screen stash. She needs to find the digital file of this one to make more.  The print came out pretty cool. I like the repetitive look that matches the fabric. I think I’ll start stitching this one into a new piece.

This one is destined for the dye bucket. I’m testing out the Plaid Simply Screen paints for Lynn. See my guest blog on her blog for the first round of tests. Next will be with the MX Pro Dye (Procion). I’ve been known to microwave my fabric in the dye process. Stay tuned for that.

At the end of the three hour workshop I had a nice stash of revived fabrics for future projects and a new surface design skill to add to the resume. I should also mention that I’ve been designing screen images for Lynn’s Etsy shop. So go check those out when  you get a chance!

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By Jackie, October 13, 2010 1:23 pm

For a long time now I’ve been contemplating how to work my Catholic faith in to my artwork. Since I’ve spent a large amount of time over this past year digitizing and preserving the work of another artist who more times than not built great symbolism into her pieces, I’ve been thinking more and more about my own artwork.

Amongst the portfolios from West Winds Studio was a very raggedy collection of amazing drawings (some dated 1948-56) that were not drawn by Irene. In fact there was a note in there that the artist was ‘unknown’ and someone had given these drawings to her. Some who have seen the collection have suggested that it may be more than one artist. These images really got me thinking about so many things dealing with the human form, how society looks at the body (especially women), how (and what) my boys are going to learn about in a few short years and so on. So with permission from mom-in-law to use the drawings, I am working on a series combining the images with Church teaching.

With that I’ve begun to study Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOB). Not a light read.  I attended a talk a few months ago given by Vatican art historian, Liz Lev. It rocked. I felt like I was back in one the countless art history classes in college, only it was fun. She recommended that an artist have a good theologian to bounce ideas off of. So I asked our pastor Fr. John Riccardo to help me out and he happily agreed. He has also started a lecture series on the Theology of the Body that I have been attending monthly. His first suggestion for me was to change my approach. Get to know the material then see what jumps out at me and match an image to that. Yes, I was doing just the opposite and getting very overwhelmed. He also gave me a list of books to read that simplify TOB. So I have a growing pile of books that I am working my way through.

To keep the creative juices flowing through the study hours, I decided to use the remaining pages in my handmade journal to write down scripture passages, thoughts, scribbles and notes. Here’s one page I’ve started working on.

I do have one piece I’ve been working on that I’m trying to finish up. It’s called “Crucify the Flesh.”  The text is from Theology of the Body. The title idea came from reading Men and Women are from Eden by Mary Healy. Although the term itself comes from the Bible. Through temperance and purity of heart we find the freedom to discover who we truly are, as God made us to be.

I did an image transfer with silk screen medium and transparencies. It’s a slower process but I usually get less of a shine factor than when using matte medium. Then I used various pens and colored pencils to fill in the detail of the body. Lots of Golden paint later I colored the rest of the fabric with a lovely autumn oranges, reds and browns. There’s hand-dyed paper and cheese cloth on the sides, attached with stitching and glue.  I would have liked the text to be cleaner but at this point I’m accepting it as it is and moving on. Next one will probably have some thermofax screens for text application.

As for my sad, sad pace of blogging, all I can say is that I will try to do better now that I’ve gone public with this current project. But family, home and paying jobs have a tendency to take priority and always will.  Keep checking back and I’ll let you know my progress. I already have an idea for the next piece.

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By Jackie, September 20, 2010 1:06 pm

Last Wednesday I attended an “Art Lunch” at the Plymouth Community Arts Council. The speaker was Marilyn Prucka, a Michigan fiber artist from Monroe. She had some interesting and large pieces displayed. I was probably the only one peeking around back of the pieces to see how they hung. I liked all the surface treatment she incorporated into her pieces. I learned that potato dextrin cracks when it dries and makes a cool resist on fabric.  Also learned about ‘fabric etching’ for the first time.

The one piece I found the most interesting had these frayed out strips of fabric removed from the piece, exposing the dyed batting behind. She did that with Fiber Etch. Currently I’m only finding it at Dharma Trading. I’ll be ordering some up soon. I already have a piece forming in my head.

I’m pretty sure I was the youngest one in attendance. One of the women commented that this type of work was ‘revolutionary’ and that there should be some other name for it rather than quilt. And that nothing like it has been done before. I really wanted to stand up and point out that there was a thriving community of mixed media fiber artists right here! But Marilyn was quick to point out that this was not ‘revolutionary’ and there are many artists around creating art quilts. She also said one could easily curl up and go to sleep under one of her quilts as easily as one could under a traditional quilt.

It was a good talk and a yummy lunch. Marilyn reminded me of my own mom in respect that she went back to school several times to explore something she loved to do, as my mother has done several times as well. I’m never worried that’s to late to learn something. It may be more or less challenging at different times, but never to late.

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By Jackie, September 13, 2010 1:49 pm

Yup, summer is done and I am back to blogging. One kid back to school and I don’t need to play referee all day between the boys. My kids love each other but they are happy to spend time apart. Aside from that I got some new graphic design clients and have been working away on new jobs. Yippee! No really, I do mean yippee this time around. Money was needed and I actually enjoyed the new challenges.

So as a result we’ve been visiting the local Ikea and updating our digs. Now Ikea isn’t my ideal furniture but I’ve realized that their stuff is a: affordable, and b: fits our little house really well. The boys got a bunk bed,storage and book shelves. This is the Mydal in pieces, a lot of pieces that weigh a lot when packed in a cardboard box.

Here’s the Mydal and Trofast storage bolted the bed (to limit tip-ability). Still working out the bedroom layout and have many toys to purge, but this was a big first step.

Then we move to the living room. We donated a few chairs to the Salvation Army, talked the sibling with a new house into taking the tv and old shelves. Tried to get someone in the family to take the 100 year old upright grand (family heirloom) but no go on that. So it got pushed into a corner for the time being. Setup a lot of Ikea Billy shelves with extensions, added a few new chairs and Bam! almost new living room! Here’s the biggest part:

I’m still setting up the shelves. I have nic-naks stashed all over the house and I’m finally able to display them. There will be more doors and lighting added soon. Next is curtains (I’m not good with those) and new tile for our entry way. Victor got bitten by the home improvement bug and I am a happy girl!

Victor’s sister and husband bought a farm last month, literally. It came with a fully stocked barnyard. So we’ve been visiting ‘The Farm’ frequently these last few weeks. Here’ one of two pot belly pigs, Digger… I think is the name.

There’s also a few miniature goats, ducks, a goose, chickens, a one legged guinea hen, and two turkeys. The place is never short on work or entertainment.

I have been working on art as well, but I’m not ready to share. I have a very cool piece in progress right now and hope to have it done soon.

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By Jackie, August 6, 2010 3:47 pm

In the last two days I’ve managed to photograph a whole lot of pieces from several large portfolios and sketch books. Still have many more to go. I converted my work space into mini photo studio. More on that later. But for now here’s a quick glimpse at one of my favorite pieces.

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By Jackie, August 3, 2010 6:56 pm

Still working on digitizing and archiving three very large portfolios from the WestWind Studios. So I’ve been doing lots of research on photographing sketches and stumbled across this one.

One of the best how-to’s I’ve seen for how to photograph artwork. Not to mention it made me feel like I was back in photography class in college.  Now if I could just find that much open wall space in my house.

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By Jackie, August 3, 2010 6:56 pm

The summer projects have revolved largely around kid friendly fun. We made plushies based of templates from this book. It came with an envelope in the back that contained templates for the creatures featured in the book. Couple that with lots of soft fuzzy fabrics in my stash and we created Blockhead and Wally Whale.

For another art adventure we broke out the Setacolor paints and fabric for some sun painting. It was good, sloppy, messy fun… outside . First we painted, then we let the sun do it’s thing. The dog was very interested in all of this. I also managed to sun paint a perfect square on the grass. That part wasn’t planned. I’ll aim for the driveway next time. We also finished the project with lots of painted fingers. So I had the kids wash with Reduran and the texture freaked them out a bit, it was kind of funny.

After the sun painting was done I was left with a little bit of paint left over. So I stuck several used dryer sheets into the containers and soaked up the leftovers. Here they are drying on the fence.

Then a few days later I did some screen prints of grape leaves and tried it on some dryer sheets. Came out pretty interesting. The images print on the sheets and the fabric. I found that the sheet could easily be removed for twice the printed images or you can leave the sheets to dry on the fabric and they will be very stuck. Also did one regular print. I used the Golden Silk Screen Gel and Neocolor Crayons for these.

There were a few weeks of very exciting weather around here. Lots of thunder and wind to keep everyone on their toes. But after one afternoon of rather harsh weather we were left with a lovely rainbow. I don’t recall ever seeing one with such vibrant colors.