Thursday, February 28, 2013

Encore: Boathouses #1

Boathouses #1

Today is the Big Reveal for my 12bythedozen blogging group and our quarterly challenge. Michele is the last of the group to set the theme, and she chose Encore, which can be interpreted in many ways.

I looked back over our twelve challenges and decided on one that could inspire an Encore. I settled on the theme I had originally suggested, Structures. For that piece I used copper squares, metal washers and heavy hand-stitching to make a kind of patchwork quilt of metal on black cotton. It weighs a ton!

Then had a look at the boathouse photos taken this past summer. I find the crooked buildings in their hodgepodge arrangement charming, and decided to give them the "Cityscapes" treatment. I've used low-immersion dyed cotton for the sky, and some arashi for the water below, with hand-dyes for the walls and roofs of the structures.

This piece has already been put to work, serving as a class sample for a course I'm teaching in March, at St. Lawrence College in Kingston. I hope it will be the first in a series on Boathouses.

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