Anni Albers @ Tate Modern

Sadly, it is unlikely that I will be able to visit the current exhibition of Anni Albers at Tate Modern, which ends January 27, 2019. The show has received rave reviews from The Guardian and The New York Times.

But visitors to the Tate Modern site can learn about Albers' life and career, and get a sense of the powerful visual and tactile impact of her weaving.

Scroll to the bottom of the Tate site and more resources appear, like the reflections of Sheila Hicks on Albers' oeuvre, or even Seven Life Hacks from Anni Albers.

Enjoy!

Art Quilt Quarterly

Delighted to have a piece included in the latest issue of Art Quilt Quarterly. This journal is produced by SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) and is aimed at collectors of art quilts, museum curators, and professional art quilters.

Haut-de-Cagnes, 2016, 11" x 9"
hand-dyed and hand-painted cotton, machine-stitched 

You can find out more about this publication here.

New Project Underway, Part 1

Our Text'art group of fibre artists has undertaken a project in association with the Maude Abbott Medical Museum at McGill University. (I blogged about this last month.) Due in seven weeks, I am happy to say that my contribution is well underway.

As it's not yet complete, I thought I would share some of the products and processes involved in my piece, which is inspired by the surgical instruments in the museum's collection.

One of the first things I did was to collect an assortment of hand-dyed linen and cotton from my stash. I looked for subtle colours without a lot of chroma, in keeping with the antique quality of the artifacts in the museum. Originally I considered this to be a complementary scheme of gold and blue, but there is a touch of red in there too, so it might be better described as a dulled-down mix of the primaries (yellow, blue and red). Or you could just say it is a mix of warm and cool hues, including neutrals.

Lauma, one of the Text'art group, contributed some aged linen that added the perfect hint of antiquity.

A small patch of texture was created by stitching scrim to a background of hand-dyed cotton. 

One of the elements in my composition is made of layered synthetic tulle and synthetic organza on top of hand-dyed cotton, with a stitched motif of "pebbles". It was then distressed with a heat gun. The photos below show how the upper layers have been burnt away, creating a very "organic" texture.

trying out the heat gun on tulle (above) and organza (below)

A sample, made by layering organza and tulle on top of cotton,
stitching, and then applying heat to burn away the synthetic fabric

Now, why would I have two heat guns, you might ask.
One of them is stronger, the other more moderate. I think.

Artist Transfer Paper was an effective way to incorporate photo images into the project. It's also a useful method of adding text to a composition.

I've had this product tucked away for several years.
always being careful to seal it tightly after use.

an example of image transfer, applied to mottled, hand-dyed cotton.

Light Steam-a-Seam 2 allowed me to "fuse" cut-out cloth shapes onto a cotton or linen background, later to be machine-stitched into place.

The seed-like shapes have been fused onto a background of hand-dyed cotton.
The photo shows some of the threads and beads I am "auditioning"
to add detail to this element.

And finally, when the project is completed, I will add a coat of Fabric Shield, which protects the textiles from dust and from fading due to sunlight exposure.

Hope to share more glimpses of the work in progress soon.

Mirka Knaster on Playfulness

For several years I have subscribed to the blog of Mirka Knaster, a textile artist with a decades-long career as a writer. This month, she posts a thoughtful piece on the value of play, and its role in creativity.

Paul Klee, Castle and Sun

As always, Knaster draws on a wide range of sources to explore her subject, this time referencing artists Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Richard Diebenkorn as well as Dale Carnegie, Jean Piaget and other psychologists. She reflects on a recent exhibition staged at SF MOMA and on her own experience of rust-dyeing.

Knaster ends her posts with thought-provoking questions and invites responses from her readers.

Couldn't we all use a little more playfulness in our lives?

Stewart Hall Rental Collection 2017

Once again, I am delighted to have work accepted into the juried show for the Stewart Hall Rental Collection in Pointe-Claire.

Competition is always fierce, and typically there are over 500 entries from all over the region for the 130-or-so acceptances. This year I took a chance and entered three small acrylic collage pieces, rather than work in cloth.

One of them was accepted. And it has already been purchased. Every year the Gallery buys a single work and then awards it to someone randomly chosen from all those who purchase a piece of art during the show. This year the winner will go home with Touchstone #1.

Touchstone #1

The idea behind the Stewart Hall Rental Collection is that a wide range of work (different sizes, different media, different subjects, different colours, different price points) is accepted for the show at the beautiful Stewart Hall Gallery. When the show closes in late November, all the works become available for sale or rental, for one year. Last year I was lucky enough to sell a large cityscape in fibre.

Come and see what it's all about!

October 29 - November 27, 2016

Monday - Sunday 1 - 5 pm; Wednesday 1 - 9 pm

vernissage: Sunday, October 30, 2 pm

176 Lakeshore Road, Pointe Claire QC

514-630-1254

In Print! x 3

Just delighted to have my work featured in three magazines this season.

An art quilt that I made specifically for SAQA's "Tranquility" call for entry was accepted to the show and also chosen as part of a two-page spread in the SAQA Journal, Volume 26 No. 3. I was pleased to be accepted as it was the first time I had entered an all-member SAQA show. I participated in a regional show a few years ago, "Synthesis 2".

Page 2 of 2-page spread on "Tranquility" show, SAQA Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) is an American-based international group that promotes the medium and supports artists who work with fibre. Among their many initiatives, they regularly organize thematic exhibitions that travel worldwide to be shown in museums and at quilt shows. "Tranquility" will open at the upcoming International Quilt Festival in Houston, the IQF in Chicago (April 2017) and will likely be shown at other venues over the next couple of years.

The current October/November issue of Quilting Arts magazine also features an 8-page sampling from the "Tranquility" show, devoting a full page to my "Come Sit with Me, Patrick Caulfield". My artist statement reads,

"Patrick Caulfield (1936 - 2005) was a British artist known for his paintings of interiors, with their strong black lines and flat colours. This is my invitation to him, to join me in my cozy reading corner and have a cup of tea."

Page 4 of an 8-page spread in Quilting Arts magazine (Oct-Nov 2016) is given over to my work!

Even more exciting is the upcoming edition of Stampington's Art Quilting Studio, which will showcase ten of my cityscapes and include a beautifully-written article by Ricë Freeman-Zachary, based on her interview with me in August. I will post more details as they become available.

Through Our Hands, edition #7

The latest free issue of Through Our Hands magazine is now available to read on-line, with ninety pages of beautiful full-colour illustrations, information and inspiration. A pdf version is available for a small charge, for those who prefer to read off-line.

British-based, this publication profiles more than a dozen textile artists, including Canadians Kate Bridger and Sandra Meech. I especially enjoyed learning about the graphic work of Marilyn Carter, the paper quilts of Maggie Paykel, and the unique vision of Luke Haynes.

Through Our Hands, issue #6, now available on-line

For 76 pages of inspiring and innovative work with fibre, have a look at the latest issue of Through Our Hands, the British-based on-line journal of contemporary work in textiles.  Included are artist profiles, reviews of museum exhibits, and close to 100 images to delight and intrigue.

Through Our Hands, Issue #5

In the past, I have posted links to the British magazine Through Our Hands, which showcases contemporary stitched textiles, print, painting and mixed media.

While the first four issues were available free on-line, the magazine has developed to the point that the latest issue is being sold for a very reasonable £3, or roughly $6 Canadian.

The cover of the current issue shows one of the sensitive renderings in embroidery by Jenni Dutton, who lovingly documented her mother's decline in a series of stitched portraits, in the account "Jenni Dutton: The Dementia Darnings".

I enjoyed the profiles of artists Sue Stone, Margaret Ramsay, Mary Beth Schwartzenberger and Sandra Meech. The issue is loaded with high-quality colour images and includes informative ads.

You can access a free sampling of the magazine's contents here or purchase the 68-page download here.

A visit to a corporate art collection

For the second session of the Séminarts program in which I have enrolled, we were taken to visit the prestigious Montreal law firm of Fasken Martineau.

The company occupies eight floors of the Tour de la Bourse building on Victoria Square. Most of our tour happened on the 37th floor, designed as "clientele space", and offering the larger walls and more open spaces that show off larger works to their best advantage.

One of the best aspects of the tour, held in the evening, was seeing the city spread out at our feet in all directions.

The group met in the boardroom, where we were welcomed by Maurice Forget, a partner in the firm who has directed its corporate art collection for some 33 years. Forget is a major player on Montreal's art scene and a Member of the Order of Canada. He has donated 400 pieces of his contemporary art to the museum in Joliette.

M. Forget began by outlining the benefits of having a contemporary art collection: to provide an attractive premises for clients and a stimulating environment for employees, and to enhance the company's image as being "forward-moving".

Investment is not a motivator, as none of the purchases have been sold, so no profit has been realized.

A budget of $25,000 or less has been set aside every year for about 33 years, and this has allowed for a steady acquisition of almost 500 works.

Ninety percent of the art acquired is Canadian, and of that, 80% is from Quebec. Twenty percent is by women artists.

7 jours dans la ville, Thomas Corriveau

Forget, who has free rein over the collection, chooses most of the art from galleries, but frequents student shows, charity sales and non-profit fundraisers as well.

Nudes and controversial imagery are avoided.

None of the work belonging to the corporation hangs in private offices, and this is an incentive for the lawyers to buy their own work.

Forget is a big fan of works on paper, and smaller works, but those pieces are displayed in the more intimate spaces of the "working floors", where they can be better appreciated.

Terre Crue, 1 & 2, Claude Tousignant

One of the more unusual stories of acquisition relates to this diptych by Claude Tousignant, one of Quebec's best known contemporary artists.

When Tousignant had a fire in his studio, he required legal services and used his paintings as payment. What was originally valued at $10,000 is now worth $125,000.

Forget is pleased with the ways Fasken Martineau's profile has been enhanced by its involvement in the arts. Besides doing pro bono work for art groups, the firm sponsors exhibitions at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art (like the current Orientalism show), and supports artists by buying their work.

Ligne d'horizon, Eugenie Schinkle

A successor to Forget is being groomed to take on the curatorship of the collection in the future. Yusef, a young lawyer, is also the publisher of a Montreal quarterly art magazine, Artelo.

The law firm plans to move to another location in a few years, and architectural plans will have to accommodate the large collection.

An initiative is underway to put the entire collection on-line, once releases have been obtained from all the artists and their estates.

detail, Ligne d'horizon, Eugenie Schinkle,
Ektachrome colour proofs on wood

Says Forget:

"When I started collecting, the distinction between abstract and figurative works was all people talked about. Today, this distinction no longer really applies, as many painters of today are figurative and there are fewer abstract painters....

"There is new interest in landscapes. Now everyone is buying photographs. No one was interested in public arts. Now they are all over the place."

The Quilt Show, free on-line

To celebrate International Quilting Weekend, March 20 - 22, 2015, The Quilt Show will be available for free. This on-line show is hosted by Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, and features some of the quilting world's leading artists. Over 200 episodes will be available for your viewing pleasure. As well, prizes valued at $5000 will be given away.

To learn more, please click here.

Séminarts at the Musée

We are lucky here in Montreal to have available to us Canada's premier museum dedicated to contemporary art. Founded in 1964, the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal owns more than 8000 works, almost all from 1939 or later.

And I am lucky to have enrolled in Séminarts, the Museum's program of five biweekly sessions designed to educate the general public about contemporary art.

There are twenty of us in our mixed group, and we are the twentieth group to go through this program, which is offered in both French and English. Véronique Lefebvre, the coordinator of the program, greeted us on our arrival to Session 1, and guided us through two of the museum's current shows.  That evening, we met John Zeppetelli, chief curator and director of the museum. Relatively new to the job, John is quick to identify himself as being from one of Quebec's "cultural communities", and looks forward to forging more links between the museum and its counterparts around the world.

I'm looking forward to the next four sessions. In session 2, we will meet with Mr. Maurice Forget of the distinguished law firm, Fasken Martineau. Mr. Forget will lead us on a tour of the firm's corporate collection, and will explain to us how the works in the collection have been acquired, how they are maintained, who decides on the acquisitions, and the role of the collection in the corporation's identity.

Later sessions this spring will include visits to the studio of painter Janet Werner, to the Parisian Laundry art gallery (which represents Werner), and finally to the home of a private collector. We have been given a small handbook which outlines the topics to be discussed at each of our meetings and provides a few supplementary readings.

I will report on the highlights of this experience, so please check back!

Snow Dyeing: The Saga

Last week our text'art group met to try our hands at snow dyeing. Materials required were dye solutions (1 - 3 teaspoons of dye per cup of water) mixed in a squirt bottle. Equipment included plastic trays, screening material, and clips or clothespegs to secure the screens to the trays. Also: snow! Before starting the activity, I read the instructions on the Pro Chem Dye website.

Here you can see Dianne preparing the fabric by pre-soaking it in a soda ash solution, 5 tbs soda ash to 8 cups of hot water. The cloth is wrung out and crumpled artfully on the screening, positioned above the tray. (Leftover soda ash solution may be saved and stored indefinitely.)

Above, Colleen builds up a 3-inch mound of snow on top of the cotton ...

... and drizzles dye solution generously on top of the snow.

Michele also arranged some prepared cotton underneath the screening, to catch any surplus dye solution.

The idea is to allow the snow to melt slowly, causing a random application of the various dyes over a long period of time, and allowing blended-pigment dyes to split into their components to produce serendipitous results. Eventually the trays were moved inside to promote the melting.

The results? Distinctly underwhelming.

For the piece above, I used four pure colours: strong orange, fuchsia, mixing red and boysenberry. Very little orange or boysenberry appeared. 

Bleh!

For these two, I used mixed-pigment dyes (pearl grey, safari grey, stormy grey, and blue violet.) The one on the bottom of the tray (below) was even more boring.

Ewww!

Not one to waste perfectly good PFD cotton, I ripped each of the three one-meter pieces in half and went back at it, using leftover dye solution. 

What was originally done with boysenberry / fuchsia / mixing red / strong orange was divided in two, with one half getting a generous dose of strong orange, and the other a good dousing of boysenberry. Much better results, shown below.

extra "strong orange" applied

extra boysenberry applied

One of the smaller bits done in greys was topped up with more blue-violet and black. 

Another with more of the greys plus nickel.

Another with all the leftover greys, which could make an interesting sky.

And finally some leftover chartreuse and the remaining blue-violet on this one.

first stage: three greys and blue-violet
second stage: chartreuse and more blue-violet

I'm happy with these and will definitely be using them in my work. 

Takeaway: don't approach snow dyeing with a light hand. Use more dye than you think you need and opt for mixed-pigment dyes to produce happy accidents. Consider using complementary colours rather than analogous for maximum impact.

Adventures in Dyeing

I've been having lots of fun mucking about with dyes. Below is a range that I achieved by using Strong Orange and Deep Navy. I chose these colours because Anne Johnston, in her Color By Accident, recommended them for producing interesting neutrals.

Strong Orange with increasing amounts of Deep Navy

Knowing that the navy would readily overwhelm the orange, as dark colours do, I began with a mix of 17 parts orange and 1 part navy, producing a warm brown. Gradually, I upped the proportion of navy to the point that I was using equal parts of orange and navy, which produced a dark charcoal.

With a weaker concentration of dye, the warm brown would translate into a sand beige, and the charcoal would become a neutral grey.

I learned from Anne Johnston that all commercially available dyes are either pure pigments, or a blend of pure pigments. She recommends that dyers acquire these 14 pure pigments and become familiar with the way they behave. So I chose pure pigments for this trial. Another time I might try the same experiment with Strong Orange and Mixing Blue.

Diane Franklin's Dyeing Alchemy referred me to a page on the Jacquard website, which gives recipes that use 11 basic pigments to create 71 mixed colours. I was immediately drawn to the recipe for chartreuse, which I have always found to be an interesting colour.  The Jacquard chart recommends 64 parts Lemon Yellow mixed with 1 part Medium Blue.  Isn't it surprising how such a tiny amount of dark dye can change the character of a light colour? (Jacquard's Lemon Yellow is the equivalent of Pro-Chem Sun Yellow and their Medium Blue matches Pro-Chem's Basic Blue.)

I found the result was a little "brighter" and "happier" than I wanted, so I tried again, substituting black dye for the Basic Blue, which gave a more "interesting" mix. You can see the two results below.

chartreuse, 64 g Sun Yellow : 1 g Basic Blue (on left) and
50 g Sun Yellow : 1 g Black (on right)

Finally, I was interested in the recipe for Periwinkle. I grew to love this colour as the result of one of our 12 by the dozen challenges. Jacquard recommends a mix of 9 parts Navy / 4 parts Fuchsia / 4 parts Cobalt Blue, one of the few recipes requiring three pure pigments. This translates to 9 parts Deep Navy / 4 parts Fuchsia / 4 parts Mixing Blue, using the Pro-Chem names.

value gradation of periwinkle

I made a gradation of values using this mix, producing some colours that I'm sure I will use in my work. The photo has washed out the colour of the lighter end of the range, so you will have to trust me on this: they are lovely. The starting solution was mixed to 6% depth of shade, which was too dark, and next time I would begin with a depth of shade set at 2 or 3%.

Colour Inspiration and Hand-dyeing

Andy Warhol & Keith Haring

I have visited a number of art shows recently that have provided inspiration for colour in my own work.

One of them, Warhol Mania, runs until March 15, 2015 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and focuses on Warhol's posters and illustration work. Look at his use of luscious colour in these pieces.

He seemed to favour a palette of warm colours (orange, red, violet) with accents of cooler blues and greens, though of course with Warhol there were no rules.

Now, look at this striking portrait of Helena Rubenstein, by René Bouché. It was one of many portraits in the (superb) current show devoted to the grande dame, at New York's Jewish Museum.

Portrait of Helena Rubenstein,
by René Bouché

When analyzing a painting's colour scheme, it's important to note not only the proportion of each colour, but also the blacks and whites that we don't really notice at first.

With a deep blanket of snow on the ground, I have been spending time in my studio, dyeing cotton in the hot colours inspired by these works.

I have been using a new guide to dyeing published by Diane Franklin, Dyeing Alchemy: A Primer about Procion MX Dyeing. It consists of a manual with almost 100 pages of general information, and a downloadable, interactive spreadsheet. Basic to her approach is the weighing of fabric and dye, and having on hand pre-mixed quantities of urea solution, dye solution, salt solution and soda ash solution. Before beginning, I had to go to a kitchen supply store to pick up an electronic scale.

The spreadsheet allows the user to enter the weight of the cotton to be dyed and the intensity of the desired colour, and then gives precise quantities of the various stocks to be used. Though Franklin purports to "take out the math" for the hand dyer, her method is less casual than the usual "one tablespoon of this, two cups of that" approach. Quantities are more likely to be down to the single gram and millilitre, 367 ml, for example. The result is less serendipitous, with less waste.

My results so far have been strong and vibrant, with more subtle mottling than with other methods. This may have something to do with the relatively large quantities of salt Franklin recommends, and the urea required for the dye stock. Or maybe it's that I have been using pure pigments rather than blends. I'm not using any more agitation or liquid than I have with past methods.

Shown here is a range of tangerine to fuchsia to "mixing red". Keep in mind that it is sometimes difficult to capture reds in a photo.

I am looking forward to using some of these gorgeous colours in my new work. I'm also enjoying the dyeing so much that I might just see what else I can add to my working palette before putting away the dye pots.