Feb 6
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Backstory: When I first moved back here, I started taking art classes downtown because I could WALK to them after spending 8 years in a very very very small town. (Classes were at the late, lamented Guild Studio School when it was over the art supply store, in ratty, cramped quarters but with style and verve.) The teachers were great, the selection was great, I had a lot of fun, and made and did some very cool things.

My favorite teacher was Maura, who taught Surface Design. She had a 4 or 5 week class that covered dyeing, painting, marbling and discharge. Among the things I learned from her were that sometimes more is better, and to seek inspiration in the kitchen. Maura had a collection of potato mashers. An extravagant, fabulous collection of potato mashers. She brought them all to class for us to experiment with when we were printing, encouraging us to use them without fear, hence "fear not the potato masher". I decided it was so cool I had to have some too. So my mother (hi Mom!) colluded with me to locate a series of antique potato mashers, and my younger daughter Little A helps me keep track of new potato masher designs in the local supermarkets, and I am looking forward to the potato masher designs in England this summer.

I have used them for printing and batik – the source of the brilliant fabric for yesterday’s card (all me own work, as they say) and the green impression is a rubbing of the same one, this one photographed today, done with Pentel dye sticks.

I think I have enough ideas for a whole week of embracing the potato mashers. I’ll let you see some of the other ones too. I think this one is my favorite. Until I start looking at the other ones. There is one that looks like fishbones, and one with great stacked chevrons on it, and one that is almost flowery. Stay tuned.

On a slightly different topic, Poppalina is working on a drawing a day, actually a design for fabric work. She is part of a group called The Creative Act out of NYU.   Each person commits to one creative act per day, one theme per week, for four weeks.  I am finding many peole doing this kind of steady production of things. There are entire lists of photo a day and painting a day people. I’ve read about quilt a day, tiny book a day, Artist Trading Card a day, you name it. I don’t know what possessed me to accomplish a postcard a day NOW!! It seemed like time to make things, instead of staring into my room and sighing, and going to do something else.  

And the last thing today is to admire friend Kate’s studious use of her stash. We walked into Webs this morning, and walked out with just enough sock yarn for two pairs of  socks. I have two Fiberarts magazines, one with a piece on growing as an artist which seemed like it might be important, and one with a section on the figure in fiber, one of my favorite things to make that I am horrendously out of practice with. Oh, and just enough deeply discounted silk/merino for a pair of socks for myself. The most astonishing colors! Pink! Red! Orange! they shine! they make me so happy…