After cutting the circles out of the patchy overlay for the previous piece, I had these patchy circles, and still, ideas are keep bubbling along about how I want this to look. So this is a another thing. It is not yet what I had in mind, but it is interesting.
There is a Zen practice called Enso, that is drawing circles.
They are simple. Expressive.
Even after making a year of circles (possibly because of it) a circle is a soothing shape for me. And the rest of life is sufficiently exciting right now, soothing is just fine.
There is a very brief moment in New England where the snow melts, the ground melts as well, but slower, and the earth is covered with water; running down hillsides, filling and over-filling rivers and ponds, spreading into glinting puddles in fields before they can be tilled.
Before the water can completely consume the landscape, the ground melts, and the surface water sinks in to be ground water, or flows down the tilted landscape to the ocean. At the moment the water begins to disappear, the green begins. Trees standing with their roots still covered by water start pushing the first sprightly bits of color. The first green is so intoxicating – these absurd flashes of chartreuse and brilliant reds at the very tips of the branches.
I thought I needed more brown fabrics, but in fact, what I needed was to organize and dig through the fabrics I actually own. I found this array of browns and tans, some with gold – I was particularly hoping for brown with gold so it was gratifying to find these pieces.
Then I finished getting the colors down for the spring river piece, and starting stitching on the fields. The outrageous thunderstorm last night prompted an outburst of blossoms and baby leaves all over the trees, so I need to get moving on this to catch the part of spring I am thinking about.
This past weekend I ran away from home. I did not answer my phone or stay with family or friends, I just went away. It was lovely!
What took me to Portland was a class by an online friend, Velma Bolyard. I’ve been following her blog since I started mine in 2007, and we’ve emailed privately and sent actual objects back and forth. I leapt at the chance to see her in person, and to see what she had to say about contact printing using foraged materials and metals.
The class was held at the Southern Maine University Portland campus, in a beautiful new building. It was organized by someone with extensive background in book arts and paper who also possessed a sturdy capacity to organize. The day went beautifully.
Contact printing is far simpler than I expected. The process consists entirely of three steps: collect, arrange and cook. Foraging is used loosely to indicate it does not matter where you find the material. I pulled leaves off trees, ferns out from under my house and fungus from a neighbor’s log. One woman brought all her old spices and dried food, several people brought seaweed and other local flora. And THEN we all traded around.
Placing the material on the paper was not so hard as folding the paper to keep all the bits inside. Once the paper was folded around the plant material, it was clipped onto pieces of flat metal. The combination of metal (mostly iron and copper, in the form of can lids and pipes but also a big handful of pennies) and plants would color the paper in all kinds of unexpected and interesting ways. One of the most coveted metal pieces was a flattened box grater – all the holes made compelling patterns on the paper. My best find was a bottle-cap that had been in a parking lot over the winter. It made a great little corrugated circle on one side and a rusty blob on the other.
From there, you just boil it for a while. You could steam it too. But really – an hour or so, and we fished out the wrapped bundles of paper and unwrapped them and found these beautiful colors and shapes. If control matters to you, and you want a particular outcome, this might not be so gratifying. If you are willing to explore the garden, freezer and grocery store with an open mind, there is some good fun to be had!
I just finished the second tree. I will post a trip report soon.
The short story is Portland! Velma! Contact printing – on paper!!! but it is worth fleshing out a little.
This tree is well ahead of the actual trees outside my window. We have not even reached the brilliant green haze part of spring, where the trees bloom and pollen is everywhere and tiny tiny leaves start over all the deciduous trees. It will happen. Eventually.
I have packed materials and foraged greenery for a class in printing from wild things. When I’ve printed from nature before I have used paint and made prints. In this class we will learn about what things already have pigment that can be set set using scraps of metal (found along with the foraged greenery I assume). I will report back! With Pictures!
This is not quite done yet – it needs either leaves or blossoms scattered across it, and stitched down in a way that will let them floof (that’s a technical term) out away from the flat surface.
I realized when I’d made the second one that they looked like Truffula trees, from the Dr Seuss book The Lorax. Well, sort of.
The moral of my story is that it has taken me a while to focus on the next big piece, but I was obsessed with these today, and worked on them more or less all day, and it was fun. So I am glad I temporarily put the more serious piece aside, and I swear I will work on it next, but I think I needed to goof around a little!
Lee Thomson 