Lee Thomson

Over the weekend I took myself off to Annapolis to partake in Okoume Festival 2017 at Chesapeake Light Craft World Headquarters.

I have been thinking about building a boat forever, basically, but I have doubts. I joked that if I could sew a boat, I’d start in a heartbeat… and I discovered that is a possibility! Stitch and glue kits for boats are made by several companies, and CLC had exactly what I wanted – easy to build, car-top or trailerable, rowing and sailing, holds four or five – all the things I required. Because I wanted to touch one before embarking on such a big project (I normally work on pieces 12″ square on the outside!) Alice and I went to look at boats.

We had a great weekend: Friday was driving and lunch and admiring the vessels on saw horses and trailers on land. Saturday was on the beach where all the examples of kyaks, dinghies, dorys, ocean rowing shells, prams and etc. were present and usable. Alice and I sailed and rowed and compared notes, and we think we have the  next project. Meet CLC Skerry, kit bought, to ship May 30, plus or minus.

I’ll keep you posted how things go. It will make for breaks between doses of artwork!

oxidation reaction 2
5×7″
center section indigo and rust dyed
ripped and stitched borders
stretched and framed
for sale: $85

I finished this one on Friday, and took a photo, and promptly lost the photo, lost the camera and lost the plot. So I’m back today with a little less entropy, and posting this new small piece, second in the oxidation series.

I am also working on a set of larger pieces – quite tall and thin. Everyone knows about the golden ratio, and the spiral that goes with it. It turns out there is also a silver ratio and a bronze ratio, described in several different ways in this wikipedia article. I had heard (endlessly) about the golden ratio and how it it is used in architecture and found in nature and every other thing, and when I looked it up I read that there are these other ratios as well. So I started sketching things using different proportions, and I like that long stretchy feel I have using them.

I am having trouble getting a decent photo of the long thing pieces, with wind and rain and general meteorology happening in our area, but once I can take it outside without it flying away like a kite, I’ll show you.

A small piece, 5×7″
center section indigo and rust dyed
ripped and stitched borders
stretched and framed
for sale: $85

Both of the colors on the central piece of fabric here are oxidation reactions – rust and indigo – when oxygen combines with another element to change the chemical composition, and also color. Rust forms on iron in the presence of oxygen and water. Indigo requires a reduced (oxygen poor) solution to dissolve. When something is dipped into an indigo vat and removed, you can watch the dye react with oxygen in the air, turning from yellow-green to deep blue (as close as I’ll ever get to alchemy, I think!).

While I am interested in the chemical processes in an abstract way, I am really smitten with the combination of blue and orange colors that show up on fabric. I have a spectacular collection of strange rusty things Alice has brought home for me, and I pile them on top of fabric, or wrap fabric around them, salt liberally, and leave out in the weather on the back porch. I check on them, intermittently, and bring in pieces when something interesting has happened.

Indigo is much easier right now. Instead of maintaining an indigo vat, and fretting over stability, smell and dye intensity, I have a packet of pre-reduced indigo crystals. Mix them in water, and I can dye any small thing blue, from lightest to darkest. It feels like cheating, a little, but it also feels like a much easier answer for the size and quantity of pieces I am working on.

Edges of, in this case, the land. Or possibly the edge of the ocean. It all depends on whether you are afloat or on land, and what you would prefer to avoid; grounding or wet feet.

This was based on NOAA chart 13302,and is clearly NOT to be used for navigation.

I was thinking about edges of things this week – where one object or way of thinking touches another. They can be easy to see from far away, but get less and less distinct the closer you get. Case in point: coastlines. The coast of Maine, depending on how you measure it, is relatively short, or infinitely long. The edge changes with the tides. (I won’t even mention that the tides change with the moon.) The land goes from distinctly not-ocean to distinctly submerged but passes through this interim, inter-tidal space where it could be either. Or possibly both.

found materials to make brushes
found inspiration for making new things from small pieces

The Brush Maker from ABC Open South East NSW on Vimeo.

also found:

a multitude of tiny periwinkle shells broken so I could see the twist
my mother, healthy and happy and anticipating moving closer to the ocean
the ongoing rust dyeing experiment on the back porch  producing something
the pre-reduced indigo is also encouraging exploration

I still kind of want a nap though.

I feel sometimes that I am just picking things up off the floor of my studio and finishing them. I had these three rivers from last year but they were not quite done somehow. I had some blue beads I’d made from colored porcelain and a friend had fired for me, and the yellow shells from the last several summers on Mohegan, but it took a while to settle on all those red buttons for the last one. And then they were clearly related, and also clearly done. I will frame them up as a trio in a single frame, and call it good.

I had two pieces accepted to the Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Ohio. That feels like huge compliment. I was looking at the classes offered, but couldn’t swing it financially.

Closer to home, I had another piece accepted into Catch and Release, a show at the Great Falls Discovery Center in Turner’s Falls, Massachusetts, just up-river from us in Northampton.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at other peoples’ work, looking for the things I find compelling. That is always interesting. I’ll show you my scribbled notes on that sometime!

I finished two new pieces and took them up to visit Lesley at Grow Gallery. They are both showing New England in early spring.

Sugarloaf south, spring

Last night I took a bunch of old work that could not be fixed or finished out into the back yard, and with a small amount of ceremony, burned it. I started a fire in the new fire pit (bought for the purpose, but clearly a very promising addition to the back yard) and waited for the first star to show, and then, piece by piece, said something nice about each thing, or what I’d learned, and set it on the fire. I had also acquired some packets of salts that color the flames, and I sprinkled those on the fire at the end, and invited the ghosts of old pieces to visit me now, when I have better skills and can do better by them. Alice roasted a couple of very stale marshmallows, and we waited for the International Space Station to go overhead, and then we doused the fire and were done.

I am temporarily obsessed with fish. A different piece I finished looks like this:

Resin fish, paint, and a lot of stitching. Can you find the stitched fish? Contra-fish….

For today I have for you three tiny journal pages, made triangular, and some philosophy.

In my own defense, I am tired and punch-drunk, but here are triangles for March 19, 20 and 21. I missed completely March 16-18 because the high school musical was happening, and that takes all of my attention until we strike the set and put it to bed. The following day I spent sleeping (three pillows and many Zs) and then contracted Alice’s vicious stomach bug which laid me out such that knitting was all I was capable of, followed by today’s three triangles to catch up.

I am feeling apologetic because I have not been as diligent about these daily projects as I was for previous daily projects, and I attempted to spend some time today thinking about it. Sadly I have no (useful) conclusions, just sweary notes to myself about dedication and persistence and doing what I say I will.

The first time I started a daily project, I had two children in school, coming home daily, and very little time to myself. The studio time I could carve out of my regular life was precious, and I made a point of standing in my room every day for a half hour at least. The postcards I made were a direct result of that. Through the postcard project I honed my skills, explored materials and techniques, and found some ideas I mined for the next several years. I also learned how to be efficient in the studio.

The next time I started a daily project it was across a year that had one child starting college and the other starting high school, as well as me starting a larger commitment to the high school theater program than I had before. I had more uninterrupted time in my studio, and the circles became more like a period at the end of each day – something I’d seen or thought of or was in some fashion related to the time and the theme of the month. I made a point of giving the circles away – call it karma, call it advertising – and that practice made me more widely known, and opened several doors for me.

This year I have one child mostly independent, living and working in Boston, and one at college. The house is empty, but not all the time – I joke about having 1/7 of one child and 3/7 of the other – and I have no set schedule or requirements. I am attempting to locate my practice in something besides opposition to other people’s time constraints, and it is harder than I thought.

I guess the thing I am taking away from all this introspection is that I should carry on, to the best of my ability and patience, making a daily triangle, and something will have changed at the end.

In the mean time, thank you for your patience while I think out loud, on the internet.

attached please find an experiment I am undertaking with Instagram. I have not yet wrestled it into submission.

I did bring home the memory of the blues and greens of Miami Beach and they are currently imbedded in this month’s triangles. Also I am interested in what I can attach to the triangles, for instance, thin pieces of wood, shells, cork… I have a lot of things I was interested in sewing onto other things.

More hand stitched triangles, showing off some of the fabric I have printed recently using a gelatin plate (more on that in a minute) and some of the silks I succumbed to in Belfast, ME. Belfast has an amazing and wonderful little art and fabric store, right in the middle of town. My good mother was singing its praises, and I failed to believe her until Kate and I stepped inside. And then it was kind of hard to breathe because there were so many amazing things to see. I cannot do it justice. Go visit Fiddlehead Artisan Supply and be delighted.

I signed up for a class with Linda Germain to learn more and better ways to print on fabric using a gelatin plate. It is made from Knox unflavored gelatin and glycerine. The result is tough, rubbery and fun to mess with. The class has been fun, and I have learned some elegant techniques to get quite detailed prints from leaves and other natural things, as well as learned in the abstract about layering color. I still have a lot of learning to go on that topic! But it did mean I got some new inks for printing on fabric. After using them cautiously for a couple rounds of experimenting, I decided to give myself a gold star for each jar I used up, and if I use them all up, I WIN! I am not sure what I win, but I will have made more things and learned more things than if I’d spent time conserving paint or fabric.

And finally, I marched on Saturday along with, apparently, between 3 and 4 million others. My family and I stayed local, expecting a couple hundred people and ten minutes of speeches. What we wound in the middle of was 2500 people, celebrating solidarity, feminism, parenthood and the sunshine. I was so glad I went, and so glad so many others turned out. I will leave you with this short video of us as we go under the truck-eating bridge into the middle of town.