Lee Thomson

So Velma Bolyard has a blog and she posts pictures of things she is working on like contact printing on paper and book binding, and she posts pictures of what her life looks like. Part of her life is this barn, which she photographs so lyrically that I felt compelled to do something with her photos. This is the second of my efforts. Below is my third, which is the same image as the first one I did except I have lost the first one somewhere in my room. This probably means it is time for a more thorough cleaning than I have accomplished for a while.

The hook and the weathering were speaking to me!

I finished stitching around the last of the two large circles – the fabric pieces are 12×12″ on these. This one is the darkest background, with one of my favorite threads on it, the Sulky cotton blendables. You can see the range of purples and blues in the stitching. The second one done is on silk, which takes the fabric paint very differently. The results tend to be lighter as well as brighter and shinier, so I set that off with a fine light purple rayon thread.

I have started looking hard at the next set of photos I want to work from. My friend Velma, who was also my teacher for the class in contact printing in Maine last month, has been taking pictures of her tumble-down barn for a while now, and I find so many of them to be SO compelling! I think I might start with one that looks like summer, but she has a couple of winter ones too. I have promised her a picture in return for her inspiration, so I have to make one extra…

Over the last several days I have been working on a lot of circles. This mosaic shows the last twelve I finished. I spent a while last night trying to figure out how to mount or frame them, so they could go on the wall in a more organized fashion. Right now I have one held up with double stick tape, but that is not a gallery-worthy answer.

The green backgrounds are 8×8″, the rest are 4×4″ – to explain the difference in stitch density.

New experiments with a different Japanese craft.

Kintsugi is

a general concept of highlighting or emphasizing imperfections, visualizing mends and seams as additive or an area to celebrate or focus on rather than as absence or missing pieces (from Wikipedia)

You guys are patient to put up with my fumbling – this is always a strange part of the process.

I started using smaller pieces of fabric, so the painted lines are bigger, and the insides of the circles smaller – I like the three mid-sized ones a lot. And then because I had scraps of fabric left over, I did three tiny ones. Just for fun!

I like the composition of these four together.

I think I might try a really fat brush on a larger piece of fabric and see how that feels.

still not there.

still working

The fabric I painted using Pebeo transparent paints. They are light reactive, and show the texture under the wet fabric as they dry. I painted these on the back porch, so the weather texture of the boards shows up as background. I used a green oil paintstick to draw the circle. The circle is insufficiently swishy, so the next step is to try some paint on a brush.

I do rather like the background. I can do more of that.

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.