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More gelatin printing – today with ferns, baling twine and bottle caps. This is a very forgiving medium.

via www.flickr.com

I've always had a thing for Queen Ann's Lace – here and yesterday I was experimenting with how to get nice prints of the details in the blossom. It is trickier than I thought.

via www.flickr.com

and also summer greens, and whites – and in our case also oranges and yellows, as in sails and hulls:

This was just before Alice and Emma paddled and swam the tiny (and moderately useless) kayak out to instigate an epic (epic I tell you) squirt gun battle that concluded with swamping the kayak, boarding the Laser, and a salvage tow for the wallowing and ultimately upside down kayak to shore.

Epic. And quintessential summer.

The thing about gelatin printing is that complex and layered pieces happen after 3 or 4 or 5 prints. For instance, to get to the above piece, I had already made these prints: 

• I started with green paint, covered the plate, and put down a leaf, then printed (that is not here – I have that for another project)
• I removed the leaf, leaving green paint that had been hidden, and printed (that is on this piece)
• I put down a piece of fern, and rolled ink over the whole, block, peeled off the fern and printed (that is the purple circle on this piece) 

And each time you can add something, or remove something, or mask something, or unmask something… It is a lovely process for experimenting.

In other news, Al is home from Ann Arbor and we are both home at the same time for the first time in nearly three weeks. It turns out, part of what I was homesick for was home-with-Al, so I am happier now.

my brain is full….

When my brain is buzzing, or tired, I prefer to doodle rather than do nothing. I can use the time at the machine to practice making patterns, or filling space, or connecting dots, and let my thoughts wander. That produces more abstract things than the landscapes I've been working on so steadily.

I am thinking maybe I need a short break from reality!

Here is July 9 (late because of a migraine)

and July 10, right on time:

(and this is the Gary Larson cartoon being referenced)

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I have nothing else useful to say! I am still pleased to be home.

Saturdays are not structured much. There was a movement to go to the dump and pick up interesting things that might spark art works – but I am forbidden to take things away from the dump because I live in a small house with other people in it. And my own stuff is insufficiently curated, so I should not be picking up what other people have determined they can live without. So instead I sat in my studio space and did…. nothing much. I really did recharge everything; phone, netbook, camera, ereader. I tried to call home, but it was hard to hear and be heard, so it didn't go on for long. 

Shortly before I left for Haystack I had a dream that I made white velvet jackets for beach stones, but then I had to put them back on the beach before I left. So I collected a handful of interesting beach stones (there aren't so many lovely smooth ones, which are the ones I was thinking of, so I've settled for ones wiht character and large crystals). That is the story behind the existing white velvet jackets on rocks. There has been some consternation that there are no sleeves on these jackets. I have pointed out that rocks do not, in fact, have arms, thus negating any reason for sleeves, but the sentiment persists that I should have sleeves. So last night I built a rock jacket with sleeves.

Ifind this very disturbing, and I am not at all sure about it, but it has provoked a good deal of amusement.

Today is hot, so I am thinking I might make a linen jacket for the next rock. Sleeveless.

There is nearly no internet, and no email, and sometimes one bar of cell service but generally none. I've snuck up here to post some pictures, which you should check out on Flickr – there's no way they'll post here! 

But! Today's circle was a perfect Haystack moment. I was working on my circle for today, having completed a couple of other pieces and made a velvet jacket for a beach stone (long story, I'll tell it when I come home) and just as I was thinking about how to finish the circle to hold all the tiny pieces of chopped up thread I had added, someone from the Print Studio offered to show us some beeeswax encaustic, and then I encausticed the circle, and it is beautiful and smells wonderful. 

you can only imagine!

Bucketing rain last night, and into this morning. What I did not realize, when I signed up for a room with no bathroom, was that I'd have to walk for it, in the middle of the night; outside, up two flights of stairs, in the dark, and last night in the rain. And yet, this is a pretty fabulous place. 

We were inside this morning, trying to draw our faces on mirrors. It turns out, if you look into a mirror, you can take a pen and trace your own features on the surface of the mirror. It also turns out that it is substantially easier if you shut one eye. Even then there are odd places where you swayed and failed to replace yourself perfectly. But the end results are interesting. I made one drawing using transfer pen, so I could iron the image onto fabric, and then stitch it. That was fun. 

The same idea can be used to look out a window and draw, on the window, the scene you see. That was the basis for the circle today. It was an image I drew onto the studio window using water soluble crayons. I pulled the print onto wetted fabric, and stitched it onto the circle.