In The Studio: Hecate Shroud

I feel quite a bit like a lady spider these days--spinning, winding and pulling thread. My Dream Time piece for Fibers is slowly growing tendril by tendril. Earlier in the week I dyed the cheese cloth I will be using to create a series of fleshy, petal–like additions for the existing coils which will eventually make a bed or nest structure for the entire piece to rest in. The dye was a combination of day old coffee, soy sauce and corn starch. (It smells as good as it sounds.) I wanted to achieve a very mottled, organic gradation of colors and if you can ignore the stink, this soy sauce concoction does the trick!

My initial plan only required a few large tendrils, but decided it was far too clunky and didn’t invoke the sort of movement I was aiming for. So I am creating several other more dimensional root structures to beef it up. I’ve also been sewing on small glass beads so the forms play with light a bit and reference something like dew drops or suggest the fantastical. I’m going to experiment with coating the yarn in gel medium to see if I can get more of a fresh wet sheen and less of wooly surface texture.

Aside from the Wooly Universe, I’ve been working on a paper construction project for printmaking. The theme for the course is personal memoir and I'm planning to do a piece about my mom. She has posed for me in the past, but the pictures were less about her and more about a mood I was attempting to capture. I want this work to speak about her personality and her seemingly supernatural creative skills. I have a photograph that I took of her wearing one of her fabulous costume pieces, but due to my fledgling skills in the darkroom it never really captured what I intended. So, I’m planning to use this photograph as a springboard for the project and will hopefully be able to animate the piece so it speaks properly.

By the way, if you dig this nitty gritty process stuff, you should visit my dear friend and kickin’ artist Rick. He’s been posting some crazy creepy work for his thesis show. It’s such a treat to peek into his studio and see what sort of shenanigans he’s up to!

What are you working on this week?

Until next time—
Merry Making, Friends!~*