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February 2020 : Personal Map Making : Mixed Media Daily Challenge (part I)

10/2/2020

 
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 2 Shift your perspective
Day 2 Shift your perspective
Day 3 Make backgrounds
Mapping has been such an important part of my life from when we travelled up & down the countryside as kids to my previous profession of medical imaging which involved interpreting the 3D human body & imaging it in 2D.
It’s no wonder that mapping occurs in my creative practice and having used monochromatic or greyscale for medical imaging for decades is undoubtedly the origin of my love of high contrast black & white images.

Over the past 2 years I’ve literally been mapping my thoughts & emotions in my creative practice. I’ve been exploring the connections & relationship between things which I often want to discuss but don’t want to articulate in words. 
Landlines is pretty obvious - it’s just a statement of fact.
The kawakawa monoprint series has helped me facilitate healing & wobble my way through grief.
The most recent Māhoe Leaf series is probably a lot less obvious to others, unless like me, they see the decaying leaf as a metaphor for the pathological process within the brain that is dementia & that same dementia as the metaphor for the breakdown of our society. 
I like to believe that my work is beautiful nonetheless & it’s not necessary for everyone to be able to see or even to know the unspoken dialogue . . .  it’s there to be felt for those who need it
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 5 Map your desktop
Day 5 Map your desktop
Day 5 Map your desktop
All heavy seriousness aside, this month's personal map making class on Creativebug is colourful, light, thought provoking & fun - OMG, so.much.fun. 

e bonds’ daily mixed media Creativebug class celebrates maps in all forms, most importantly, the abstract concepts of map making. 

e’s teaching style is amazing. She ever so gently guides you through a method or technique that is then yours to play with. The most wonderful thing for me is that each day presents a completely new aspect of ‘mapping’ about which I have never thought. It’s brilliant. 

Here in NZ we’re a day ahead & kind of a day behind at the same time.
​Every night, at about 9pm, Hugh & I sit on the couch together & watch the next day’s class which means I go to sleep thinking about it & usually by the morning I’m pretty excited to get my morning routine shizzle out of the way so I can scoot over to the studio & play. ​
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 7 No straight lines
Day 7 No straight lines
Day 7 No straight lines
I cleared my table deliberately the week before the class started & ironically the work I’ve put to the side is a map of sorts. It’s an extension of our ‘Listening to the Land’ series, it speaks of connection to place, also my leaf litter project & laments the loss of wetlands from the NZ landscape. 
There’s an aspect of this new work, well several aspects actually, which i believe are incredibly significant for us as kaitiaki of this whenua . . . & that’s a story for another day. 

A real positive of this class for me is that it's given me with an idea that is likely to be the basis of my next muka artwork and that for me is the most exciting thing of all !

I’ll keep you posted 
 
Sal xx


Following My Whims

27/3/2019

 
Following my whims in February took me back to block printing, using blocks we had carved few years back & also, mono printing my beloved kawakawa leaves.
Indulging my monochromatic tendencies I started with a little bit of block printing, using white fabric paint on black cotton.
Must admit I was surprised by what a difference the brand of paint makes.

I equally enjoy the white block on black & the ‘less white - more grey’ tones on black using the blocks
Initially I didn’t like the uneven white blotchiness I obtained with the more highly pigmented paints on the kawakawa leaves & preferred the smoothness of the grey.

I realised that my preference was based on what I had come to ‘expect’ & a preconceived motion of what I might ‘do next’ with the prints rather than what I was obtaining in the exploration.
​Ha ! rookie mistake falling victim to my own preconceptions.
I changed fabrics, back to the natural dyed cottons of varying weights & monoprinted some singles, groupings & multiples of kawakawa leaves.

It felt so indulgent to be picking more than one leaf at a time !
I love these as none of the black is super black, which looks pleasing to me on the undyed fabrics. 
I decided to test my heat setting process by over-dyeing some of my black monoprints in a harakeke pod dye bath.
I also popped a few whenu of muka in too.

Love, love, love these - perhaps mostly because it worked !

So there it is:
Changing paints, changing fabrics, creating layers all whilst preserving the detail of the leaves.
Overdyeing, or is it underdyeing, with natural dye.
​White on black, grey on black, black on white, black on harakeke pod brown.

It's been a fabulous summer following my whims & now, at the end of March, I have washed & ironed all the small squares of fabric I've been using over the past few months.
Some I used to filter the inks I made & some are the result of these last explorations.
I literally have a couch covered in 30cm squares of different browns, all obtained from harakeke pods - no wonder we can't find one word to describe them all.
Some look slightly pink, some look slightly green, there are definitely a few that hover a little too close to beige for comfort & some are a rich warm harakeke brown.

Tino nui te mihi aroha ki te pā harakeke.
​He taonga tuku iho.

Sal x

​

Botanicals: Direct Printing & Embroidery of Kawakawa Leaves January 2017

30/1/2017

 
At the beginning of the year Kristin Axtman, from Brooklyn Haberdashery, proposed a year long, creative project Instagram challenge called #our52weekproject.
The rules are guidelines & extremely flexible; you choose your own project, choose a unique hashtag & post to IG once each week.
​That's it !
So simple & so attractive.  
Attractive to me because I like to experiment with different techniques & different media AND I like to have a point of focus & a deadline, albeit self imposed & arbitrary - basically it just helps me get shit done !
Kawakawa (piper excelsum)
Selecting a unique hashtag which relates to your project is a brilliant idea for posting to IG as it means all your own posts will be in one place. 
I've chosen the general theme of 'botanicals' which will allow me to experiment & explore many different things & I'll be using the hashtag #52weeksofbotanicals.
January has been an exploration of mono printing & embellishing the mono prints with embroidery.
I've been making direct prints of kawakawa leaves (piper excelsum) onto calico using water based fabric paint which is heat set by ironing before I add some embroidery stitches. 
kawakawa leaf
direct print on paper
direct print on fabric
On a side note, last year I started 'a thing', guidelines for me to work under, basically, to use readily available materials, which makes things accessible to me & it also keeps the cost down.
This month's project has been a great example of that.
The leaves grow in my back yard.
The fabric, fabric paints & embroidery cotton are sold in my local Spotlight store & are affordable.
The make up sponges I've used to apply the paint I bought in my local supermarket.
I found a superb resource book at my local library.
Below is a gallery of photos which show the process I've used.
​I think piccies are easier to flick through then wading through a sea of words.
materials
leaf front
leaf underside which is the side I'll print from
don't need much paint
dab the sponge into the paint to cover the end
dab the back of the leaf to get the coverage you want
getting an even layer on the leaf
test printing on paper & using a smaller piece of newsprint as cover
applying pressure with my fingers to get imprint detail of veins, holes & edges
ready to lift the leaf off
using the stem to lift it
test print on paper
assessing detail
ready to print onto fabric, having cleaned the left over paint off the underside of the leaf
inked up again using the same method
leaf on fabric
leaf, print on paper, print on fabric
residual paint post printing
hot iron to heat set, follow instructions for whichever paint you are using
using a cover cloth over the print
embroidery running stitch using a single gold thread
I am incredibly excited about this year long project as it will provide a year's worth of motivation & continual exploration.
Continual exploration ensures I will be able to approach my creative year with enthusiasm, excitement & energy.
I look forward to trying new things, learning new things & hell, I'll probably even take myself out & meet new people !
I've said it before & I'll say it again, I love Instagram & this is why.
'flawless'
'how do you mend a broken heart' 2
'tie the knot'
'a little rough round the edges'
 Embroidered Kawakawa Monoprints 
January 2017
Of course the added bonus is that I will end the year with at least 52 new art works.
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    About
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    Hi, I'm Sally
    I'm a fibre artist who loves botanicals - especially NZ native plants
    you can find me on 
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