Spreading My Wings

The good thing about blogging half as often is that I'm creative twice as much.  I have such a full year.  I've been enjoying the new body of work I'm creating through the Sask Arts Board grant.  It's a whole project of larger pieces, all hand done.  This one is nearing completion.

The Earth & Heather piece I showed you earlier happens to be rolled up on the same frame, so as soon as I am finished this, I can scroll to the other piece and add the silk ribbon I planned on.  I didn't want it to crush it when rolling it again to move to this piece.  I won't be taking it off the frame until both are all done.  I did it that way, thinking I would save time by not having to set up the whole thing with a new background cloth.  Silly me.

I took an afternoon off to run some errands and stopped in at Prairie Lily Knitting.  I FOUND THIS.

SWOOOOOOON.  I don't know why but these colours are completely knocking my socks off.  I think it's the hot orange in there!  Charlene asked, "What are you going to do with that?"  I smiled, "Art."  In fact, I have just the piece that I'm going to work on.  Hopefully it will be a little more impressionistic again.  Oooh I just love this.  And there is even some sparkle in it!!!

my photo from the first year of this blog.  xo

I have several moody photos like the one above with all the colours of that delicious yarn.  Most are around sloughs or flooded ditches lined with autumn bullrushes.  Sweet Sweet Sweet.  ***Just a reminder that I use my photos as a basis for my art, so please do not print them out for your own use.

Since I'm on the topic of experimentation, I have a show booked in Melfort at the Shervin Smith Gallery with Ken Wilkinson, a ceramic artist.  I met him when I had my show at Handmade House.  I had been on the lookout for prairie themed pottery that I could have an exhibit with. He said yes.  Since then, we've been more interested in collaborating, so it's not just 'my art here, his art there'. Isn't that cool?  Ceramic and stitch.  I think that's a perfect fit for the 2015 Year of Craft.

It's fun to meet with him and watch as all these ideas pop into our heads.  If it were a retro cartoon, you'd see POOF!  SHAZAM!  and EUREEKA! showing up in bright colours all over the room.  I don't know if we will pull the collaborated part off, but it's amazing to be flooded with new ideas. On the creation end, I'd say I'm failing miserably at incorporating his work into mine.  I'll keep at 'er!  Here, I have tried my hand at creating a vessel.  I made the rope by combining yarns and stitching them to construct metres of rope. Then I did the coil thing by machine.  It was really enjoyable, but I think the next one will be hand woven.

We will have my art, his art, and then some collaborative pieces as well.  The show has been booked for the month of May 2015. That's coming up!   I have a LONG long way to go. Wish us luck!