A Taste of Matisse

We enjoyed our visit to the Stedlijk museum which was featuring a Matisse exhibit.  The pictures below show the progression of his work from early in his painting career to the end period of paper cutouts.   The last picture is actually a tapestry based on his cutout.  I'm having trouble with these postings so am not going to try and place the pictures together!

Our Lord in the Attic

We stumbled upon this little museum in a classic canal house. During the 1700s it was rather unhealthy to be a Catholic and so this family built a church in the top of their house where they could secretly hold services.  It still has the original organ.

And below is a classic city scene. 

My Modern Quilt

This started out as a simple quilt for my mother in law using some of my collection of fabric samples from playing with surface design.  I then got a little carried away with the quilting. It's backed with flannel to make it warm and cozy.

An exhibit of bees

Our Text'art group had a outing which included a visit to the Visual Voice Lab in the Belgo building in Montreal.  This exhibit by Sarah Hatton is as a result of colony collapse in her bee hives.  As a result she wanted to voice what happens when hives are too near corn fields which have been sprayed with nicotinoids.  The black in these circles are made with her dead bees and the entire work was then coated with resin.  The results are beautiful and it is only if you look closely that you will see the bees.

Stencilling

Here are the results of my stenciling.   Learning how to be creative in making a screen was so valuable.  I probably should have taken pictures of the screens themselves! 

Think about Tudor houses when you look at the brown and the orange pieces.  This has been so much fun!

More Arashi Shibori

These are the results from another day of dyeing.  So much fun, and such great fabric.  Seems a shame to cut it up!

Dyeing to Design

This is a course that I am taking with Elizabeth Barton and it is choc-a-bloc with ideas, suggestions, recipes and encouragement.  Can you tell I'm having fun!

Here are some of the photos so far of the dyeing that I have done.  I'll post the art work when it's a little more completed.

First lesson involved working with shades of grey (just 8).  So that we could learn about value.

Numbers 7 and 8 were redone as a totally blue fabric was produced in the first go-around.  I was more careful of the water temperature and it seemed to work.  Weird.

Lesson two moved onto colour.  I didn't do the colour wheel, having done that  a few times already.  But I did dye these shades using her recipe.

To the right of the fuchsia the next 5 have a slight amount of black added to the yellow to turquoise range.

Lesson three has been very addictive.  Here are some of the results.