I get around!

My work is now being featured on the Jacquard Products gallery, thanks to my work with their discharge paste. I'm quite pleased.

I started discharging with bleach, but found that it was hard to get fabrics that didn't go to orange, and it was difficult to neutralize the fabric after. Discharge paste also works on silk, which bleach destroys.

on not making art....

Life keeps getting in the way of making art. If it's not fighting off a virus, it's raking leaves. If it's not looking for a comforter that actually fits our bed, it's moving furniture from one room to another. If it's not rewriting a website, it's taking photos for said website.

In the meantime, autumn is drawing to a close here in northern Illinois. The above picture is a couple of weeks old; that tree is now bare. Its leaves are chopped up and mulched. DST has ended, it's already dark at 5:30pm.

None of this means I'm not thinking about art, figuring out what I want to do with some pieces I have started. After the first of the year, I have two shows coming up fairly soon; that means time will have to be spent sewing on sleeves and cutting mats.

But somewhere in the midst of all of this, I'll find a way to make some art--it's what I do. I'm an artist.

That is all.

the wait is over

After much postponing, dithering, avoiding, I have launched a new version of my website. I think of it as BJ Parady 2.0.

Right now it's quite simple. No Flash, no music. That's a deliberate decision--I want the site to be about the art, not about how well I can--or cannot--write html. The navigation may be a little cluncky, but you can easily get about in the site.

Except for the front page, I went with a white background--again because of the art. It just looks crisper and better against pure white.

At the moment there are only 16 pieces of art on there--at least 12 of which have never been on my site before. In time, I will be adding more older work. But for now it is simply a portfolio of where I am at this moment in time as an artist.

That is all.

doing the mundane...

Haven't made any art this week. Instead, I've been sitting in front of my laptop, redoing my website. I think of it as version 2.0, a total revamp. Almost from scratch--although I had to go back to the original to jog my memory in regards to html. But I'm back in the swing, should be up in a couple of days--I'll have a big drum roll out here.

I've been rethinking the whole thing--decided I wanted something simpler, more of a portfolio than a catalog of every piece I've ever made. For now it will just have a few of my best pieces. In time, I'll add others.

But it feels good to wipe the slate clean and start anew--maybe it has something to do with the change in seasons. The view out my windows is undergoing its seasonal change--from a completely secluded backyard to one where I can see 13 of my neighbors' houses. This too shall pass.

Everyone talks about spring cleaning. But fall cleaning is a good thing, too.

That is all.

testing, testing

I have now made several panels for a project I have in mind, using the transfer method I've talked about before in this blog. I found a woven polyester that seems to work nicely at JoAnn's; it's not too shiny and has some substance to it.

So the next step would be adding some stitching to the pieces, probably by machine. But before that, I wanted to do a test sample--for once erring on the side of caution. So I did, and here it is:



It's actually a kind of a repeat image for me, I've done the same thing with hand dyed fabric pieced together, and with watercolor on paper. Each one is slightly different, but I do repeat myself.

That's ok, though. The scientist in me knows that it's better to just change one variable at a time in order to truly have meaningful results. The results here are that yes, I can pretty much stitch this as I'm used to, and thus I'm able to predict what the final piece will look like.

If I don't change my mind along the way. This piece, by the way, is for sale for $75, postage paid, unframed. It measures a little under 11x14 inches.

That is all.

disperse away

My work (play) with disperse transfer dyes continues.I've been refining my process, trying to make larger pieces with them by tiling and overlapping images. And making more and more papers:



By the way, turns out this is the perfect use for an old vinyl shower curtain. And I've been using the old sheets I started using in a workshop as table protection; they keep looking better and better.

I'm doing this because I don't know of another way to get this kind of look on fabric:



Or this:



There's depth and interest in the images, the hand of the fabric remains the same, the colors are unmuddied. It's my current favorite technique--until the next one enchants me...

That is all.

Change of Pace

Maybe I'm in an avoidance mode. Avoiding the final big piece of my gall series (final if only because there's only one big piece of the original silk left). But I needed a change of pace.

So back to the transfer dyes I went. One of my goals is to put together enough pieces for a show based only on transfer dyed pieces. To do this, I need more papers--they only make 5-7 prints each on average.

So yesterday I mixed up the thickener--it takes around a day to fully hydrate the powder. This morning I mixed up some dye solutions, and this afternoon I painted papers.



What fun. Not as much fun as doing it with Ann, but fun enough on a dreary cold day. I rolled the dyes on, I brushed them on, I plopped them on with a spoon. The thickener makes them behave kind of like fingerpaint--they move around, hold a line. I got swirls and interesting lines and color blendings. Today I only used yellow, orange, blue, and turquoise. The papers look really promising:



But they need to dry until tomorrow--I've learned the lesson of trying to iron them too soon. Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't. It doesn't matter a lot, because I have enough dye left to play again.

That is all.