More Color Choices

I asked several additional Gallery artists how they choose colors for their nonrepresentational work.  Here's what I learned.

Silk painter Clara Graves told me "When I create one of the woven pieces from my New Worlds series, I have no plan in mind at all. I simply go to my collection of painted silks and pull colors that appeal to me. This is usually quite a large and colorful pile of silk. As I go through them again and again, a particular color pattern within the fabrics attracts me and I begin working to find other pieces of silk that will work with that initial piece. Sometimes I want to subdue it a bit, as in the area of blue green blended with the violet in the piece below.

Clara Graves, Toward the Sun

"Not wanting the whole work to be too quiet, I then put together some more vibrant and complementary silks to play off against that original section of the piece."

Anne Sanderoff-Walker, a weaver and felter, says "Weaving is all about color. I find inspiration everywhere. I remember when I was a kid, blue and green were never seen together, but looking at a bluebird sky and the trees in leaf, it seems so obvious that green and blue should be used together and I do. Recently I’ve been going outside my color comfort zone and using reds, oranges and pinks together. Now that I’m comfortable with the “hot” colors, I need to look beyond my newest comfort zone for something new."

Anne often decides the colors in her woven work by her selection of yarns.  Sometimes she defers the decision on color by weaving a white garment, then dyeing it, as seen in the shawl below, which was dyed using a fold and clamp (shibori) technique.  She says that "This is my newest passion in use of color. Every time I dye I look forward to the surprise results."

Anne Sanderoff-Walker, shawl

Janet Barnard is a weaver, silk dyer, garment maker, and silk paper sculptor.  Her palette is distinctive.  She says that her color choices change with the day and whether she is weaving or dyeing because the colors interact very differently in these techniques. She continues that "I prefer darker palettes as opposed to pastel, and muted colors as opposed to  primary ones. Since I rarely use real images, I can play with color and be surprised with what I get."

Here are examples of two of Janet's recent dyed fabrics:

Janet Barnard, silkscreened cloth

Janet Barnard, silkscreened cloth

You can see examples of Janet's other work and other color choices  in our January blog post on Wondrous, Lustrous Silk. 

Artistic Growth

Our members must demonstrate mastery of at least one fiber technique––knitting, weaving, quilting, etc.––to be juried into the Gallery. Sometimes members may want to learn something new, whether as a change of pace from their primary area or as an expansion of something they already do. This new road helps us grow as artists and broadens the range of work available in our Gallery. Today I'll showcase three members who have taken this artistic journey.

Anne Sanderoff-Walker is a weaver, but recently she has added felted, embroidered pins to her repertoire. When I asked what led her to this new endeavor, Anne said:

Every once in a while I take a workshop that is totally different from my primary art form, which is weaving. The Potomac Fiber Arts Guild’s February three-day workshop was on hand dyeing, stitching and beading on felt, making pins and books. I find that learning new techniques helps me tap into unexplored reserves of creativity. I have recently been exploring dyeing and I was looking forward to expanding this exploration with the added dimension of felting. Chad Alice Hagen, the instructor of the workshop, encouraged us to make one decision at a time as we stitched patterns onto the hand dyed felt, adding buttons and beads as the whim struck. This is drastically different from the planning and executing of my woven pieces which require color and structure decisions to be made very early in the creative process. I have always enjoyed hand work and the embellishment of my new pins has brought me back to a loved technique. The addition of this new fashion accessory line to my work has also provided pieces at a lower price point, providing the opportunity for customers to make a differently affordable purchase of my art.

Below are photos of three of Anne's pins:

Anne's work shows the wide range of color, texture, and composition she can achieve with this technique.

Another member who has taken this road to artistic growth is Roz Houseknecht. Here is an example of Roz's felted shibori scarves:

Roz says that "combining textile techniques has always been intriguing to me. For several years I have been dyeing silk using a variety of shibori techniques."

Shibori is a resist process that creates patterns in cloth by blocking the flow of dye to certain areas of the cloth. For example, if one clamps rectangular blocks of plexiglass to both sides of a folded length of fabric, a pattern of repeating rectangles will result because the dye hasn't reach those areas, but has colored the rest of the fabric. You can see this in the center scarf above, where the first dye bath of paler blue forms rectangles outlined by the purple applied after the fabric has been clamped. Another shibori technique that Roz uses involves wrapping the fabric around a length of PVC pipe, tightly wrapping string in a spiral up the length of the pipe, then compressing the cloth so that the cord blocks access to the dye. This results in a more linear pattern of light and dark area. You can see this in the closeup below.

Roz makes the surface complex by using 2 different tying methods. "I clamp or wrap the silk and put it in a dye bath. After I rinse the project and dry it, I then tie or clamp the silk in a different way and drop it in a second color. This multi step process adds depth and interest to the surface. After the cloth is dyed, I add fine merino wool to the silk to highlight different sections of the cloth. The felting process adds additional texture when the wool shrinks and silk pleats."

Another process that Roz has been working on with felt is to collage onto the silk with shapes that have been pre-felted, creating a complex surface pattern. Below is an example of a garment Roz made that uses this technique:

A third Gallery member who has developed a new body of work is Janet Stollnitz, another of our master weavers. Here's how Janet describes her journey:

What is old is new. A number of years ago I took workshops in both wet- and needle-felting. Although I enjoyed the results of the wet felting, I was more intrigued by the details created using needle-felting techniques. In the needle-felting workshop we created heads; each head had a unique personality. The next step was to create a body. My enjoyment was in making the heads, not a full body sculpture. That ended my needle-felting endeavors. However, seeing the various pins produced by Gallery members reminded me that I had enjoyed making heads, especially the faces––face pins!

Each face is created individually starting with a basic background followed by a nose and ears. With the addition of the eyes and the mouth, the personality appears. Some hair-- many seem to have a “bad hair day” --and of course, beaded earrings complete most pieces.

The base or background starts with a hamburger roll sized mound of carded wool fleece. Using a needle that is specially designed for needle-felting, the fleece is pierced repeatedly to form the desired shape and density. The nose and ears are shaped separately using the felting needle and attached to the base shape. All facial features, such as eyes, eyebrows, and lips, also are made of carded wool fleece and applied using the felting needle. Curly, wool locks are most often used for hair. The beaded earrings are attached using a needle and thread.

I hope you've enjoyed learning about these artistic journeys as much as I did. Our new show will be juried on Monday. Please visit the Gallery to see the latest places our artistic paths have led.

Floris