Art – Page 21 – Deidre Adams

Life on the Eastern Plains

©2011 Deidre Adams. All rights reserved.

This summer I’ll be starting on a new public art project to be installed at Anythink Bennett, a library serving residents of Bennett, Strasburg, and Watkins, a group of small towns on the eastern plains of Colorado. The project, whose theme is “Life on the Eastern Plains,” is the first in a planned series of collaborative, community-inspired artworks for the library district, under the umbrella theme of “This is Who We Are.” This press release has full details.

“Anythink” is the name given to a “new style of library that celebrates imagination, play and interactivity.” The concept is the driving force for the Rangeview Library District, a network of seven libraries serving the residents of Adams County, Colorado. It is a “new style of library that offers memorable experiences and transformations for its customers,” and in addition to books, also offers “innovative programming, technology, and the highest level of customer service so that everyone who walks into an Anythink feels welcome.” This video illustrates the spirit of the Anythink concept and the accompanying logo.

As part of the development of the artwork, I’m talking with residents of the area about their experiences living on the eastern plains. Members of the library district staff are assisting with the interviews as well as recording them for an oral history component of the project. We’ve had one community meeting to introduce the project to the public, and two days of conducting interviews. A final day of interviews will be held this Monday.

In addition to talking to people, I’m also asking them to contribute fabric for the artwork, which will be a stitched textile piece. I’m asking them to give me pieces of fabric that have some kind of a history: perhaps a scrap of an old work shirt, or a worn dishtowel or apron – something that was a part of the daily experience on living on the plains. I want the finished piece to incorporate literal physical artifacts that have come from the community.

I’m also asking for handwritten letters and photographs that speak to the experience of life in the area. These I will scan and return to the owners. My vision is to incorporate some of the handwriting into the piece either by direct printing on fabric or perhaps with a silkscreen.

Anythink publishes a newsletter called Spark. The June 24 issue of Spark has two articles about the art project. The editor, Ken Devine, interviewed me after I was chosen for the project and wrote a great article about my work and how I was selected. Evidently, having a love of grain elevators was a pivotal factor working to my benefit. But whatever the reason, I’m very honored to be a part of this project and really excited to start working on it.

Older grain elevator in Bennett, Colorado. ©2011 Deidre Adams. All rights reserved.

July 23rd, 2011|Art|2 Comments

SDA – India Flint, Part 2

Rose petals, onion skins, various leaves and flowers used for dyeing in class

Near the end of Day 2 of the Traveler’s Notebook workshop, we prepared and simmered more bundles. The difference this time was that the pot was richer in mordanting compounds – both through the accumulation of plant materials from prior dyeing as well as through the addition of odd hunks of scrap iron and other metal. We also left the bundles wrapped overnight so that the dyes could have more time to set. The first thing next morning, we opened our bundles with as much anticipation and excitement as children on Christmas morning. I was a lot happier with my results this time.

While waiting for bundles to come out of the dyepot, we continued to make more sheets collaged with fabrics, papers, and special mementos, held together with stitch. We also did a writing exercise to create a page covered with a texture made of our own handwritten marks. (More on this later.)

With all these raw materials now in progress for our finished books, the next thing to do would be to create a binding structure for the finished books. This was to be based on the Blizzard Book, a structure created by Hedi Kyle during a blizzard.

The folds of the Blizzard Book are called “mountains” (outer folds) and “valleys” (inner folds). Because we would be stitching all of our pages to folds of the Blizzard Book, we added support to the paper by hand-stitching a length of fabric to the center portion. Then we accordion-folded these large sheets of paper and prepared them for dyeing by the same processes as used before.

While waiting for the real binding structures to dry after dyeing, we practiced the Blizzard book folding technique with a dummy sheet. The process is rather paradoxical – it seems simple when you see it demonstrated, but then when you try it, you realize how complex it can be when you can’t remember what to do next. Instructions for making your own Blizzard Book can be found in the Penland Book of Handmade Books. You can also find a PDF with instructions here.

The last step of the bookmaking process was to attach the materials made during the last few days to the folds of the Blizzard Book structure. I didn’t get mine finished, but several people did, and the results were spectacular.

I had one more goal I wanted to accomplish in class. Many artists are packrats, and I’m no exception. I’ve been holding onto a large stack of Rives BFK printmaking paper in thin strips, the remnants of trimming large sheets to a specific size for intaglio prints when I was in school. When the supply list said to bring scraps of paper, I threw these in with my materials. I used the class time to dye these strips. I don’t know yet what I’ll use them for, but I do think they’re quite beautiful.

Rives BFK paper dyed with leaves, rose & iris petals, and onion skins. Peony petals acted as a resist. Drawn lines were made by painting with milk prior to dyeing.

June 9th, 2011|Art|7 Comments

SDA – India Flint, Part I

Silk fabric eco-dyed and hand-stitched by India Flint

This week I’m in Minneapolis, Minn. for the Surface Design Association Conference. This is my second time at SDA, and this time, I decided to give myself a gift: a workshop with an artist whose work I admire greatly. India Flint calls herself a “maker of marks, forest wanderer & tumbleweed, stargazer & stitcher, botanical alchemist & string twiner, working traveller, dreamer, sax player and occasional poet.” She is the author of Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles, which is a guide to coloring cloth using locally sourced plant materials.

I don’t remember now where I first heard of India, but somehow I found her blog and web site and fell in love with the extraordinary yet delicate beauty of the plant-dyed fabrics she creates. I bought her book last year, not only to find out the details of how to make these magical marks on cloth, but also because the book is just plain beautiful. It contains a wealth of information on the different plants that can be used as well as types of mordants that can be employed to improve the strength of the dye bonds produced. The most compelling thing about the process is that it doesn’t involve harmful chemicals and can be done fairly easily without the need for buying expensive equipment or materials.

India lives on her own farm in Southern Australia, but she travels the world and teaches extensively. This particular workshop is called “Enfoldments – A Traveler’s Notebook.” We’re combining the dyeing techniques with hand stitching and simple bookmaking techniques to “explore ways of recording and describing responses to place and country as a means of making sense of wherever

[we] are in the world.”

India began the class with the opening of a “bundle” she had created the previous day. A bundle is a length of fabric which is rolled up together with leaves and flower petals and other assorted bits and tied tightly around a stick, then submerged into a pot of water and given a gentle simmer for a prescribed amount of time. We would be making many bundles throughout the course of the week, and the the opening of one’s bundles after dyeing to see the lovely gifts granted from nature is a greatly anticipated event.

Fabric eco-dyed by India Flint

We then went outside for a “windfall walk,” the purpose of which is to gather leaves and flower petals that have fallen to the ground. Small bits of rusted metal and odd scraps of paper are also treasures to bring back for our books. Once back to the workshop, we used our harvest to create our own first bundles.

After learning the basic process, the next step was to start making the pages of our book. To that end, we were each given a sheet of heavy drawing/wash paper and given instructions to collage fabric and paper using thread and stitch – no glue. I got rather caught up in doing the stitching – I even took my piece back to my room that night to work on it some more. I do love to stitch on fabric, but I found it to be a lot more difficult on paper. If I’m going to be doing much more of this in future, I’m going to need more protection for my needle-grabbing fingers. My thumb was very sore after a couple of hours of doing this.

The second day, we started to make the books. India showed us a simple way to make a very basic artist’s book from a single sheet of paper with folding and cutting. Then we used the same dyeing principles with our folded books to get color on the pages. Although mine turned out rather pale, some of the others were quite spectacular.