Mary Vaneecke

It is always a good day in the studio when I get to open the dyepot and pet some new fabrics.  This week I was exploring some shibori techniques I learned over the summer and I spent part of the day perusing the results.  Looking closely at the details.  Planning the next process.  Is the fabric ready for a discharge bath or another layer of dye?  Or does it only need a bit of paint and quilting to finish?  Is the piece destined to remain whole, or be cut into several smaller works?  Which side of the fabric do I like best?  Do I want to see what the same technique does for a different type of fabric?  So many questions to ponder.

It was with a jolt then that I realized that there was an angel in this fabric I have been pondering now for days.  She (do angels have a gender?) is small, about three inches tall.  She is standing in front of a rainbow.  I am not making this up.  Under two white doves, no less.  I tell you, it does not get more kitschy than this:  the top three trite images you can think of, sitting there on my stitch dyed silk.  And I certainly did not plan one treacly iota of it….

In the midst of rust-dyeing one day, my friend Peggie found Don Quixote and his sidekick looking strangely reminiscent of this famous sketch by Pablo Picasso.   That is really cool.  But Pablo wasn’t haunting my dyepot….  It was the Angel of Sweetness and Light.  I don’t know whether to put her on my design wall as the patron saint of my studio, hand quilt her into oblivion and sell her for double the price of my other little gems, or banish her into a boiling discharge bath….what would you do?  

I spent a week on Whidbey Island with Elin Noble and 14 other artists learning the art of shibori while discharging and dyeing fabrics.  It was wonderful!   We tried clamping, stitching, arashi (pole-wrapping) and masking a raft of different fabrics:  silk dupion, cotton, rayon twill, etc.

Elin is very knowledgeable about the chemistry of the dyeing and discharging process.  Armed with that knowledge, you can analyze what happened on a piece of fabric, and predict what will happen on another.  How great is that!?

Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the week:

The setting was beautiful.  This is not a postcard–it is an actual picture I took from the deck of the Cottage on the Cove:

Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person on Earth.

After a week on Whidbey Island, I spent a week in Seattle, and visited the Seattle Art Museum AND the La Conner Quilt Museum.  More on those wonderful outings later….

The 2013 SDA conference was a terrific and inspiring program with artists on the cutting edge in their respective fields.  These are just three of my favorites.

Otto von Busch discussed his fashion hacktivism (check it out here).   He offered intriguing ways to subvert the ‘fashion industrial complex.’

Kim Bruning spoke about how she puts electronics into textiles.  One project she completed was a leather jacket for a blind woman that would sense objects within 30 inches and vibrated the collar so the wearer could discretely avoid a ‘collision.’  For info on how she works and DIY, click here.  

Another speaker was Janet Echelman, who has collaborated with computer graphic designers and textile manufacturers to create her gorgeous permanent outdoor textile sculptures.  She has a piece in Phoenix, and I plan to see it the next time I am in town.  A link to her TED talk is here.  

In addition to a phenomenal speakers program, several galleries around San Antonio featured some outstanding member work.  These are just a few of the pieces that caught my eye.  Which one is your favorite?

Already planning for the next conference in Tulsa in 2015.  

I have thought quite a bit about my options for the Radical Elements piece since I posted ‘The List’ of possible materials.  My research has taken some interesting turns, including making some aerodynamic origami (check out the video here–the cats love it, but I don’t think it is going to make the final cut.).  Two or three options are ‘percolating’ in my brain about how to go with this project.  They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I am thinking of them as distinct at this point.

One way is go is with a play on the word Samarium.  I choose this element because of my samaras series and my use of maple seed (maple seed = winged tree fruit = samara) imagery in my work.  With this option, I could, for instance, make handmade papers from maple seeds, and use techniques borrowed from my textile work (screen printing, foil, etc.) to make a paper samaras quilt.  I like this option, though I know nothing about papermaking.  A paper piece like this that ‘references’ a quilt could be really beautiful.  It also seems a bit simplistic–if not boring–to just use papers instead of fabric, layer them and stitch with raffia or something similar, and call it done.  Issues I must consider are the archival properties of handmade paper, durability, and hanging issues.

Another way to go is to borrow materials from the ways samarium is useful (with none of the maple seed imagery).  That would be in nuclear fuel rods (they have a gorgeous blue glow), audio equipment (headphones and Fender guitars), cancer treatment (both curative and palliative), the motion picture industry, and magnets.  This option has all kinds of possibilities.  Backlighting with blue LED lights…stitching with guitar strings, film strips, and IV lines….Cds layered on steel with magnet ‘stitches’…to name just a few.  With this option, I have to think about power, archival issues, and test magnet strengths, etc.  Also, I would like the final work to be beautiful, on some level, and avoid a messy, disjointed conglomeration.

Another option that is ‘percolating’ would involve an interactive component.

I reconnected with a high school friend who studied paper engineering.  Several online connections will send me springtime samaras, and another harvested a fall crop for me in Washington state.  There is more research to be done.  In the meantime, I am enrolled in a one-day papermaking class with Catherine Nash.  Should be fun…

I will keep you posted.  What do you think?