That’s my piece right there in the top row! The public voting part of the contest is done and now we are on to another round with a “final judging event” and some guest judges. I am so excited! Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by etsy to vote.
2010, 8 x 8 inches
Materials: cotton fabrics, hand dyed and commercially printed
Techniques: shibori dyed cotton, raw edge applique, hand-embroidery
I started this piece with the idea of making something a bit more abstract than it turned out to be. The shibori fabric that makes the water was an experiment. I didn’t want to get my whole dye kit set up, so I dyed it on the patio table using a textile paint. It’s a magical process called “sunpainting” and works very much like blueprint /sunprint paper you can buy. Paint the fabric, cover part of it with something that blocks the light and the shadowed parts of the fabric will stay lighter, the parts in the sun will get dark. I wrapped my drippy painted fabric around a PVC pipe, scrunched it together and set it in the sun. Every little while I unrolled a bit of the fabric as it started to dry, so the inside layers would get the sunprinting treatment. At the end, gorgeous ripply watery looking fabric.
This was created for a specific exhibit with the 8×8 inch size specified. Working small like this made me think of a macro camera lens and capturing only part of a scene, so I went looking for something with interesting feet that could be wading in my newly dyed water. An egret with yellow toes seemed to fit the scene just perfectly. The rest of the scene was assembled by cutting and layering the fabrics, stitching the edges and adding a little shading and shadows with a colored pencil. Last I embroidered her dainty toenails.
This was donated to an auction to benefit the Dahl Art Center galleries in Rapid City SD, where I grew up. The artists were anonymous until after the auction had ended, so I had to keep this under my hat. I hope it went to an appreciative home!
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t get to vote yesterday because I was frantically trying to get this piece done. It is called “Enterprise Generation”. From my etsy shop description:
An original counted thread embroidery piece. Cotton thread on canvas. Finished piece is approximately 6×9 inches.
Two news stories from NPR were the inspiration for this piece. The first was story about graduating seniors and the annual list of things that this graduating class has or has not experienced. Seniors that graduated this year have always had computers and cell phones, they have never had cassette tapes or film cameras and so on. The very next story was about the last few missions of the Space Shuttle and how the shuttles were soon to be retired. Those two thoughts came together and I realised that very soon that list would include “The students graduating this year have never seen a space shuttle launch.” What a sad thought!
This piece tells that story. I imagine a future student typing in a search to their computerized something and coming up with this information about the Enterprise Shuttle OV-101 and the Space Shuttle Missions.
(For those detail nuts, you will notice that the date for STS-133 is incorrect. It was supposed to launch Tuesday and they postponed it for a possible launch on Thursday. Good luck, Discovery!)
The “future” computer screen is inspired by the Star Trek: The Next Generation consoles, as is the title of the piece. The dates are faux star dates; faux because star dates are in the future and these refer to past events. The right side is all Space Shuttle Enterprise facts and the latitude/longitude is the museum where the shuttle is currently on display. The left side is the final few shuttle missions, complete with error as I mentioned above. You can see more detail photos here.
Why? Etsy and NASA have collaborated on a contest. Grand prize winner gets to be a guest at the final space shuttle launch and your piece could fly on the shuttle. So I had to finish the piece in time to enter. I had actually started designing this summer and stitching was underway but they just announced the contest about 3 weeks ago so it has been furious work to finish in time. You will be able to vote for my piece to be a finalist starting sometime next week. I will let you know!
