workshop/playshop, day 2

I bet you thought Elmer's School Glue was for making things stick. Not so. You can draw your image on a silkscreen, let it dry, and voila! You have your own custom made silk screen image and can produce a puzzler like this:

Why a 'puzzler'? Well, Rayna Gillman interprets it as a Jewish man in a shawl; artist Carolyn Ryan sees a curvy-necked giraffe; and I see a weeping willow a la the Craftsman style of none other than Frank Lloyd Wright! (Ha, I wish -- I do set my sights high.)

Anyway, this second day of Rayna's workshop had us making fabric pieces with silkscreens, using masking tape and glue as a resist. As one makes successive copies of the screen on different fabrics, the tape deteriorates, giving fascinating variations on a theme.

Here is Eileen Alber, the owner of host Quilters' Studio, with her screen made from masking tape (that's artist Karen Rips in the background)


Here's my masking taped screen (note: this took me hours to cut but this satisfied my semi-obsessive side):

We also made thermofax screens from our own images and printed those. Oh, and drew on our fabric with plastic syringes filled with textile paint!!! Fue muy divertido (that's Spanish for 'It was a lot of fun.') Way cool fun.

A wild and crazy variety of textile designs hangs from the the drying lines:


As a side note, lots of cool people are in this class, even author, artist and teacher Sherril Kahn (she's standing next to Rayna in the first picture). And of course there is 83 year old Florence Stroup, who inspires us all with both her modern designs and her stamina!!