Inspired!

Not long after I took that workshop with Deborah Fell, I heard about an upcoming call for entry for a show that will take place in 2016.  I don't want to say too much about this because I'm not sure what the status of  this show is at the moment, but between the techniques I was using after the workshop and the call for entry, I was hugely inspired!  The "theme" I chose to interpret was my personal vision of Colorado.  There was a ton of leftover material from the workshop that I wanted to use, but in the end I had three large pieces in mind and had to make even more materials.  A surface design superstorm hit my studio when I got out the Gelli Plate, stencils, stamps, and any other mark making tool I could find.  When I thought I had enough collage material I painted some canvas and began collaging.  When everything was dry I cut the collaged canvas into 6 inch squares and combined the colors into the background for a quilt.  I forgot to take photos of the original canvases but I did take some of the second round. Here are some pictures of the uncut canvases and one of the backgrounds that I assembled.

I had 3 thermofax screens made & you can see all 3 image in this photo.

Painted Canvas

In September I took a class with Katie Pasquini Mausopust where we learned to paint canvases, cut them up, and reassemble them to make art quilts.  The class was fantastic and I just loved Katie.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera and had to take pictures with my cell phone.  Now I can't get the pictures off my phone! I'll get that worked out eventually!  In the meantime, I was so inspired by Katie's class that when I got asked to make a memory book for a retiring coworker, I decided to paint and quilt some canvas.  I began by painting a background of colors in acrylic paint.  The result was fairly uninspiring but I intended to stencil over it so it wasn't too distressing.  After hand stenciling two large motif's I realized that doing it this way was going to take FOREVER and I was in a time crunch.  What a great excuse to go buy some of the new Liquitex spray paint.  Whoo-weee!  I spent a fun filled, happy hour out in the sun spray painting through all my stencils and the results came out better than I could have imagined.  The memory book looked great after I quilted it and I made a small bag for a friend out of a remaining piece.  Now all I have left are some small pieces and these photo's.