Erosion- Many Different Facets

e·ro·sion

əˈrōZHən/

noun

the gradual destruction or diminution of something.

I had to think long and hard about fear; I finally decided to focus on erosion.  Erosion can be applied to many areas of our lives...erosion of the beach at Lake Michigan..erosion of your health as you age...erosion of world-wide safety...so many things can gradually destruct creating fear.

My piece is inspired by an Edward Burtynsky photo shown below:

My piece is below. After creating the landscape, I used rust to create a tributary-like flow across the piece.  Some seed stitches finished it.

Enjoy!  Kathy

The space within becomes the reality of the building.

~Frank Lloyd Wright

My 12 x 12 groups's challenge for this quarter was "Structure".  "Structure" can mean many things; for me, from my nerdy engineering side, I thought first of building structures. 

 I went to Google, looking for structures and the photo below spoke to me.

Below is a photo of my piece in process; it is tough to see all of the layers.  I pieced fabric, sewed additional lines, rubbed  metallic wax on it, covered it with tulle, and then added the two circular appliques.  I knew I needed to add one more layer of stronger supports, but was not sure how I would layer them on.  

 I took a photo of the work-in-process and printed out six copies; I took a white colored pencil and began experimenting with how the final layer would look. Finally, I could add the velvet thread to finish it! 

I wanted this work to be dark and steely, but thought that one pop of color was needed, so a citrine colored velvet puff was added.  Below is my finished piece, entitled, "Industrial Pop".  Enjoy!

CELESTIAL EYED GOLDFISH by Gladys Love

When this theme was announced, I immediately thought of moons, stars, planets, the milky way, and other galaxies.  I also thought of two people I know with kind of "celestial" personalities....lovely, gentle, sort of ethereal persons who constantly amaze me with their ability to see life as magical. 

However, since I don't have that kind of personality.....I had to really think to come up with something that would fit this theme.  I googled images for "celestial" and got many many that would fit in with what I had been thinking.  And then one popped up that made me laugh and I thought it was perfect. It made me happy! It was a "Celestial Eyed Goldfish".  Here is the photo that I worked from. 

I have had the great pleasure of taking a class from Carol Shinn (http://www.carolshinn.com/) who is well known for her thread painted works of art.  I decided that would be the perfect way to present this little fish.  It was printed onto canvas with an ink jet printer, and away I went, stitching in all the colors and trying to duplicate his comical expression.

 

I wasn't happy with the way his tail was not visible so I took artist's license and drew it in.  Here it is partially done. 

 

I was quite happy with the way this looked and continued filling in the tail.  I had a little helpful input from my son, who raises koi, as to the colors in the "fantasy" tail.  I learned from another project that it was important to do the eyes first or they look terrible after all the other work is done and then your project is wasted.  So the order of work was the eyes, the body, the background and then the tail. 

I was quite pleased with how the canvas flattened out behind the fish as I progressed with the colors.  A learning experience as I made some of the stitches go different directions and I think this helped.  When all done, I cut him out of the canvas so he was a free form "patch" that I could apply to a 12 x 12 background. 




The background is a technique learned from my friend Joan, who did one of our challenges with strips of old silk.  We had split two skeins of these strips between us so I decided to use all my "watery" colors for the background.  Here is what it looked like as I played with the
background.  I was dissatisfied with the white edges showing.  I had carefully trimmed the canvas away and then pulled out the warp threads to give it the thready edge, but the canvas color made too much contrast with the background for my liking.

So out came the fabric pens and I colored the front and back of each section to match the thread beside it.  This was better.  I was quite happy with the look of the silk so did some free motion quilting to fasten it down, added some embellishments and here is my "Celestial Eyed Goldfish".

 

And here is a close up of the threadwork, and a photo taken of it flat to show the three dimensional effect in the eyes and tail. 



I think my beading is not random enough so I may be adding more to make it look more natural.  I'm told random beading is the most difficult!  Apparently that's true!   Now, on to LOVE! 

I LOVE TURTLES by Margaret Kelly

The 12 x 12 group topic this time was "Whimsical" ......."I love turtles". Of course I had to eat the chocolates first :)

I then heat shrunk the wrappers and attached to black background fabric for the body of the turtle. That cost me a few needles, let me tell you! Head and legs are also of black fabric with copper painted on for contrast to the dark background.  I drew faintly on the background where I wanted to place the turtle, then attached the heat shrunk cellophane (floral wrap) to show bubbles in the water.  Also the background is actually 4 small pieces of my hand dyed gradation fabric sewn together.  After the "bubbles" were sewn down, I added the quilting lines.  And finally I added the turtle, binding etc. 

Now...... where did I put that other box of chocolates.....