Last night was the opening reception for Artmore.  Michael Burnett, owner of Space Gallery, selected three artists to exhibit a few pieces in his beautiful and prestigious art gallery in the Santa Fe Art District in Denver and I was one of the lucky ones.

The Fiber Paintings behind me started as white cotton fabric. I than used deconstructed screen printing with thickened dye to create the background.  I added paint, stencils and stamps to create different layers.  I finished them off with free motion machine stitching.  You can see more of these in my gallery on this website.

The event was well attended and I met lots of art lovers.  I had forgotten how much fun it is to exhibit my work since its been over 4 years since I had done so because of Covid.  It was also fun to put on some make-up and get dressed up for a change!

Took a Paste Paper Making workshop at Inter-Ocean Studios with Rhiannon Alpers and Alicia Bailey today.  I've always wanted to try this technique but never got around to it so when I saw this workshop, I jumped at the chance to learn from the experts.

I can never create good art in a workshop and today was no different.  But I learned a lot on things to try in my studio and seeing other student's results was informative.  I always love seeing artists create and the demos were wonderful.  As we learn new techniques, it is obvious that to become proficient, we need to spend a lot of time practicing.  

Making Paste Paper involves a lot of combinations:  the type and quality of the paper, the various paste recipes, the different ways to color the paste, and the tools used to make patterns or marks.  Not to mention layering everything over and over to achieve different results.

Tomorrow, I will look at the papers I created in the workshop and see what worked and didn't work.  And then, I will try to create more Paste Papers using stuff in my stash.  Another thing to explore!

I couldn't resist adding another bird to my scroll.  And I had fun adding some birds flying in the sky along with some grasses in the ground and a weird tree that you would never find in nature!  I also glued on some small flowers that I had in my sari stash and those are actually beaded.  So now my scroll has pieces in it that were contributed by people who live in India — a world away.  I like this idea and if I make another one, I will expand on it. 

I highly recommend this intuitive embroidery art making.  It's very freeing and fun!

I forgot how much fun it is to create on the fly.  Making this embroidery scroll has given me permission to just play with fabric and thread.  The more I work on this piece, the more it reminds me of folk art.  It's almost done so I need to think about my next scroll and think about incorporating new stitches.  Luckily, my friend Gay gave me two of her embroidery books so I'll have plenty of inspiration!

After watching Misti Mo showing her embroidery scrolls, I decided to make one myself.  So FUN!
This combines my love of fabric and stitch in a new way and challenges my brain to decide the next iteration.  I started out deciding to use canvas rather than muslin since I wanted to work on something more substantial.  If you know me, you also know I only use 3 embroidery stitches in my work (straight, chain and French knots).  So this project will encourage me to explore other stitches (like a fly stitch, back stitch, and who knows what comes next!)
What I love about working on this scroll is that I don't have to fuse anything to the surface before stitching.  That give me a lot of freedom every day and eliminates a step in the process.  And, because I love texture, I don't mind some fraying that happens around the edges.
I haven't measured the scroll but I think it might be 45 inches long and about 6 inches high.  It's quite heavy so that is a challenge.  
I'm working on all parts of the scroll at the same time so it won't be finished until it's finished.  but here is a small part of the scroll.  I still have to add some leaves to the stems with the orange flowers and add something to the ground besides the flowers.  More to come!