2009/09/29

Looking Ahead

Moving On

This was my motto for the last few years, and since the day I bought the little magnet at the Red Gallery, the day Jay decided to sell my scarves there, it sat on top of the smaller window in my stash room, like the cross the Irish always wrote at the top center of the blackboard as soon as she entered our classroom.

I've been ready to move on with my motto of late. Considering what's happening with my life right now, it feels apropos, and I didn't want to just discard it, but I wanted to pass it on to someone else. So I posted it today. I hope I did the right thing.

I'll stick to "preposterous" at least for the rest of the year.

Kiva

I've heard of these micro lending schemes on the radio, but never knew I, too, could participate. How fabulous, and so easy. I started out with a loan to this group.

2009/09/28

Philosophical

Yesterday, a journo who writes for fancy magazines rang and complimented my weaving and tried to suss out if I would make an interesting story. I sounded unenthusiastic and dull so she asked me to recommend other Nelson artists instead. I was listening to my own voice as if it was someone else talking.

While driving back from the Frizzell exhibition, Rose asked me what my next big project is, and I didn't have an answer. She asked if I still felt passionate about weaving as I always did, and my answer as, "yes and no", and I made a joke about the amount of stash I have now allowing me to quit so easily.

It's almost October and my preposterously creative 2009 is heading towards the final stretch, and I'm not sure where I'm going, where I am, or where I've been all year.

When I was a child, I imagined getting older to mean being physically less agile, but intellectually superior and emotionally settled, the latter two more than making up for the first. I wasn't counting on having a mental illness (that sounds so serious!) and not being able to be productive. I've coped the best I could, and there's no use crying over unraveling threads; I try to be philosophical and stay positive.

And things aren't so bad. I'm finally sick and tired of the stash problem and am tackling it; for the first time I felt like checking out the 2009 courses via the UK Online Guild (but couldn't remember the url and had to ask Dot!); the client who wanted a baby blanket around February/March still wants it, and has put in a tentative order for the next, fourth commission; and I'm thinking about another warp of my gold, Rococo scarves, this time around 10 inches wide.

I'm ordering 1600 more heddles, some very fine merino, and though I struggle, I'm learning lots from Ali's mentoring. I really enjoy my figure/life drawing class; 6 terms ago when I signed up, I had hoped to learn to draw fine, accurate drawings, but my focus has changed and I'm into spontaneous, emotional gesture drawings. (Yeah, me, spontaneous!) And Textile Lunches have become a regular thing for all of us.

I'm still here, with all the yarns and equipment and books, and all the plans and To Do lists, and a husband with a day job who thinks my weaving is nice. And a dad who turned 82 today, who started to think this past January that I wasn't a lost cause after all.

So I go on, counting my blessings, and the recounting the warps over and over again as my thoughts drift from this project to that.

Thank you, friends.

Appropriation - Textile Lunch V

I'm trying to recall the discussions during lunch on Friday the 18th.

"Appropriation", in the art context and the way I was explained, is a catch all phrase for using things other people created to make your art. Making a collage or doodling on magazine photographs to create your own work can be appropriation, as can using found objects to create a sculpture. Appropriation can be done in vastly different ways and in varying degrees. I'm not sure where the exact border between it and plagiarism is, but with appropriation the artist would put her/his own name on the work.

Then came the era of copyrights, intellectual property and cultural sensitivity, and even the Internet.

The first issue is cultural sensitivity. In New Zealand, there have been discussions on the ownership of indigenous Maori intellectual properties, among them the Haka (the war cry ritual at the start of many sports matches), and their many traditional motifs and patterns. There was an outcry of, for a want of a better word, blasphemy in some quarters when Robbie Williams got what to us is a clearly Maori design tattoo. I can't go any further because I've not studied the subject beyond what I hear on the radio news, but suffice it to say unless I get permission, and blessing, from Maori, it doesn't feel my place to research or develop ideas based on their culture, history or motifs, to make my own work. The same goes for the various Pacific Island cultures. (And now I'm thinking about my tapa-inspired series. Yikes.) To a degree, I not only get this, but sympathize. But things are nowhere near as clear cut as this in New Zealand.

As a Japanese, I cringe to see the costumes every time I heard of a new production of Madame Butterfly, especially the loose necklines or open hemlines. I cringe at the Hollywood rendition of geishas, samurais, Japanese tourists, or Japanese businessmen. And I feel uncomfortable, sometimes, seeing shibori or kumihimo, because they are taken out of the Japanese cultural context. Still, I don't feel any ownership of them, and I am amazed when I see genuinely good work, in or out of any context. In fact, theater forms such as kabuki and noh have enjoyed a resurgence because of their popularity overseas.

(You have to give me this one however: haiku and other poetical form just cannot be done in any other language, and outside the Japanese psyche. You've got to let me cringe big time at those.)

In short, we are used to anyone doing whatever they like with Japanese motifs and material.

But there is a problem. Most anything Japanese pre-1980's came from people and places to the west of us, via China and Korea, a large majority of it from the Han people, I think. So if I go to the extreme, not only can I not research and develop ideas on my pet subjects like Arabic writing, Rococo, Kente cloth, and Larsson, but about the only Japanese motif left to study would be Pokemon and co. Rosie, who is English, has similar problems with her heritage.

The second point is about originality vs copyright, and it gets murkier. Who owns rights to images? This is less of an issue in the style of weaving I do, i.e. not pictorial, but for example in painting, can I use Campbell soup, or Coca Cola or McDonalds to make a point, a social commentary? Is it "more" OK to make fun of large internationals? Is it OK if I'm celebrating their work? If I want to paint landscapes, can I paint your house in it without asking your permission? The list went on and we started to feel distraught.

There is no obvious conclusion, and I don't foresee there being one. Still, I would like to work ethically, and we felt it was important to ponder the point.

This is Dick Frizzell's True Colors, a spoof on the Four Square Man, which Frizzell himself designed as a graphic/commercial artist.

Finds

Husband found this Flickr site, and we can't get enough of it.

If you want to weave something for breast cancer awareness, Bonnie Inouye posted two pink ribbon drafts some years ago on Handweaving.net, here and here.

If you are new to weaving, or is about to teach a beginner, have a look at Tracey's post in her Pioneering on the Home Front blog. (No, it's not new, but I just found it.)

"Feel of Fibre" Review

If anyone up Auckland way reads or hears about the Waiheke Art Gallery exhibition, can you please let me know? For now, I feel like a white asparagus shoot (kept in the dark). Thanks.

Edgy

What does it mean???

2009/09/27

Another Art Outing

Today Rose took me to Wollaston Estate Winery to see a Dick Frizzell exhibition. We saw six large paintings, five of which were based on hand painted signs on the roadside and on shop fronts. The viewing experience had a new twist; the gallery had MP3 players loaded with Frizzell's interview, so we went around the gallery listening to him describe each painting. We came out feeling we had a very intimate, immediate access to the paintings.

I appreciate my friends taking me to exhibitions. They've all had formal art education, whereas I've had none, and I am opinionated and have been known to blurt out, in not-so-inside voices, utterances such as "Yuuuuuuck!!!!" and "Good God!!" When asked, I can only say what I like about a work, or not. And when they discuss techniques, forms, compositions, etc., it gives me a deeper understanding of how to understand and appreciate (or not) paintings.

Sometimes I wonder why they put up with me because I react like a kid, but then they are all good mothers and they may be used to kids' reactions.

We started daylight savings today, so we are officially in spring/summer mode.

2009/09/24

CV/Resume??

I'm off to The Suter to look at John Bevan Ford works with Rosie the art historian, but before I go, I thought you might get a chuckle out of this. The chuckle, that is, what I sent to Waiheke as my "CV/Resume":

Born in Yokohama Japan.
Schooled in Tokyo, Japan, Minnesota and Arizona, USA.
Started weaving as an occasional hobby after moving to New Zealand in 1994. Decided to weave seriously after I found myself too old and unemployable for office jobs in 2004.

Selected Exhibitions:
Sea, Sand and Sky, (solo exhibition), Nelson, 2007
Re:fine, Wellington & Nelson, 2007
Culturally Routed, Nelson, 2007
Craft 08, Nelson, 2008

2009/09/23

The One That didn't Fly

While weaving the second, yellow piece for Waiheke Art Gallery, I thought of using the eyelash yarns vertically. I only wanted to pin down the eyelash yarns every inch or so in two pics, and after some experimentation, I decided to have three ends in four places.

The mechanism was simple and straight-forward. As you can see, I didn't thread them, but sleyed, and every inch or so, I held down the eyelash yarns and let the shuttle travel over them.
But aesthetically, it didn't work, and since I didn't have the time to experiment some more, I wove the last two with no accents.
I thought, while photographing the sample piece this afternoon, it might have worked better had I used the other face of the draft. Or if I had kept four ends in three places like I imagined first.
Maybe next time.

Waiheke Art Gallery Pieces

I sent four to Feel of Fibre. The first is my SSVE piece. I spoke to the organizer shortly after I finished this piece and had the rest of the warp on the loom, so I thought I could make something "funky" (their request) from this warp to include in the package, but in the end all four pieces came from this warp.

The second is similar to my SSVE, but in duller-than-gold yellow, in an original draft. I made and sampled half a dozen drafts for this project but this is my favorite; the size of the units suits the yarn size, sett and the width of the stripes.

So much so I wove a dark, garnet-red piece without the eyelash accent. This is my favorite.

The last one is the same draft as my SSVE, without the eyelash, in a blindingly bright aqua color. I was running out of time, I experimented with something else but it failed, (I'll show you that later), and couldn't make up my mind, so I went with the "funkiest" I could muster, and this was the result. I add that in summer, (and on Thursday when I was weaving this piece) shallow parts of the sea around here turn into a soft greeny aqua color, so this is representative of the coming season as well.

I both love and loathe this piece. The only regret is I didn't make the bottom side the A side when hemming, but the top side looked better before I washed it, and this is the price I pay for leaving it too late.

All four pieces are woven 7 inches side and around 170cm long.

I apologize for the less than the optimal pictures. They were hung and being dried with the aid of a fan heater while I shot them.

The Week That Was

Last Wednesday I went to see Dr Tom for the one-month check up to see how my tiny antidepressants are working. I companied I've been reduced to an emotionally steady, well-balanced person, with none of life's highs. But admitted I didn't have extreme lows, either, and most days I managed to do something albeit slowly. I complained (nicely) it's been like living with an emotional cataract, and asked if we could look into reducing the dosage. Dr Tom convinced me the current dosage is so low it may not work halved, so we agreed to stay on track for two more months.

Speaking of slow progress: my project. Back in early June, Andrea contacted the organizers of a selling exhibition at the Waiheke Art Gallery on Waiheke Island near Auckland, and asked them to invite me! And they did. The plan was to take all winter to experiment and concoct four exquisitely funky pieces. I managed, just, sending off four possibly-still-damp cotton scarves on Friday morning, paying the quickest costliest Saturday delivery postage to insure they would arrive by Monday, and they did. Outside the Guild structure, this was the first exhibition I took part in since Craft 08 in Feb 07*, so it was important that I'd make it. I hope they liked what I put in; even though they were not some of my best, they were my brightest. Feel of Fibre opens this Friday.

I was frantically pressing and tagging and doing the paperwork Friday morning, so I missed my drawing class, but I made it to our Textile lunch. It was a small group, only Rose, Rosie and me, but what an interesting discussion. The topic was "appropriation", a potentially touchy subject in Aotearoa New Zealand, but I'll have to think about this and post separately.

Ben had gotten yet another cold last week . When I came home from the lunch I just fell into bed, and with practically no chemical assistance, we both slept through to Monday morning, with occasional breaks foraging in the fridge. I felt a tad week during the day but funny how I knew I was fully recovered that night: my mind raced and I couldn't sleep. Life was back to normal.

And speaking of projects proceeding like a snail locked in glacier, yesterday, Tuesday, I started/resumed my stash war, with full gusto this time. I've actually been on a cleaning high, something I missed. So that's where you can find me this fine Wednesday, attaching lethal fluffy balls.

*Edit: I had the wall at the Suter and Bye Bye Blue Eyes, both two tiny exhibitions - I'd forgotten about them this morning. And Craft 08 was in, yes, 08!

2009/09/22

Heard on The Radio This Morning

Somewhere near the start of a short story this morning was a passage: "It wasn't envy, but (she) missed what could have been."

That's what I feel when I hear of my friends traveling. When we lived in Japan, we worked crazy hours; we worked during the booming 80's up until the very start of the 90's recession, so overtime was automatic and unquestioned. In return, we got two weeks of holiday to almost anywhere our little hearts desired, with comparatively little financial restrictions. Compared to now.

Now we live in Nelson, and people from around the world and from all over New Zealand envy us. And this place is pretty darned near Paradise with its weather and scenery. But it's too easy to forget that when I wallow in my bookshop-, stone-architecture- and history-envy.

My stash room is the only room in the house that looks out to our garden. It makes me want to make the garden beautiful. Which my neighbors would appreciate, no doubt. OK, back to the stash room today.

Kiwi Blokes Lack Dress Sense

Yeah, well. I don't mind. In Japan, they worried too much what one wore or carried, or what one drove and where one ate. It's the inside that counts. (And it's not as bad as DLJ describes.)

As well, I just came across an index to Ashford products' assembly guide info, in case you ever buy something second hand with no instructions. (I was looking for cheap plastic sley hooks, my favorite. The very first one I got now has a big crack in it, and I have one other, but I want to buy some peace of mind.)

2009/09/19

Women's Suffrage Day in New Zealand

Since 1893! Ben and I didn't move to New Zealand until late 1994, but I wonder if there was a big Centennial in '93. I've got a few things to tell you, maybe later in the weekend. Ben's shared his new cold with me, so I'm a little drowsy, but I managed to finish and post a project yesterday and am thinking of the next few.

2009/09/13

Ichthyo

I finished paying for this book and brought it home yesterday. I don't know how to pronounce the title/technology, but it's a book of black and white photos of fish X-rays. Any photo in this book has the ability to shut out outside noise and transport me to the deep sea, though not all the fish are deep sea dwellers. It's a strange, magical book.

Meanwhile, I'm contemplating the aversion I've had towards weaving. This lifetime textile- (or more like fabric-) nut has felt no desire to weave in, like, forever, and I'm past disappointment with myself and have been slightly amused.

I've been obsessed with collages and drawing, and have been looking at painters' and sculptors' docos and books. My latest passion, in addition to fish X-rays, has been Ralph Hotere's figure drawings; I can't take my eyes off of them. When I close my eyes, I also see Rodin's Javanese dancers.

I've even been taking out my figure/life drawings and studying them, something I've never had the inclination to do before. I want to improve and I don't know how, so I stare and stare at them, hoping an idea will pop up. Then I look at other people's drawings and try to identify what I like about them. But everybody has different drawing habits/tendencies/skills/whims and I don't know where what I want to do converges with what I like in others' work.

Kind of like weaving.

I'm glad I found a hobby I can obsess about, particularly as drawing is less fattening than baking. I think this "I'm not weaving" phase is temporary. In fact, I have to get cracking today if I am to meet that commitment I talked about almost a week ago. And it may or may not be cyclical, but for me, this prolonged disinterest has definitely been a first.

I think I'm more attracted to drawing because once I get my material out, I can start drawing immediately. What I used to enjoy, the processes of weaving, has become a burden for now: the planning, the forecasting, the sampling. Goodness me, the drawing class is changing the way I prefer to work; it is having a profound effect on my personality!

Our drawing exhibition closed yesterday.

Funny how in my mind I weigh half as much, my hair and skin are perpetually impeccable, and my world is always color-coordinated. Reality; what a bother!

(Phew, that shadow is a reflection from the ceiling, not on the work.)

2009/09/10

Oops, Changes in Technology & Material

The instructions, from my 1980's textbook, said to apply a thin layer of lighter fluid on a glossy magazine page, put drawing paper on top, and rub or draw lines from the other side of the drawing paper. The printing ink was to lift a little bit and the drawing paper absorb it, making a faint, mirrored copy of the page/photo/text on the drawing paper. I tried it with Ben's Zippo fluid with two types of paper to no avail, then with grape seed oil, to no avail.

I then spoke to a local print guy, who said in the 80's print ink used to be mineral oil-based, but nowadays it is vegetable oil-based, and couldn't think of any other solution to try.

But this particular magazine, The New Zealand Listener, makes my hand dirty whenever I have certain types of moisturizer on my hand, but I can't remember which. I'm thinking there must be something, before I resort to mineral turpentine again?

Have you done anything like this?

Zombie

A commitment I made in early June, I realized I couldn't fulfill it so I composed a long letter of apology in my head on Monday, only to find on Tuesday I have two more weeks, so I am supposed to be working on that.

I am told by many people my medication is working because I don't have the extreme lows any more, but I am still waiting for some highs, some days full of energy and zing. Tuesday and Wednesday I was exhausted for no reason, and felt brain-dead, but I could read, so the meds must be working. And I don't have absolutely blank days any more.

I continue to enjoy reading about design, and my next module involves playing with lighter fluids, so expect some... flares!

Eye candy, or eye cakes, for you here. Click on the tiny cakes at the top of the page; my fav is the tea party cake.

Tell me what you've been doing to inspire me, please!

2009/09/03

Slow, Again

As I washed some dishes, reflecting on what Ali said yesterday, it dawned on me that profile drafts would be a good tool for the next draft project.

A good tool? Ma'am, profile drafts are for blocks!!!

On Advice

A person younger than I asked if it is too late for her to become a craftsperson. Unfortunately it's not weaving, but she'd be superb at her chosen craft; her temperament and background suit it.

I try not to give advices, but I tend to have lots of them; I don't intend to change or force anyone, but I get excited and enthusiastically brain-storm with myself in the presence of the person who may or may not want advice.

This morning, while talking to someone else, I thought, "Today is not to late, and if I can't finish it today, tomorrow is not too late, either." Because that's the best lesson I've taken from depression so far.

Sometimes I should take my own advice.

Wednesday

I managed to weave my straight draw samples before Ali came yesterday. But for an unknown, mysterious, incomprehensible reason, the yarns did not bloom in the wet finishing, and the samples look stringy. I don't understand this. Because I'm studying blocks, I wanted to eliminate certain factors from interfering, so I used my regular 2/20 mercerized cotton at my regular 36EPI and washed the way I always do. I used different wefts, cottons of various sizes, merinos, and one mix, but even some of these didn't bloom. The only reason I can think of is the initial hot bath wasn't hot enough, and I might have been more in a rush than I thought at the time. Anyway, it is a sorry looking rag, I'm disappointed, and I'm not showing it to anyone but Ali. Is there anything I can do now it's been pressed and dried once?

I want to weave, again, one of my samples in straight draw because I think it's an OK looking one, then rethread and weave one more before moving on to the next chapter, which is to use more than two blocks.

The design part was a laugh a minute, (including snorting at that passage), and she gave me a whole heap of ideas to extend my understanding of the chapter. In particular, she recommended I do more on the theme of "putting a price on art". But this puzzles me; the joy of making that piece was while I looked at the frottage on hand, the idea sprung out of nowhere and it was pasted together instantly. If I know what the theme is, my mode of operation would change. So how do I keep the spontaneity (and the fun) and still work to a theme? So far the only plan is to gather lots of attractive "stuff" in a box and not worry about assembling them until later, and I'll augment, but won't go actively looking for, material to suit the theme. Any other ideas?

Here are her other suggestions:

Blocks:
  • Play with setts, mixed (color and/or fiber) warps, use these as design features.
  • With more blocks, don't just think about showing only distinctive blocks, e.g. have two behave the same in some parts, and differently in others.
  • Consider unity with variety, asymmetry, irregularities.
Design:
  • Express same themes using different methods, or combinations.
  • Use also technology, i.e. scan my frottage, then pixilate, change colors, etc.
  • Use different media for rubbing.
  • Consider the shapes and the cut edges of the collage pieces.
Other:
  • Transfer what I'm learning about designs into my samples.
All in all, what I realized was spending 1/2 day a week on sampling and 1/2 a week on design, I should be able to do far more than just the exercises in the books, but take up these suggestions and try them. Busy, busy. At this point, I am totally not sure about the last one, however.

She also mentioned that colors work differently in weaving (which I knew) and glass (which I didn't). I'm curious to know more. Which conveniently leads to my evening.

Last night Rosie and I went to a presentation on English art and cut glass from the 18th and 19th century, mostly from Stourbridge. I had never thought of glass from England, so it was interesting to see them, particularly the opaque kind. There was an example of a Roman pot in the British museum estimated to have been from 0-50 CE, a cameo of white glass over a dark blue base. There was a prize for recreating this piece in the 1800s and a young apprentice was inspired to start working on it when he was 9; he eventually succeeded and this brought back cameo into fashion. In return, nobody is able to recreate the delicate pictorial cut glass designs made in the 1800.

Winter sprung back overnight. The hills are covered by a fresh dump of snow. My basement sounds good on a day like this.

2009/09/02

Reading Over and Over

From page 41 of "basic design: systems, elements, applications" by John Adkins Richardson, Floyd W. Coleman and Michael J. Smith, (Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 1984).

Designer and critic Roy R. Behrens (b. 1946), in his book "Art and Camouflage" apparently "analyzed the roles of contrast in nature and in art, using the raft of concealment as a clue to the nature of creativity in art. The camofleur deals in delusions and tries to obliterate our awareness of a 'thing' that is being hidden. For a creative act to occur, a 'framing' of the act (by actual picture frames, placement in museums, theatrical stages, religious edifices, scientific laboratories, or tones of voice that imply jokes) is essential. Framing 'separates acts of creation (which are labeled deviant acts) from such phenomena as madness which are unframed deviant acts."

At first I thought it meant human action motivated by intention, i.e. "framing", is required to bring to the fore camouflaged stuff hidden stuff in nature, but the more times I read it, the more I get confused. Delusions and obliterations? So framing (critics and museums' actions) make the deviant act of creating OK and sane???

Collage, The Day After

I said I don't like making collages, montages, and frottages, but it was strangely therapeutic as well. Because I find the tasks so challenging, I was thinking of nothing else, and whether it was this concentration , the outcome of the collages, or the combination, but I was quietly happy all last night. Which was a far cry from Monday, when for the whole day I thought of ways to un-become a weaver.

Collage might be thrown into the potentially-happiness-generating tool box.

2009/09/01

Looking at The Whole Cloth

I don't know if Ali i s doing so intentionally, but what I get from our conversations is she is trying to make me look at the whole cloth, or the cloth as a whole.

In the last few years, (and you can't blame me after taking Bonnie Inouye's workshop in 2002,) I've unintentionally put most of my effort into making interesting drafts, and the type of yarns I use, the colors, or the sheen were all selected to make the pattern/lines/shapes look pretty.

Ali is not against complex patterns, but she has been nudging me to put in just as much care, effort and thought into selecting textures and weave structures, and play with setts and such.

Thus far, the design modules in particular and even the block sampling seem to have only the most tenuous, invisible, link to the kind of cloth I want to weave. But then if you asked me today what kind of cloth I want to weave, I would have to tell you, "something different from what I've been weaving." So I'm OK with the tenuous link, because I'm excited about the possibility of possibilities.

Playing with Scissors and Glue (Design Ch 3)

Mentor Ali comes tomorrow, so I'm finishing my design module for August. This chapter focuses on "fields, forms and fragments," terms I don't really understand in the art context.

The exercises included a lot of collage, montage and frottage (rubbing), where we "slice (paper) with the razor blade... without attempting to make them 'do' anything except move easily and directly." I take it the authors meant don't try to cut out thought-out shapes.

I don't get collages. They are messy to make, I get glue all over, and I don't understand where I'm going or whether I'm supposed to know where I'm going. So I tried to not think at all. As we were supposed to pay attention to the negative space as well, I ended up doing many on black backgrounds, so I'd see the negative space.

After moving around the pieces, I needed to glue them, and realized I couldn't remember exactly where the pieces were supposed to go, so I photographed each sheet before picking each piece up to glue.

As I worked on the next one, I was surprised as the sea, volcanic cones, and plants on the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland began to appear. To me, this is an Hauraki seascape even though the colors are not representative at all.
The next one is a mosaic where some of the tiles were displaced/misplaced to make the picture a little more interesting.
The next exercise were to be a collage of one of my prejudices. I made a statement in protest to the media/fashion industry's definition of women's beauty. Not exactly "my" prejudice, but something I could have think of with the pictures I had.

Photos of prototypically "attractive" women were not hard to find; they were all young, slim and devoid of expression. There are body parts, bikini pics and luxurious taffeta dress in the collage. If you think this is bad in the Western media, Japanese magazines are full of Western celebrities and models who look nothing like the very people whom the businesses intend to target.

The next is a collage of rubbings I made by putting a sheet of Japanese calligraphy (rice?) paper on an object and gently rubbing the paper with a graphite stick. I rubbed Randy Darwall's scarf, my cotton scarf and a repp sample with a heart motif. As you can imagine you cannot get clear images by rubbing textiles, so I also rubbed a vase and my silver brooch. Then the idea of making a collaged based on the act of putting a price on art sprung to mind, and I also rubbed a $2 coin and my name from my credit card.

The textile rubbings are in the background, the harder ceramic and silver in the front, to show harder art objects can fetch higher prices. Next to the $2 coin is the shuttle Gavin included in my brooch; can you see it?

Under my name is the rubbing of the repp sample. As you know, structurally repp is (in this case) a warp-faced plain weave, so the rubbing is just that. I wanted to include this because the chapter included what seems to me typical art gibberish I didn't understand.

Designer and critic Roy R. Behrens, in his book "Art and Camouflage", supposedly "analyzed the role of contrast in nature and in art, using the craft of concealment as a clue to the nature of creativity in art. The camoufleur deals in delusions and tries to obliterate our awareness of a 'thing' that is being hidden." Yeah, yeah... You don't seen the cute pink hearts on a white background, do you? I think Mr Behrens said the act of art making is to bring to our attention bits of concealed nature, but that may be way beyond paraphrasing.

I enjoyed making the last collage. The calligraphy paper is almost translucent and delicate and graphite rubs off easily. I don't feel comfortable with the concept talk; writing about why I included the repp sample in relation to concealment frankly embarrasses me. But I did enjoy the process, and I am pleased with the look of it, especially since it took about 7 minutes to make.

The last exercise involved repeating one shape in different ways.

I apologize for the bad quality of the pics. Today has been sunny as the longest summer day one moment, and then gray, dark and torrential the next, and the interval got progressively shorter.