My sewing table has a window where I can watch village life go by as I sew. My studio is in the top floor of our heritage home which was built in 1909 and has two of these original old single pane windows. The other one is filled with the branches and leaves of a big maple tree.
‘Handscape’ shibroi dyed and printed wall hanging with my newest garments ready for summer art fairs and markets.
ArtStarts ABC Arts Project with Home School studentsLast week I completed an arts project I have been facilitating over a period of a few months with a small group of home school students in my community. We held an exhibit at The Hidden Garden Gallery, our local gallery here in New Denver. The show of work included examples of workshops we did as well as our final group project. The ABCs of Community Arts Project provided an opportunity for a small group of Distributed Learning students from kindergarten through Grade 5 to explore their community and environment through art and the alphabet. This project was funded by ArtStarts in Schools and Arrow Lakes Distributed Learning School.
Through facilitating a range of visual art experiences and local field trips I was able to guide children to represent key aspects of this place we share as home. DL students are home learners so parent participation was a vital component of this project. This ABC art project consisted of a series of full days, each day made up of art exercises, field trips and an art workshop which focused on a variety of arts media.
We began each day exploring with brush and ink key art elements such as texture charts of natural found objects, line used to express different kinds of weather and experimenting with freestyle lettering. Each student received an art journal which they used for recording visual observations as well as words and letters associated with places we visited on field trips.
Gelatin plate prints of found natural objects collected on our field trip along Carpenter Creek to the Slocan Lake.
Block printing small motifs onto fabric which was then sewn into sachets – designs were inspired by African ‘Adinkra’ stamps and by metalwork seen on our field trip to Sandon.
Paintings of heritage buildings around New Denver
Three dimensional constructions of letters of the alphabet after a visit to the mining museum in Silverton.
Shibori dyed textiles – shibori is a Japanese technique in which fabric is stitched or bound before dyeing so that when the bindings are released a pattern emerges. The field trip on this day was to the Nikkei Centre to learn about the internment of the Japanese people to this area.
Our main project was a culmination of all of their experiences and new skills learned. Working as a group, the children and some of their parents contributed letters of the alphabet in the form of block print designs. Each letter of the alphabet was used to represent elements of our community and natural environment. If you look carefully at each piece you will recognize many small but important details that add perspective when seen as a whole.
We showed all of our blockprints which were cut from Safety Kut blockprinting material.
The Hidden Garden Gallery provided a beautiful intimate space for our show which we held over the busy May day week-end – May 19th to 21st,2012.
I am most grateful to the parents and teachers who gave me the opportunity to work with these amazing young students, to Arts Starts and Arrow Lakes Distributed Learning School for the funding, to Lucerne School for providing us with classroom space, to The Hidden Garden Gallery for their beautiful gallery space and most of all to the awesome group of children I have had the pleasure of working with.
I was having a discussion on my Inkyspider Facebook page the other day about OOAK. A friend and very talented jeweler had no idea what OOAK meant. I realized that some terms which we use to describe art and handmade items were not necessarily clear to buyers and even artists and makers. I decided to compile this list of commonly used terminology and abbreviations which artists and makers may use to describe their work. I chose words which were used fairly broadly and have not covered techniques and terms used for specific media. This may come in useful if you are one of those people who like to peruse the beautiful handmade world of online venues such as Etsy.com . Any of these words or terms may be used to make your searches on these sites more relevant.
'Undersea Garden" - An original OOAK fiber art ACEO by Morgen Bardati
THE LIST OF ARTS AND CRAFT TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
“Berberis Thunbergi” Don’t you love the sound of Latin names? I always enjoy discovering them when looking up names of plants and shrubs in my garden. Otherwise know as Japanese Barberry, this striking little shrub with it’s red berries and dark thorny branches in winter, was the inspiration for one of my latest textile prints.
Detail of wrap style skirt with Japanese Barberry design by textile artist Morgen Bardati
I discovered the simple beauty of this shrub when I used it in an arrangement for my booth at a Christmas Fair. I was so struck by it’s dramatic dark branches and thorns contrasting the bright red berries that I made a pen and ink drawing of it and transferred that to a silkscreen. I’ve since used it as a layered design in skirts, tunics, table runners and napkins. I constructed this skirt of hand dyed linen rayon with a hemp silk satin finish on the hemline, waistband and tie. I discharge screen printed the first layer and then screenprinted a second layer in black textile paint.
Japanese Barberry skirt by Morgen Bardati
My inspiration:
“Bee in Tulip” - original textile art wall hanging
I have a long history with insects in my art. It was many years ago in South Africa when I was doing a three year college art program that I first became fascinated with insects. Just across from the art school was the local museum. Many times when I became frustrated with whatever I was working on in the art studio, I would walk across the street and spend time alone in the quiet halls of the museum. I could be found making drawings or just contemplating in one of two places: the beehive with it’s busy little bees buzzing and working in their hive, or the dragonfly display cases. I loved to sketch the dragonflies even though many of them looked like they had crash landed and were rather mangled. I made a whole series of dragonfly etchings (intaglio and drypoint), whimsical drawings of dragonflies with helicopter wings. Some of these in fact became my first designs on textiles when I started with block prints years ago. I have since then created many textile screenprinting designs of butterflies, bees, dragonflies, beetles, moths and grasshoppers.
This newest design of a bee in a tulip is inspired by the bees in our garden. We keep our own beehives for honey and pollination of our large flower, fruit and vegetable garden. These sweet natured and hard working little creatures are my constant companions in the summer garden. I am fascinated by their strong curiosity – they love to investigate every nook and cranny they encounter. They play ‘hide and seek’ with me in the flowers, rocks and straw in my garden.
This organic cotton fluted skirt has been dyed and screenprinted by hand. The “Bee in Tulip” design has been printed in light blue round shapes created by using a shibori technique called itajime. Itajime uses clamped blocks to resist the dye leaving a pattern when the clamps are released.
This dusty pink and light ochre hand dyed linen cuff has a screenprinted design of sweet little bees on a cosmos flower in silver textile paint. There is a pretty shibori trim running down each side. The pink I have used here is almost identical to the actual colour of the cosmos flower.
I have always had it in mind to make fiber art necklaces using my own hand dyed and printed textiles. I finally produced some this week and am really pleased with the results. They have a strong ethnic tribal flavour and are soft and comfortable to wear. I’ve really enjoyed designing and making them.
Rust Red Leaf necklace – hand dyed and screenprinted cotton, hemp, silk and linen with vintage silver grey mother of pearl button
Clover Flower fiber art necklace – screenprinted natural linen and hand dyed cotton cording with vintage mother pf pearl buttons and African ‘Lucky Bean’
Autumn Rust fiber art leaf necklace – hand dyed and screenprinted cotton pendant and with vintage mother of pearl button.
Tree of Life screenprinted and embroidered cotton and linen pendant with vintage mother of pearl buttons
I have been working on stitching these running lines for the past three winters – not all the time of course, but picking it up on long winter evenings and putting in a few rows at a time. Shibori is a Japanese technique of manipulating fabric by stitching, tying, clamping or folding to create a resist to the dye. When the bindings are released the pattern emerges. This particular pattern is called Mokume, meaning wood-grain because it resembles the organic linear patterns of wood grain.
I have now completed stitching lines about 1/2″ apart on this 80″ by 54″ length of hand dyed purple cotton sateen cloth. I have begun to pull up the upholstery thread and gather them tightly with knots at each end. This stage in itself is beautiful. After being in the dye bath, the threads have to be released and I always feel a little sadness at cutting them and losing the amazing sculptured cloth that has been created by stitching and gathering.
This fabric will go into a vat dye bath, most likely gold or light rust brown, where I will replace the purple visible on the outside with the new colour and when the pattern is revealed the purple hidden inside will form a beautiful and interesting contrast of colours in a wood grain pattern.
I am planning a collection of skirts for this summer and will be using this new cloth in some of them. The skirt in the image below is one I did a few years using the Mokume shibori technique as well as a shibori technique called Itajime to create the bright orange patterns on the yoke. Itajime uses clamped blocks to resist the dye and leaves behind a motif.
I have to admit a bit of a fetish for sewing notions. I collect vintage buttons, hooks and eyes, metal stitch-in snaps and zippers are so much fun! Sewing tools like thimbles, sock darners and unpicking tools. Pins, needles and pin cushions are irresistible!
I was recently having a pin crisis because so many pins made right now arrive, blunt, bend easily and are always losing their little round pin heads. I bought a new set of (hopefully) good quality glass head pins and this gorgeous pin cushion from Etsy seller Susan Parsons of Georgia Street Crafts. She made this felted wool pin cushion with hand stitched detail and a vintage bakelite button in the centre. It is beautifully constructed and filled with crushed walnut shells. This natural eco-friendly filler gives the cushion a nice solid feel and helps to keep pins clean and sharp. A great way to start the new year in my studio!
Textiles in this photo have been surfaced designed in my studio – discharge screenprinted, direct screenprinted and hand dyed. I have started making some of into cuffs featuring mother of pearl and natural wood buttons.
We have had glorious weather here in the Kootenays this Christmas and have enjoyed yesterday and today walking along the shores of our beautiful Slocan Lake.
We Three Trees
Blinded by the sun reflected on the surface of Slocan Lake
Skyward
Flatlanders will often comment that the skies in the mountains are not big enough but I am in love with the changing beauty of our Kootenay skies. The place where sky, trees and mountains interact has so many ever changing nuances of light. I often find myself completely captivated by the mountains and sky while on a trip to the post office or the corner store.
Autumn’s promise – organic cotton and hemp table runner
This organic cotton and hemp table runner is ‘hot off the press’ as they say and has been hand dyed a beautiful rich rust brown and screenprinted with a combination of two of my designs. A simple drawing of a leaf and a seed motif which I call ‘multiply’ brings to mind the trees outside my studio window. The seeds fall with the leaves and nature’s promise that they will come to life in the spring inspires this design.
