Quilt Transformed into Community Art Project - "The Wishing Wall"

The quilt took a whole new turn on Friday morning, the day of "Whitsun", when the Holy Spirit comes to the Earth! After I heard the little voice in my head say, " you are creating "The Wishing Wall", I ran into my foyer and stripped the pieces from the wall. I found a basket to hold them, gathered up all of the pushpins I could find and quickly typed up the Score sheet seen above. At school, I pinned the "seed" origami piece with the Score sheet and the monoprint that resulted from my exploration of monoprinting called "Ripples 2" to the wall. During the critique in my Fiber Art Sculpture Class, one student exclaimed, "I don't know if I'm looking at the ground or the sky." In the Land of Metaphor, monoprints folded into simple origami forms do resemble a field of "flowers" or a sky full of "stars." Another student said that she could see this as a large public installation project. Now, I am folding monoprints like crazy for a Community Project at the Falkirk Center for the Arts during the Re: Valued show in June - August, 2011.

Thank you Cayan Robertson for showing me how to create the conditions that encourage people to participate in artmaking.

Elise

Origami "Scrap" Quilt Created with Monoprints

I am using my monoprint "rejects" to create a "scrap" quilt. In the making of my monoprints, I noticed that my brayer was going over the edge of my paper. To protect my work space, I placed a piece of paper under the paper I was working on. At the end of the day, I noticed a history of marks from the various inks I used throughout the session. I also found myself with a lot of unused ink on my pallet, and in my conservative nature, I sprayed the pallet with water, and "printed" more paper. With many monoprints accumulating quickly, I saw the opportunity to create a "scrap" quilt, with folded Origami "flowers". Now, I pin them to my wall in the foyer and enjoy the interplay of random color, line and form.

Personal Creativity Workshop at O'Hanlon Center for the Arts

"Butterfly", Cray-pas on Brown Paper and Origami, 24" x 24"

This week-end, Cayen really stretched our boundaries, asking us to draw inspiration from a shape, rather than our usual way of working. We were instructed to tear or cut out a shape from a plain piece of typing paper, then pick from an image from her collection of postcards spread out on the table. We used the images and shapes for inspiration in our artworks. I picked a postcard with colorful fishes. Since my dominant right arm was hurting from doing too much art these days, she instructed me to glue my images, the positive and the negative, to a plain piece of brown butcher paper, then work only with my lefthand! I felt like a kid again, using Cray-pas and "painting" large shapes on my piece of paper. During critique, members pointed out how much my piece looks like silk. I found that interesting since I am now painting on silk! This piece was folded into a kite-form after it was painted, in the tradition of Origami.