thelmasmith

Another beautiful day in sonora.

I worked almost all day and finally came to the desk about three.  Got the winter clothes sorted out of the closet and put away.  Dumped out the donation bag of widows weeds for Valarie James Las Madres project and added some summer clothes and reconsidered and removed others.

Got black clothes washed, dry, hung up.  Same with whites including my towels.  Also a piece of the peruvian pima cotton sateen.  I have decided that the brown back on my fancy banana leaf pillows though beautiful is distracting.  So I’ve a piece of sateen in a green dye bath.

All the Left Turn Lane came back from the Pomona Downtown Art Center.  They had been there since December.  Since they were in the community conference room and the art center is associated with Pitzer etc.  I wonder if I can legitimately call it a solo exhibition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Colleges

Anyway, the dye board was set up in the garage and I got everything unpacked (bulk packing) and individually rerolled and wrapped and put away.  While I was at it and had the ends off the storage tubes I decided to get rid of some of the space wasters.

I did my best with the cat bat.  When that storage unit was in the house it had no ends and was tunnels for cats.

While I was at it I rolled all the rest of the sateen off the core and folded in by the yard.  There was ten yards before I had to get it back out of the closet and tear the pillow length.  I think it’s nine and a half now.

I’ve been rereading the paint and dye books.  The Tuckman & Janas Creative Silk Painting keeps talking only about “new” instant set dyes that need no steaming. They never mention a name or a brand; it is most frustrating.  The stretch or not stretch page is followed with a stretch with tape over stretcher boards.  Stabilize with freezer paper, loose stretch (over an open cardboard box), stabilize on adhesive boards, stabilize on a smooth flat surface.  Aaarrrgggg  -  they do mention the complete book of silk painting at only $27.  Since the book in my hand is more than ten years old I should be able to find it second hand.  Do I want it??

Kate Broughton’s textile dyeing makes references to acidic mediums and acid dyes almost as an afterthought.  It gives several different ways of working.  Including laying silk on washed, ironed, white canvas, doing the dye painting, letting everything dry thoroughtly, peeling the two apart, touching up the mirror image on the canvas, and steaming the whole shebang.  The particular artist then makes totes out of the canvas and I’m not quite sure what with the beautifully hand painted silk.

Another artist in the same book talks of acid dyes, wet in wet like watercolor.

Even dharma says very little of particular use.  There is something “everybody” knows that I’m not getting here.  I have dupont dyes, untouched.  Single sentences about water and alcohol.  Asides about vinegar or citric acid crystals.  Even the “recipes” from each artist’s paragraph may mention vinegar but no one ever says, “Do this with the vinegar.”

I’ve got to go fold white clothes.  Obviously I’m not going to start painting on silk in the next day or two.  However, I do have three quite large bunches of what I would call silk broadcloth folded up and in a marked container.  I have to figure this out sometime.