Spring Cleaning In The Studio

Yesterday I did a bit of spring cleaning in the studio. Today I've been reflecting on advice I've given to many students over the years.

"You have to make a lot of stuff."

This is part of the sermon on building fluency with the materials, finding your voice, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, I practice what I preach, and I've got a whole lot of stuff. Yesterday I started looking through several boxes of samples for classes I don't expect to teach again. I need to clear some things out to make room for more samples for classes I am teaching now and ones I'm developing for the future.

What to do with all this stuff? I have plenty of other samples that more than adequately illustrate possibilities and the evolution of ideas. I don't need to keep all of this. So I started sorting it into piles.

Gifts. There are a few things I know I can give as gifts soon enough that I'll actually remember I have them stashed away to give as gifts. This wasn't a huge pile, though, because I enjoy making gifts that are really personalized.

Donations. Maybe I'm naive on this point, but I want donations to represent current work or new ideas I'm exploring. Still, I found something to donate to an event next year. It will be part of the award given for an exhibit piece made with recycled materials. Must remember what I'm donating and where I'm stashing it.

Recycle. I found a few pieces I could recycle into something for a gift or harvest for materials.

Archive. There are pieces I want to hold onto just the way they are. Some may inspire future efforts. Some will remind me not to waste more time on that idea.

That left me with a large pile of stuff I don't want to keep, give, recycle or archive. And a dilemma. This stuff doesn't represent the work I do now. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I have no desire to go to the work of photographing it, writing descriptions, pricing it, and trying to sell it online. But it represents hundreds of hours of time. I don't want to sell it at a garage sale or donate it to a thrift shop. Did I mention it represents hundreds of hours of time?

So I slept on it last night and here's what I decided. I'm packing  it up and taking it with me to a gathering at the Amana Colonies in Iowa later this month. The friend who organizes the Festival of American Basketry at Amana is hosting an event that will include demonstrations and sales to the public as well as time to share and connect among participants. I always love going to Amana, and I love this group of people. They'll understand what I'm about to do.

I'm not going to package or tag stuff (there's at least 5 hours saved). I'm going to put it on a table with a sign that says, "Pay what it's worth to you."

I don't think this will have a negative impact other people's sales at the event. In the unlikely event that there's someone selling things very similar to mine, I'll remove mine until theirs are sold. And if there's anyone at all who's uncomfortable with this scheme, I'll remove it all and just demonstrate and sell books like I planned.

But if it works, some of this stuff will have new homes by the end of the month, I'll have freed up some real estate in the studio, and maybe, just maybe, I'll have some income in a month with no teaching gigs scheduled.

What do you think. Am I nuts?

Results Are In On Wonder Undies

A while back I did some sampling of disperse dye transfers on 100% cotton. I did it knowing full well that disperse dyes are formulated for synthetics, or at least blends. But I read somewhere that you can improve the fastness of disperse dyes on natural fibers by painting the fabric before applying the transfer dye. And while it made sense (sort of -- I'm no chemist), there's no way to know something like that without sampling.

So I did. You can read the whole Wonder Undies experiment post here.

After a couple months, the results are clear. I love working with disperse dye transfers, but in the future I'll stick to using them on synthetic or synthetic blends.

Now it's time to sample something new on those cotton undies. You know what they say: There's no ugly fabric, just fabric that isn't done yet.

My "To Don't" List

This morning I went to the studio with every intention of completing a sample I've meant to do for almost three years. And I chickened out. Once again, I've been bested by Asian lady beetles.

With warmer weather, my studio is aswarm with faux ladybugs. This alien species seems to have no natural predators, and it's no wonder: After accidentally eating one that landed in my cereal, I can tell you they taste awful. They also leave a nasty orange stain any time they're crushed, which made me think I might as well see if they're good for dye -- you know, lemons into lemonade. Cochineal, the traditional source of the dye color carmine, comes from a bug. It made sense.

So today was going to be the day I began a simple solar dye experiment on silk. The plan was to sweep up a bunch of the carcasses that pile up around my studio windows, throw them in with some silk fabric and vinegar, and see what happens.

I threw in the towel, is what happens. Even if the silk takes the color, would it also take on the smell? I'm not going to find out. I yield. Uncle.

Besides, I have osage orange roots I can use for orange.

So I took this off my To Do list and put it on my To Don't list. And it feels so good!

Is there something you can decide not to do today?

Too Much Information?

Yesterday, there was a Panty Raid at my house. Too much information? Let me back up and tell this story from the beginning, starting with a few words about evaluation and the creative process.

Research often divides the creative process into four major stages:

• Preparation (sometimes called "saturation")
• Incubation
• Illumination (sometimes called "inspiration")
• Verification (sometimes called "evaluation")

In workshops, I generally refer to an earlier model of the creative process that focuses on the first three items in that list. Item #4, Evaluation, is an important bridge between one idea and the next. But  I ask students to defer judgments until they have more information. In art (and in life), I find that when people jump to conclusions based on insufficient information, they very often don't like the results. And there's often a reason why those ideas are called "half-baked."

So yesterday I wanted to sample something that's been on my to-do list for longer than I care to admit. It relates to disperse dye transfer printing on fabric. Fabric Transfer Crayons are disperse dyes in a waxy carrier.You just color with a transfer crayon or paint a prepared dye solution onto regular paper, then transfer from the paper to a synthetic or synthetic-blend fabric using a household iron.Without going into the chemistry, let me just say that disperse dyes are really not intended for use on 100% cotton.

But a while back, I read somewhere that you can improve the fastness of disperse dyes on 100% cotton by first applying fabric paint to the area. Hmm. No way to evaluate that without sampling.

When I want to evaluate how well a fabric paint or image transfer technique will stand up in the wash, I use a sampling method I call Wonder Undies. As in, "I wonder what will happen if..." I like being able to sample an idea without having to buy something. And Wonder Undies don't lose their usefulness if they don't turn out to be Works Of Art.

For the record, I wear cotton undies. Perfect. I painted the seat of some of my granny panties with Dye-na-Flow fabric paint, let it dry, and heat set it with an iron. I will not be posting pictures of this.
Then it was time to apply the disperse dye. I'm testing a new creativity warm-up exercise, so I tried it both on type of fabric for which the product is intended and on my painted panties:

I cut a tree trunk-shaped resist element from paper, and lay it on the fabric. Then I cut paper confetti, letting it lie where it fell (don't try to cheat by blowing on it -- bad idea). Then I lay my prepainted disperse dye transfer paint paper dye-side-down over the confetti, and applied a hot iron to the back. The confetti resists the transfer.

To aid in my evaluation, I applied disperse dye to the unpainted front of my panties as well. I also applied fabric transfer crayons to painted and unpainted cotton undies. And I applied transfer paint and transfer crayon to painted and unpainted undies.

Off to the laundry room. After just one trip through the washer, most of the disperse dye applied to the unpainted parts of panties was gone. No surprise there. But I got better results than I expected on the Dye-na-Flow painted parts. We'll see how well they hold up to additional laundering. It will be a while before I have sufficient information to make a judgment. For now, though, I'm seeing possibilities.

Again, I ask: Too much information?