Dancing Crow Designs

Aug 19

Aug 19
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Using a freezer paper stencil, I can get the Lumiere paint pretty thick, although you can see the more ghostly results from thin paint too. That is why it hadn't dried before I went to bed last night. I may need to rethink the dark fabric background. I like the glow of the paint.

The stencil looks like this:

I tried a plastic stencil from some stiffish contain plastic, but it was a serious pain to cut (like almost removing a thumb at one point), and freezer paper, is, well, paper. Scissors work well. Mistakes are not fatal. Plus the paint seems to make it much more durable. This thing will be fun to play with.

sailing sailing

Instead of finishing a postcard, I had a peaceful afternoon. We went to a friends' lake house, and sailed our dinghy, sailed their day sailer, paddled several kayaks, ate pizza and fresh corn and tomatoes, and drove home in the dark.

I did start a postcard, but the paint is still wet.

Cornell, dimly

On Friday Aerin and I stopped at the Peabody Essex Museum, nowhere near on the way home but closer then that at any other moment of the summer. It used to be Peabody Marine Museum and have lots and lots of good boat stuff in it, now it is mostly art that was plundered brought back from various exotic locales during the time Salem was a world trading power. I wanted to see the Joseph Cornell exhibit, because he seems to be a Very Important Person in the development of collage and assemblage.

Like Mimi, I found it hard to get into. I thought it might be Aerin's increasing impatience with the place, or the (astonishing, to me) crowding, but it occurs to me in retrospect that if it had been more interesting it would have been difficult to drag her away. It was dim, to save the art. The organization was not clear to me, although there did seem to be some kind of thematic underpinnings relating the various kinds of work to times and places in his life.

I didn't find much of the work I saw terribly compelling. I can see how he is an important source to people working in collage and assemblage. He drew from many varied sources and did rather paste everything together.  I usually play the game "Which one would you steal buy?" and I was surprised that I didn't find any particular piece that I really lusted after. I liked a couple collages, two made me smile, two more made me stop and look harder, but on the whole, I was underwhelmed.

On the other hand, down two floors and over one gallery, I was itching to touch, borrow and steal one out of every three pieces I saw in the Origami exhibit. So many really interesting and compelling images and shapes and such a great deal of cleverness wedged together in one place made me a little dizzy. There was a Pangolin in particular, that I wanted for my very own. It was folded from a single sheet of 6 foot square paper, and had all the lovely scales along its back and the sweet pointy nose and lightly bronzed edges on all the scales... stop here and imagine, for a moment, a piece of paper 2 meters on a side. Now imagine folding it precisely, to make a creature that is roughly 45 cm long, extravagantly detailed, and blackly/charcoally gorgeous. Makes my head spin. Clearly it really spoke to me.

In family things, Alice seems to have had a fine time at Pony Farm, and is even now recreating it for three dolls and four stuffed horses all over the kitchen floor. The girls have fed the ponies, cleaned stalls, and are now being run through their riding lesson, later they have been promised swimming with the ponies. There is a steady monologue of songs and encouragement for dollies and ponies. I feel I am watching Alice's past week unfold, possibly with editing to make it funner.

beaten gold

Aug 18
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Metal shim can be stitched, but not much. The density of stitch I usually put on is enough to profoundly perforate the stuff and cause it to drop off the postcard. So I went around it instead, with bobbin work. Metal doesn't photograph well either.

Alice is home from camp. She rode a small determined pony.

She drove a toy pony.

She slept most of the way home. She was pleased to see us. We are pleased to see her too.

And finally - the fabrics came from the hand printed fabric swap. I made a mosaic of the pieces that came to me, and posted it on Flickr here.  There are two that are not part of the Flickr pool - some astounding frogs, and an intriguing red with black faces printed on it.

pairs postcards

Aug 16
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Aug 17
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I worked on these two in parallel - when something didn't work on one, I tried something different on the other.

I started with Aug 17, laying on a thick layer of green paint over a yellow and orange print fabric, then pressing the stamp into it to clear it away. It mostly soaked into the fabric, so I tried a "primer" coat of yellow and let it dry, then did the same again, for Aug 16.

After they had dried, I could almost see the yellow paint, so I left this one alone. The print fabric had vanished, so I added some Lumiere paint into the petal shapes to make them show up. That helped, and I like the look of the paint a good deal, but it still needed more. So I started embroidering the petals until they both showed more definition. While I like the bobbin work on Aug 17, I think Aug 16 is a more successful card. It is hard to photograph the paint without getting reflections from it. I'll try again tomorrow outside and see if that makes a difference.

In family news, Aerin is home and ready to be issued her Captain's papers for 8 ft/100 lbs vessels on inland waters. She spent a happy two weeks with my sainted mother getting ferried to sailing camp in the mornings and then puttering together in the afternoon. She can rig and sail a 12 ft. sailing dinghy, won a race, and made three boys squeak "nooo, please don't heel so much!!" (to the intense satisfaction of the other 3 girls in her level). I am so pleased to have her back.

I am sorry to bid farewell to the past week. I spent most of it resolutely not acting my age, and I had forgotten what fun it could be. I drank prodigious amounts of beer and wine, stayed up late, talked for long hours with friends, had a very fine time with just my guy (the bike rides, the food - get your minds out of the gutter!), and turned the car stereo up VERY LOUD. Something about parenthood just kind of precludes some of this, forcing me to act closer to my age. Although I may go back to loud music and a bit more beer. I do like beer.

Alice returns tomorrow, and we are all together again for the first time since we returned from England. That will be nice too.

Aug 15

Aug 15
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The paint still isn't as thick as I want. I may need to rethink the process to get a different result. These are the new Jacquard Lumiere paints, which are really beautiful smeared in the edges of my fingers. Why does stamping wind up being such a whole body experience for me? Or at least whole hand? (and nose - the nose always itches when my fingers are covered with gold paint)

Anyhow, I want thicker paint on the surface of the dark fabric, so the edges have more punch. Maybe stencilling.

More work elsewhere today. Anybody want to buy a car?

Aug 14

Aug 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

yesterday's. again.

I was using up old Deka Starlite paints for dark fabrics. I think for painting it is possible to get them thick enough, but stamping with them makes the paint thinner than I wanted. I wonder if different stamps have more "tooth" and might carry more paint?

Al and I had a nearly perfect day yesterday. We took the grown-up tandem out for a roaring ride in the morning, through some of the most perfect weather of the summer, over some of my favorite bits of terrain, and finished at one of my most favored restaurants for lunch. The two of us work so well together. It is really different having no kids - just me and my sweetie. I miss the girls, but I like having just a glimpse of an empty nest too.

After all that pleasure in the morning, I took supper to Andy, then helped the crew there sort, pile, package and carry. I was very, very tired at the end of the day!

stamp, whack

Aug 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Yesterday's card - hand carved rubber stamp petals, plain old stamp pad ink, and an eraser from the end of a pencil for the center.

More later.

perseids

meteor shower, no kids, husband early... postcard tomorrow.

wholes

Aug 12
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

shhhhh (looking over shoulder)

There are no children in this house.

That hasn't happened for more than one night at a time for a very very very long time. I'm thinking they are hiding, even though I know I left one with my mum, and the other today at pony camp.

Alice looked like this:


as we left. She has been assigned a smallish gray pony for the week, name of Stitch in Time called Stitchy for general use. We found the pony, found the donkey, found the chickens and the goats and the miniature horse and her foal, and left her reading and cheerful. Her friend Sophie is in the next bunk over. The counselors look like a very kind and compassionate lot. The cook promised not to poison her. We have high hopes for the week.

Al and I left and had an extremely grownup dinner on the way home. It was lovely.