Dancing Crow Designs

all kinds of blue

via www.flickr.com

The indigo experiment for the day above. Below, because I am getting to work on some commissions, I needed some sky and some ocean (Hi Jenny!).

Rather than submit to the vagaries of indigo, I used Inkodye, requiring heat or UV light to develop color. It is a different kind of magic:  the fabric is soaked in a gray, muddy looking mixture of dye and water, then removed and set in the sun. As the fabric warms in the sun, the color develops, going from muddy to pinkish and purpleish and finally to deepening shades of blue.Parts of the fabric that are shaded do not develop, so it can be used for sunprinting, or with transparencies for very detailed prints.

I find Inkodye (along with almost everything else) at Dharma Trading. It comes in many colors, but I was most interested in the blues and greens.

what I did at summer camp

by me, Lee:

 

to recap:

• I made a circle a day
• I made a bunch of experimental art pieces using white fabric and a ton of thread
• I made other experimental art pieces using only thread and odd non-fabric things
• I went kayaking
• I sang to the moon
• I waded in exquisitely cold water
• I stitched an achievement badge for each of my classmates and my teacher
• I made some velvet jacket for beach stones
• I made some lined linen jackets for other beach stones
• I ate a lot of very nice food, including a great deal of dessert
• I was as nice as possible to everyone I bumped into (some of these were easier than others)
• I came home ready to think about what I'm doing, but it will probably take a while for this to sink in - most things take a while to sink in for me...

 

trees and a sliver of moon

I've been looking so hard for things that are (still) gray or white, and I forgot about all the dark things. Like a night sky, and trees against the moon. So I might be able to make it to the end of the month without color, although it is certainly getting more and more difficult.

casting class

Not choosing actors for parts. Not fishing with thin lines and flies. Not throwing things.

Casting and molding class today, a different class at the museum school. I loved the teacher, we did interesting and exciting things, and this is the first thing I made. It reminded me of pressing shells and sticks into sand and pouring plaster into it. I think I made a dragon that way. It was lovely.

This was pressing a lot of fossils and modern shells into clay, and then making a mold of it. I like the way things overlap. You can see two trilobites, and a lot of coiled shells and several brachiopod impressions.

I felt so odd from napping and waking up badly that even though I made a circle it was very ugly.

one lone crow

The absurd weather continues.

Alice was suggesting things I could put on circles, and I kept saying no, I hadn't seen that this month. And I realized the circles this month are very strongly tied to things I've actually seen. Probably as a result of the original inspiration; the snowstorm at the beginning of the month. Which is why I will probably not make one with a moose, unless a moose crosses my path, or a bear, for the same reason.

Aerin's Young Man joined us for circus - he's strong and surprisingly flexible, but oddly floppy in the middle. Handstands are really strange for him. But it is nice to have another sturdy person around.

mist again

Once I cleaned off the table and flipped over my mat so it was clean there was much less fluff and dust. With less dust, each layer of organza is cleaner and clearer, and it takes more layers to feel distant. Also it looks like substantially less air pollution. Or rain. Or something.

I am very pleased with this one - it is almost precisely what I was aiming for.

 

wooded hillsides

Going south and east into Connecticut yesterday, and coming west and north today, I found myself looking up into continuous hillsides of leafless trees. The snow line was right at the Massachusetts border, and the Holyoke range had ranks of deciduous forest rising along the southern flanks. I love being able to see into the woods in the winter, to see the shape of the land underneath. The trees feel like the pelt of a creature, and the whole landscape seems both living and sleeping. 

 

And here you can see us in our fancy duds, ready to drive away to a night of food, drink and iniquity. It was a good time. 

March inspiration and March 3

What I didn't expect when I laid out my plans for the year in January was a snowstorm on March first, followed by gorgeous atmospheric weather and all the colors I've been thinking about. I'm not one to pass up inspiration when it whacks me on the head and gives everyone a snow day, so for a while you'll be seing small black and white landscapes in circles, inspired by the ones seen above. 

And the first of those is here. 

The advantage to driving a particular path routinely is watching things change across the seasons. I have a particular fondness for this field - the curve of it into the horizon defined by the woods at the edge, the lines of the rows of corn, as they grown green and are harvested. The cut corn stalks make particularly elegant hash marks against new snow.