by janice on June 13, 2011
One of the benefits of membership in the Nepean Fine Arts League is the opportunity to participate in a group or solo show at the NFAL Gallery. My turn has come up and from June 10 to 30, I am having a solo show of my mixed media textiles at the NFAL Gallery.
These small fibre works are made in the folk art tradition combining various materials with simple imagery to create whimsical depictions of common themes. The framed size with double matt and glass is 10″ x 10″. They are all unique ‘one of a kind’ pieces available for $75 each.
They are perfect for a child’s bedroom and can be combined as a set of 4 or 6 for greater impact on the wall. I really enjoy creating these small images and love the textures of all the different materials.
Some for little boys.
Some silly.
Some whimsical.
And some for little girls.
The NFAL Gallery is located in the Nepean Creative Arts Centre at:
35 Stafford Rd., Unit 11
Bells Corners, Ottawa
613-596-5783
by janice on April 4, 2011
I will be participating in a juried show at the Britannia Gallery in Ottawa from April 5th to May 1st. The title of the show is ‘Alphabet Soup’ with all artwork required to include some sort of lettering to qualify. This artists’ group exhibits locally on a consistent basis with interesting and creative themed shows. Many of the members are well represented on the local art scene in Ottawa.
Come and see how each entrant has interpreted the alphabetic theme.
I will be showing my most recent textile work ‘Is this the future of language?’ I wrote about the process I used to create this piece in my last blog post entitled SMS textile diptych. For the show I have joined the two canvases together to create one easier to hang piece. After some deliberation I chose the arrangement below.
by janice on February 24, 2011
This
or this
A diptych…sort of like a collage but the two individual parts are separated. These pieces are part of a new direction where I am mounting the textiles onto a gallery depth canvas with heavy gel. The larger piece is 20×20 inches and the smaller 10×20 inches. The textile comes very close to the edge of the black canvas. These two pieces can be hung in a variety of configurations, even horizontally.
The textile pieces were created by layering opaque fabrics, printed photo images, stamped letters and sheer fabrics together…then by sewing patterns over the whole ‘sandwich’. I added more stamped letters onto the top layer and then distressed the piece by melting through some of the layers, adding more layers and more distressing.
This method using sheer fabrics gives the same effect as glazing with paints over an image to blend colours, allowing some to show through and others to fade away.
The theme is SMS language or texting language. My kids are much more adept at translating this new dialect than I am. There’s lots of commentary to be found about the impact of SMS in schools etc. What will happen to spelling…literature? It would certainly be a challenge trying to play Scrabble using SMS.
by janice on January 19, 2011
The above image is from the Shadow Box exhibition website.
This February I am participating in the Shadow Box exhibition at the Textile Museum of Canada for the first time. Follow this link www.tmcshadowbox.com to find out all the details about this fun show. An image of each entry is listed under the artist’s name.
For my entry I adapted one of my small folk art pieces to fit into the wooden shadow box form that every participant is given. I painted the frame with a base coat and then added interference paints to give it a ‘Bollywood’ glow. Then I applied fabric about half the width of the outer edges to give it more depth. I added fabric to the inner sides of the frame to give a sort of soft upholstered effect. Then I added a wider border around the image and embellished it with more beads. I wanted to achieve a jewel box effect. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph my work before I mailed it off and the flash has washed out the image on the website.
Here is an older image of ‘My Pony Moon’ before it was inserted into the shadow box for this exhibition. I reduced the noise level in the photo because the sparkle from the sheer fabric a the top of the image created unpleasant glare. But it is still not a perfect photo and the result is lost detail. Photographing anything with shine is a challenge particularly if a flash is used as in the case if the shadowbox image. A tripod and some diffused lighting may have helped or just no flash at all.
As an experiment I have photographed another textile image in my home…with flash and without flash…to see the difference. I used my 35mm lens and a tripod with all four images.
The first image below was taken with the flash on. The flash adds unwanted sparkle to the felt and dulls the colours. The image also has a flattened look to it.
This second image was taken without the flash and the fabrics and colours are much more natural looking in appearance. The image appears more 3-dimensional as well. I used a wide aperture… F1.8… for lots of light.
I then tried a few other combinations using one of the built-in scene modes…adding a flash diffuser to the camera and simply turning off the flash on the camera. Neither of these options produced as nice an image as setting the aperture priority to F1.8.
The third image was taken with a flash diffuser added to the camera. There is still unwanted sparkle in the felt and the focus seems uneven.
The fourth image was taken with the flash turned off on the camera. No sparkle in the felt but the focus isn’t as sharp as it should be and the image is somewhat flat and dull.
These examples illustrate the difficulties and challenges when photographing any artwork. A good tripod and a little experimentation with lighting can make or break the outcome of the final image.
One final adjustment to the image is to check that the colours are true to the original. My camera was set to auto white balance and it did a pretty good job with all the colours except the bright pink. It is a little too orange in tone, so in Photoshop I replaced the pink with an adjusted pink tone closer to the original. Now the image is a decent representation of the original artwork.
by janice on June 16, 2010
Little Fish
Originally uploaded by Janice Saunders
Wow! What a mouthful! It is very hard to define textile art as it includes many different styles and materials. These little folk art pieces developed from a little experimentaion with my felting machine. They are mostly 4×4″ to 6×6″ in size. I added wool felt images and then beads and buttons and finally thread details to build them up in a 3 dimensional way. They need a shadow box style frame.
The other mixed media textile pieces are larger and were an experimentation with dye discharge…using bleach to remove some of the colour from the fabrics. You have some limited control as to how much colour is removed by using an agent to stop the bleaching action. Later I added extra details with Shiva paintsticks and beads. The shapes seemed to suggest a city with gathering storm clouds and then the sun breaking through later.
