Marks and Mellowness

It's giving me great pleasure to quietly explore making language marks and start printing new cloth without any pressures or deadlines. I'm starting to find my rhythm again; a slow, steady hum, almost meditative. I spent a lovely, low-key day at my studio today washing and drying new cloth, which I then stretched out on my print tables. I spent the rest of the time exploring tools and more tools for making marks, plus dyeing a few yards of silk habotai to print on with textile paints.One great brush that I've found for calligraphic marks is a flat synthetic brush. The one I used for this mark was only about half an inch wide; I'm going to invest in a wider one as well. The one I used today has a lot of spring to it and seems to glide easily across the surface, plus it seems to hold more paint than the sumi brushes do. The calligraphic mark above is about the tenth one I did today and the first one that looks freer and more relaxed. My goal is to fill this particular sketchbook with nothing but language marks, trying out and noting what tools I prefer for different types of marks. Reed pens are quite enjoyable to use as is the Y & C 3. 5 calligraphy pen, which has a hard chisel tip.

To get my fabrics ready for the next stage of printing, I decided to monoprint different types of calligraphic marks on with a resist. The marks above were brushed with a foam brush on to a Plexiglas plate and then monoprinted onto the cloth.

Then I filled up a gold-tipped applicator bottle and started creating illegible handwriting on the Plexiglas and monoprinted that onto the cloth. Since I'll be monoprinting dyes over both lengths of cloth when I go back to my studio this weekend, it will be interesting to see if these marks read as language marks once the pieces are dyed and washed out.

I'm also working on some new silk screen designs, so while I worked in pretty relaxed manner, I did actually get a lot done, including cleaning out all the old dyes that were in my refrigerator and washing out all the containers so I can start with fresh ones this weekend.

Tomorrow I'll be driving to Ithaca to get six of the new pieces from the Notations exhibition photographed so Holly can put them up on my website, which we'll start redesigning next week. Then I'll be back in my studio on Saturday and Sunday and hopefully will end the weekend with some great new pieces of cloth underway that will help launch new Parables and Pages pieces!