This time the journey was to Dove Studio in Port Angeles where a group of us played around with marbleizing paper and cloth. This is a technique I learned from Joan Flasch (the best) in art school years ago. This technique is like the Fourth of July, full of oohs and aahs.
Marbleizing is a way to put pattern on paper, or fabric (or fingernails or car parts or tennis raquets…). We limited ourselves to paper and fabric. What you do is get yourself some thick water and float some paints on the surface. Mess with it and then drop your item on top of it – gently.
Here is Pamela placing drops of acrylic paint on the surface.
Pamela applies drops of paint to the water (sized with carageenan) and watches it spread.
Magical!
Then she makes patterns in the paint.
The room sucks in its collective breath.
You can see the images enlarged by clicking on them.
Diane muses.
Diana and Katie experiment with ways to drop fabric on the paint to avoid the dreaded air bubble.
One of Katie’s works captured on Masa.
After a couple of hours of too much fun:
Katie Yeager, Pamela Hastings, artist Francesca Cameron visiting from Portland, and Diane Williams
Everything a girl (or a cat) could want (notice the wine which Diane thought we might need) in the Wildcard’s Picking Parlour.
When everybody went home, Oola and I gathered up the leftover materials and played into the very small hours.
Did you ever see a round rock? Not round 2D like a pancake. Round 3D like a perfect sphere. Well I hadn’t, so I was intrigued when some friends told me about a beach where you can find them. So was Oola.
The place is Murdock Beach, (sometimes known as Round Rock Beach) off of Hwy 112, down a rough dirt/mud road to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Being that Oola and I are novices, my friends kindly showered us with examples.
Murdock Beach on a bright day with a minus tide and with Vancouver Island in the distance
Here is a “round rock”.
It is called a “concretion” or a “nodule”. What happened is when a marine critter died, something about it created a chemical reaction in the mud surrounding its remains and the mud hardened. There is a fossilized sea creature inside this rock. Here is a youtube video to explain the phenomenon better.
My friend artist/quiltmaker Diane Williams found this one.
Concretion inside a matrixArtist and teacher, Diane Williams. She also organizes the art shows for the Library in Port Angeles.
You can see that if you take the spherical part from the matrix, you would have something that looks like a pitted avocado. And that is what Pamela Hastings showed me, along with something that was created by a creature with different ambitions.
Dove Studio 