Scarves and Art

Monday morning I went into the studio for my volunteer shift an hour earlier than normal.  I was scheduled to assist with two 3rd grade classes of 22 students each class and this was the lull before the storm.

The current main exhibit in the gallery is 20 woodcut prints of Central Oregon reptiles, a program in conjunction with the High Desert Museum.

Dawn, the gallery director, spent about 15 minute talking about these reptiles and their characteristics with the students.  She really gets them engaged and then its time to make their own snake.

She showed them how to make their own snakes on a plexiglass plate with a 1.5" brayer and gave them some tips on shaping and pattern.

My job was to help the students run their plates through the press, my favorite part.  They are apprehensive when they start cranking the press and then their faces light up when they see what they made.

Meanwhile I was successful with the remaining warp.  The weft on the left is gold and on the right it's fuchsia. I like the way the gold one shows off both colors.

Flush with success, I went to work on the next warp, also a slub yarn.  It's Henrys Attic Scheherazade and according the website the sett is 10-12 so I went with 12.  What they didn't say was 12 ends, two per dent in a 6-dent reed.  I got it all done and went to beam the warp and the slubs simply would not go through the dents.  If I had warped from the back, resleying would have been a quick procedure.  As it was I had to cut off the first yard or so just to free it, and without a choke tie, this was yet another monumental mess.

 I spent a ridiculous amount of time on this and will only get one scarf.  I'm trying to decide if I'm going to be using any more novelty yarn because if I do, I need to order an 8-dent reed.

I started Pat Clark's second half of the American Abstract Expressionist drawing class.  She gave us a 90-minute lecture on the artists who were movers and shakers.  Then it was time for our drawing exercise.  We had three minutes to put one hand in a brown paper bag and draw it with the other hand.

Each bag was numbered and we put that number on our paper so we could compare results.  It was a very fun exercise.

The assignment is to select an image from an artist of that era and trace the lines of one of their works with tracing paper.  I chose Georgia O'Keefe

This is my tracing and we're supposed to marry lines from one of the "mystery" drawings with the lines of the tracing. I was very confused by the instructions so went to Pat's open-studio yesterday after book club.  There were about five of us there, equally confused as I was.  Pat said she wants us to draw texture, not forms.  She doesn't want to see any recognizable shapes.  When I said that I hadn't even started, she laughed and asked, "What have you been doing?  Weaving?!"

I started late yesterday afternoon with the one on the right.  It's in acrylics and I really like the palette but my brushes are crap.  I did the one on the left this morning in watercolors so I'd have something to show to the class, then I went to the art store and bought some good brushes.  I had planned to repeat the acrylic piece this afternoon but the paper I'm stretching is still wet.  I can't believe I left this to the last day!

So I finished weaving the blue scarf.  The next two warps from the workshop are tencel and they're smooth yarns.  The weather is still dreary and we've had frost the past three nights so there's not much point in yard work yet, and with the Smart program (reading to kinders) concluded for this year, I've had a little bit of free time lately.  I just haven't used it very well.  Last day.  Good grief.