Something About Nothing

My husband and I took a red-eye flight to Columbus, Ohio, and then drove the one hour to Athens, Ohio, to attend the opening of the Quilt National quilt show where my piece, Wild Flowers was being shown. Made a stop at Tim Horton's, a Canadian chain for some delicious breakfast sandwiches and donut holes. We went to the Kennedy Art Museum, on the Ohio University campus. This is the side of the building. Photo of the front of the building from the cleveland.com website. The building was designed in the 1860s by Cleveland architect Levi Scofield, and was originally part of the Athen's Lunatic Asylum. It opened in 1996 as the Kennedy Museum of Art. There were some lovely prints, paintings and exhibits. It didn't take long to tour, which was good for my knees. I was glad to be able to see this Elizabeth Catlett print. I admire her work. I've seen some of her her other prints in person, and was anxious to also see this one. Friday evening, the Quilt National show opened, and...

 A number of pages in my sketchbook were filled with flowers.  These drawings are always a way for me to unwind. Not my favorite. Was experimenting with the swirl and didn't like how it came out, but it's just a sketchbook piece. Sketchbooks are for experiments. Laura Kemshall suggested stitching on some pages, and putting oil pastel down as a resist. I wasn't sure where to go next so, flowers behind circles it became. To fill or not to fill, that was the question. Obviously, I didn't go all in. Black and white was good, but . . . . . .sometimes it is fun to experiment with color too. These flowers were inspired by the last of the flowers in my backyard. It was a lovely day in the fall and I took the cat out so he could roam while it was nice. I used an old stool as my table.

After returning home, and working on getting caught up on the blog, emptying some of the suitcases, and sleeping a LOT, I had a new idea for some stamps based up the beautiful floral pieces from The Garden Wren . The pieces I carved while in Houston were for The Garden Wren but after looking at her work, I had to carve more for her. Fortunately she was all in.  First there is always a drawing, and then a lot of carving.  Keiko often feels the need to help me carve and I was grateful she decided to nap this day.  Next I wanted to create something she could use across the bottom of bags, or cards.   But I couldn't stop there! That was extremely satisfying.

Ordered a free sample of Gomuban Relief Printing Plates from McClain's Printmaking Supplies. Gomuban is a synthetic rubber plate used in Japanese classrooms. It can be carved on either side but is a very thin plate. It works well with a press, however, since I don't own a press, I printed my images by hand, and just tested it with an ink pad. It was amazingly easy to carve with my Speedball Linoleum cutter. I was able to get a very fine line, which made me very happy! I think I will order this again!