Ballarat - workshop begins

Thursday - first day of class. As I am not doing the usual walk around the lake, I walked around the grounds before class, and took more photos of moss and lichen, and as usual, found mushrooms – teeny, tiny mushies! 

A nicely paced day to begin with, starting with mono-printing. I was really pleased with how using pieces of heat-distorted satin worked, looking like rocks. The fabric pieces themselves look wonderfully interesting too. Something new to me was the reverse monoprint, where you place the paper or fabric down onto the inked up plate, and can draw into it, which creates quite a different effect.

Heat distorted fabric

The fabric itself will be great to use now too

Reverse transfer monoprint

Gladwrap on plate, printing the gladwrap itself

Next was embossing, then creating patinas on our metal fabrics with bleach and ammonia. We finished the day by using flames to colour the metal fabric, with each one reacting differently, and many interesting effects possible. I particularly liked the random scrunching method, which is a little like tie-dyeing.

Flame painting

Chemical patinas

With a little free time before dinner, we were able to have an aperitif in the gloriously warm Woodbridge common room, before braving the cold to the dining room. Luckily the tutor talks are held there so we could stay on and enjoy them – both were very good. Lorell Lehman was not an artist I was familiar with so that was an eye-opening and enjoyable presentation. Our own tutor Alysn Midgelow-Marsden was next, and I felt her words resonate with me as far as being inspired by the same things, and her working just with them in her mind and informing her marks rather than recreating images.

Friday - Another photo session before class – just a quick one, as there was a very fine mist of rain. Some more very tiny mushrooms were discovered! 

We brought out the sewing machines today, and some struggled to remember how to use theirs, or did battle with the ones they had on loan. The morning’s exercise was cutting up the flame-coloured metal cloth into dark and light sections, and stitching them to create shaded areas on a piece of solvy.

The afternoon began with a layering of metal cloth over material to perform reverse applique on. I needed to colour more metal, so got out my butane torch, and ended up creating the loveliest pattern. I couldn’t bear to use it, so made another one, which was also fabulous. This created the pattern I would be using, so I ended up sewing from that side instead of the reverse. In the middle of the sandwich was a crumpled and torched piece, which I didn’t think would make much of an impact, but as I cut into it, I saw some lovely pieces.

Three different flame painted pieces

The layers pinned up, then stitched into and cut back

There were a few more experiments in the afternoon which will be completed tomorrow, such as stitching tissue paper on to be painted and scrubbed off, and stitching on lutrador over metal cloth.