Friday, April 18, 2014

Three x 3

Three x 3 is a mixed media piece I made especially to enter in the 7th Annual Juried Contemporary Exhibit at the Museum of Northern History in Kirkland Lake, ON.  See previous post here


Three x 3



The theme was Nature’s Enduring Bounty and use of natural material was encouraged.

I used three techniques and made nine 5" x 7" canvases arranged on a 3 x 3 grid.

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of work in progress.

I started with pages from a book of poems which I gessoed and stained with coffee. 

I needed to glue the pages to muslin in order to be able to attach the natural branches.

When I applied the glue, the coffee stain (not waterproof) mixed with the glue and puddled on the paper. 

This was not the look I was going for but I thought it worked.
detail

First technique

I used real branches from my Linden tree and attached (couched?) them to my prepared background. 

The fabric was then wrapped around the canvases.
natural branches


Second technique

I reproduced the design of the branches by painting them on with acrylics.
painted - acrylics

Third technique:  

I made stamps from "fun foam" and stamped on the background.

stamped 
My background panel was then wrapped with a piece of my own hand-dyed muslin and the little canvases glued on.


Happy Quilting,

Terry

8 comments:

momiji said...

Lovely work, and thanks for sharing your techniques! I particularly like how the fun foam prints came out, but it's also so effective to see the three different versions of each canvas together and contemplate the different visual effects and textures.

Margaret said...

I was intrigued by this piece so thank you for devoting a post to its creation, Terry. :-)

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

This is such an interesting piece! Great job on it.

terriquilts said...

Love your piece! Great use of materials and thanks for sharing it with us.

The Inside Stori said...

I'm in LOVE....this is simply fabulous..... If you can share, how did you attach the branches?

Terry Whyte said...

My background is paper glued to muslin, and I used a dark brown sewing thread and pretty much couched them on like you would with cord or wool - (prior to gluing the whole thing to the canvas). I kept the stitches further apart so I would not have too many holes in the paper.
Thanks for coming over. I read your blog all the time and love your work.

Regina said...

Certainly very interesting - one tends to forget what all is out there to play with while sitting at the sewing machine.

Teresa Duryea Wong said...

The best part of the design is the lines you formed that carried through each technique. So lovely.