Sunshine

Heat penetrates earth

pulling stems and leaves skyward

Sun decides it’s spring.

This month I decided to play with mixed media collage. My piece is 10” X 14”. The back is a piece of heavy pellon. I first glued on a layer of fabric scraps in different sizes and dimensions, including a piece of my own snow-dyed muslin, covering the entire piece of pellon. The next layer was made up of various types of papers – magazine, paper towel, yellow pages, receipt, paper napkin, hand-made paper, wrapping paper, and tissue. Words were included in that layer. The next layer is strictly torn yellow tissue paper. Then I glued on lengths of yarn and ribbon for stems, as well as the haiku lines printed on paper, and fused on leaves cut from fabric. The dirt is made from a piece of brown paper bag and a dyed dryer sheet, both painted sloppily with black acrylic, then scrunched and glued on.

Love

Eagles swoop and soar

coupling, nesting, parenting,Yin and Yang 'til death.

Eagles have an elaborate mating ritual of swooping and soaring in the sky to impress each other. They mate and are a couple for life, sharing in building the nest, keeping eggs warm, and parenting their young. When one leaves and does not return the remaining bird shows signs of distress, walking around and around the nest's rim, and eventually flies off in search of its mate. Death is commonly caused by being hit by a car. If the "widowed" bird finds its mate, it continues to mourn and even tries to move the body off the road. The eagle will return to the nest but will not mate again until the following year.

For this piece of work I used pastel batiks for the sky. I tried a new technique on the eagles: I used 2 pictures from a wildlife magazine and transferred them with clear packing tape. (I don't like the glossy look, however.) The nest is made of thread trash and a few feathers. (Eagle nests can weigh up to 2,000 pounds.) I free-motion quilted the whole piece.

beginnings Haiku

seeds of all seasons
waiting for life to begin
rest in still places


I used a piece of copyright-free artwork, manipulated it, printed on a batik fabric, stamped, did some free-motion stitching, twisted 2 different fibers for the edging, added beadwork and quilting. I think I will mount this on a textured black substrate.

This idea was inspired by my daughter and her husband who have spent 4 years in fertility treatments, battled with each carrying a recessive gene which does not allow a baby to reach full-term, but now are pregnant with a normal, healthy baby! Praise God!