6" Art

The Southern Highland Craft Guild is sponsoring a show this Sept which runs through January, 2015. The show -  "It IS a small world afterall" is in the main gallery at the Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC. This years theme is 6"art. It can be a 6" cube or smaller or 2 dimensional 6" or smaller - not a "hair" beyond that amount. It should be fun and interesting to see what people can do in the space of 6". I've thought of several things and was going to start yesterday when another idea hit me in the head, .Just like that!

Several years ago, I read an article in a quilt publication written by Wen Redmond - a favorite artist of mine. It was about a technique she does with layering and sheers, right up my alley so I thought I would give it a try. I had a 6" pre-stretched canvas ready to go. With this technique you cut an opening, place an image in back and a sheer one in front. Since the width of this canvas is 3/4", the images will be separated by that amount.  The first thing I did was to remove the staples on the wood part as I would be using a jigsaw to cut the wood away.

I marked  on the front how wide an opening I would need and using a exacto knife, I cut away the excess canvas.

I still had wood to deal with but now it's easier to get to.

Using a jigsaw, I cut out the back (with help from sweet hubby who is a woodworker and has lots of tools).

Wen uses the same image when she does this technique, one image is printed on opaque fabric and the second image on sheers. I like using 2 different images that might work together. I photographed this image and transferred it to fabric using an acrylic medium; this is "paper fabric" and very strong. The image is around 8 1/2' x 11" so I had to find a smaller area that would work.

I covered the frame with batting but it also served as an opening to slide around the background image to see which part to use. I wanted enough of the sky so I would have some blue color in the piece.

I had to find an overlay that would work with the background image. I printed out several on paper first to get a feel for size and then took my favorites and printed them on silk organza.  I couldn't decide whether to use the positive or negative but I had my family vote on their favorite - as luck would have it, we didn't come up with 3 different favorites, we all liked the same one - Hooray!

This image was more simple and didn't compete with the background image. We also like the "positive" image....

as opposed to the negative.

So now to assemble it which was trial and error for me. I did paint the inside edge black to cover the raw wood. The part of the image I chose to use, was attached to the back. I chose a blue print batik to attach to the organza layer and frame it out.

and the finished piece. I came up with the name "Intertwined". You can find out more about the show by going to the Southern Highland Craft Guilds website.