Friday, May 15, 2009

Cherry Winks

Years ago, I took a weeklong workshop with Karen Berkenfeld - an amazing fiber artist whose main focus was printing on fabric. I've been cleaning out and found some blocks from her workshop. I've been wanting to use up some of the fabric I've created over the years. These blocks incorporate many different kinds of printing including monoprints, carved blocked printing and laying fabric over objects for relief printing. On some of the blocks, I used a dry paint brush and applied paint to dry cloth for an interesting brush stroke affect.
The dark lines in the block below are where the fabric was laid over corrugated cardboard and a brayer with black paint run over the top. I also discharged circles by dipping a tray, recessed with circular openings (looked like it held candy) into discharge paste and stamping on fabric.
I like the dry brush painting which uses little paint so much of the base fabric shows through.
I wanted to do some screening on top. I like words and in my search for something appropriate, I came across my grandmothers "cookbook". This is a cookbook of the 1940s, when during the depression, people didn't have extra income to buy cookbooks. They improvised and made their own. To this day, my favorite recipes are those from friends and social gatherings. And this is my grandmothers - her favorites from friends and church suppers. The pages note who it's from, how many it serves, where she had it AND ALL in her handwriting - even better!  There are also clippings from the paper, all yellow and aged. One caught my eye - "Cherry Winks". What a great name for a cookie.
So I made a screen of the recipe on my Gucco machine. I like the way the tape runs down through the recipe.
I'll be using this to screen on some of the blocks. So far, it's gone together fairly easily, still more to do but will keep you posted.

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