Art for Sacred Spaces
Silk Painting Workshop
We had beautiful hot sunny weather at Grunewald Guild this summer. A lovely, lively group of 14 students, from age 12 to ?65? or so, we helped each other make some wonderful silk pieces.
Drawing and Painting the Wild Journal
Sept. 6-9, 2012, North Cascades Institute’s Learning Ctr
http://ncascades.org/signup/programs/the-wild-journal/program-registration
Preparations for this 4-day workshop are getting me excited! September is my favorite month to be in the mountains here. The weather is cooler but more predictably sunny, the bugs are fewer, and every plant and animal is putting for a last burst of beauty and wholeness before the early mountain snows and cold winds push them back beneath the surface. High mountain summers are brief and beautiful.
We”ll be brushing up on drawing and watercolor skills in the morning, and using those skills to record our high mountain excursions in the afternoon, the easy way: we’ll be shuttled by van to places our resident naturalists choose for us. When it’s time for dinner we’ll be driven back to the Learning Center for a good meal and a warm bed.
Click on this link for more info on the workshop
http://ncascades.org/signup/programs/the-wild-journal
and click on this one to register:
http://ncascades.org/signup/programs/the-wild-journal/program-registration
Recently I’ve re-discovered my love of figure drawing. July 6th I was invited to draw portraits of visitors to the Whatcom Museum here in Bellingham, in conjunction with the Ray Turner show “Population.” I brought my easel, a 6B pencil, sketch book and kneaded eraser, and drew 10 quick portraits in 2 hours. I was exhausted but satisfied.
I’ve also been attending 2-1/2 hour life drawing sessions at a local art school, Bellingham Art. Here is one drawing:
Here’s a new banner to hang over the sanctuary exit of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Manasquan NJ.
The symbol is of a butterfly, resurrected from the dark of the cocoon into a thing of great beauty. Maybe the sanctuary is like a cocoon, resurrecting us into things of beauty, ready to be servants in the world.
Commissioned by Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia’s senior class of 2012, these red banners will complement and add to the set commissioned last year. I just got back from photographing them, in the same place as last year, an office building with lots of tall open spaces with convenient balconies. In my photos the colors never come out exactly like the real colors of the silk, but this gives a fair idea. I see the colors as less orangey, a deeper scarlet, and more nuanced. You’ll just have to wait and see them yourselves!
I’m honored to be making another set of banners for Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia this year. The graduating class of 2012, LTSP, has chosen to commission a pair of banners to continue the set ordered last year by the class of 2011.
Last year’s banners were also in pairs: Green, purple, and gold/white. You can see two of them in the picture below.
Here’s a peek into the process:
I start with white silk pinned to a wooden frame the size of the banner, which my husband has made. This frame is 16 feet long and 45 inches wide. We set it up in the living room and adjacent shop area, after moving all the furniture away.
First I experiment with the colors I’d like to use, see how they mix together. Then I mix up a batch big enough to cover all the silk.
I use techniques similar to watercolor painting when I do these nice loose silk paintings. The silk is made damp first, so that the dyes will move and blend into each other softly. Then I apply the dye with sponge brushes.
After the silk is completely dry, usually over night, I remove it from the frame, lay it over newsprint paper, and roll it up in the paper.
Here you can see the whole first red banner, with paper underneath, extending from the living room into our shop.
Next I roll the silk and paper up together, drill a hole into the top of the roll (avoiding the silk of course), and stick it into a piece of stove pipe.
The silk roll then hangs vertically down in the center of the stove pipe. I top the pipe off with newspaper and a towel as a lid.
I carry the stove pipe outside and put it into a big pot full of water, with a propane burner underneath. After sealing the pot to the stove pipe with aluminum foil and masking tape I light the fire. The water boils, making steam. The moist heat chemically bonds the dyes to the silk.
The silk steams for 4 hours. After letting it cool for a while I bring the pipe back into the house and unroll the silk. Usually the colors are brighter after they are steamed, so it’s always a pleasure to see what’s inside. Very much like opening a potter’s kiln, to see what the new pots look like!
For these banners, I cut the bottoms into an inverted arch, to match the arches in their new home. Then the hems are hand-stitched, so I can control the tension of the thread. This way they hang better.
All that’s left now is to finish the hemming, pack them into cardboard tubes, and send them off!
July 30-August 5, 2012, Grunewald Guild, near Leavenworth, WA
Liturgical Arts Week: A Spiral-Shaped God
August 13-16, Carey Institute, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Carey Worship and Arts Summer School: A Creative Exploration On the Psalms
I believe my friend Reed Carlson, from Icicle Valley Photography, will be one of the other teachers, as well as possibly a calligrapher. I’ll be teaching silk painting. Stay tuned.
September 6-9 near Nwhalem, WA
North Cascades Institute Environmental Learning Center: Creative Arts Retreat
In our Wild Journal workshop we’ll start the morning with some basic drawing and watercolor skills, to prepare us for our outings to high mountain meadows with our journals.
September is one of the best months to be in the mountains. Come and join us!
Here is a mural I completed for the entryway of Trinity Lutheran Church, Coeur d’Alene Id. in 2008. The four arched panels are 5.5 feet tall by 3.5 feet wide each. The three panels above depict a small quiet pool with a waterfall that I used to frequent in the Cascade Mountains, at Holden Village. I considered it a sacred place.
The first panel, seen here, is an image of Lake Coeur d’Alene, and is closest to the main door of the church.
I designed this panel to have an outward, rather than inward, view. If I were to title this panel alone it would be”All Water Carries the Sacred” or “Go out with Good Courage.” But all four panels together are called “Come to the Water.”
Someone at the church took a couple of pictures of all the panels together, and spliced them. It was the only way to get an image of all four panels together after they were installed.
WELL. You may be wondering how big a STUDIO I have, in order to make such big paintings? At the time we were renting a house from a friend who had an attic studio. It was good to have a space, and I could stand straight up right in the middle of the room.
St. Marks Lutheran has a new theme every year, and the past two years they have commissioned silk banners to depict those themes. For 2011 the theme was “Come to Us Creative Spirit.”
This year’s theme was ” Listen, God is Calling”, and they commissioned another silk piece.
Here’s a close-up of just the painting:
I was pleased to hear that the pastor referred to the silk painting in each of the sermons the following two Sundays after it was hung. I wonder what he said?
A big project has been brewing for quite a while now at the Grunewald Guild near Leavenworth WA. We’ve been collaborating on designing and building new entryway doors for our main building, the Centrum, to make it a more welcoming space. I was asked to design some stained glass “windows” which friend and stained glass artist Joe Hester somehow turned into a much bigger “entry doorway” project!
Here’s the second window.These two will of course be side to side.
Joe Hester, stained glass person, put the windows together, etching some of the glass with a labyrinth pattern, and painting on other parts to help simulate a butterfly wing.
Grunewald Guild commissioned Andrew Campbell, a woodworker from Plain WA, to make double wooden doors which will hold the windows.
Now you might think that these doors would be special enough but Joe decided to get enamelist Jean Tudor involved. She helped Joe develop enameled copper sheathing for the door! Following you will see all the color samples. Joe and I chose the enamel colors together, with the idea of extending the butterfly design out onto the copper sheathing over the wooden doors.
Joe is holding the butterfly that originally inspired my design. Below you can see my smaller schematic drawing of the butterfly design, and the larger drawing Joe did on big paper that served as a pattern for the stained glass cutting.
Pretty complicated, eh? Can you see the penciled outline of the wooden doors in the small drawing? And the two ovals that define the glass? So you see the design spills out onto the wooden doors. There in front on the table you see one finished piece of copper enameling that will sheath the door.
Here’s a peak into the enameling process.
The enamel is applied as a powder onto copper pieces, then heated in a kiln to fuse the enamel onto the copper. It’s a big project, and Joe had lots of people helping.
And below you can see the finished copper pieces that will go onto the wooden door. The center part of the door, where the two doors meet, will hold the body of the butterfly.
Joe has worked very hard to bring this project and all its pieces together. But now Joe is dealing with severe health problems and the project is on hold. I do believe all the pieces are there… literally. It may be that others of us will have to assemble them, to finish the beautiful gift Joe has made for the Grunewald Guild.
Here’s my original silk painting from the series “Metamorphosis” that inspired the door design. The series uses local butterflies representing change, labyrinths for the spiritual journey, and Celtic knots denoting the interconnectedness all. So this becomes the theme for the Grunewald Guild Entryway Doors.
