Long Walk

Long Walk

Digital Fiber- Rocks & Water

One of a kind multi-layered fiber photographs. Images are printed onto treated natural textiles and other surfaces, combining painting and digital media into a one of a kind art piece. Organza Overlay.

Creatively stitched. 12x12 

mounted on 3/4" black painted canvas

Available at Exeter Fine Crafts, NH- info here

Leaving Home

Leaving Home

Digital Fiber- A nest

Photograph of a found nest fused digitally with a photo of my painted fabric.

For printing on fabric, 

I often increase saturation as fabric can be dulled or more mat as ink absorbs.

For this piece, I printed on a combination of leftover inkjet fabrics. I collage these on fusible and cut to size. 

Printed work is batted with thin felt, quilted to emphasize details in the photograph or to create additional design elements.

One of a kind multi-layered fiber photographs. Images are printed onto treated natural textiles and other surfaces, combining painting and digital media into a one of a kind art piece.

Creatively stitched. 12x12

Mounted on 1 1/2" painted black canvas 

My Digital Sketchbook Live

My Digital Sketchbook Live now at archive of the Brooklyn Art Library. Complete scanned sketchbook at
http://tiny.cc/qioso

Digital Paint Brushes

Recently I visited a blog having a discussion about how printing on fabric is not creative. 

Yikes I thought!

  When things went digital, my work expanded ten-fold! I could do so many more things than I ever dreamed of. I married my interest in photography with my love of fiber.

      I think working digitally IS a creative tool. Not only must you have an eye and take intriguing photographs. You need to know how to interpret this into fiber, then your vision can show.

      You can then leave the photo as is, manipulate it in a variety of ways ( much like you could do in the darkroom), layer them, fuse them with other photos, tile them, collage photo's, draw into to them using a digital pencil. And more. It is a vast field.

plain rice paper

painted rice paper

Not to mention deciding how to print them. What cloth or paper to use. Add a digital underpainting, or not. Print on painted or plain substrate. Print on a collage made from cloth, paper, or tea bags. Endless!

THEN when they are printed, you can go forward with creation. Stitching, adding mediums. collageing, layering with transparent media. Cutting apart and re-sewing- any number of options.

Ink Jet Printed Fabric Collage
from my Dig it ALL,  Digging into Digital Printing Workshop
Photo Shop tools are digital paint brushes! It is a very creative technique- much as any surface design technique is! You can take it and run with it!

"It's how the artist uses the media to interpret the subject matter that makes it art - not the media used to get there."
Jayne Gaskins

Sense of Touch

     Ever notice how sometimes you just start to work and pieces fall together as if by magic. As if just showing up in the studio is somehow like catching an ocean wave and riding with it. And OH what a ride!

Sense of Touch completed

Yesterday I had just such a day. I put down a background and played with some collage materials leftover from another recent spurt. I ended up with 4 wonderful pieces. Sense of Touch is one. This will be an entry for an upcoming exhibit.

the starting point

detail

     I started with a manipulated and digital collage printed on a molding paste substrate. The surround is a combination of paper compositions created earlier and painted cloth. I overlaid parts with silk organza and stitched into the piece as a mark-making tool. 

      I feel I was definitely in touch with the energy of creation. A sense of touch.

Digital Collage Printing

I use a lot of ink jet prepared fabrics for my work. I purchase this in large rolls from inkjet fabrics.com (here). This way, I can cut the yardage to the desired size to print. This works out very economically and is less expensive than buying sheets. I do end up with a variety of different size scraps though. I have figured out a couple ways of using these bits.

You can fuse them to paper or cloth and print this as a collage that is ready to work on.

Or you can temporarily tape bits to a carrier sheet, remove and fuse these to a work in progress.

Carrier sheets can be as simple as a sheet of paper, freezer paper or even a flexible cutting board.

Try different things to see what you and your printer like best.

I like the effect of combining the different fabric textures in a single work.

I used this technique on Coming Back, now at the PSAQA's ARTQUILTS Illuminations exhibit in Durham, NC. It can be found on my website in the Digital Fiber Art Gallery.

Photo Shop Play

One of the things I like to do to relax is play with my photo's in Photo Shop. Here is the original image.

I overlaid the image with a photo of painted fabric. You can see tints of the color coming though.
Then I went to image> invert.
For this image, I copied and pasted in a new file, using sections of above photos. I did change the hue in the center image. Such fun!Try playing with your images. Just do it. If you're afraid of ruining your images, just make a copy first. Then see what those buttons in photo shop DO!