Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Odd Stories

There once was a family that lived deep in the forest at the foot of some seven or so mountains, which reached all the way up into the sky and poked the clouds so that it would rain down on the city below, for every season.

Harold the hairdresser, who was famed through all the city for his skill with his blade, had decided one day that he had reached the furthest depths of his understanding and skill that one lifetime could afford, and decided from this point to take it upon himself to smash and hammer hot metal into finer scissor blades, to be passed down to his successors. From here, he became Harold the blacksmith, and slowly gained a reputation in this way, although for each of his years in the city he had lost a single hair, and was now growing quite bald, he proved to be a dedicated student, even in stubborn old age. The whole city was in love with him, except for whoever it was that had to live next to the old man and his family.

"Go away," they would shout, "All that smoke coming out of your furnace is like poison, and it's turning all of our meats orange and blue."

Harold moved out into the country, but even the farmers would yell at him. The smoke from his furnace was so potent that everyone was sure he was doing something wrong, but no one could say quite what it was. He tried moving deep into the city also, to hide among the little cramped apartments, but it was no use. All the neighbours could tell where it was coming from, and inside his apartment there was always a thin yellow film coating all the walls.

"We will have to leave and go live in the mountains", He told his wife, who promptly left him. She was already tired of all the horrible smells, she told him, and said that she could not even taste the food they ate any more, it all tasted like peas soup, and said that he was unbearable otherwise anyway, in a general sort of way. Here, with a great sigh of disdain, Harold arose, and quickly swept up one of his smallest children, not a very important one as far as notable members of a family go, to go work in the mine in the mountain, searching for metals to throw into the fire.

Deep in the cave of one of the mountains, although he couldn't see it, Harold, the smaller one who was not a blacksmith, could feel his boots start to wade into water. "Don't go in!" Said two small fishes as they burst up above the surface, "It keeps getting deeper and deeper, and soon you will feel like you are out in the ocean, even if the shore is right there next to you."

"I can do it," Harold said, and he skipped across the water until his boots no longer touched the bottom. The boy did not know where he was, nor where he came from, but kept swimming until he came to a small passage, wide at first, but narrowing as he went further. The fish were saying something in the distance, but the boy could not hear them.

At the smallest point, the cave turned underwater, so that it was impossible to tell if there was any end to it without swimming in deeper. He went in, down for many seconds, and the passage was so narrow he could not turn around. The boy was guiding himself by the stones of the cave, pulling himself in deeper, when he came across a lizard that had lodged itself in a crack and was struggling to escape. The lizard grabbed the boy's hand in a fit, but the boy ripped it in two, not wanting to be trapped down there with the lizard as well.

When he came out, he took a deep breath, but had to quickly cover his mouth, as he saw something like the whole darkness moving in the cave that opened up from the small cavern passage. "Who is it?" Said the dark. The boy pulled himself up, "Harold," he said, "Do you have any metals in here?" But there was no answer. He started shuffling around the open space and saw the very feint light catch a hill that was sparkling in the dark. Harold touched it, and found that it was a mound of silver, taller than he could see. "May I have some of this?" He asked, and at first there was no answer, but eventually a call came from further into the cave, "Can you find my son? He went in the small pool you came out from. Did you see where he went?" The boy was quiet, but eventually saw an orange light flicker in the cave, dimly lighting up the whole expanse.

"Please go back in and look for him," and the torch was thrown at the boy's feet, "It won't go out under water, and not for any reason unless I put it out. If you find my son, you can have all the silver you can carry back down." The boy, knowing what he had done, took the torch and made his way as quickly as he could out of the whole cave, down past the narrow passage, swimming by the fish, who were now quiet, and up the ladder towards the daylight.

The boy never returned, but in the numerous cavernous channels that weaved themselves through the mountains, he found much more silver and tin, thanks in most part to his torch which would not go out underwater. When he was not in the cave, the torch would be thrown into a boiler, which would eventually come to help bring electricity to, and industrialize, the mountains, where the rest of the townspeople that moved there for work would have to come to tolerate the smells from Harold the Elder's small cottage home, as he was there first.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Mosaics Yet Again

We've gone back to making more mosaics the past few weeks.  Angela and Chantal started new projects, and Jordan finished his.


Angela is making a tiled support to go under a potted plant.  She used a large rounded piece of plywood as the base (originally shaped like a ladybug, but it ended up having its head cut off).


Chantal experimented with using a metal tray as a base for her mosaic.  We weren't sure how the tiles were going to adhere to the smooth metal, but the glue did its job and the piece grouted just fine.




And here's Jordan's grouted hotpot/trivet, started a couple of months ago:


I have gone back to making another mosaic tray.


I started months ago by painting a large (10"x13") tile in an abstract motif, using acrylic paints:

I broke up the tile into small and large shards, but tried to arrange it on the wooden tray in the same layout as the original tile (hoping it would resemble the original abstract painting, and also hoping that the imprint of the white maple leaf would somehow remain recognizable).


Some of the paint came off the tiles during the grouting (bummer!), but I decided that the whitish edges didn't look bad, especially with the white grout.  The bits of paint that flaked off the painted tile shards somehow got imbedded into (or on top of) the grouted lines, and I decided to leave them in, and varnished over them.  It gives the grout a speckled look, which I think looks alright with all the other bits of texture and colour in the piece.


Following Tamsen's instructions for finishing the wood, I sanded the tray edges, and decided to use a stain before finishing with shellac.  I ended up using a dark oil-based wood stain, ebony black.  I gave the tray edges one (and a half-ish) coats of stain, because I liked the lighter colour of the original wood showing through the stain streaks.  I didn't do a great job with the edges (where the wood meets the grout), and had to paint/stain over the outer edges of the grout.  This felt like cheating, but it made the finished piece neat enough.



Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Wax Etching

Chantal introduced us to a new arts and crafts technique this week:  wax etching! 

This is something kids learn to do in school with crayons: a layer of multicoloured patches underneath the black layer on top, and designs etched in with toothpicks or other sharp objects (I used a mechanical pencil - easier to hold and work with).  The bright colours underneath show through beautifully.





I tried some Zentangle doodles (again):

 My nephews Jaxon and Cooper joined us this week, for some finger painting fun.  Cooper loves to blend colours together, and turn them to brown.



Jordan is continuing with his sketching.  He'll post photos of his finished painting (big spider with face of old man) shortly.



Saturday, November 1, 2014

Halloween Bio Pumpkin Carving Contest

Congratulations to the Ciborowski lab team of pumpkin carvers for winning 3rd place in the University of Windsor Biology Department Pumpkin Carving Contest!


Our carvers:  Lyndon, Jasmine, Kellie and Jordan (absent from photo:  Chantal)
The pumpkin design was a joint collaboration of ideas from Chantal, Jordan and Celine.  The sketch and transcription to the pumpkin was done by Jordan.


 




Sunday, October 26, 2014

Quilted Colour Wheel

We haven't had a theme to work on collectively the last little while, so we've each been doing our own thing.  Chantal is decorating a clear vase with autumn leaves (painted and embellished with gold/metallic pen, and glued on with Mod-Podge).  Jordan is close to finishing his painting of the spider with the face of an old man (that's my description of it, but Jordan may have another).  And Ellen started a gorgeous painting of the Toronto skyline a couple of weeks ago over Skype, which I hope to see completed soon.



I finally finished the quilted colour wheel I started at the beginning of the month.  Here are a couple of photos of work in progress, to show just how much the beginning and the end of my projects resemble each other (usually not much!).





To add a bit of texture to the final quilt, I stitched in (free-motion) a bunch of wool/felt 'nuggets' (loose, pebble-like bits of felt, brightly dyed).  I love the final effect (though I had to struggle with my sewing machine to get it done, and only finished after breaking 5 needles...).



Sunday, October 5, 2014

Carving Pumpkins

We carved pumpkins last week!  Jordan carved a big orange one, Jess carved and painted the big white one, and I (Michelle) carved and inked a butternut squash, while Jessica looked on and knitted.



I don't know what kind of squash the white pumpkin was, but it was much heavier and denser than the orange one, with walls at least an inch thick when hollowed out.  Jess turned it into a painted clown.



Jordan did an elaborate carving of a headless horseman on his orange pumpkin.  The photo below is work in progress.  The final work ended up being eaten by a squirrel, before evidence of the intricateness of the final carving could be photographed.


I recently discovered the art of Zentangle doodles, and drew some in with black ink (pen) on one of the 4 layers of my carved butternut squash. 





And so as not to waste perfectly good vegetables, I made pancakes out of the carved pumpkin pulp, and roasted the seeds (sprinkled with salt, pepper, garlic salt and paprika, and tossed in canola oil - yum!).




Monday, September 29, 2014

Chantal's Quilt

Last week we welcomed Chantal to our group.  Chantal is working on a bed quilt.  I don't have a great photo of it (we'll get better shots, and a better description, when it's finished), but here it is anyway:



Sunday, September 21, 2014

Painting, Tyvek, and Mosaic Tray

Our last get-together was multi-themed.  The common thread was painting though, with a couple of exceptions (Ellen, for example, worked on needlepoint over Skype from Ottawa).

Jordan started on his new painting (but isn't showing work in progress).  Jessica chose a monochromatic design, and used her fine, intricate floral stencils for the beautifully layered painting below (only partially finished):





Tamsen and I finished our collaboration - the mosaic tile tray.  I guess this is the place to give the whole story of this project, which started with a wood framed goose print (a thrift store find):
I painted a couple of ceramic tiles in brightly coloured backgrounds and tree silhouettes (using ceramics-specific and acrylic paints).  A layer or two of varnish, over the paint, ensured that the paint didn't scrape off during the grouting stage.

Tamsen broke up the tiles into shards, large and small, and rearranged them on the inside surface of the tray (the back of the goose print):



The next step was to finish the wood frame - and Tamsen is a pro at this (literally!).  She sanded all the edges (several times, and with different sizes of sand paper, if I observed correctly), and then used her fancy brush to apply 3 coats of shellack, which dried beautifully and gave the finished wood a nice, shiny, smooth look and feel.


I put the finishing touches on it all and turned the old framed print into a tray by attaching cabinet door handles to each end.  Because of some difficulty with the screws, I stumbled upon an interesting finish to the handles (the screws were too long for the width of the wood, so to make up the difference, I added shards of tiles to each end, which ended up matching the tiled tray very nicely... if I do say so myself).





And VOILA! the finished tray:



I also worked on painting Tyvek.   Tyvek is a wonderful addition to any fiber art.  It's paintable, it somehow absorbs paint despite having the feel and texture of plastic.  And its flat shape can be distorted by heat (for example, by pressing with a hot iron), giving a very textured surface, for those who love that sort of thing (and I do!).

Here were my painted sheets of Tyvek (my blank, white Tyvek sheets were just used FedEx envelopes, cut up):


I broke them up into even smaller pieces, and pressed them with my hot iron (in the garage - the fumes from this can be quite bad!).  The flat sheets bubbled and melted.  The process is very unpredictable, and you never know how much bubbling and/or melting you're going to get (but it's always fun to see the results):



 The unpainted back looks great too!