Layers Lunch

Today was Lunch with the Layers group, an off-shoot of COOTS. Five members from our area have formed this group to cater to our insatiable need for knowledge and encouragement in the fibre field.

I did not like my Karen Eckmeier Quilted Village (sorry can't find the original photo of it) so the Layers girls encouraged me to turn it over and cut it up. So here it is. I have gessoed a piece of the front (coloured) and a pieced of the back (black) - I quite like the effect, I'm not sure what to do with it next but it was quite liberating to chop it up and I won't be daunted in the future to do this again as I can see more potential.

This next piece is from a Textured Landscapes workshop I did at the Picton MiniSymposium. I didn't like this much either so once again I chopped it - it is in need of some stitching now but I like it more.

Here are some more pictures from my Layers book. You may notice a theme here - I am fixated with architecture at the moment - maybe driven by the fact that we are currently not living in a home of our own - we are renting and we always get a bit unsettled. I am fascinated with old buildings, decaying and no longer used, flakey paint, etc. These next pictures are painted and stamped papers, writing about derelict abandoned buildings and photocopied photographs of the Old Drapery at Ophir. I ripped these up and wove them back together.

The next two are layers of felt, magazine pictures, transfer dyes, writing, organza, and photographs

These lunches are great - we go away thoroughly recharged and ready to produce more work. The emphasis is more on exploring and playing and not necessarily producing a "finished piece" we are all heading in different theme directions.

We are having a COOTS exhibition at the Festival of Colour in Wanaka next year. For our Artist's statements we are using the "I am from .... " poem. It has been fantastic, insipiring and different way to introduce ourselves.