Recent Work

When I returned from my art retreat, I tried to set up my workspace in the basement and use that new found energy to keep on track with the clay prints.

So at home with my limited, as yet, available colors, I have been trying out different combinations, different tints and pigments.

Those beautiful blue-green leaves were made by mistake. I was looking for black, a really deep black that when mixed with white clay slip would still be black. I grabbed the black food coloring I use at Halloween, and the clay was black, but it separated when drying on a piece of newsprint and became this color I never could have mixed on my own.



I am also trying to make recognizaable images and am having no luck. I keep coming out with impressionistic flowers instead of the simple lined Japanese iris that I am trying to make.



Here I have flowers, but somehow I just keep slopping the color around. And the fact that the history of the clay slab comes to the surface makes for the serendipity so exciting in the expressionist prints, but so frustrating when I want to be in control of my feeble designs.















This is a close up of the first pastel piece I made at Peters Valley.










And finally, back to the brights! The orange was made by grating a pastel over the surface & spritzing it with a little water. Here is the black I was hoping to rediscover when I used the food coloring.
The black lines were made with a very thin slip i.e. watery, and drawn on newsprint which soaks up the excess water. Then the paper is inverted onto the slab and inlaid.