New Combined Blog and Website

My newly designed blog and website are now “live”, so this will be my final post on this blog site.

My new blog address is:  http://www.aynhanna.com/blog/

Please join me at my new blog site here  for my future posts.

For Subscribers of this Blog

Those of you that are subscribed via your email address, you don’t need to do anything.  We have migrated your subscription information to the new site, so you should continue to receive my blog posts in your email inboxes.  I plan to publish my first post from my new blog site sometime this week, so look for that in your inbox.

For those of you that are subscribed to this blog via RSS feed reader, here is the new feed link for my blog:

http://www.aynhanna.com/feed/

I am excited for this next “2.o” version of my online presence and hope that you will all join me over at the new site so we can continue to connect through cyber space!

Be helpful.

It’s the #1 most important thing I learned in Alyson B. Stanfield’s (aka Art Biz Coach) Social Media Immersion workshop a couple weekends ago.  I went with lots of questions about Facebook, Twitter, Google+, blogging and learned a lot in 2 days.  Not only did we learn a lot, we made many new artist friends, as there were 45 of us participating in the workshop.

Barbara and Alyson enjoying Alyson's book, "I'd Rather Be in the Studio". By day 2, we were all pretty giddy with our heads packed full of new information.

I have a long list of action items and a plan for next steps to improve my online presence and be more social.  I’ve also been thinking a lot about what “be helpful” means for me – how can I be helpful to those of you that read my blog, those that I connect with on facebook and twitter and those of you I’ve yet to meet in cyberspace.

I have some ideas for things I can share to be helpful, including more about effectively using the various social media platforms.  But I’m also really interested to hear from you – how can I be helpful to YOU?  If you have particular ideas, I’d love to hear them – you can leave me a comment below!

Fun times at the Social Media Immersion Workshop

2 person Show at Bas Bleu Theater in Fort Collins

Besides attending the SM Workshop this past month, I’ve been heads down in the studio working to complete some new work for a new show which we just installed this past weekend at the Bas Bleu Theater here in town.  It’s a 2 person show, my first one with my partner Barbara Gilhooly, and we have a total of 36 pieces in the show – paintings, fiber, and works on paper.

The exhibit will be on display now through Dec 30th.  We will have an artists’ reception on Friday, Dec. 2nd, from 5-7pm.  There will also be a Beet Street Arts & Drafts event at Bas Bleu on Tues, Nov 15, 5-7pm (RSVP required) which will be another fun opportunity to see us and see our show.

Postcard we'll be sending out to announce our show

Changes coming

And speaking of social media immersion…I am in the process of revamping my own online presence, creating my “2.0″ version of my website and blog, now that I’ve had my original site up for a couple of years and my blog for 1.5 years.  It’s time to re-fresh my web presence to reflect my newest self.

I want a site that not only is well-designed, but that gives me more control, to be able to make all my updates myself, and to also integrate my website with my blog.  So, I’m working with Pat Velte of WhiteWing design to create my new integrated website and blog design.

What does this mean for you if you are subscribed to this blog?

If you have subscribed to my blog with  your email address (you currently receive my blog posts in your email inbox), you should not need to do anything.  When we complete the migration of my blog to the new site, if all goes well, I’ll be able to bring you all along with me and migrate your subscriptions.

If you have subscribed to my blog via RSS feed reader, you will need to re-submit your subscription.

You’ll know that we’ve completed the migration because the look/feel format of my blog posts will be different, and my blog will be located at aynhanna.com (no longer at aynhanna.wordpress.com).

Our plan is to complete this blog migration before 11/26, so you should see these changes get implemented within the next 3.5 weeks.  I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going, although you’ll probably know once you “see” the difference.

Wish me luck with all the changes!

My hand-dyed fabric stacks

An Informal Fabric Stack Project

Last week on her blog, artist Lisa Call had a fun idea – have each of us that has stacks of fabric take photos of our stacks and post them on our blogs and then add a comment on her blog, so that we can all go enjoy looking at each other’s colorful stacks.

This idea sprung as a tangent of another similar project - the Paper Stack Challenge – that Seth Apter of The Altered Page posted on his blog.

The idea in either case is that multiple artists will post photos of their own “stacks” on their own blogs, and then add a link in the comments section of either Lisa’s post (if fabric artist) or Seth’s post (if paper artist), so that everyone can check out all the cool “stacks” we’ve all got.

One of my racks of fabric.

Yes, I’m a Fabric Junkie!

But really, what textile artist isn’t?  Ok, some of us are worse than others.  I currently have a (spouse-imposed!) limit of 4 (oops, make that 3) racks of fabric.  Actually, the limit is for my own good and I need these boundaries, otherwise, well, my studio would likely become over run with fabric and I’d be so overwhelmed I’d never get anything done.

Another of my fabric racks.

I’ve acquired quite a stash in the few years I’ve been working in textiles and I do weed through it on occasion and donate some of it to charitable causes.  I’m working mostly with my own hand-dyed fabrics these days, so some of those commercial fabrics I found at thrift stores don’t quite have the same appeal now that they did back when I first acquired them and I know others will put them to good use.

A mini stack - a textile painting waiting to happen.

And sometimes it’s just necessary to let go of the old to make room for the new!

If you have a stack you’d like to share, please do join in the Informal Fabric Stack Project on Lisa’s blog.

OPTION A –  New Legacies: Contemporary Art Quilts, Lincoln Center, Ft. Collins, CO. October 7, 5-8pm.

Two of my textile paintings are included in this juried show which is the inaugural exhibit at the newly renovated Lincoln Center.  I am excited to see not only the artwork, but also the spiffy new expanded gallery space.

OPTION B – Swimming Upstream: Juried Print Exhibit, 44T Artspace, Denver, CO.  October 7, 7-10pm.

I am a  juror for this show at 44T, and have included one of my intaglio etchings as a sample of my work.  So far I have only seen the works that were selected for this show via the digital image submissions so I am very eager to see the pieces in person.  There are works included in the show by several artists living throughout the US.

Eeenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo.

As much as I’d like to be able to attend both events this Friday night, that’s just not going to happen.

And as luck would have it, the 44T Artspace is planning to do not only an opening reception this week, but a closing one as well on Nov 26th.

So, I’m going to be attending the opening reception at the New Legacies show here in town at the Lincoln Center this Friday night.  If you’re in town, I hope to see you there.

If you’re in Denver, I hope you’ll stop by and see the print show.  I’ll be there for the closing reception in late Nov.

And if you’re somewhere else in the world, I hope you get out and go see some original art at a local gallery near you!

Our little black bear.

The image of this sweet confused young bear’s face is burned into my mind.  A week ago, we raised the deck door window shade, and much to our surprise and delight, there she was – sitting sideways under the pine tree, looking back at us with as much surprise and confusion as we at her.  We shared a few quiet moments before she ably lumbered over the fence into our neighbors’ yard.

We excitedly followed her progress over the next day, hearing that the DOW was going to let her find her way back to the mountains as long as she didn’t become a nuisance.  And then we got the news that 3 overzealous men from the DOW had shot her full of tranquilizers, causing her to fall out of a neighborhood tree, ultimately dying from her injuries.

What to do with that news?  So much anger, sadness and helplessness.  I cried a lot.  I keep seeing that sweet inquisitive face, and wondering why people have to be so hurtful and well, stupid.

Bear Medicine: Introspection

I kept thinking about this bear visit all week, and the gift she brought us.  It slowed me down from the usual daily race, and helped me remember that with all the crazy things going on in the world that we encounter, the only thing we truly can control are our individual reactions to the craziness.

I also started re-developing some focus again on myself, on routines that are healthful for my own body, mind, and spirit.  Thanks to my bear visit, I’ve been awakened from the trance yet again.

Ducks on the Long Arm machine.

What’s on the Long Arm Machine?

One of the routines I’ve been redeveloping this past week is to get into the studio and do some art each day, even if it’s only for a short while.  I had forgotten how much of a stress relief it is for me to have that daily meditative time, creating my art.

I’ve been focused on finishing a piece I started several months ago.  I finished constructing the top (pieced and appliqued fabrics which I hand-dyed and screen-printed) awhile ago and now am adding the drawing/stitching on the long arm.

The idea for this piece came from one of my vivid night dreams.  As I’ve worked to turn that dream image into a physical work of art, it has become a bold and graphic representation of how I felt in that dream.

Reconnecting with this piece, spending a little time each night in the studio working to finish it has helped me get back into a meditative rhythm not only with my art, but with myself.

Ducks getting stitched on the long arm.

Deep Spaces Show Postcard

One of my textile paintings, Along the Way, is included in the  ”Deep Spaces”  exhibit which opened this week at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook, OR.

"Along the Way" (detail) ©Ayn Hanna, 45"x18", Textile Painting

The Curator/Juror of the show, Larkin Jean Van Horn, has assembled 50 artworks, and created a stunning catalog of the exhibit, available for purchase with all proceeds going to support Doctors without Borders.

Deep Spaces

From the show’s catalog:

Curator Larkin Jean Van Horn selected the theme “Deep Spaces” following a conversation with friends about the limits of space and the photography from the Hubble telescope. While it was clear that textile art dealing with the cosmos would be an appealing exhibit, the title implied so much more. Artists interested in participating in the exhibit were encouraged to interpret the theme in any manner that suited them, and the entries were outstanding.

The artists went deep into space, deep underground, deep under water, deep into the woods, canyons, and prairies, and deep into the mysteries of the heart. Each artist worked in her own style, whether photorealism or pure abstraction or something in between. Holding all this wide variety together is a common size: 18 inches wide by 45 inches long.

The Making of Along the Way

This piece is the second in a series of discharged wholecloth black cotton fabric textile paintings.  Making marks by using various drawing techniques to apply color removal agents, these artworks evolve intuitively, through quiet meditative drawing and wordless conversation with the work itself.  This way of working aligned nicely with the theme of this exhibit, giving me good opportunity to spend some much needed creative meditative time going inward to the deep spaces within.

"Along the Way" ©Ayn Hanna, 45"x18", Textile Painting

I began by drawing with discharge paste, which after steamed to remove the color, created the “lighter/white” areas.  Next I drew with a bleach pen, which created the orange marks.  Once the drawing was finished, I quilted this top layer together with batting and a backing layer of fabric on my long arm quilting machine.

My artist’s statement for Along the Way

An inward journey, intuitive drawing, mapping of a mind, lost in thought, problem-solving, the time ticks away.

"Along the Way" (detail) ©Ayn Hanna, 45"x18", Textile Painting

Deep Spaces Exhibit Logistics

Latimer Quilt and Textile Center, Tillamook, OR – Sept 5 through Nov 6, 2011.

Sam Houston Memorial Museum, Huntsville, TX – Jan 10 through March 12, 2012.

LaConner Quilt and Textile Museum, LaConner, WA – March 28 through June 24, 2012

There are many beautiful mountain towns in Colorado, and then there’s Telluride, CO.  Perched at 8750 feet above sea level in a box canyon with mountains all around, Telluride has to be one of the most beautiful (and cleanest) places on earth.  Spending a week there, teaching an art cloth workshop was heavenly.  Words and even pictures really can’t describe it.  Every morning, I was filled with quiet appreciation as my eyes tried to absorb all the surrounding glory.

And in this most beautiful place, I was gifted with working with a wonderful group of artists, in an amazing facility – the Old Stone building, which houses the American Academy of Bookbinding / Aha School for the Arts classes.

Old Stone Building in Telluride, CO

Students at work making hand-printed art cloth.

For 3 days we played, making art cloth using various impermanent silkscreen techniques.  My students were off and running after the very first technique demo – no fear here, just wind them up and watch them go – they dove right in and achieved incredible results.  I think it’s safe to say that the discharge/color removal techniques were a group favorite!

Michele applying a discharge paste design to her cloth.

Suzette using a bleach pen to draw her design.

Kathy got some great results printing with stencils on this piece.

Cindy enjoyed the monoprint technique, printing multiple leaves she gathered during the lunch break one day.

By the end of the 3 days, my students were all rockstar printmakers and every one of them had a good variety of unique art cloth pieces to take home and incorporate into their art projects.  Here’s some more photos of the great cloth pieces they made:

Kathy working with the bleach pen.

Cindy made this piece using 2 techniques, glue screen and flour paste screen prints.

Suzette is going to use this cloth in a quilt that's already in progress.

Michele made several pieces of art cloth which she will be incorporating into her art quilts.

It really was a special week, visiting a beautiful new place, teaching at a great school and meeting and working with some new artist friends.  Thanks to all for a great time – Can’t wait to go back again next year and play some more!

In the part of the studio where my long arm quilting machine lives, I hung several newly completed textile paintings, including several small kitschy cowgirl pieces on one wall.  I also devoted one entire wall to work in progress.  Since we were asked to provide demos of how we make our work, I thought it would be fun for visitors to see some of the pieces I’m working on, in their various stages of completion, which revealed a bit of my working process.

On the printmaking side of the studio where my etching press lives, I included a “demo” area with some of the tools used for the various kinds of prints such as linocuts, woodcuts, and etchings as well as examples of different printmaking blocks/plates and the prints that were made from each, so visitors could see the range of mark-making possibilities in hand-pulled prints.

I also had my artist book of etchings displayed accordian-style, with the actual copper plates the prints were made from lined up in front of it, again so visitors could see both the prints and the plates they were made from.

My Process

I like to work on multiple pieces at a time, moving back and forth between the several pieces in progress.  This allows me most efficient use of my time and endless variety, as depending on what I’m interested in doing during a creative session (dyeing, drawing, stitching, composing, etc), or if I only have a small window of time to work with, I have lots of options of how to spend my time.

There is also a downside to working this way as well; at times I get too many new things started (because of new ideas being spawned from a piece I’m working on, or answers not appearing for resolving some of the existing pieces in progress) and then I get overwhelmed with all of the work I’ve got started.

It’s a kind of expansion and contraction process, the exploration of beginning a new idea/new work, expanding into new territory, and then needing to have the discipline to to resolve and complete the work, a sort of contraction, bringing it to a close.

This is why artists make good project managers!  Artists have to be able to come up with an idea worth doing, and then plan/figure out how best to do it, and then implement/deliver the goods, hopefully achieving a great result in the finished piece.

Anyway, back to the tour….  There were 36 studios participating in this year’s tour and visitors had 2 days to get around to as many as they could.  For my first time participating, I think the event was a success.  My goal was to introduce my studio and artwork to the local public and meet more people involved in local art scene.  I achieved that and I also sold some work.  And, best of all, I got some great feedback about my studio, hearing that some visitors thought it was the highlight of their tour – and in the end, that made it all worthwhile.

Eco Dyeing supplies: plant material, string, cotton and silk fabric, metal pieces.

My friend Diedre Adams attended an India Flint workshop at this year’s SDA conference in Minneapolis, and shared her experience in 2 great blog posts.   Who knew you could make cool art cloth by picking up stuff on the ground in your environment, wrapping it in fabric, and boiling it in water?  No toxic chemicals involved, and no special supplies to buy.  After reading her first post, I was off and running – I just had to try this.

Really having no idea what I was doing (other than having read Diedre’s first blog post and having previously done some dyeing with procion MX dyes), yet trusting my process-intensive background in printmaking, I dove in.  We had had a pretty intense hail storm and I have lots of trees/plants/greenery in my yard, so there were lots of healthy green leaves, stems, and petals laying about for easy gathering.  I also had a big collection of dried wildflowers that I had harvested years ago and still had preserved between layers of newsprint, knowing I’d find a use for them some day.  I laid out my fabric and like a burrito, filled it with plant materials and in some cases, wire and metal pieces, and then folded and rolled it up into tight bundles:

I tore some strips of PFD cotton fabric and also decided to try dyeing some silk (which I have never worked with before but had recently bought some yardage to try out).  I didn’t know this at the time, but when using protein fibers such as silk, it is necessary to add some type of mordant agent to the boiling water pot to “fix” the natural plant dye colors to the fabric.  There are several things that can be used for mordant – metal, milk, and soy milk are some options.

Wrapping up the "burrito" of plant materials. In this case, I used a hollow metal rod to roll up the bundle around and then tied it with string.

I had seen some pictures in Diedre’s post where they had used metal clamps and flat metal pieces as “supports” when preparing the fabric bundles.  Lucky for me, my Partner uses wire and metal in some of her work, so I was able to pilfer some great rusty metal pieces from her stash for my bundling.  I used these metal pieces as embellishments on the fabric bundles and to help provide some structure as I rolled, folded and wrapped the plant materials up in the fabric, tying them into tight bundles with string and rubber bands:

Plant filled bundles all tied up and ready for boiling.

Backside of the 3 bundles with more metal pieces tied on.

Then it was bundle boiling time.  All those leaves, needles, petals, sticks, and pieces of metal made for an interesting aroma in the house.  It was my very own backyard brew!

Bundles in the water pot.

After boiling, I let the bundles sit overnight in the brew pot before opening up the first one.

Bundles after boiling in the water pot and "steeping" for a couple of days.

The magical part of the process – revealing the results:

Above photos are 1 piece of cotton, and below, are photos of another piece of cotton:

After heat setting the color and then washing the fabrics out, these 2 pieces of cotton looked like this:

The colors that the plant materials created in each fabric are very subtle yet beautiful (hard to see in the photos), and I love the dark shapes and marks that the metal pieces and string resist contributed.  These 2 pieces of fabric really seemed to need to be together and so, over the next 3 days, I created a new textile painting using these fabrics along with some other cotton that I had hand-dyed earlier this year:

"The Vagaries of Recall" ©Ayn Hanna, 46"x28", Textile Painting (cotton fabrics, eco-dyed and hand-dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton threads)

I’ll post more of the results of this first eco-dyeing session, as well as photos from a follow-on 2nd dyeing session in a follow-up post.

"5th Floor Reflections" ©Ayn Hanna, Ink Drawing on Paper

Drawing – The Artist’s act of thinking

Michael Gormley, Editor Director of American Artist Group, shares some interesting thoughts about drawing in an article he wrote:

“Practiced frequently and without inhibition, drawing represents the graphic remains of a thought or idea-hence its evolution ultimately aims to record not just the gesture of the hand but the inspired movement of the mind.  Drawing is thus a powerful tool for recording the stages and end products of our imaginative thought processes; it is associated with the highest levels of human consciousness.  In a sense, drawing is an artist’s act of thinking.”

I resonate with Michael’s statement, as well as with this one, from Cate Prato, Online Editor, Cloth Paper Scissor Today:

“Knowing ‘how to draw’ is not just about putting down an organized series of lines to create an image we recognize, it’s a way to organize and express our thoughts.”

So true.  This is why drawing is such an important component within every artwork I make, whether that artwork is a hand-pulled print, piece of sculpture, or textile painting.  It’s the inherent drawing within a piece that gives the viewer the most insight to the artist maker.

I am fascinated by other artists’ drawing qualities in their work.  It’s the first thing I notice and most appreciate in other artists’ work because it reveals so much to me about the person who did the work, without them even being there to tell me about it in words.  It takes courage to put your honest drawing in your work, because it is so revealing, and “speaks” for you visually.

"5th Floor Reflections" ©Ayn Hanna, 43"x36", Textile painting (cotton fabric, cotton batting, cotton thread)

I made the textile painting above based on that quick little drawing of the window reflections.  In the drawing, I really liked the abstract compositions within each window, the graphic quality, and the repetition of the hand drawn squares.  The dual association of the repeating square format with art quilting seemed a natural segue for me to (literally) extend my drawing into a textile painting.  And so I did.

I scanned my drawing and printed it out, and to my surprise, my old scanner read the drawing as a cut-out and printed the image with a black border framing the irregular shape of it.  I realized I was looking at my mock-up for my new textile painting.

In a way, creating a textile painting of my drawing helped bring emphasis to it, objectifying it into something larger that feels like it has a better chance of being seen or noticed by others.  And I think that’s a part of why all artists make art, at least I know it’s a part of why I do – to have a voice, share my thoughts, and participate in our society’s conversations.