Gelatin Mono-Printing At Ten Thousand Villages

Two weekends ago I participated in a Demo Day at our local Ten Thousand Villages Store in Fredericksburg. I must admit that I am responsible for getting this whole program off the ground. Ten Thousand Villages (TTV) is one of my favorite shops as they sell Fair Trade Craft items from third world countries with all of the profits returned to the artisans. I go in to get inspired quite regularly and I have gotten to be quite friendly with Kathy and Terri , the gals that work there. One day, Terri noticed my purse- one of my denim collage painted ones . She wanted to touch it and examine it and of course, I allowed that! Love that!! Anyway, she asked if I knew of other artisans who did artwork similar to what they stocked in their store. I told her all about Liberty Town, and the wonderful artists who work there and I gave her some names. I also told her that I would ask members of the Spinners and Weavers Guild if anyone might be interested in doing some demo's there at the shop. Well, before I knew it , I had 10 gals raring to demo from the Guild and several other artisans- a recycled Metal worker named Megan Hicks and a Batik artist named Amber Arrowwood and myself slated for Demo Days!! All due to my big mouth!! So wear your artwork or carry your artwork, you never know where comments and conversations about your artwork, will lead!!!!

Kathy and Terri did a fabulous job of advertizing and when I arrived at the shp for the two hour alloted time, there were people waiting for me to get started!!! I got all set up and started to play and to talk- I was not planning on a full lecture but that is what it turned out to be.People were fascinated by the process and asked many 'What if..." questions. That led me to try some new things and to answer their questions all at the same time!! All were very interested in Liberty Town and brochures and class schedules were handed round ! All in all it was a very successful day for all of us!! This will only be good for Liberty Town as many now know more about the location and the availablity of very unusual class opportunities. I was also able to talk about the classes that I will be offering at Liberty Town over the next two months so I may even get some students signed up!! Too Cool!!

Below you will find examples of some of the fabrics and papers that I printed that day!

On this next piece I used a wood print block that I purchased at the shop. If ever you buy one of these blocks, by sure to soak it for a bit in some water, as they are extremely dry and will absorb any paint that you try to stamp with!!! Trust me, I KNOW!!!

The old wood blocks give lovely patterns. On the right side you see stamping from a mesh bag.

This piece began it's life as a piece of sheet music. I coated it with some dilute gesso and then did several rounds of printing on it. It has a very layered look which becomes more apparent if you click on the picture and look at the enlargment.

This piece bagan as a sheet of a chinese newspaper, coated with gesso wash and then three layers of gelating prints.

This was the first print of a mesh bag and some sppol prints and the following shows the ghost print from the same plate. Love this!!

This last example is my favorite from that day! I think that it is the shapes( large bubble, bubble wrap) and the fabulous contrasting colors!!

The Joy's of Teaching Kids!!

I promised a blow by blow description of my Gelatin Monoprinting experience with 40 4th graders and 40 fifth graders, so here goes. I only had two hours,so the time went very quickly but we all had a wonderful time! I always feel that I get so many rewards after an experience like this, I find myself wondering if the kids enjoy it as much.

The morning did not start off well at all. It was bitter cold -12 degrees- for VA that is darn cold!! I went out to load my car after following the list that I had made for myself the night before. I noticed that my right front tire looked a touch low. I park on the very steep driveway and so I usually don't notice this. Fortunately Tom was home from work and he insisted on pulling out the air compressor and filling the tire.. I was late but I did not want the tire to go dead flat on rt 95 and totally miss the class- I would never have forgiven myself.. So Tom filled the tire- he siad that it was indeed flat> SIGH!!

So I got on the road and got to the school and found the room and got set up and then the kids trooped in with very expectant faces. Several teacher wandered through having heard about the gelatin printing and many were making jokes about jello wrestling and wanting to watch!~! the kids wanted to know if they could Eat it- yuck , no it is only plain unsugared gelatin!!

We got right down to it as the clock was ticking and we turned out some wonderful prints. I did a quick demo, we talked about different stamping tools and off they went!! I had promised lots of pictures but in the last minute rush to get out the door and with the tire incident, I forgot my camera!! ARGHGHHHHH!!!

So Mirinda Reynolds the fabulous ARt Teacher at Fredericksburg Academy took some shots and forwarded this one on to me.

THese prints ( on Navy mulbery fiber paper) will eventually become covers for the book of art that each student creates for the artworks generated as they participate in the year long Artist In Residence program. In the lower left corne you can see aparticularly nice print that this girl made using a plastic doily for her patterning!

The kids really did a great job. They were very curious and asked lots of great art questions by trying all sorts of things to make patterns with. We had a very messy, creative and rewarding time!! I certainly hope that the funding for this program is not cut, as I am really looking forward to participating and working with these kiddos again next year!!!

Circles and Curves!

As you can see the latest challenge for the GPP Street Team is to SHAPE IT UP! I have finally settled on a shape that will allow me to prepare samples for a class that I will be teaching to fourth graders on Friday and that will qualify for the Challenge. This is a level of organization that does not usually befall me and I must admit that I am quite pleased with myself!!
The shape that I will be using is a circle, actually many different circles. The medium will be Gelatin Monoprinting on both fabric and paper. The paper pieces will become background pages for my visual journal after being used as samples in the Gelatin Monoprinting class that I will be teaching to EIGHTY- that is 8-0 - fourth graders!! The fabric pieces will be used as samples as well ,as I am being advertized as a Fiber Arts Visiting Artist. After the class I will use these printed pieces in fiber collage mini quilts and they may even appear on my Etsy site.
So here is the set-up:






Regular, nothing fancy, acrylic paints, a brayer, and a tray full of extra hard solidified gelatin as my printing surface. The printing tools are a toilet paper tube, bottle caps, plastic thread spools, bubble wrap and a paint brush end.




Here you can see some circles of plastic canvas and a clutch of spools that I taped together to create a specific pattern. this is all about making your own tools and using what you ahve. When I teach children I really try to empahsize that specialized tools are not needed to create art. Using things found around the home, with a parents permission , can yield totally wonderful results!!



The paint is loaded onto the gelatin and then subtracted using various "tools".. The tools are then relieved of the paint that they picked up by stamping on either paper or fabric, in this case, paper.



Here you can see the imprint left by the circles of plastic canvas, the bottle caps and the spools.

Here is the gelatin palte loaded with paint and then I used the end of a skewer to remove swirls and circles of paint. Below you can see the resulting prints first on paper,



And then on fabric. This fabric was intially printed with tiny black circles.




Here are some more fabric and paper printings!!



Yellow paper with orange paint.


White fabric with swirls thru pink orange and yellow paint and then more paint removed with large bubble wrap.



White fabric with paint removed using the circles of plastic canvas . THe small cluster of circles in the top right is the result of a group of bubbles that formed when the gelatin was formed. MORE CIRCLES!!!!!
( This slab of gelatin was made using KNOX gelatin made in a 1:1 ratio of gelatin to water and has been stable in the fridge covered with sran wrap for three weeks between uses.) Youc an be sure to see some of these prints in upcoming projects and I hope that everyone might try this really amazing technique for creating one of a kind prints!!! I will also be featuring pictures and tales of my teaching experience of this coming Friday, here on my blog!!

I also must thank Michelle Ward for offering this Challenge at this time as it really got the gears (more circles) turning to create some interesting tools for this class!!




(Addendum posted 1/29)
After recieving some wonderful comments, I realized that some of you may think that this is a regular deal with the 80 kids!! Not so much!!! this is a one shot gig and it is at a private school so I am pretty sure that I will have lots of help. to do this on a regular basis would be more than I could handle but I am soooo very grateful that there are wonderful teachers out there who do it all the time!!!