Flying Tree has SOLD!

 Flying Tree has sold at the Northville Art House's annual juried exhibit "Small Works."  I am so happy.  It does feel rare to sell one of my tree structures.  Flying Tree is 12" tall x 6" wide x 4.5" deep and can be viewed in the round.  The collaged fabric on the base is machine stitched with a hole in which you can put your hand, if your hand is small enough.  

In the 2nd image of Flying Tree you can see the inside of the top piece which is discharged brown fabric with stripes.

I have more in the Tree Series that I'm hoping to work on in 2023!

2022 Holiday Shows

Dear Followers,

I am truly terrible at keeping up with my blog.  Sorry about that!  So I thought I would take the opportunity to tell you about the three holiday shows I'll be in and give you some ideas of what's new in my work this year.

ArtCats Gallery in Muskegon, Michigan, at www.artcatsgallery.com is an incredibly wonderful little gallery (and not just because my work is there).  The owner, Louise Hopson, is a potter with her studio behind the gallery where she produces quirky and colorful, wild and wonderful pottery displayed in the gallery.  I have my dolls there all year round, fortunately, and usually have Leotard Angels and Big Skirt Angels.  Here are some of the newest ones at the gallery:

Louise also chose four Little Angels, only 6" tall:

LowellArts in downtown Lowell, Michigan, at www.lowellartsmi.org sets up their large gallery space for their annual juried holiday artists market for over 40 artists' work.  I'm a member there and love to have my dolls at the annual show.  My space is a small, narrow one but it fits my work so well.  The show is November 4 - December 24.

I hope you can visit to see everyone's work!

I've been invited back to the BBAC (Birmingham Bloomfield Arts Center) in Birmingham, Michigan (north of Detroit) this year and am so pleased to have my work there.  The Holiday Shop is December 1-20 and they spend all November setting up this wonderful show and sale.  (Check them out at www.BBartscenter.org.)  I have Button Jesters (seen just below), Big Skirt Angels and Ladies, Leotard Angels, Little Angels, as well as a series of dolls I call Imaginary Friends--- lots of fun to create and to see.

I hope you're somewhere in Michigan where you can visit any of these three locations that are spread from the Lake Michigan shore to the eastern side of the state!

Glue Gun Stencils: What Fun!

Making hot glue gun stencils was an absolutely fun time inspired by Traci Bautista's "Printmaking Unleashed" book (North Light Books).  That is MAKING the stencils was so much fun.  I actually use the "stencils" as rubbings.   In making them, just make sure you connect the glue line enough times to keep the lines together without falling apart. (My original post was on Dec. 14, 2015.)

Glue gun stencils - be sure to connect the lines
often so the stencil doesn't fall apart

Here are some images of the rubbings I made:

Embroidered Collages: Small is good!

I have been working on small pieces, as well as dolls, and love the ability to take pieces from my tubs of handprinted, dyed and painted scraps to make what I am calling Improvisational Embroidered Collages.  Taking one piece that looks inspiring and adding it to another with stitching satisfies that part of me that can't through away anything, especially fabric that I've worked to hand dye, print, paint or embellish.  These are my most recent pieces:

Jennifer Gould "Purple Clouds on the Horizon,"  8" x 6", synthetics, cotton; deconstructed screen printing (DSP), rubbing, printing, stamping, embroidery

Jennifer Gould "Radiating Spiral," 5" x 7.5", Indian dyed/printed cotton, synethics, sheers; stenciling, fine line printing, hand and machine embroidery

,

Jennifer Gould, "Out There," 6" x 11", cotton, synthetics; hand printed,
stamped, drawn, embroidered

Profusion: newest 3-D shibori indigo piece

Profusion is my latest piece in three-dimensional shibori stitched and indigo dyed work.  It's 10" x 10" x 3" deep; cotton, Procion MX dyes, textile paint, indigo and shibori.  Also, because the pre-stretched canvas frame has almost a 2" deep side, I added flattened fabric to the edges to give a wrap-around effect.

I wanted to do more than just have blue on white fabric and decided to dye paint large areas of bright colors.  Relearning to mix Procion MX dyes was good experimentation because I discovered that my red and pink dyes had died.  So, I brought out my ProFab textile paints and did a thin wash over those faded areas.  Knowing that indigo does attach to textile paint (can't be too plastic-y though), I was glad of the results.

Unfortunately in this new Blogger, I can't get the caption to appear no matter how I follow the instructions in the Help section.  

I find it amazing in this new virtual exhibit reality we have right now that we can have one piece in multiple shows and never physically send it anywhere!

Here's what it looks like when it's all scrunched up after pulling and tying off the stitches.

The second photo shows an entire dishpan filled with indigo dyed fabric.  There are all different colors of blue because indigo overdyes beautifully and creates lovely and unusual colors.  My favorite is indigo on orange/yellow!

New Dolls for ArtCats Gallery

Oriental Poppy Woman

Sunflower Woman

A customer at ArtCats Gallery in Muskegon MI requested a commission for two Square Headed Women dolls in the flower themes of Oriental Poppy and a second one of Sunflower.  It was a great challenge that I loved.

I used some fabric from my most recent 3-D shibori stitched and indigo dyed fabric to make the dress fabric for the two dolls.  The dress for the Poppy is mokume which reminded me of the leaves of the Oriental Poppy.

Sunflowers have big oval pointed leaves.  The dress for the Sunflower Woman is exaggerated whole cloth ori-nui pressed flat unlike the Poppy Woman.

The petals of the poppy are red silk organza around black flocked netting.  The sunflower is constructed of many yellow cotton petals, ruched yellow-orange crinkled cotton and a discharged green knit fabric. Both dolls' flowers have stems of my printed knit tube.  And both have green UltraSuede faces!

Oriental Poppy leaf

3-D Shibori Indigo Pieces for "Tiny But Mighty" exhibit

Pink Volcano Landscape

Close-up 

Wild Jungle Leaves

Detail

Lush Bananas

I've continued with the three-dimensional shibori and indigo dyed work.

This time I did 8" x 8" square pieces (the maximum size required for the entries to the "Tiny But Mighty" exhibit at the d'Art Center in Norfolk VA).  This is their 2nd National Exhibition of Small Artworks.
















The "Pink Volcano Landscape" piece is a collage of cotton and knit fabric shibori.  The kumo "mountains" and ori-nui wiggles are two of the most 3-D shibori which I love doing.

"Wild Jungle Leaves" is shaped shibori (maki-age) which I love to do in leaf shapes.  The cotton was dyed as low immersion in yellows and oranges so that overdyeing in indigo created an odd green.

"Lush Bananas" is a whole cloth piece in exaggerated ori-nui.  The embroidery uses the holes created during the first shibori stitching.

Detail