Discovery and Evidence

My workshop opened today with about 20 students and we were on a rolling roar of a start. I gave a small gallery talk about my work and with 7 and 8 year old boys and girls they were very attentive and inquisitive. We talked about drawing with stitches and our needles and threads. We studied portraits done in transparent seta colors and embellishments like buttons and beads and possible found evidence to expose our personal identities and making layers in a CSI approach to our investigation. We made our fingerprints onto white cotton cloths and outlined our hands...to be further developed into a stitched design element. I discover Stazon inks worked the most productively and permanently...the boys were thrilled with making their prints and the evidence remaining on their fingertips. I had hoped to use a new pigment stamp pad with metallic inks but I will have to add a solvent to the pads to rejuvenate their impressionability...I bought some alcohol ink blending solutions so we can play some more tomorrow. We then wet our fabrics and applied three primary colors in a wash of colors and allowed them to dry outside with found objects on top of their first color applications. We then came inside to draw a portrait with a number 2 pencil ...one of my favorite tools...onto the paper we will then color with transfer color crayons ...to make our own personal portraits. After a thick, slow application of the crayons we will heat and iron with a very hot iron our images onto the individual cloth we had painted. Then we play with the "identity" stamps and personal selections to add further design elements onto the cloth. We will have time now to add another layer of intense colors on top of the whole cloth process... and after drying we will need to iron once again with a very hot iron. I took a few photos so enjoy...tomorrow is another day and we will begin a slow cloth process of stitching our hands. Imagine and Live in Peace, Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart