The tea staining worked as expected, bringing more change to the dot than the linear Jimmy Pike pattern, and I will use some of these two fabrics in piecing sets of strips for the next, larger work – as in the first in the series, you might remember –
Some of these shapes might go well between sheer layers – that’s another thought that just came – samples can be so inspiring.
What I read about the structure of what’s inside these intriguing landforms took my attention. So, I thought another in this series would feature the layered limestone and conglomerates using fine pieced strips in beige-cream/off white tones, surrounded by a solid band of brown to signify the outer and inner colours determined by the structure. This outer colour is due to the tiny spaces in the stone being colonised by cyanobacteria which give earthy browns and golds to the outer few millimetres, and this deepens when the rocks have been rained upon. Inside the rock remains white and nearly white/cream tones.
The time consuming work was the piecing. so when I’d done enough, I set the shapes I’d cut into the solid colours, darker to go to the front/nearest the viewer so to speak, thinking some sense of depth might result, and in a primitive way I think that’s been successful. You’d think I’d have been able to work out that the black and white spotted fabric for the background just is not IT, though –
but, having just written that I am having second thoughts…..
However – and here’s the reminder I periodically give about the value of making samples and small studies: this leads the creative mind onward, and I now have in mind something, perhaps two pieces, of much larger work. After all, the BungleBungles are massive …. so with this in mind, there’s a considerable piecing I feel I will need to do now. So some of this b/w dots plus some b/w print of work by a prominent Aboriginal artist designer, printmaker and painter, the late Jimmy Pike have gone into a strong bath of black tea to tone down the white:
Many of Jimmy Pike’s beautiful linear patterns were reproduced on commercially available fabric and used in clothing principally I think under the Desert Designs label – having been away from Aus for so long I’m not sure what’s now available now, though.
With the quilting completed – see previous post –
and the binding sewn in pinned back for finishing, this piece is virtually finished. The coverage by gold quilting is enough, I think, so don’t need to fill in small gaps with black quilting.
With the piecing all done, and layers in place, this afternoon I began the quilting treatment. Double lines of gold stitching have begun to appear on the piece, and I’m not sure where that will lead, and some of it might be black, but there is a fair bit more quilting required. This is an area about 4″ x 5″.
The dots I used on the fist piece are really too big for the shapes on this one, and so the bits of glitter provided by gold stitching seem to fit better with the smaller scale shapes.
Last August I visited a wonderful textile show at MAPI, the Museo del Arte Precolumbino e Indigena. A lovely small museum, on Calle 25 de Mayo in the old city; you can easily find info on line at http://www.mapi.uy/informacion_de_interes.html 
It was not until I found those photos today, that I realised why I hadn’t written anything about it at the time: late last August, several weeks before scheduled surgery ‘they’ suddenly brought the date forward – no emergency on my part, but there must have been a vacancy or something. In the flurry of suddenly dropping everything, and the aftermath of recovery and rehab, this excellent exhibition was forgotten, and I’m sorry as it would have been nice to post it while the show was on. Worse – and even though I remember the works – now I have to research some of the names and match them up with their works I photographed, as not all had a swing tag placed helpfully as this one!
This first exhibit is by one of my favourite textile artists here. Siv Goransson produces wonderful garments and objects of felted wool. Her work is found in the Manos del Uruguay shops and in the several artisan market galleries – one on the Plaza Cagancha and the other in the basement of the market building on San Jose near Ejido, probably in other places too. Some very special people have received one of her scarves that I buy from time to time, and mostly in typically glorious colour, and you can find lots of images here http://tinyurl.com/qy5hzvc. This poncho however is in very dramatic black and white, with a lovely tasselled edge. Very elegant.
As I now have some research to do for the others, I’ll make this into a series, the next post in which will appear in the next couple of days.
