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Phase 2 of An Illuminated Psalter

February 23rd, 2015

23psalmartcloth

I am starting phase 2 of the work for my solo show, An Illuminated Psalter. The description is this:

Gerrie Congdon will portray how the Psalms teach us to express our emotions and longings, articulate our anger and our compassion, and see our lives in the grand scheme of God’s creation. Her fiber art creations will use colors and forms that bring her favorite psalms to life.

I am doing the 23rd Psalm first – imagery is pretty easy to create and I hope it is not going to be hokey!! Here is my plan. For each of the colorways, the central piece will just be a length of surface designed art cloth with no stitching – 5.5 feet, finished.

Each piece in this collection will have some foiling as part of the surface. This large piece will have a foiled sun in the sky.

foilingpaper

foilinggluesun

The foiling glue is drying and I will add the foil tomorrow.

I also decided the green pastures needed some colorful flowers.

flowerdetail

Each art cloth hanging will have at least two smaller pieces mounted on wrapped gallery frames – 18 inches square. I will start them tomorrow. I am getting excited to work on these.

Last February, when I dropped out of the Master Class, I had gotten this far on the February assignment.

abstractmovementprogress

I put everything in a box and it has been sitting in my studio. So. I am attempting to put the pieces back together and finish it for this month’s homework.

Painting Red and Photoshop Fun

February 22nd, 2015

stainedglassposteredges

I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot in my Pixel Ladies Photoshop Class. The above photo is this paint rag with two filters used to alter it.

paintrag

And here it is with a couple of other filters.

glassaccentededges

And here is a really cool rendering of a photo of Paige and me.

cutoutposteredges

I am having a very good recovery of the injured arthritic knee. I have been taking walks again and sleeping without pain.  I made it to the studio to paint the red silk.

redsilk

I also pieced backs and cut the batting for the two kid quilts. Trying to make good use of my time. I have one more project in the works for my Master Class, but more about that in another post.

 

Wordless Wednesday

February 18th, 2015

WW 02-18-15

Missing, But Not in Action

February 17th, 2015

purpleviolets

My life was rudely interrupted this past week-end when I started having excruciating pain in my left knee to the point that I could barely walk.  I finally had Mr C take me to urgent care on Sunday when he got home from church. The Dr. I saw thought it was a lateral collateral ligament sprain. I had xrays done and they fitted me with a neoprene knee stabilizer.

bionicknee

The worst problem I had over the past two days was sleeping. I could not get comfortable and would sleep for 2 or 3 hours and then wake up in pain that made me cry. I would get up and walk up and down the hall and go back to bed and sleep for another short spurt etc. I was wearing the knee stabilizer as prescribed.

Today, I saw the Orthopedic doctor who looked at my xrays from 2 years ago and compared them with the new ones and declared that I have an “enraged” arthritic knee. You could see a big difference. I was relieved that it was not a ligament problem, but sad to know that my knee is wearing out. He said that I am a candidate for a knee replacement at some point.

I stopped wearing the knee stabilizer and feel better already. The pressure points that help to stabilize a torn ligament wear pressing on the arthritic bone spurs and making me feel worse!!

I am a couple of days behind schedule but I can catch up!! As you can see, I got the purple painting done. I also finished the yellows.

yellows

I got the final cuts and prints made for my reduction printing class.

reductprint3

reductprintfinalThat last layer was not registered very well, but I did it on Saturday when I was in pain from the knee!!

I am taking a Photoshop elements online workshop with the Pixel Ladies. Here is an example of something I did in the first week. I altered the tulip photo.

tulips

 

You can see that I cleaned up the background and altered the color. I am learning a lot. I am basically self-taught and this is really helping me.

tulipsphotoaltered

Wordless Wednesday

February 11th, 2015

WW 02-11-15