It's a Boy

Well here he is, the new grandbaby and his parents. Our daughter and son-in-law are first time parents. Greyson Rodger Huberty was born at 11:19 on the forth of July. He weighed in at 7 pounds 11 ounces. Everyone is enjoying the little sweety who is our second grandchild. Greyson has a cousin that is 15 months old:)

Yosemite National Park Tessellations

Yosemite was on the agenda last week. One of the most beautiful places in the world, Yosemite National Park is located in Northern California in the High Sierras and contains nearly 1200 miles. I first visited the park in 2005 for an artist residency and have been back every year since.

This year we visited familiar places and enjoyed some that were new to us. Mariposa grove is my favorite. The majestic trees are incredible. We hiked to the upper grove (which by the way is where the best of the trees call home) at 8 AM and were magically alone to enjoy the awesome environment. We spent 3 hours hiking and only when we were back at the bottom of the lower grove did we see any other hikers.


Since returning with over 2000 photographs, I am exploring some natural tessellations and then creating some of my own. One of the places in Yosemite that has a base for natural tessellations is Mirror Lake. This quiet, engaging lake is a short hike and well worth it. It is a great place to visit in all the seasons and enjoy the changes.






Yosemite Falls never ceases to amaze. No matter what point of view you see it is a massive powerful falls. At this time of year, there is no major crashing of ice as it melts and flows, but the falls is impressive just the same.



Enjoy these tessellations from my recent visit to Yosemite. These images are available on KathyAnne Art. Visit the entire Yosemite Collection or click the link and you will see the start of these images at the bottom of the page. Browse to the next few pages for the rest. Members get unlimited downloads with their membership. Non-members can download images on a pay per image basis.

Digitally Printed Beverage Can Installation

Creating with a vision in mind….. Recently while contemplating printing surfaces, I had this thought about creating a forest installation with recycled beverage cans. My biggest problem was trying to assess where this idea was going. So I slept on it and got a picture on some ideas to proceed. Printing and working with the can’s surface is the start.

The cans do present some difficulties. Pretty easy to print a few at a time, but printing 100’s is a little different. The cans need to be cut, flattened, sanded, washed, pre-coated, attached to carrier sheets, printed, dried, sprayed, dried, coated with MSA Varnish and one more time dried.

Once those tasks are finished for 100 cans, days have passed and to keep the process going 100 cans are in the works in different stages of the process. It is quite an undertaking and the printing itself is a little scary. It took me several days to come up with the best way to print the right amount of cans on a carrier sheet that would go through the printer with no crunching or scraping sounds. Any kind of sound is not to be ignored and the printing process has to be monitored at all times to make sure there are no problems. Immediate response to my printer is imperative to keep it running and printing.

Now it remains to construct the pieces. For one of the configurations in the installation it takes one can to piece 15 to 17 inches. I have finished 150 cans to start the creation of the installation.

The surface is enchanting and it will be sometime to get enough pieces together to see what has to be done. There is excitement as I watch it go together, see what can be depicted with this unique surface. The forests reflect light in amazing ways and I can see that is the surface of the cans. It will be entirely interesting to go forward from here.

The pictures here show various stages of the process so far. Tomorrow at 4am my husband and I will be leaving for Yosemite. The few days we will spend in the Maripose Grove will enhance my sense of how this installation will enfold. I will continue to post on the unfolding.

Portland Oregon Workshops

On June 26th I will be teaching a couple of workshops in Portland Oregon at ARTFIBERFEST 2009.  Right now, ARTFIBERFEST is doing a one day drop in rate so anyone can take one workshop without staying for the whole time of the venue.  This means that if you are in or around the Portland area, you could take a one day workshop that would cover the basics of digital printing on fabric.  

Digital Textile Journal is the title of the workshop and we will be learning about how to print on fabric and then use the prints in collage work for journal.  Since it is a one day workshop we will use fabrics that have already been pre-coated for printing.  The workshop participants will get complete instructions on how to coat and print fabrics.  We will use my Epson PM 260 Dash to print 4" x 6" images to be used in the projects.

This is a great way to get an introduction to digital printing on fabrics.  If you are interested in taking advantage of the special drop in rate for one workshop ($160) please email Teesha Moore.  

My other workshop is available the same way.  You can check out one of my older blog posts from January 11th of this year.  This post gives the details of both my workshops at ARTFIBERFEST 2009 - Cover it Funky and Digital Textile Journal

Join me at ARTFIBERFEST for one of my workshops, or come for the entire retreat and have a great weekend!!!

"Creating Digital Prints on Uncomon Surfaces"

This is the last day of the pre-conference workshops at the Surface Design Association Conference. Time is flying by! We will be setting up my demonstration "Creating Digital Prints on Uncommon Surfaces" later today and tomorrow it will be taped for the conference DVD. I will be showing how to coat and print surfaces such as pima tex cotton, organdy, a hand made skin, aluminum screen and recycled beverage cans. The basic parts of my process will all be there.

Last night I started creating a page in my new book of forests with some of the printed beverage cans, interesting surface. I printed 40 cans to take with me to play with. There is something about that surface that interests me. My plans for an installation completely out of digital printed cans has brought me to playing with the surface to see where I want it to go. So I start here. These are some of the cans that I have with me and a very small start of a composition using them.

It's all About the Surface

Last Thursday I arrived in Kansas City to participate in the Surface Design Association Conference.  

First working as an assistant in a workshop, "Photoshop for the Textile Industry", instructed by Heather and Hitoshi Ujiie.  They are great and I love being in the classroom.  Next I will be giving some demonstrations once the actual conference starts "Creating and Printing Uncommon Surfaces."  Since there will be 2 demos, the second one will be recorded for the conference dvd.  After that I will be teaching a 4 day workshop, "Expanding the Digital Prints to Uncommon Surfaces"  and one night during the workshop, I will be giving a lecture.

I am very excited to be at the conference, see some old friends, make new ones and teach on a subject that I am truly passionate about.  My work is about the surfaces.  Inspiration sores in me as I create each print.  Teaching others to experiment with surfaces brightens my world.

Depicted here is a print that will be included in my next addition to the Book of Forests series.  This print is on crinkly paper.  Before printing leaves were added to the surface, then the paper was precoated with inkAID.  The top print is the actual print and the 2 following are details.  As the book develops, I will include more pictures in the blog.  Right now the pieces are laying all over my hotel room an various stages of completion.

Any questions about my work contact me at KathyAnne Art!

Creating Journals

Working in my studio all day, I started with putting together some hand made journals. After dying and printing the watercolor paper, (I used Fabriano Artistico 140 lb hot press from Dick Blick) It is a fabulous heavy weight paper and prints beautifully.

The papers I start with are 22” x 30”, once dyed I cut them so they will go through my wide format printer. For that printer the paper needs to be less then 17” wide. The images I use have been layered on photohshop, with some of the layers deleted so the prints are more lines then total image. The opacity % is lowered on the layers remaining so that the pages are easy to write on. The pages as printed ar 5" x 11" and then folded to sew into the signatures.

These are some of the journals that I will have with me at the Trunk Show at the Surface Design Association Conference on Friday of Memorial Weekend. I will also have all sorts of digital prints and other artwork.

Tomorrow I will finish printing the various surfaces that will be used in my next Book of Forests. In the next couple of days, I will post my printing results.

Patterns-Patterns-Patterns

Just finished teaching a couple of workshops in Photoshop Elements.  It's such an interesting program. Sometimes the difference from the actual Photoshop program drives me crazy.  I miss my pen tool,  I miss the single line marquee tool, I miss curves, I miss the way you can make textures, but Elements has some good characteristics.  Whatever Photoshop program I use, there are always new ideas to try:)

A rock with 10 layers of texture created in Photoshop Elements is inspiring me for pattern making.  Actually, I always think of this as a rock, but it really is a piece of a tree in the Petrified Forest in Northern Arizona.  Those trees are actually around 200+million years old.  The crystal properties of the trees feel like rocks to me.

So many ideas on what I want to work on are going through my head.  Some new surfaces I would like to try to print on .  Plus my book about prints on uncommon surfaces is coming together even as I write this.  In a few weeks when I go to Kansas City for the Surface Design Association Conference, I will get clear on some of the information I would like to include.

If any of you have any comment on what you would like to see in a book on printing outsider surfaces let me know.  The book is never finished till it's finished and that won't be until the end of the year.

Tomorrow night is vendors night at the conference.  After that I will fly to Colorado to celebrate our grand daughters birthday.  Seems like she was just born, my how time flies.

Then back to my studio.  This week, a couple of youtube videos are on the agenda.

Topics of videos?   The 2 workshops I am teaching at ArtFiberFest at the end of June.

USING DIGITAL IMAGES IN ART AND JOURNALS

DIGITAL IMAGE

JOURNAL PAGE DETAILS

At the end of June – the 25th and 26th I will be teaching a couple of one day workshops at ARTFIBERFEST in Portland Oregon. One of those workshops will be about creating and using digital prints in journals. We will be putting together journals with images from digital files and images students bring to the class. On my Epson Dash, we will create a wonderful array of digital prints to build unique journals.

Digital Textile Journal is a quick look at printing on fabric. (For class description see my blog post of January 11, 2009) It is amazing the results that are possible in printing fabrics that have been coated with a pre-coat such as inkAID. The vivid prints on fabric, even created on an Epson that prints only 4” x 6” photos is awesome. Using a carrier sheet and a little care in starting the surface through the printer, I have printed aluminum cans, pimatex cotton, lutradur, hand made substrates, organdy, rice paper, tyvec among others on my Epson Dash. Digital Textile Journals is a great little workshop and if you want to start experimenting with printing on fabrics you choose and prepare, you can begin your journey here.

Once the prints are ready, the possibilities for building compositions in your journal are unlimited. One of the things I love about these workshops are the individual expressions from these journals. Everyone is unique in their personality and as each individual builds their journals it is inspiring to see their presence in their work.

Join me at ARTFIBERFEST in this innovative leading edge workshop☺

Book of Forests #2

Just finished an art journal with digitally printed elements. 

The base of the journal is created with assorted fabrics such as silk, cotton and organdy painted with acrylic paint.  Once the paint is dry, the surfaces are coated with either inkAID Type ll gloss pre-coat or white matte pre-coat and then printed on my Epson R2400.  

After the base pages are over-printed, each page is created. The pictures above show the front cover and the open journal.  The following image has details shots of the various pages in the journal.

Some of the materials used:

Digital prints on cheesecloth skin, recycled beverage can, tyvec, lace paper, aluminum screen, watercolor paper, distressed lutradur and melted tyvec, crocheted hemp, wire and recycled art quilts.