Dyeing to Print II: Solar dyes

......and even easier than Hapa Zome ecoprinting is the technique of Solar Dyeing. This is done with a natural fabric, your leaves, flowers, seeds, berries etc, water and sealable jars, and you need plenty of patience because this technique requires time to brew. It feels a bit witchy, having potions on my deck in the sun.

India Flint, guru of Eco-printing suggests this technique. Put your fabric into a jar, clean or not because whatever was in there before may make an interesting mordant. Squash in your leaves etc and cover with water. Add an extra mordant if you want, then seal it up and leave it in the sun for some time. 

In the small jar on the left I have cotton mull, screwed up tight and wound with string to hopefully create some variation in pattern. This potion contains NZ flax pods and seeds, crushed, and a tea bag for mordant. In the jar on the right, I have unbleached calico folded with morning glory flowers in between layers, then more morning glory flowers crushed on top. For a mordant I used alum. Both jars are filled with rain water. I took this photo the same day I put the mix down, already you can see a lot of dye extracted. India doesn't say exactly how long, but I'm choosing to leave mine for at least one month (I can only resist the temptation of opening them earlier by leaving the country!). 

Dyeing to Print I: Hapa Zome

I've been experimenting with dyeing (not dying) from natural materials lately. I'm inspired by the work of the goddess of Eco Printing, India Flint. The easiest and by far the quickest results are by using Hapa Zome, or as it's otherwise known, beating the c**p out of leaves. The technique is fairly simple although it does take a bit of practice and the results are variable.

Collect some leaves, preferably freshly fallen onto the ground so you are not damaging trees. In theory, you don't even need to leave your garden (assuming you don't live in a tenement block). I found quite quickly which leaves work and which don't. Flowers and seed pods also give interesting results. Lay down a piece of thickish cardboard onto a firm surface. Lay your fabric on top. Use only natural fabrics e.g. cotton, calico, mull, silk. You should use  mordant to assist the natural dyes to 'bind' to the fabric. I use alum 10% spray, it's easy to buy at the hardware (hydrangea food). Preferably you will have soaked your fabric with the mordant first, then dry it before trying Hapa Zome technique. I soaked mine after, and found the dyes to fade quite a lot.

On top of your fabric, lay your leaf flat, then place on top a piece of paper. Get a hammer. You can use a mallet, which I would have done except ours (whose name is Sandra for some odd reason) has gone walkabout. Beat the paper on top of the leaf, not too much or the leaf will mush up and soak into the fabric or worse still, the fabric will wear a hole. By the way, if the neighbours have been pissing you off lately, this is good way to get revenge. Otherwise you might want to warn them because I tell you, this is addictive. You could be noisy ALL day.

Peel off paper and leaf. Wait for the dye to dry, then steam iron. These are some of the results I got the first time.

Bougainvillia

Ivy

Morning Glory

Maple

And my personal favourite, Harakeke pods.
These suckers have a lot of natural dye.

Polyphemus

Polyphemus was one mean son of a bitch to Odysseus and his men. 

"The cyclops grabbed two of the men and bashed their heads on rocks. The remaining men cried aloud as he ate their comrades". He ate whole sheep in one bite, and tried to trap sailors in his cave (like a live supermarket for fresh meat).

But Odysseus gets even, poking the cyclops eye out with a stick after getting him drunk on wine before making his escape. 

He was one cool due, Odysseus. When the sirens sang to lure him and his sailors to the deep, he put wax in his ears and had himself tied to the mast so as not to be lured to his fateful death. Pretty resourceful really.

Anyway, here is my tribute to Polyphemus and the most awesomest-ever adventure of Odysseus. This is my most adventurest (is that a word?) assemblage shrine so far, gifted to my husband Luke for his 1/2 century.

Interesting that my biggest source of inspiration - the king kapisi of assemblaaazzzh Micheal deMeng, has just posted a blog on cyclops inspired work - the Santa Clops. I'm probably the world's biggest Scrooge when it comes to Christmas, but Michael puts back some reason for the season. 

The Making of the Tentacles, for Alberto

This is the story of the making of Polyphemus, the cyclops monster of Homer's odyssey.

Polyphemus grew from some tin foil (or aluminum foil as they say in the states), some wire, Ave's 2 part apoxie clay and a baby doll head. Some say I'm a sick puppy.

Baby's head got seperated from her body in a sad accident (ahhh poor baby). Luckily I found her abandoned cranium and resurected her, gave her a sex change and made her into He-Baby.  A builder left behind at our house, a box of these fabulous nail strips from his automatic nail gun, which I refilled with rusty screws and attached to baby's head. No longer a baby, now some sort of Punk revival dolly he became the base for Polyphemus.

But now for the tentacles...... hmmm how to make these. Alberto had an idea (lightbulb), buy some Finger tentacles from an online shop. Muy buen idea mi amigo Alberto, but not so easy to find finger tentacles in NZ. Too impatient to wait for the American post, I decided to make my own.

Here comes the clever bit. Looked on line and found a great tutorial by Propnomicon, a fellow blogger and tentacle maker extraordinaire. This gave me the basis for the idea. Fueled by the insanely talented Michael deMeng's workshop 'Mad Alchemists Guide to Assemblage', I discovered Ave's 2 part apoxy clay and ordered it up from a local taxidermist supplier.

So.......... take some strips of fencing wire and wrap with foil, bend into shape.

Roll out the Ave's clay into thin strips. Wind it around the foil and smooth over any lumps.

Stick into Punk revival Dolly head (since glued onto the top of my shrine), and add texture to the tentacles with a button or something like that.

I added an evil blue eye (Daniel Craig's), and painted it with gesso.

....added an eye patch, an earing and painted with color washes and.....Bale..... Polyphemus es finito.

This shrine was made for my husbands 50th birthday gift. Next post, I will put up some photos of the completed assemblage. 

In a frenzy, yet again.....

I have a million ideas spinning around my head, here is where my prioritizing skills will come in handy.  In November I am part of a group exhibition at A Fine Line Gallery in Matakana called Ink, Paper, Thread. Yes November seems a long way away but that does not seem to reassure me out of my sense of panic when I think about how many works I have yet to finish, and how many more left to start even. But start I have, and hopefully by the time we hang I'll have 6 pieces done. Ink, Paper, Thread is to be presented by a group of 11 women who are either book artists, calligraphers or printmakers. Our work will be varied, but basically the common thread (is that trying to be punny?) is the use of paper, ink and threads as the main medium used in construction. It's going to be exciting and unique.

I can tell you it takes a long time to make 109 tiny paper beads, several cups of coffee and an episode of Junior Masterchef later.........These beads were formally from a 1950s edition of a Boys Our Own annual, the story is called 'Masquerade in Baghdad' which sounds quite mysterious dont you think? These will be incorporated into an installation somehow, don't know quite how but the call was heard and I followed it, destination unknown. Watch this space.