What We Keep

Jamie Fingal - In contemplating 'Empty Spaces,'  I have brainstormed many different ideas, but then it became clear to me, what my subject would be all about.  I lost both of my parents within a four month period.  There is certainly a large empty space in my life, without them in it.   In cleaning out their house, I began to photograph my memories of the things that they used with their hands in the kitchen, sewing, office, and tool chest. 

My mom had a great spoon collection, but I had no room for it in my house, but I do have a lovely photograph of my favorite spoons, to keep forever.  From my mom's favorite cookbooks, to the wood bird with a clothes pin beak, that held a recipe card, to funky aprons and even a apron pocket prayer book.  This has become my labor of love to honor them.  What we keep to remind ourselves who we are.

These photos of my art quilt are what I would call a 'sneak peek' of portions of the piece that I made for our on-line exhibit 'Empty Spaces.' 

Work in Progress

Hi from Kathyanne White as I post the beginning of my Empty Spaces piece.

One of the things that is characteristic of my work is the way I work spontaneously, have an idea first and see what happens next.  I don’t really plan my work I let it flow.  I would rather start creating materials and as I work create supporting elements to bring my thoughts together in the form of artwork.  For my interpretation of the Empty Spaces theme, I have chosen to create a free standing textural piece.  As I work through my idea of the theme, things may change, but I will share my beginning plan here and continue to work on the composition of the pages.

This piece will either be shaped like a book with a spine or it will be finished in the round.  It depends on what happens as I create the textures of each composition.  I have cut 5 pieces of hardware cloth and painted them to use as the base for the dimensional collage.  I will build all my compositions on the face of each side of the hardware cloth as I assemble all my finished artwork.  For now I have digital prints on the following surfaces: recycled printers plates, beverage cans, metal mesh and some other surfaces that have not been photographed.  They are in my maybe pile right now.  Here are 4 of the pieces of 8" x 8" hardware cloth.  Three have nothing attached, the one on the bottom left has a piece of painted aluminum screen attached.

Next is an image of the 5th piece of hardware cloth that has a brass mesh print attached to one side.  First picture is of the front of the print and the second the reverse side attached to the hardware cloth. There are empty spaces in the print that were created when the metal mesh was constructed before printing.  The hardware cloth has also been cut away.

  The next photo is the other side of this page for the assemblage.  It is a print on a recycled printers plate with holes cut and small holes punch in order to use wire and beads to embellish the top of the page.  You can see the brass mesh from the other side as the pieces are stacked together. This mix will evolve as I work on the composition of the page.

 

A couple other pics show elements that have been printed for other pages to be completed.  As I proceed with the work, more prints and elements will be added to the mix.  Many of the cut shapes in the hardware cloth will have nothing behind them and I plan to arrange them so those openings, or empty spaces will allow the viewer to look through parts of the work to textures on the other pages.  

Printed beverage cans and aluminum mesh

Slivers of printed beverage cans

 In the next couple of weeks all the pages will be in the process of assembling and I will post pictures as this piece grows.

Introductions: Kathyanne White

Hello, I’m Kathyanne.  My body of work is about building textures with digital alternative surfaces.  I look to build textures first in the image that will start my piece and then take the image and digital print to a new dimension.  I love to build surfaces uncommon to digital printing, alter and assemble my surfaces with other mixed media techniques and share my process.

As long as the surface created is within the thickness parameters of my printers, I will print it.  Below is a piece that I just finished.  The images for the prints come from patterns and texture created from pictures taken in forests.  The digital prints are on recycled dictionary pages coated with inkAID Semi Gloss Precoat. Once the prints were dry I coated the papers with ice resin.  The papers have been torn randomly, a hole punched through the surface and the pieces strung on cotton cording.  The strands of images are are crocheted into the final configuration and mounted on an under layer of crocheted jute twine.

start

finish

As I move forward, my Forest Book series will be absorbing most of my artistic hours in the next year.  Here is an example of a book that is growing as I add pages.  The basis of this series is to build surfaces that jump off the page and are inspired by my visits to the amazing forests on this planet.  In the pages you see here I have printed aluminum mesh, copper mesh, recycled printers plates, sheet metal, lutradur, watercolor paper, tyvek, and an assortment of paper and fabric too long to mention.  I added materials such as twigs, wire, twine and anything else I could think of to build textures on the pages.  Since each page is on a separate metal frame measuring 2 feet by 4 feet, I tend to add and change the pages around until the book is ready to leave my studio.

You can see more of my work on my Kathyanne White website and at KathyanneArt that includes tutorials and workshops based on my work.