I flatten out the large folded up canvas
Measure, cut, match, repeat
Iron each piece to flatten the wrinkles
Later, in a big plastic tub juuuust small enough to fit in my bathtub at home, each piece of canvas is washed in hot water with alkaline solution and mild detergent
The water becomes a bubbly dirty beige
Rinse, re-fill, add tannin, soak
Rinse, re-fill, add alum, soak
My hands get so hot and red massaging the canvas pieces in the water, but I insist, because I want to.
I remove each piece and stack them, flat, wet. The corners are curling up and I try to keep them down but materials have their own wills.
Wait a day (or a few) for them to fully dry
Now each piece is officially mordanted, ready to keep the plant pigments at their brightest (the alum does this)
Some pieces get stretched on wood just like this, and others get to take a more colorful bath in a natural dye
Only one dye at a time, multi-tasking feels disrespectful to the plants (art does not need to be max efficient).
Heating up the dye in the pot, resisting the strong urge to be impatient as soon as I see the first sight of color.
Let it really come out. Let it absorb some time. Let it turn into itself. Dance to the music in my headphones and just be with the liquid. (Art doesn’t need to be fast).
Soak the canvas, then submerge in dye
Walk away, come back the next day or two
Remove the canvas (in delight)
Hang to dry
Re-use the leftover dye for a lake or an ink
Stretch the canvas over wood
And now we’re here.
The other day I said to my friend, I’m not really making art right now, I’m just preparing surfaces.
“Just”
As if all of the above is a slog of meaningless tasks! As if all of the above is just a list of lifeless check marks to passively get out of the way so I can finally make the art! Ha! What a deception. I almost missed the whole thing!
Dear reader, I write to you today in the sun with a piece of the most bitter dark chocolate slowly melting in my mouth. Urging us all to see, feel taste, touch, smell the ways that even the most monotonous tasks are explosively rich with bare essence of magic. I don’t mean magic in the cute way, I mean literal alchemy. The very elements of life are present in every step of your process if you wish to notice. Which elements? Employ your senses to catch hold of them and let them usher you into their worlds of meaning and connection.
Examples: The water-alchemy of shifting ph. The fire-alchemy of heat on my hands. The light-alchemy of watching colors come to life and change. The earth-alchemy of stable, strong, woven plant fibers. The time-alchemy of evaporation. All of these elements exist in my body, in your body, in the earth body, in the body of the universe.
Do’s and don’ts of preparing a surface:
Don’t rush.
Do know the power of your attention.
Without your attention, the most beautiful and potentially soul-enriching parts of your most boring little steps can go completely un-seen, un-felt, un-smellt.
Preparing a surface, preparing a surface…
The act of preparing a new blank slate is an act of creation itself. It can either be meaningless or it can be sacred and you do get to decide. It is also a very emotionally and psychologically safe process, because we don’t have that tendency here yet to (oops) get way too in our heads thinking about the final product at all, it’s just the blank space.
The innocent blank space.
Each blank surface offers itself to a multitude of possible futures. Then emerges the tension between excitement to mark upon it, and the gorgeously heartbreaking realization that any mark you place severely narrows down the possibilities. This is the inevitable drama of something coming into being. And perhaps there is one destiny for each piece, and it’s really not as much our responsibility as we think. Perhaps (or obviously) artists are conduits for something less logical, something mysteriously more real than logic. What’s great is that there is no pressure from the innocent blank canvas. It’s just there, shining.
The surface of my hands are stained with dye from sloshing a piece in the warm liquid water element heated with the element of fire. The scent is wacky, earthy, un-manufacture-able, exquisitely designed by an invisible hand, and explosively nostalgic. The air will evaporate the water and change its color intensity. And I am stewarding the process with my attention.
How is that not art-making?
All steps are equally significant on the path of creation, and there’s no such thing as just preparation.
With you on the staircase,
♡ Kristen
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