I got an inspiration from a glass artist at a Portland art fair last year. I forget the artist's name, but she used historical maps as the background. Then she layered a skyline of the map area over the top of that (city buildings for a city map; elevation for coastlines, etc.). The final glass layer was an etching of something that related to the previous 2 layers. For instance, she etched a bicycle on top of bridges which were layered over the map of Portland. This was to memorialize the Portland bridge pedal event. I was so blown away at her original idea of layering. Since then, I have thought about how I could bring this technique into an art quilt.
One of my ideas was to document the changing Vancouver waterfront. What used to be industrial and old hotels is now being turned into a destination waterfront along the Columbia River. There are restaurants, hotels, wine and spirit tasting rooms, condos, and a huge retirement complex. Here are the pictures that I located to give me a start on this idea.
Anyway, I wasn't sure if my idea would work, but I decided to turn the paper into fabric paper by using dilute school glue between a layer of white muslin and the map, and another layer of dilute glue on top. I had the picture printed in black and white and trimmed it so that it wouldn't cover up the entire map. Here is the street map wet and after the drying process, which curls, crinkles, and stiffens the paper.
Here is the photo of the waterfront while it was wet and after it dried.
I trimmed the waterfront picture, and I didn't like it at all. Oh well, onward and forward. I layered the city map with organza on top, batting and backing. It was quilted with green and blue thread, pressed, and put underneath a large cutting mat with weights to flatten it out. Here is what it looked like after those steps.
Stay tuned to see if I scrapped the idea or continued to move forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment