Trashy Art

I am fortunate enough to live near the beach and take frequent walk within view of the ocean.  I also live in Senegal which means that unfortunately the view on those walks are marred by rubbish.  Sadly, many Senegalese drop their rubbish everywhere.  My children are disturbed by this also and so on one of our walks, I suggested that we pick up some of the trash and see if we can turn it into something beautiful. 

We picked up some interesting bits and washed and bleached them.  Many of the pieces can be seen on the green tray pictured above.  

We next prepared trays of gelatin (great instructions here.)  We used opaque and transparent textile paints and either painted our gelatin surfaces or objects and laid silk over surfaces.  We also utilized the ghost images.  Below is a series of some of the most interesting prints we created.  If you decide to do a project like this with your kids, make sure you have plastic gloves, aprons and clothes you are unworried about staining.  Clean up supplies should be close at hand as well.  

Horses, Pegasi and Unicorns

Every Little Pony Across the Desert

Every Little Pony at Her Own Speed

My ability to design fabrics is curtailed over the summer while I have the kids at home and we are traveling.  I really wanted to enter the Horses contest on Spoonflower.  I have two designs--one a sporty, stripey design influenced  by My Little Pony, the other design places the horses in the desert and is inspired  by 70's pop music.  The desert design is the one I entered into the weekly contest.

Sing! Sing! Sing! and Room at the Table ATC's

This ATC incorporates painted lace, stamping inks and ephemera.  It was inspired by a song.  It could be a Benny Goodman's tune written by Louis Prima. It could be the song whose lyrics are:
"I keep wanting to spread my arms wide like wings
Breathe deep and sing for my life, sing for the earth
Sing, sing sing!"
Unfortunately, I do not know who wrote the later.. 
My second ATC is a copy of Picasso's painting Large Still Life with a Pedestal Table, from March 1931 in color pencils and ink.  I added and extra element to it, see if you can guess what before you go look at the original (whose colors are much bluer than the picture I was working from.) Copying Picasso's painting really gave me and appreciation for how he abstracted the shapes and a new relationship to this painting.

American Pride

I belong to a handwork group that is very international.  We are small but almost entirely from different countries.  We are from Mauritius, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal and the United States.  Our group decided to make a sampler art quilt with images significant to our country.  These are two of my squares of American pride.  All of our quilt squares are to be in the colors of the Olympics. There is a group photo of the majority of our members at the bottom of this post.