Flowers and Standing Stones

The term mixed media has changed for me over the course of three decades. In the late 70s I barely knew the words, but the early 80's mixed media to me meant that I used two of the counted works in the same piece. Astounding to me who was quite a purist and, of course, quite wrong. I knew that samplers were not mixed media.

When we moved back to Colorado from living in England for two years, I immediately joined both Colorado Chapter and Foothills Chapter of EGA. At the first meeting of Foothills I had a marvelous awakening. We did marbling on fabric. It wasn't the first time I had worked on a painted ground. In the late 70s Lynn Payette came to the Creative Needlework Chapter in southern New Jersey to teach us dyeing with Kennebunkport dyes--a real eye-opener to a neophyte stitcher. It was the marbling that tore off the cover of my mind. It was essentially from that point that I started doing mixed media.

Mixed media is doing any two or more art media together. For instance when I print out one of my photographs and then stitch over it, that is mixed media. Or when I paint a background and then stitch over it, that is mixed media. Embroidery isn't universally considered an art unfortunately. So in the New Mexico State Fair, I have enter mixed media pieces in the professional category of fine arts in order to compete. A pure embroidery, no matter how artful or transcendent, would be eligible.

In Castlerig, one of my most recent sojourns into mixed media, I have mottled the backgound fabric with acrylic paint. Then I cut out copper strips from a thin sheet and I stained the copper with alcohol-based ink. After layering on netting, I couched the copper down. Then I went in with several different threads and started doing French knots, dozens and dozens of French knots.

Castlerig, by the way, was inspired by the stone circle of Castlerig on the edge of the Lake District in England. The last time I was there someone had left an offering of flowers at the base of the biggest upright stone. This is my homage to the flowers and the stone.

Castlerig

14" X 20"

mixed media

detail from Castlerig

the couching and French knots.