On the Design Wall

I'm getting more actively engaged in working with the Watt & Shand images. (If you are new here, you can track back by clicking on the Watt & Shand label to the right.) I have a LOT of pictures of the building renovation in all stages. I spend some time today organizing and reviewing them, and picked out some to edit in Paint Shop and print onto cotton fabric.

I put them up on the design wall, along with some of the cyanotypes I did earlier, and pulled a few fabrics to audition--there's a brilliant orange silk, an orange hand dye that Mary Manahan gave me, a handwoven brown with a lot of texture, a piece of raw silk I handpainted in blue and ochre, and some commercial fabrics.

There's no rhyme or reason to the arrangement just yet; I'm just putting things up so I can look at them at length and think about the possibilities. It is becoming clear that this will probably be a series, not a single work, as I have so many fantastic images to work with. This opens up a lot of possibilities, but also raises a lot of questions about how the individual works should relate to each other (if at all). Should I tell a story? Do I want to capture individual moments? Should I focus just on image and not worry about content?

This is a very anxious moment for me, albeit in a good way. The difficulties and the potential will inform my waking and sleeping mind, until I solve the puzzles and it becomes clear to me how to proceed. I am more of a process person than a product person, so this is all an enormous amount of fun!