I've been looking forward to this past weekend for quit awhile. In fact, this workshop is the very reason why I joined the Utah Surface Design Group headquartered in SLC and full of crazy talented ladies. Intimidating, yes, but what a great group to push me along in my attempts to be creative. The class was being taught in Heber City, Utah which is south of Park City and about 45 minutes from our cabin, where I stayed between the two day class. While Heber City is growing at a fast pace, it still is pretty rural and offers views of Mt. Timpanogus, above, and the ski resorts of Park City, below.
The studio is owned by Timmy Burton, shown below. And what an amazing studio it is. This building is one of seven on her property and while this one is her main studio space, other buildings also house galleries and work spaces. She generously offered her studio for this class.
Sinks, a washing machine and dryer, stoves to boil the wax out, numerous work spaces as well every tool you could imagine - all in this one space. I can just imagine what is upstairs!
Below is Anne Munoz, our teacher, who is a fabric artist and member of the USDG. She has been creating and working with batik fabrics for years. Here she is working at the large kettles used to remove the last bits of wax still left in the cloth after pressing the pieces under newspapers - the end of the process.
We set up our work stations outside and the weather was lovely, except for the wind that kept throwing our fabric, dyes, utensils, etc. off the tables. Polly, below, ended up with rocks around her large pieces as they batched.
After introductions on Friday morning and a short lecture on the process, we were sent outside to the
wax tables. Below is the combination of paraffin and sticky wax heating in double boilers and cans on heating elements. We all decided that this type of wax offers the "tightest" lines while the soy wax
(on a table inside the studio) spread on your fabric causing softer, blurred lines. Soy wax also breaks down faster, so if you want a lot of crackling on your project, Soy would be a good bet.
After drawing the wax on your fabric with any number of great kitchen utencils and made objects, you went inside to pick the dyes you would use to paint over the wax. Then batch, wash out, dry, and start again....and again, until you were happy with the results. Below are some of the projects hanging on the line to dry.
Below is one of my pieces, about half way through the process.
Another one of mine, aching for some more wax and dye.
Two days, too much fun. I meet some great ladies and learned a lot. Now I just need to get on-line and order all the waxes, tools, dyes, stretcher frames, etc. etc.. I mean, Roger did say, "Go right ahead"!
Just let me wipe my green eyes and I'll be right with you! Lucky you, this looks as though it was a huge amount of fun. I didn't know that different waxes gave different results. Did they discuss other sorts of resists, (instant potato, oatmeal etc) to get similar results or differences? That would be fun to do, try them all out. Interweave has a few dvds that demonstrate batik with found objects which you may want to take a look at.
ReplyDeleteAs interesting as the batik is, I mostly wanted to see photos of the studio and set up! Lucky woman. Of course there is nothing stopping you taking over the whole of the basement too, Roger has the garage, just how much space does he need?!
I've got a number of books which cover wax, other resists and discharge agents. All worth trying. While we didn't try any other approach but wax, our teacher did show some of her other work. She had waxed over a black fabric creating a tree and then used discharge to remove the black around it. Amazing!!!! So many things to try, so little time!!!!
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