Auction Commission: No Turning Back

A little something about who I am as an artist and what has affected my attitudes about my art.

When I was 10 years old, my father had me apprenticed to a Master glassblower, William Burke, who (allegedly) taught renown glass artist Milon Townsend of New York City. I learned how to manipulate glass using the torch technique, with solid Pyrex rods and hollow tubing. By the age of 12, I had my first craft show in a cow field under a tent. My dad built me a demonstration table out of old pallets from a neighboring field. By the age of 14, I was sick and tired of mass production. I just wanted to be an artist. Only to create. Not to produce, and reproduce.

Because of that, I have only created artwork to please myself. If I love it, I keep it. If I hate it, nobody will ever see it. If I like it, I tend to give it away. I have never really sold anything since my glassblowing days. Not that I haven't had offers, but the price was never high enough to relinquish.

The Tipperary batik is, technically, my first "commission." Not that I am being paid, mind you, but rather I am doing it for someone other than myself, and very proudly for the benefit of Global Sighthound Rescue. It's hard. If I don't like it, I just can't throw it into the pile of my rejects, and, if I love it, I DO have to let it go. Keep in mind, I only taught myself to batik almost 2 years ago, and I have so much more yet to learn.

This batik will be the first one in which I have done the background first, and the first batik in which I will be doing a double dye bath. The problem with doing the background first is that you have to keep in mind that the background should not overwhelm the foreground. And yet I challenged myself by choosing to draw a busy blanket upon which to put the subject, a black greyhound, surrounded by detailed and colorful chocolate wrappers. The batik is at risk of losing a strong focus on its subject, with the busyness and color of the background acting as major distractors.

Whomever determined that problem solving occurs during R.E.M. sleep is a genius! I find myself waking during the early hours in the morning with Eureka! moments on how to approach my batik conundrums.

The dark subject and the colorful chocolate wrappers means I have to have a relatively neutral background. But I don't have to sacrifice the retro pattern of the blanket. I have to de-emphasize it. One of the main elements of my batiks is the "comic-bookish" dark outlines. For the background, I am going to forgo that element.

This is also the first time that I actually have to have a recipe for exact colors. That means I have to do intensive color studies while noting down the formula in order to recreate the color on a larger scale. To actually measure my dye concentrations, I had to create a miniscule measuring device. I used Sculpey and a golf tee to create it. Again, LOVE those Eureka! moments!

I started with a soft wash on the blanket to eliminate any distracting white highlights. I free-painted (painted with no wax resist) the retro pattern with my chosen color palette. Next, I waxed out everything that will will NOT be the warm, mid-tone brown of the blanket that will be accomplished using the first of two dye baths.

Tomorrow will reveal the results of my choices. There is no turning back now!!

Currently, I am visiting my twin sister in Colorado for a month. (I am from New York state) She has graciously taken time off from work to teach me stained glass, and for me to teach her batik. I sketched the following image for her to start with, and tomorrow, we begin batik in earnest!

**SIGH** Sadly, I love this sketch too!!