Cardboard and a girl

After playing with cardboard and simple forms the piece became interesting when I placed a photograph of me as a child in it. The scale changed. Now it became a kind of décor.

Art academy products

I'm still trying to find out what I really want to tell with my artwork for the art academy. There are so many stories and emotions in my head, constantly changing. Also, the textile works I make are even more different. I'd rather bring the two together. But maybe that isn't possible.

In this piece below is a picture of me as a young girl, balancing on a big ball, surrounded by the scary world of technology. At least, that's what I meant to convey.

The front and back of my embroidered face.The back is the most interesting one, anxious almost, because of the extra threads.

Free motion machine embroidery

Another project for the DIY Textile School: free motion machine embroidery. I cheated a bit because part of it is silk ribbon stitched on. The girl is from an old photograph when I was seven. It's transferred on cotton with gel medium and attached to the background fabric with three small paper fasteners.
The image is from an old photo yearbook and I used it upside down.

Textile book

Another project that started with the train photos. I transferred them on fabric and organza and embellished them with embroidery. And I stencilled with textile paint. I mostly use the Dylon cold water paint because you don't have to prepare your fabric beforehand. I like that because I'm the 'spur of the moment' type. The letters on the front are also embroidered.

I kept the threads on the edges of the fabric to soften the look and give some contrast to the hard steel of the subject.

Textile colouring

What fun to have my own coloured textiles. It's like an icecream shop.

Playing with forms

The art academy assignment was to design a sculpture for a square. I drew several organic forms, inspired by the green sprouts from the bulbs emerging from the earth.
Some glossy cardboard, a big eraser, playmobil figures and leftover pictures from Norwegian houses made it into a mini square.

Art Academy assignments

Photo of a stil life transformes into a textile work

The assignment: take a photograph of this still life and make a black and white collage of it. Then make a textile work of it in complementary colours. In my case: purple and yellow.

I had a piece of purple burlap and threaded different purplish threads through it. I brought the elements of the photo down to three and simplified them. I wanted to make a kind of child's game (you have to throw the textile elements in the exact spot) so I made the pieces a bit dimensional by filling them with some filling material.

Invitation (for Dutch readers only)

I'm proud to announce that a few of my books will be part of an exhibition curated by the bookartist Roswitha Witten (a former teacher).

Making a collage every day

That was an assignment of the DIY Textile School. And you had to make one of the collages in textile. Here you see a part of my collages. I had 28 in total. I used mostly scraps I had in a box that were leftovers from all my paper- and bookbinding projects. It's hard for me to throw out even the smallest of pieces.
Sometimes it was fun making a collage, sometimes it was annoying. I learned that I like circles (:-)) and not too many elements on a card. But I also tried to push myself to add more than I at first wanted to do. (Succes not guaranteed.)

Because I had to do also the 'end of term' assignment (the train blocks), my textile collage is pretty simple. I copied the Audrey Hepburn photo on paper backed fabric. I like her and now and then she appears in my work.