It's been a while since I've been active in the studio. I was a bit rusty (no pun - you'll see later), so I decided to start with a still life. Solis and I were walking along South Congress on a date night and we went into one of my favorite places, Uncommon Objects.
I found this baseball. Now if you know ANYTHING about me, you know I am NOT gifted at sports in any way whatsoever. But, this little baseball was telling so many stories. I wondered what was the event that caused the outer layer to peel back and show the inside? And the inside was this amazing ball of wound string. Who knew?
This was my muse for the first trip back to the studio in a long time. This piece has a lot of firsts in it. I've changed the way I'm stretching and mounting the denim. No more canvas stretcher bars. Now I'm building them from scratch with a wood surface to adhere the denim onto. Using archival adhesive, this prevents the denim from sagging and losing its shape.
Another new experiment is layering two pieces of denim. The top layer has a hole cut in it revealing the interior of the baseball.
The third twist is the use of rust as a pigment. Taking scraps of metal and making my own rust solution, this is a pigment that's brushed into the piece once the initial bleaching and washing is done.
Back are the oil paints, too. Loving the addition of that when it suits the piece.
The end result has made me very happy. It's been a laboratory of new medium and has jump-started my energy for the studio!