Tag Archives: diy

Nov 02 2017
3 Comments
galleries, illustration, People and Places, Publishers and Books, Uncategorized

Indie Publishing

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A long time ago, in the town I grew up in, I had my first Indie publishing moment in Mr. Smith’s Canadian Lit class. I wrote the story, drew the pictures, hand printed the words, and bound the pages with red electrical tape. Pretty cool. An excellent teacher, Mr. Smith went through the pages with pencil and pointed out my not-too-numerous spelling and grammar mistakes. He whispered to me (I was a class-slacker) that I should get this book published. I thought it was.

Little did I know at the time “nurd” would be become a part of our vocabulary, and have a different spelling!

Now with online printing platforms, I can go beyond a short children’s story and print out a whole novel, and many copies! In my case, I used CreateSpace, and being a pencil and paper girl, I had a hard time until I just followed the instructions. Oh yes, and I enlisted a friend’s help!

Talking out design problems and getting the book just right was a great experience, and now it’s done. I have a BIG book.

Mind you, I also booked a venue to hold an art show in 2018 — can’t resist illustrating a novel. Deciding how to include illustrations is still to be decided. I’d like it to have some of the charm of an “old-school” book, maybe with colour plates pasted onto blank pages opposite the text, or scattered through more randomly. It won’t be hand printed, but the illustrations will be hand-made.

I’m proud to announce the release of The Bones, and will be among the small presses and indie authors at London Ontario’s Wordsfest — Southwesto Book Expo — held November 4 and 5th at Museum London. A cool start for a book.

Meet local author_landscape

 

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Jun 09 2017
2 Comments
fibre art, galleries, gardens, People and Places, Sewing Projects, textile art

Colours of the Garden: colour wrapping

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thread wrapped basket/Laura Wythe

Many of the fibre artists I meet dye their threads to make their own pallet. I haven’t tried it, except the once when I sank a skein of pearl cotton into a brew of black walnut juice.

In the cold of winter, I went to a workshop led by Nancy Latchford. She’s a fibre artist who specializes in baskets, and her baskets are amazing in size and range. We met in a workroom in the Jonathon Snell-Bancroft Gallery where we had a view of Nancy’s fibre-based work, as well as many, many amazing ceramic pieces.

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Base of basket by Laura Wythe

We started making our little baskets, first wrapping a washer for the base, then wrapping more threads over a cotton and wire core to make our coils. I’ve made slippery coils for clay for pots before, but this was new, and quite a challenge to juggle the pieces.

A huge part of the project was to choose the colours, or in my case, let the colours choose me. There was a boardroom-size table before us filled with hand-dyed cotton thread of all colours and tints. Impossible to include them all, but I tried. Red is always my favourite, but then violet, purple, orange, yellow, greens and blues took up the bulk of the project. In the dead of winter, I was thinking about June gardens.

The wrapping technique was new to me. You choose 2 or 3 colours and wrap them together around the core materials. It’s blending colours, and then as Nancy pointed out, they become further blended when the coils are bound together with yet more blends.

The basket is still a work in progress, palm-sized. The gardens, however, are in full bloom.

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Thread-wrapped basket in progress, Laura Wythe

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Mar 18 2012
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Uncategorized

Push

I am a selfless soul, one among many on the planet.  There must be at least a billion other people like me who quickly get down to brass tacks when it comes to helping someone else out.  On my own, I could die of clutter.

The studio has been a mess all winter and you know about the piles.  I’ve got a corner of the table clear for working on the sweater pattern and I can get to the sewing machine.  Otherwise, the room is occupied.  Files of work-related documents, binders and books cozy up beside the art and textile projects like they are old pals.

So here’s the push.  Last week I bartered expertise with a friend–his in business for mine in watercolour painting.  Only, where will I put him when he comes to the studio?  As you know, there’s fabric piled on the chairs.  At least, I think there are chairs underneath.

For the sake of this person, for this relationship, I’ve literally pushed everything not related to studio practices out.  Just pushed it out the door.  Now I have space–floor, table, shelf and closet space.  Soon, I will have chairs.

Never mind what I’ll do with the boxes in the hallway.   Never mind how great it looks to my friend.  The push from helping someone else has helped me out enormously.  I can work in my studio again.

Love it when I discover what everyone else knows.

 

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