Play on Words

I have a mixed media collage on paper piece at the Texas Federation of Fiber Artists show, Celebrating our Creative Spirit, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. It’s called Play on Words

Play on Words

And this is its story:

“Play on word” embodies how I go about creating a piece: following my curiosity and trusting the process. It started off as an experiment. The initial idea was to brush medium gel on mulberry paper to render it transparent. It worked and when I tinted it with an ink wask , the gel medium acted a s a resist. Neat! Still, it felt like this was not a finished piece and that I needed to look further what to do with it. So I decided to see how I could play some more on the transparent effect and tried to use the mulberry piece as a layer on top of other pieces. It all came together when I laid this experiment on top of a thesaurus page that I had sketched on. It just all fit. It belonged together. I had to sneak a bit of cheese cloth thread in there for the final touch and that was that. After I finished collaging the layers, I realized that the thesaurus page contained the word “play.” One can see it through the translucent paper (top right – middle). This word indeed described both the process and the spirit of this piece. Playing with techniques, materials, words, letting them be my guide, is my way to explore and cultivate my creative voice.