Catching Up on Summer Projects

I have been very active in my writing and in my studio. But I have been finding it difficult to keep up with promotion via all media outlets. Just as keeping up with the outdoor work makes housework neglected, so too, does keeping up instagram and Facebook pages cause a blog post to be neglected. To remedy that, I’ll be posting the work that I have been doing with little text or expository remarks. Hopefully it will not take too long and my blog can become active once again. I’ll begin with the latest projects and then work backwards from there to a place in time when my blog posts began to go fallow.

For this month, I decided to attempt to finish up a project that I had begun in 2017: my Liberty Snakes. These are large painted snakes that I had originally done for social rallies. The first one (and the last!) was the March for Science in early 2017. Considering the dilemma our country is in now with a raging pandemic along with a concomitant viral anti-science epidemic, many of the slogans on those snakes would be especially appropriate today. But others are pertinent still as well.

The slogan on this snake says "Don't Tread on Black Lives," but it is a bit difficult to see all at once because the painted snake is so large - about 20 feet long. I began my project anew by sewing up the painted snakes I had made earlier. This one was created for a Black Lives Matter march but never made it to an actual march, although it was displayed briefly at the local arts center. So this one, like all the others, must only attend virtual rallies now!

The patterns were created by a twelve inch square carved block of linoleum printed in white and silver acrylic over black gesso. The details were highlighted by painting back over the printed form.

I think that one really good reason for my not wanting to finish this large painted snake project was the lack of access to a sewing machine. So this snake, like all the subsequent ones, had to be sewn up by hand - which took hours! But doing so was relaxing for its slow pace. I decided to use up some antique mother of pearl buttons for the snake’s eyes.