This is a project that I completed in my swerve from pure painting to more craft, especially textiles, for my art school.
It was pretty involved, I’ve done a series of works on beauty in the overlooked, including paintings and a reliquary of beetles. And this is the final work.
To do this I took plain white sheeting, dyed it with reds and yellows. Then cut it up into rectangles. Printed beetles onto acetate. These were used to make the cyanotype images for the top. It’s not so easy to see in the photo, but where the blue has overlaid the yellow and red, there are hints of deep greens and purple around the beetles. I used some leftover fabric for the border.
For the back I wanted to see if I could push it further. So I stretched out a sheet on the grass, hit it with dye, blues and yellow this time, and left it over night to see what would happen. The odd marks on the back have been made perhaps by bugs, slugs or cats.
And the small strip is from the trimmings of the blocks. I’m really happy with how it turned out. It was a lot of steps and time. Each beetle took about 25mins to cure under a UV lamp.
This is magnificent! Your process was so interesting and worked so perfecting for something like beetles. The result reminds me of both like specimens from a museum collection and like a psychedelic festival poster.
Sounds like the perfect person to be involved with students!
My Friend, it is absolutely stunning. A truly unique and beautiful confluence of art and craft. Your decision to not use sashing was the right call. The field of blue, uninterrupted by anything except the beetles is perfect. Well done my dear.
