Designworks - Year Long Projects Revealed - "Openings"

Wednesday marked the end of the year project for my art 'support group' -"Designworks". This year we focused on 'openings'. It is also fascinating to see how everyone took this in different directions. Some thought about all the houses they had lived in over their lives and focused on that. Others took a picture of doors and windows and used them as starting points.

I took a picture I had found which looked out at the ocean from a window in Maui. Someday I plan on doing that- look at the ocean from my house in Maui. So, I decided to build my own dream window. First I printed the picture on commercially bought photo silk fabric - you know, the kind to make your own tshirts and stuff. The ocean didn't look blue enough for me, so I cut it out and backed it with my hand dyed silk fabric with jacquard waves. Then I painted the sky (it wasn't blue enough, either) and the distant mountains. I also added some more flowers and enhanced the palms on the left. I mounted this to the acrylic 'glass' that came with the frame. Then I took some silk chiffon, ironed it to freezer paper, cut it to 8 1/2" X 11" and printed the image again. This one I glued to the outside of the frame making the 2 images about 1/2" apart giving the image an ethereal 3-D feeling. I then covered the frame with shells - including some that I found when I was in Hawaii a couple of years ago. Now to put it somewhere that I see it everyday!

I also wanted to share with you some of the other interpretations of this project:

Sandy Mooney painted wooden houses and put them into a window frame:

Pat Thompson also depicted looking out a window but she chose to look at a sunrise. She used silk fusion to make her pillow.

Indy Bacon took an old windowframe, door plates, wooden folding ruler and other odd bits and assembled them to create this whimsical piece:

Gisela Bosch found a weaving pattern called 'windowpane' and wove a scarf:

Gail Rachor knitted a house, felted it, embellished the outside and added pictures of all the houses she ever lived in for the inside.

Ronnie Straus took a picture she had taken in the 70's of a shack and reinterpreted it in fabric and emboidery.

There were of course more wonderful pieces (there are 15 of us in total), but it really is interesting how 15 people can take the same concept and run in different ways.....Where would you have gone?