This blog is no longer active but all our content is still here and accessible.: Current Work

Friday, June 2, 2017

Current Work - Beth Berman

First of all thank you all for years of interesting and productive comments and participation in our FIRE blog.
I would like to talk a bit about layers. I have learned so much from my best friend Judith Brown about layering but I don't want to tell her story. She's been up to some interesting projects as well. One of the things I have been creating is a series of landscapes. I started out making silk and wool landscapes ( Monday's post) but then reverted to my old standbys, thickened dye and hot wax.

I did do some batiking and I had some dye left over so I set up some screens to deconstruct. I have gotten to the point where I can print the screen three times side by side with very little evidence of where one screen started and the other left off.

They came out very anemic and obviously needed more layers. My main goal was to try to create a "horizon" for a larger landscape. These were all 30+ inches.

Second set of screens to deconstruct

I also thought of the stitching in my silk and wool landscapes and thought about making thermonfax screens of wheat and grass. I was hoping for a real horizon with sky, fields and grasses. These are the two screens I had made.

These are the finished pieces with one layer of deconstructed prints, the thermofax screens done in olive thickened dye and a top layer of the second set of deconstructed screens. I humbly have to admit , the results were more than I ever thought would be realized.