Fortunately, I've been well-occupied, what with birthday celebrating ...
tower building ...
spelunking in the Meramec Caverns
and lots of driving, fortunately with a stop at the Philbrook in Tulsa along the way. While there, we were awed by this Red Dirt Rug
Literally red dirt ...
stamped with sneaker soles ...
to form patterns ...
Then it was back on the road. But all the while I was thinking of the Ellsworth Kelly exhibit at the Blanton,
and of this study in particular ...
While driving, I considered how it might go in cloth. Thus it was I was well primed once we had settled back in at home.
I cut pieces of thrifted linen cloth about 2" to a side, then finger-pressed them around a 1" strip of cover stock ...
turned each resulting strip 90 degrees and finger-pressed again ...
Before invisibly basting each patch a la Jude Hill, I made sure to trim the interior edges so they just touched ...
in order to make the resulting patch a uniform thickness (something I neglected to do with the Peace Pin Project).
Then I tried something that I thought up in the car: glue. Not just any glue though ... washable glue. Because I wanted the patches to stay as straight as possible on the base cloth and I knew pins wouldn't cut it.
So I borrowed some from G, and made sure to keep the glue within the line of invisible baste to avoid having to stitch through it later ...
attached all the patches within a grid ...
drawn with water-erasable marker that began to vanish as I attached the patches ...
Then I waited impatiently for the glue to be (almost) dry ...
and stitched them all down (by which time the glue was actually dry). Both the white and the clear glue ended up working equally well holding the patches in place ...
The end result from the front wasn't perfectly square ...
but then again, Kelly's also wasn't without its imperfections. As a study, it accomplished my objective of seeing whether the techniques I envisioned over the course of driving 1800 miles would actually work in practice. I was especially skeptical about whether the glue would actually wash out and am happy to report that it did.
Next up: a roadside reverie inspired by Helio Oiticica.
