Beth Emmott | artist

More Stitches

September 20th, 2016

Finished my little tapestry woven using the hand spun that tied up some of the rust/tea dyed fabrics. Wasn’t sure how to finish it off and was going through some baskets of odd bits and came across this heavy ring—I think it’s glass—that I’ve had for years and never knew what to do with except keep it in the basket. And there was the answer. Might seem a little large for the small work but the small work is large in it’s importance to me and needed such a presentation. So here it is! Gives me some ideas for other bits in that basket…

Also continuing to work on the stitching on my dyed pieces. Adding another layer of information to this conversation—dyed, reassembled, applied, and now a flood of stitches—of new purposes, new lives, new reasons for being.

Tapestry

September 6th, 2016

This summer I did a bit of eco dying with tea and rusty pieces. I tied all my bundles with some white hand spun yarn. I like to spin for the zen like process but don’t have really have a use since the last weaving project with handspun was to make chair seats and moths ate them leaving me traumatized! They not only ate them but they left them so infested with moth eggs etc that after I totally stripped off the chair seats I have never replaced them…
But here were these pieces of yarn all died in warm browns and grays and I wanted to do something with them but what. I knit up a bit but that wasn’t the answer. Then I thought of tapestry. Again, I just have short pieces so didn’t want to set up one of my larger tapestry looms so I decided on a small frame loom which is really a picture frame I had in the attic.

Tools

Then I remembered a wonderful wooden needle that would be just right for this project, dug out a small hand beater and began. This is just the thing after I spend hours wrangeling with technology that won’t behave and new operating systems that don’t play nice with existing software and all this is discovered in front of a class of students and oh my head hurts…
The plan for this piece is simply a gradated light to dark with the spacing as it falls – but I have lots of ideas for other bits of hand spun and dyed yarns stored around here—in moth proof containers!

Drawing 101

September 2nd, 2016

School has begun…

Different styles of working…

Starting with intense observation, looking, questioning, comparing… To me seeing is the first step in drawing.

Drawing a shell

I love how this student decided to prop up her object!

Jay’s Rusty Bits

August 11th, 2016

My friend Jay gave me some rusty bits left over from some of his wonderful sculpture. Lots of triangles and other shapes. Thank you Jay!

Before I left for vacation I wrapped some in one of my napkins and boiled it up with some tea and left it while I was gone. I didn’t arrange them just wrapped them up and weighted them in a pot of tea. Pretty ugly bunch of stuff when I returned.

The first picture is the napkin after it was rinsed and dried and ironed—I always iron linen napkins. The second one is my design almost finished.

This is large enough to create 3 cloths and here is the first. I cut it apart and reassembled it like my others but decided to stitch on it as I have in the fiber book. There are 3 designs each based circles, diagonals and straight lines. Finished this at 3:00 in the morning last night when I couldn’t sleep.

I work at a drawing table with a bright light. The cloth is raised up on a small portable ironing board. Jane said it would drive her crazy to stitch this way but I like it—some times sitting on a tall stool, sometimes standing. Mostly do it when I need a break from other work—or in the middle of the night.

Musings at Green Cove

August 2nd, 2016

We’ve been away on vacation—a whirl wind road trip to Cape Breton and back. Hiking and sketching and eating and driving and driving…
After a long hike we stopped by the ocean and Bob took pictures while I sat and wrote the following in my sketchbook…

I did take this picture.

Musings at Green Cove, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia 2016

water
waves
wind
rocks

young boy hopping rock to rock. I used to do that—like a mountain goat. But now, not so much. So I watch the young boy…

Bob goes rock to rock, not like the young boy but slower, watching, looking, seeing pictures in puddles that the young boy jumps over.

Saw a lot of birds at the end of our hike. young woman—not so young 53 but full of energy and friendship—works for the park—stopped to talk. I know her life history—her parents married, left Cheticamp for Toronto and returned. Her father loved the woods. I know all about her cheating husband. They were musicians, embarking on her perfect life, but… and she told us a lot about the birds.

Blue flowers hiding between the rocks—bright green leaves. Rocks with stripes—cracks and magma—each a painting.

Saw a seal swimming today!
Saw Canadian geese with a gosling.
Saw cormorants and lots and lots of sea gulls—

Tide waits for no man—nor woman for that matter.

We come and go and have hateful presidential conventions and the tide comes and goes—comes and goes—comes and goes.

The birds are on their rock, and the seal swims in the sea and we go about our petty lives—but Bob takes pictures others miss.

Crows

July 16th, 2016

Ink sketches of crows

Been wanting to combine my rust/tea dyed fabrics with bird images in a larger project – mainly crows and or hawks. So I’ve been researching and sketching crows as a start.

Drawing with thread on my sewing machine was my first idea.
Playing with tensions, stitches and rough drawing with machine

This was fun but… even though I want a rough sketchy line, I quickly saw it will take a while to gain control of this as a drawing medium. At the same time I’ve been stitching patterns and marks in the small dyed book I’ve been working on and thought I’d try this. More what I want and I can work more free form with out preliminary drawings on the fabric. But still have a ways to go…

Stitches in small book and first go at hand drawing crows with stitches