Friday Egg: Taxi!

A little grimy, a touch oversaturated, kinetic, maybe even frenetic. Reminds me of a big city. 

I made this one at the same time I made Senescence. I was exploring overworking an eggshell, just to see what would happen. The colors on this one are vivid, but slightly muddied by overwork. The edges are not as crisp, allowing for some seepage and even overlap of colors. Some of the wax came off during etching or washing back the color which adds another point of interest. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Senescence

Deterioration with age. Ravaged. Worn. Plagued with problems, even some warts. Things fall apart. But the symmetry is dynamic and the colors are vivid. Age has made everything a little more interesting.

I abused this egg with etching, dyeing and re-dyeing, rinsing off and washing and starting again. The eggshell was not happy and not cooperating with what I wanted. I was frustrated with it and set it aside for a few weeks. Once I was able to not be annoyed with the egg I decided to play with the problems and see how much I could amplify and showcase the issues that are usually frustrating to make them the whole point of the design. I ended up really loving what happened in the end.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: "Elliptical Red/Blue"

Today's egg is an idea I have been working with this year. I have become fascinated with the interior of the eggshell and what the pores of the eggshell do with the dyes as I work my design on the outside. Usually, this beautiful scattering of colors is only seen after an egg breaks and at that point most people aren't in the mood to see how gorgeous it is inside. I want to bring this beautiful "conversation" between my work and the reaction of the eggshell to the fore without the disaster preceding the discovery, so I chose a goose egg that I was not particularly fond of and sawed about a quarter of the shell away to reveal the internal scene. And because I wanted this work to be about what was happening inside the eggshell, I decided to paint the exterior a matte black to hide my own half of the interaction and accentuate the beauty of what the eggshell had to say. In one of the photos, I took a close-up of the exterior and you can still see some of the etched outlines of my design in the black paint. One difficulty I had in photographing the work is that the dots of color are so beautifully diffuse that it is impossible to perfectly capture the image because it looks out of focus. This is definitely one that you should see in person if you can. 

Which you can! As I mentioned last week, the East Austin Studio Tour is coming up, Saturday and Sunday, November 12 - 13th, 19 - 20th from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. all four days. I'm stop #75 on the tour. For more information on the tour or to find out where my studio is, go to http://east.bigmedium.org/.

If I have enough photos of my work, I may just keep posting works that you just have to see in person to entice you to come on the tour. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Blue Moonflowers

Revisiting a pattern that I love today with a more unusual colorway. These are hollyhocks done in turquoise with red outlines and black and gray stems. I started here with a goose egg dyed red. I outlined all the flowers and stems with beeswax and then washed the color back to white. Then I dyed the egg turquoise and rinsed it until it was a very light blue and waxed the inner petals. I dyed it again to a medium turquoise and waxed, a darker turquoise and waxed, and a final really dark turquoise color. Once all the blues were covered, I rinsed again and then dyed the egg black, waxed, and rinsed to gray. Once everything was waxed, I put it in a vinegar bath to etch so I could get some dimension to the design. You can't see it very well in this first photo, but in some of the close-ups you can get a better view.

Happy Friday!