I think this is going to fuel my imagination for a while!

While at my local library today I glanced over at a display of books  with an Earth Day theme. The cover of this book grabbed my attention immediately.

The Bizarre and Incredible World of Plants

The colors, the textures, the organic shapes and the topic! I’ve been sitting out in the sun and pouring over it.

This large book, The Bizarre and Incredible World of Plants was created by a collaboration between two scientists,  Wolfgang Stuppy and Madeline Harley AND a brilliant visual artist, Rob Kessler. Kessler worked with mostly electron microscopic images and enhanced them with color (sometimes based on scientific evidence and sometimes not). Here are a few more images of pollen grains by Kessler:

pollen grain 1

pollen grain 2

The photos in here are brimming with rich, complex, intricate patterns and textures. I can’t wait to sketch some to be able to begin to know those shapes and lines enough to play with them in my art.  Then that imagery becomes part of the visual vocabulary I draw from (literally) when creating. At least, I think that’s how it works!

This week there was a lively discussion on the Studio Art Quilt Assoc. (SAQA) list about how folks are using (or not) sketchbooks.

I’m a firm believer in the power of sketching to generate ideas, loosen up, explore, play with composition and fall in love with certain lines.  It’s almost always where the germ of an idea for a fiber piece begins. So I regularly recommit to working in a sketchbook at least several times a week. Notice I say REcommit because I regularly forget about it. too.

But when I am at a standstill (no idea percolating and self-doubt bubbling up),  once I force myself to open a sketchbook and draw…things happen. My recent favorite thing to do is to listen to a New Yorker fiction podcast on my MP3 player and draw. I do best when my left brain is so absorbed in something that it lets my right brain play without judgment.

This week I dusted off a bottle of permanent black ink, made different dilution levels (grays) in an old ice-cube tray and painted. I LOVED the way the translucent layers would form such unexpected richness. Then I found going back over places with a micron pen added a whole other level of possibilities. Here are a few of the results:

inkwash 1

inkwash 3

pen and ink wash 1

For several years my art has been inspired by looking at tons of cellular/microscopic imagery primarily online. Although I’m not trained in biology, I’ve tried to pick through the information about the functions and processes connected to the images.

I find that usually sparks the seed of a new work or series. It can be a certain shape, line or pattern in the microscopic images that I fall in love with. Or it can be that my imaginings about that particular process evoke a metaphorical story.

I then make sketches pulling from what’s grown into a fairly large storehouse of bioligical shapes and patterns in my head. A successful sketch, one that leads to a piece of work, usually has an imagined story/metaphor attached to it. That’s what often can serve as a guide as I make each of the myriad decisions about composition, color, line…during the evolution of a piece.

Here’s a link to an amazing collection of plant microcopic images that have been photographed and colored by Jim Haseloff.