Wednesday, January 12, 2011

January 12 x 12 x 12 in Process

After four years of working on my monthly 12 x 12 x 12 series, I've decided to continue through 2011, but this year working on boards instead of canvas.

Last week, when I started work on my January piece, I decided to use a piece of leftover monoprinted fabric from my new six panel Fall Fence Landscape since I printed enough fabric to create 12 panels.

I stitched the grids of the lines of garden mesh, and then mounted the fabric on a 12" x 12" board. After it was dry, I started painting in the 1/2" x 3/8" rectangles. It was boring, and required a lot of patience, and NPR was my entertainment.




My next step was to attach the acrylic "skin" (below) of a construction fence on top of the painted grid.


And then I coated the whole board with self leveling gel, something I've never worked with before. Interesting stuff. It's white when applied wet, and it turned my whole piece blue-ish after I applied it. I have no idea why, but it will dry clear.

Now I wait as it dries. Normally I'd be rather impatient, but it's drying in my studio, and I'm at home where we got 13"+ of snow overnight.

I look forward to seeing it when I can venture out. There were very interesting tiny bubbles starting to form under the gel, around the stitching, and I wonder if they'll still be there after it's dry.

There are more steps planned after it's dried, which I'll write about soon.