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Kathy Anne Art

Digital Prints on Recycled Beverage Cans and Crochet

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Needle arts have always been a major part of my art life.  I learned to crochet when I was 7 and made a ripple afghan that was anything but exact in the ripple department.  It was pretty pitiful, but it was so much fun I didn’t worry if the ripples were a mess.  Much later in the 70’s crochet was popular so there were always plenty of patterns around for me to make endless pieces in crochet.  Now I tend to leave patterns behind and just figure it out and crochet when the inspiration hits.

Today I still always have a crochet project going and when it comes to assembling my beverage can digital prints, I crochet pieces together.   Yesterday Kathryn who blogs (on her website)  Crochet Concupiscence sent me an email to tell my a piece of my crochet work was highlighted on her blog “20 Creative Things a Crocheter Can Do With Paper” You can see my piece and others in her post.

This got me to thinking how much crochet I have been doing in the last couple of weeks with my beverage cans so I thought I would share a bunch of pieces front and back and then show you how I start these pieces.  They are labor intensive and a bit wearing on your hands, but rewarding.  These pieces are small, nothing larger then 12″ x 12″.

Detail 
 Front
Back  
The general plan with these pieces are to string the can pieces and crochet together. 
Many of the pieces are then secured to a piece of hardware cloth so they can be hung.
 Front 12″ x 12″ piece
 Detail
 Detail of back
Back
You can see I started with a small square and then crocheted the rest of the rows around the square.  I
approached the first piece on the page the same way.
 This piece rolls together and can be hung in the round.  It is 8″ x 20″
This would actually be the inside of the piece since it naturally rolls together.
 This piece is 10″ x 16″ with the height of 2.5″- the loops of the beverage can are rather long.
This is the back:)
Now let’s see how they all start-  
I print the beverage cans- you can actually find my ebook on printing beverage cans on my kathyanne art site the title is The Complete Guide to Digital Printing and Assembling Beverage Cans.  It is also available on Nook and Kindle.  
After the cans are printed and varnished and ready to go I cut them in the size pieces for the project – punch holes and then string them onto colored hemp.
When I string the cans I don’t put tons on.  As I want to add can pieces I just cut the hemp, add pieces then tie the hemp back to the piece and crochet.  So as you see in the pic above I chain stitched and then I crochet the pieces into the crochet chain.
Every other row I crochet without can pieces.  Otherwise it is totally unruly and there is no room for the cans.  As it is I pack them in.
Please visit my Digital Alternative Sites to get more information on digital printing.  These sister sites are about my digital alternative print processes. 
These sites also have tutorials.  They are new sites and I am in the process of building the content on them.

The Sketchbook Challenge

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Well it’s almost here “The Sketchbook Challenge” a book by Sue Bleiweiss.  My piece Forest Book 2 is included in this wonderful book as well as the studio journal mapping the creation of my project.  I will be excited to see the book and will probably only have to wait a few more days for my copy. 

There is some exciting news since there will be a blog hop among the artists (this includes me) who have work in Sue’s book. The blog hop celebration starts June 25th and ends July 10th.  There are $1200 worth of prizes that will be given away from the artists participating.  Winners will be drawn randomly from comments on the posts during the blog hop.  Each artist will chose people from their comments for the prizes they will give away.  For more information see Sue’s blog post today.

My piece is of course composed of many digital prints and then assembled on 6 pages 10″ x 12″ to complete the Forest Book.  Each page is a separate creation containing digital prints on surfaces such as lutradur, metal printers plates, watercolor paper, beverage cans and more.  Encaustic and crochet  is used as well as other techniques in the assemblages of the pages.    More to come as we gear up for the blog hop.

Oh and before I forget I will be giving away a  years membership to KathyAnne Art, my member website.  The value of this is $35.00, but the beauty of it is the over 700 royalty free images and the monthly workshops that currently total over 40 with new ones every month.  Remember to visit here on June 27th and comment on my post to get your chance to win.  The winner will be drawn from the comments on the blog post from the blog hop.

Also I will have a free coupon code for the workshop on my KathyAnne Art site that was created based on my studio journal seen in the Sketchbook Challenge book.  Anyone who reads my blog that day will be able to find that coupon code from a url I will post and then download and enjoy their free workshop.  You can access the workshop description for “Studio Journals Mini Workshop” on my Inside KathyAnne Art Blog.

I also have another give away- Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden Total retail value $19.95!  

Be sure to join all of us as we celebrate the release of Sue’s book!

Forest Book 2  Front and Back Cover
Detail shots below

JuliAnne Kaplan- Photographer

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I’d like to introduce a professional photographer out of San Rafael California, JuliAnne Kaplan.  
About her work JuliAnne says  “My work is typically abstract and minimalist using natural lighting to highlight color and texture.  


JuliAnne contacted me at the end of 2010 to make plans for a one on one workshop in my studio in February 2011.  I had seen some of JuliAnne’s photography by visiting her website and was drawn to her interesting photographic world.  Her photographs lend themselves to all sorts of alternative surfaces.  What I didn’t know about JuliAnne was that she was a bit conservative in many ways and somewhat timid.  What I mean by this is that JuliAnne likes to structure her world a bit and my out of the box approach was an entirely new way for her to think.


Well think she did and in returning home she was so excited about what she had learned she immediately purchased a new Epson 7890. JuliAnne also got many of the supplies together she would need to embark on this new endeavor of digital printing alternative surfaces.  Now we need to dial it forward a year to 2012 and the ink still hadn’t been removed from the plastic packages and her printer was (after it being in a box in the garage for awhile) just freshly put together and in plastic in the corner of her computer studio. 
Luckily I was on my way to San Francisco to participate in a workshop and JuliAnne was in the need of getting her studio put together in such a way as she could actually print.  It was like a match made in heaven since I was available to spend some time setting up her printers and getting everything set so she could print alternative surfaces.  




If you visit my Digital Alternative Journaling site, you will be able to read the pages of my iPad journal about our journey through some of the set up and the significant results we had digitally printing some incredible surfaces. It was one of those- you had to be there, but humor was a LARGE part of our time together and both of us smile each time we think about our experience.  Three pages of my journal are posted from April 5, April 6 and April 9.  (You can click on each date to take you to the individual posts.)


Ms. Kaplan recently told me “the work you do has been the BEST THERAPY I have ever had!  I’m even learning how NOT to make my bed in the morning!!!  Your one-on-one workshops have really helped to stretch my comfort zone and as a result, I am quickly seeing and entirely new phase of my works emerge after shooting since 1970….”  
Visit JuliAnne’s website to get familiar with her photography.  Some of her work will appear in my upcoming book about digital printing alternative surfaces. 


Bits and Pieces in Construction

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Still thinking about this piece.  I know what I want to plug in the layers, but there is a ton of work left.  Since I am leaving for Texas to teach at the Texas Federation of Fiber Artists Conference I will have to let it sit till I get back.  The layers consist of a digital print on wire mesh, digital print on beverage cans and there will be slivers of beverage cans that have digital prints in between.  It will be very crushed up. As you can see the layers fall off of each other right now.  I may be able to get a few pieces done just to see what it looks like, but there is tons to do before I leave and my keynote to finish today.  Those pesky images need to be in place and work:)

Art Unraveled 2012

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It’s wonderful to be back at Art Unraveled again this year and teaching Explore Digital Printing.  My workshop at Art Unraveled 2012 will allow all the students to get a jump start on digital alternative surfaces.  Everyday I am creating ways to print on uncommon surfaces and now am continually designing surfaces that can be printed from a regular Epson Work Force printer.  It is amazing what can be done on a regular straight pass through printer.

I will include the workshop description here and links for access.  There is a short video on youtube to see a little of what the surfaces look like.  As with any of my workshop I strive to give the latest and greatest to my students and by August there will be tons more latest and greatest.  In any event we will also play with my printed surfaces so students will get an idea of what they can do with printed surfaces.  It will be informative, interesting and lots of fun, so if you are planning to be at Art Unraveled this year, check it out.

Registration is open on January 17th, so get ready.  We will be using my Epson small format printers and if we can print on them you can print on any pass through printer.

Explore Digital Printing

One of the amazing things about digital printing is the amount of surfaces you can use to print images for your artwork and journals. In this workshop students will print surfaces that have been prepared in advance. There will also be complete instructions to prepare surfaces for future printing. We will explore printing on fabric, lightweight metal, cheesecloth skin, tyvek and watercolor paper.

During the workshop we will use 2 Epson small format printers as everyone prints the surfaces from their kits for hands on experience. Learning how to use these 4” x 6” format printers prepares students to use other direct pass through printers to print alternative surfaces in the future. This workshop is mostly a process workshop although participants will make a small project of a mini journal and/or artist trading cards with some of their printed images. Additional materials will be available for students to use to experience working with printed surfaces to create mini journals or artist trading cards.

Each student will receive a CD containing a pdf of information about the digital printing process on alternative surfaces including printer profiles, sizing and resizing images, supplier information, a description of precoats and step by step instruction for applying precoats. See my youtube channel for a look at the surfaces we will print- 


Art Unraveled 2012, Phoenix Arizona July 30 to August 7, 2012

Crochet with Bottle Caps

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Since my post last week I have been working on the piece shown here and another one that also uses ice resin.  You can see my other ice resin piece with digitally printed papers on kathyannewhite.blogspot.com.  Both pieces have one thing in common in that I haven’t worked this way before.  For the piece here I am still working out the layers in my mind and will be working other layers above and below as I work the solutions out.  For now I am appreciating some interesting textures and a path of creation that has tons of possibilities for future pieces.