Summer camp

I’ve never been to summer camp. When I was about six or seven, I would occasionally whine, or beg, to be allowed to join the small groups of sunburned kids who were trailing behind their camp counsellors at the local beach, but it never happened.

My mother thought it was much more fun for us to have free range during the summer when our cousins came up for their annual visit from Toronto to Muskoka. Now, I think she was probably right. We lolled at the beach, lathered up with Noxema and taught ourselves to swim; tramped through the woods, braved black flies to gather plump, delicious raspberries for homemade jam; and made costumes and sets for basement productions of plays and performances.

But, the latent desire for summer camp has lingered.

Who says you are too old to attend camp as a senior?

This summer, the perfect opportunity presented itself. As a birthday gift, my husband/advocate registered me for a week-long fabric dyeing creative workshop offered at our local art centre (http://the tett centre for creativity and learning). The event was billed as a retreat, but I’m calling it camp for a check on my bucket list. It was a full five days of fun with like-minded friends, led by artist in residence Bethany Garner facebook.com.garner.bethany

Let the fun begin. About sixteen of us gathered at the Tett to experiment, play and learn, trying out a different dye technique or fabric treatment every day. I think we all arrived half and hour early, dropped off by our devoted spouses, or carpooling with friends. We each hauled in bags and carts of supplies, materials, and gear. We chose our tables, set up camp, checked out the hearty stash of communal supplies, and anxiously waited to dive in. Part of the fun was that each participant brought their own wealth of knowledge and area of expertise and even though each one of us was totally absorbed with our project of the day, no one hesitated to share information, or technique, or a special tool when asked. Great friendships were made and our collective creative network was widened….see, just like camp!

Let me take you through the week and share a few pictures. I’m sure I’ll write some other blogs on the specifics of techniques, or to update you on what I do with all the fabric I’ve generated, but for now, lets stick to the fun of playing and learning at camp.

Day One Flat Dyeing. Admittedly, I had only a very vague idea what this would be, but it sounded like fun. Basically, it involves laying out pre-soaked pieces of cloth on a table, pouring dye on the fabric and moving it around with your gloved hands. A little like finger painting for grown ups.

The wet fabric was wrapped and left to sit for 48 hours and the results were like surprise packages when unwrapped, rinsed and dried.

I am thrilled with the colours and the possibilities for creating fabric pictures with these pieces waiting for project designation. Good thing I like the results because I do have a bit of a stack!

Day Two Mark Making. Hmm, what would this entail?? Well as always with Bethany, lots of options were laid out and then everyone was left to take their own path. The intent was to make marks, on paper or on fabric, again with a big emphasis on playing. There were lots of fabric dyes, markers, pens, paints, brushes and books for available for incentive. My new friend Marilyn did a wonderful series of marks by experimenting with black inks and brushes.

I decided to try gelli plate printing. Sounds fun and easy, right? Well, this was my least favourite. It wasn’t quite as easy as it looked on YouTube. Rather than buy a commercial gelli plate, which was a bit pricey, I decided to try an easy homemade recipe using gelatin and glycerine. I should have taken it as a bad omen when in order to economize, rather than buying a package of knox gelatin, I went to bulk barn and put a hefty scoop in a bag. What I didn’t realize until I got home: 1. I only needed 30g, 2. one hefty scoop of bulk gelatin goes for about $15. Well, on the optimistic side, if I took to gelli plate printing, I’d be set for a lifetime supply of gelatin. Unfortunately, I didn’t take to gelli plate printing. Very early in the game, my homemade gelli plate split into pieces–likely not thick enough, pretty disheartening. My friend Marilyn came to the rescue and loaned me her commercial gelli plate, and I gave it my best shot, but my pieces just seemed to come out a mess. I was glad I was only practicing on paper. I will try again, because if you google gelli plate printing as I did, you will see lots of exciting possibilities. And it’s not like I’m short on gelatin.

Day Three Eco Dyeing. OK, I’ll admit it. I jumped the gun on this one and it is easily my favourite to be added to current obsessions. With no clue of what eco dyeing was, I started to prowl around on the web and a couple of weeks before camp, I started on my own. I was mostly inspired by http://MadeByBarb.com where you can find all kinds of recipes and directions. Eco dyeing is magic–or for those of you with a more scientific bent, a reaction between ferrous (iron) and tannins (found in foliage) catalysed by heat and pressure, which looks like magic. Of course being keen on both magic and science, I couldn’t wait for camp and jumped into experimentation on my own. The basics involve laying foliage (rose leaves, oak leaves, water lilies, sumac, worked best for me) on natural fibre cloth (I used old cotton pillow cases); adding ‘iron water’ (ferrous sulphate and water, or water vinegar and old rusty metal bits) either by wetting the leaves or wetting the fabric; rolling up around a fat stick as tight as you can; and steaming for 90 minutes. **Caution: if you try this you are playing with chemicals. Please wear a mask and gloves and use caution as always when cooking with steam. I promise I’ll do a blog with more specific directions later. The results are pretty magical.

Fellow camper and artist Shirley had great success using mixed foliage including horse chestnut and black walnut leaves.

Day Four Wet Felting. This was something I had been wanting to try for a while. As you know from Art with a view I recently tried dry felting and really liked it. Wet felting is a bit more tactile and I knew we were in for a treat. Felting is what happens when you toss a wool blanket, sweater, or socks into the washing machine by mistake and end up with a 3-4 times smaller, densely matted and ruined piece–we’ve all been there.

But, the good news is you can make beautiful art by purposely felting! You start with wool roving, which is fluffy, unspun wool, available in all colours and many different weights and textures. Felting happens when wool fibres tangle up together and shrink to form a tight mat. When you are doing a more controlled method than the agitation of your washing machine, you use warm water, liquid soap, bubble wrap and lots of hand agitation.

After wetting down the fibres with warm water and soap, you massage it with your fingers to do the initial ‘bonding’. This is the fun part, a bit like sensory play.

Next comes a bit of work. You roll your piece up in bubble wrap and start to roll/slam/knead it, first in one direction, then in the next until it has been thoroughly rolled in all four directions. When you are done, ta da, more magic, the piece has shrunken in size and matted into a nice piece of felt.

Now if you were paying attention, you noticed that in the early stages of this piece I was planning on a dark blue angry sea and wispy white clouds. Well, in the vein of Things rarely go as planned, I ended up liking this better upside down and it will now be a snow scape with dark winter sky. I’m intending to go back to this piece to hand stitch some silver stars and use a bit of machine over stitching to define detail.

Day Five Choose Your Own Adventure. Let’s face it, one of the reasons my mother knew I wouldn’t cut it at summer camp is because I have difficulty following prescribed directions. So, day five was my kind of day! I decided to veer off and work with all the handmade paper I had generated in June –see previous Art with a view for details of that adventure. Inspired by how earlier in the week while flat dyeing the clean-up paper towels had absorbed the dyes so beautifully, I started playing around with dyeing my rough paper. I don’t know what I’ll use these papers for, but I sure had a lot of fun making them, and one woman’s mess is another woman’s ??? I may transform them into cards, or journal covers or who knows what!

The End. All good things must come to and end, and much like any campers we were exhausted, but fulfilled. We learned new skills, shared ideas, forged friendships and imagined the possibilities for future get togethers. A good time was had by all! Thanks to everyone who contributed to a fantastic week!