Tuesday 17 January 2023

Latest Viking Voyage

As some who read this blog know, the "Real Artist", who lets me share her studio as long as I keep my mouth shut, is also a "Real Viking". Wencke, (her Norwegian name, we call her Vickie) is not one of those fake Vikings who wear the horned hats and watch Minnesota play football. She is a pure blood. And as such she is always off on new voyages of discovery. This time, it's all about dying (the colour not the event).

So now I'm back to the point in time when our daughters were young and I was always afraid to open a door in fear of the science experiment that lay behind it. This morning I found this sitting in the kitchen.


What is it, you say? My guess was an old tin can wrapped in fabric but according to Vickie, I was sadly mistaken. This was a can that she had carefully prepared to be covered with rust- not just rust but premium rust- so that when she folded some material around it, it got dyed by the rust. This, apparently elevates it from junk and rags to...ART!

Here is another cloth that has been dyed lavender by a liquid derived by soaking black turtle beans which, apparently we will now eat. Oh joy.


And this is only part of the voyage which, according to the Viking, will take two years. It didn't take that long for them to discover America! Another aspect will be to use the dyes and hand fashioned objects to make marks and thus transform a mess into an "object d'art".


Trust me, those hands will never be clean again. 

Apparently we are having the beans tonight.

Pray for me.

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