Cochineal

I collected some cochineal off of cactus at a friend's house last week. Here it is cooking in a tin-lined copper pan.



And here it is after sitting overnight. Much deeper color.



This is fabric simmering in the dye.



I've heard that you get a better color when the cochineal bugs are dried, but I don't know why.

More Ecoprint Work

I'm playing around with more ecoprint piece layouts.



This one is 36" x 48", and the materials are eucalyptus bark, indigo, oxalis flowers, and pomegranate rind on hemp and linen.

I'm sending the backing fabrics off to be stretched tomorrow, and they should be back in a week or so.

First Ecoprint Piece

Here's the layout for my first finished ecoprint piece. I tried stitching the pieces to the backing, but I didn't like the look of it, so I'm going to glue instead. That means that it will have to be stretched before I can glue.



It's 30" x 30", and the materials are brown onion skins, eucalyptus bark, pomegranate rind, iron and black pigment on hemp and linen.

New Work

These are two pieces of linen I recently dyed and painted. The first was ecoprinted using brown onion skins and then painted with black pigment in a soy milk binder.



The second piece was ecoprinted using liquid amber leaves and then dyed with eucalyptus leaves, bound with bulldog clips.



I'm going to start putting these and other pieces together into finished work pretty soon.

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Listen up! This is important. I just heard about this from my father, but evidently it's been around for a while. This is an idea whose time has come -- the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. It's a way to save the planet from human destruction with as little suffering as possible. Just say "no" to having children.

Barbara Kingsolver

There's a great interview with author Barbara Kingsolver on the Speaking of Faith radio show website. Kingsolver talks about her new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, and her year spent growing and raising all of the food for her family. She discusses global warming and the consequences of eating food not grown locally, and our problematic relationship with the food that we eat.

Waste Not

Here's what I've been doing in an effort to not waste paint. I collect leftover paint until I have enough, and then I pour it over a canvas and create these fabulous underpaintings.






They look great covered with faux encaustic and with painting on top.

Limited Resources

Greenpa has a post on Little Blog in the Big Woods today about the limited availability of resources. It got me thinking about paint. Is paint a limited resource? I use it liberally and waste it sometimes when things don't work out as planned. This is an example of what Greenpa would call "first worlder" waste. "First world" people aren't accustomed to thinking in terms of limited resources, and they consume everything as if there's an endless supply.

I think synthetic colors are made out of petroleum, and the supply of petroleum is limited. The natural colors come from Earth pigments, and they'll run out when we've dug out all of that Earth.

Although it never occurred to me before, paint probably is a limited resource, and I'll have to find ways to treat it as such.

Welcome to My Monkey Mind

I don't want to let fear get the better of me, but I've been hearing some really scary numbers lately. Things like we can expect massive global climate change in ten to twenty years, including floods, drought, famine, epidemics, hurricanes, tornadoes, and whatnot. How can I create "happy" art with thoughts about the end of the world as we know it running through the back of my mind? On the other hand, nothing disastrous is happening right this minute, and worrying about it doesn't do any good. Welcome to my monkey mind -- a Zen Buddhist term for runaway thoughts.

Colin had this video on his No Impact Man blog today:

view.break.com/311805

It's interesting, and it makes sense, but it also makes me feel afraid. I don't want to bury my head in the sand, but it's hard to listen to stuff like this day in and day out.

Time to Talk Green

I think it's time to start talking about our impact on the environment. I can't NOT talk about it anymore. It's on my mind every minute of everyday, the background mind chatter to everything that I do. Americans are the biggest consumers of resources per capita, and I've heard that we need to cut our consumption by 90% in order to avoid disastrous environmental effects. Ninety percent! How is that possible? I don't know, but I want to start exploring ideas and discussing options here. I don't think we can wait for our government to come to the rescue. I think whatever change happens is going to happen at a grassroots level, which has always been the case with societal change historically.

Colin Beavan's No Impact Man blog and Greenpa's Little Blog in the Big Woods have made a big impression on me. They've got me thinking about different ways to live. I also like Alex Martin's Little Brown Dress blog, which got me thinking about clothes, and what I really need as opposed to what I might want.

I already stopped hiking in the mountains everyday, because I feel like I can't justify the use of gasoline to get there. It's nice to be in nature, but it's a luxury, and I can just as easily walk in my neighborhood for exercise.

And what about art supplies? They're mostly toxic stuff. What are we going to do about that?

I have lots of questions and not a lot of answers, but I'm hoping that together we can open a dialog and begin to see our way clear to some practical solutions for some of these problems.

Refrigerator Alternative

This is so great! I want one of these! It's a cooler made entirely of clay, designed to be an alternative to electrical refrigerators. This cooler uses no electricity, and it keeps foods cool with water. My mom was telling me that cool boxes were common before ice boxes and then refrigerators became available. I'm beginning to think that maybe I can get along just fine without a refrigerator, especially since I don't eat meat, dairy or eggs, and therefore don't need to store those more perishable foods.

Living Green

I recently discovered several interesting blogs of people who are taking steps to live a more ecologically balanced life, some in the city, some in less urban areas.

The first is Little Blog in the Big Woods, written by "Greenpa." Greenpa lives in a log cabin in the woods, but he writes his blog for everyone -- city dwellers and country folk alike. He hasn't had a refrigerator for thirty years, and offers information on living off the grid.

Then there's No Impact Man, written by Colin Beavan. For one year, he, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter are attempting to live, in the middle of New York City, without making any net impact on the environment. No trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, and no toilets. The only electricity they use is generated by one solar panel to power their laptop computer.

Rachel Kessel of San Francisco writes a blog called The Compact. She's part of a very large Yahoo discussion group also called The Compact whose aims are 1) to go beyond recycling, 2) to reduce clutter and waste, and 3) to simply lives. Rachel hasn't bought anything new in two years, except underwear, which she broke down and purchased recently.

I find this fascinating. It never occurred to me that I could live without a refrigerator.