FEELING LIKE AUTUMN

LEAF STITCHING

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

dried or fresh leaves, needle and perle cottons

Gee no!

Not here in the So.Cal.

99 degrees today if you can believe that?

Crazy weather.

So let me show off a little something to cool things down a bit,

these sweet leaf constructions that senior Helen Park created last school year.

Inspired by the work of Susanna Bauer,

Helen picked a few dried leaves I'd collected for her over the last year and went to town.

Funny, 

she made the most difficult one first

 after she saw the little box my son bought me for Xmas from U.K. mixed media artist

Alice Fox. 

She enjoyed the tedious process so much that she made several more.

The grouping above was bought by English teacher Donna Hall to be displayed in her classroom,

a great honor.

One of these days I need to photograph Donna's classroom.

Every year she spends a couple hundred dollars at Open House and fills her walls with student art.

The effect is incredible!

I would say she has close to 250 pieces carefully arranged.

I had Helen frame out her leaves in small box top lids for Open House display.

So delicate and lovely!

I admire your workmanship and stick-to-activeness Helen.

This was a very difficult assignment.

WINDFALL

LEAF STITCHING

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

windfall, perle cottons & seed beads

For me this was the most exciting project that my students attempted this year.

It's a new assignment that was inspired by Mixed Media Artists Alice Fox and Susanna Bauer. 

I've been following both these U.K. gals for several years now, 

and incredibly own a piece from both to teach with.

Both collect windfall and do amazing 2 and 3 dimensional artworks with their leaves.

If you haven't had a chance to see their work,

I strongly recommend you take a gander.

My students were required to and here is what they came up with.

Senior William Kim chose 3 very different leaves and

 tied them together thru colored perle cottons and beads.

I apologize for the next pictures.  

I had framed them under glass for the District Art Show & Senior Awards Banquet Nite,

and didn't want to take them apart to shoot the pix.

So sadly there is glare.

This next one was done by junior Shreya Sheth.

I believe she chose a perle cotton that had rich looking multi-colored thread for a great contrast.

The kids had a choice to seal their leaves with Modge Podge or to just leave them natural.

Coating them made them much less likely to break.

Her are two more of Will's leaves.

I so love how he thought to incorporate the beads.

And I'm pretty sure that hole was already there in the bottom leaf.

This wasn't an easy assignment.  The kids broke many leaves before they got the hang of it.

All these leaves were collected with my dog on her walks both up at the cabin and down below.

Senior Amber Wu put together this gentle trio.

Love the asymmetry of it.

And lastly senior Hazel Cruz took a completely different and more difficult approach.

She strung threads between the breaks in one section.

You can see this in the close up below.

Spectacular work all of you!

Thank you for trying this project out for me,

and for creating such beauty from windfall.

My Work

Inspired by the work of Susanna Bauer I began my hunt for the perfect magnolia leaf.  I found it in the shape of a heart on my mini magnolia we planted this spring on our patio.  My craftsmanship needs work, my holes I punched are a bit shaky, but I really enjoyed working this out.  

I pressed the leaf under pressure for a couple of days then used an awl to poke my holes.  I've been saving some cotton string that I indigo dyed in our Glennis Dolce workshop last school year, found my grandmother's smallest metal crochet hook and crocheted around the leaf.  Then I looked for another string that would compliment the piece and did a bit of edging.  You are looking at the back above and the front side below. 

I also tried working on a rubber tree leaf.  I pressed it flat as well but after I hung the finished piece on our Xmas tree at school it really started to dry up and wrap.  I actually really liked the effect.

I tried one more leaf since, using another small magnolia leaf and actually cut this one into the shape of a heart, so that I had a crocheted heart ornament for each of my children this Christmas.

Thank you Susanna for your inspiration!

Susanne Bauer - Mixed Media Artist

Another new inspiration that I found thru Art Propelled is mixed media artist Susanna Bauer.  Again, her work is right up my alley.  She finds leafs, twigs and rocks and turns them into intricate works of art with her fibers and needle skills.  I recently purchased a leaf from her very much like the one above.  It also arrived from Fed Ex in a similar condition to the piece I posted yesterday after paying an enormous shipping and handling fee, for Susanna lives in Cornwall, England, and the package had to travel a long, long way.  Fed Ex, let's get it together!  

I borrowed these excerpts off Susanna's website with her permission:

"I go walking

I find a leaf, a piece of driftwood - or sometimes it finds me.

I take it home and its new life begins.  

This website is about the work that started alongside my career as a modelmaker.

I have worked for the television and film industry for over 16 years, making objects like King Arthur's chalice, cheeses for Wallace and Gromit, miniature buildings, robots and spaceships.

I have always been driven by a great love of making and working with my hands and over the years have acquired a broad knowledge of materials and techniques.

Most of my pieces are small sculptural objects often based on found natural materials. I like giving time to the inconspicuous things that surround us and often go unnoticed, paying attention to small details and the tactile quality of objects. Appropriating traditional craft techniques like weaving and crochet as a means of sculpture brings a contemplative element to the development of my work. I am interested in unusual combinations of materials, the experimentation with fragility and strength and the individual stories that evolve and shape themselves in the process of making.

I was born 1969 in Bavaria, Germany, and have lived in England since 1996 where I used to divide my time between London and Cornwall.

Since 2010 the West Penwith area of Cornwall has become my permanent home and inspiration for my work."

Susanna Bauer