Season’s Greetings, (Version 2), Verso, copyright 2023 Douglas Stockdale –
I came up with what I thought would be a vice nice version of a holiday card for this year that would incorporate my latest interest in hand-sewing my prints. As you might imagine, my real intent and interest was in the design and sewn pattern on the front of the print.
Regretfully, my first attempt did not work out so well as my French knots looked pretty wimpy and after rephotographing the resulting hand-sewn print, the visual results were less than stunning. So I used that first print to experiment with my French knots and I found out if I doubled these up, the visual results were in the ball park. Cool, so perhaps not a total waste of time.
With my second version, I now had a much better idea of my colors and pattern and I was a lot more methodical in my hand-sewing process. And as anticipated, the resulting second hand-sewn print looked wonderful! (Nope, I am not going to reveal the results in this post, that will come later next week…sort of keep the suspense going a bit).
When I was preparing to re-photograph this final print, I decided to make a few notes on the back (verso), which is when I took the time to really study the resulting sewn pattern of this print. Wow. The hand-sewn pattern was an interesting abstraction of lines and negative spaces that also suggested my subject on the reverse side. I had not set out to create this abstraction, nevertheless, there it was. In fact, even if I wanted to create such an abstract sewn pattern, I am not sure that I could have completed something as interesting as this. This piece reminds me of the 1930’s Surrealist in which they attempted to create irrational art, such as drawing or painting with your eyes closed, as an investigation into dreams and the subconscious. Not attempting to actually create anything artistic, yet, if remaining open to the results, it might be pretty interesting.
Honestly, if I had not made a commitment to someone else, there is a pretty good chance I would have used the back-side of this print for this year’s holiday card. Also debating on the sale of this artwork, thus the buyer would essentially be obtaining a two-fer-one artwork. Nice.
Make every day an Earth Day
Doug
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Book development workshop:
Update: Developing a Creative Photo Book, on Zoom with SouthEast Center for Photography (SEC4P), January 20 & 21st and 27th, & 28th, 2024, from 10 AM – 1 PM, Eastern Standard Time (EST).
New: Book Making with Douglas Stockdale, on Zoom with Medium Photo, March 16-17 & 23-24th (4 sessions, two consecutive weekends), 2024, from 9am-12pm (Pacific Standard Time).
Artist book available:
The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, an artist book from Singular Images Press, 2022, $60.00 (CA sales tax for those residing in the USA) plus shipping expenses. Message me douglas.stockdale.artist@gmail.com
Singular Images 