Wolf Coming Into View

Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis has some beautiful art manhole covers created by Kate Burke. All the covers depict an aspect of Minnesota Nature. A while ago I contacted Kate and got her gracious permission to use her manhole covers and portray them in mixed media.  You can see the original covers at Kate Burke's website.

I have been planning a series on the Nicollet Mall manhole covers for a few years.  Thinking about how to do it to get the effect I want. This year it has become clear and I started gathering the bits and supplies I would need.  The first one I am working on is the wolf. I had already done the lino cut, printed it onto the fabric I had dyed just for this project. Today I put the "metal" circle around the cover. This is made with a mixture of metal leaf from The Thread Studio in Australia. Beautiful stuff!!!

First I ironed a circle of fusible around the "wolf", piled the metal leaf onto it, put my ironing cloth over it and ironed it down.  Then I burnished it with a medium stiff paint brush.

I am posting this on Nina Marie's Off The Wall Friday!
Now onto the next step!

Productive Day

Just checked on my ToDo/Done list and it has been a very productive day!!

Block printed 3 wolves, 3 apples, 3 rice 

Cleaned off Island 

Prepped Brown Snow-dyes 

Cut muslin for an upcoming art piece

Decided on images for that piece

Cut muslin for Pecans – Sapling and marked off boundaries 

Chose concept for SAQA Text Speak 

Set Snow-dyes for batching 

Evaluated Show/Exhibit CFE schedule 

Stitched first piece to Up Close and Personal 

Overdyed green experimental piece 

Blogged and blogged and blogged

Here is my latest on the Minneapolis Manhole Cover Project which is one of my three series I'm working on this year.

Block cutting completed on Wolf

Background fabric (a snow-dyed piece made especially for this project. Seemed appropriate for a Minnesota project!)

Wolf printed onto fabric with Speedball Block Printing Ink.

I use an oil base printing ink so Woflie has to dry overnight

While I had the ink all out and ready...I also printed the Apple and Rice manhole covers for this project and two other prints of all three of them for two other projects.  Now I'll be ahead on those!!