I've been donating one or two pieces each year to the SIUE Friends of Art Auction for the last ten years beginning when I entered grad school. Three years ago I was invited to join the board of directors for FOA which organizes the auction. Since 1980 proceeds from art donations have funded the visiting artist program bringing scores of local, national and international artists to the campus in every area of art. The money has also gone to fund an art scholarship, prize money for undergrad and grad shows, a high school art competition and the auction competition, the Lovejoy Library fund, conferences, travel stipends, student art organizations, the Mexica project, and ARTEAST.
Grad school was a fantastic experience for me, coming after 25 years of teaching art at the high school level. The experience was greatly enhanced by the incredible number of visiting artists I got to meet so I will gladly donate to support the cause.
I'm donating the piece pictured above. I've also posted the image under the event calendar for the auction at the right. The piece is called Sunfish (c 2008) It measures 77" long by 45" wide. Hanging brackets allow the silk to float away from the wall about 4". The blue comes from elderberries, the other colors and design were made with the rust process.
BTW, students, alumni and friends of SIUE Art & Design and artists in the community are encouraged to donate. Original art donations are juried the day of the auction. Students can compete for 5 prizes totaling $1250 and non-students have a chance to win a $200 prize!
The entire auction catalog will be online sometime after March 28 at www.siueFriendsOfArt.com. I'll post the updated link when it is up and running for 2010. You can also view the donations at the 6 PM preview the night of the auction. The live auction will start at 7 PM.
I grew up on a farm where most of the equipment was held together with bailing wire. I wish I had some of those old tools and machine parts of my dad's to rust with now. Still, I have amassed a nice collection of iron. I've bought, begged for, found and been given some very interesting things. The lovely twisty thing casting a shadow on my newly painted shed is an auger I bought in Greenville which yielded some great scarf designs last fall. One of my proudest purchases a few years ago at a local junk yard was six spiral toothy wheels, seen above, that were once part of a rotary hoe. The kind man at the yard disassembled the machinery so I could buy just the spirals. I've used them many times as in the photo below.
This shot was taken just after I'd picked up the silk from the work table. The blue and magenta came from elderberries and poke berries tightly packed and mashed around the hub of each wheel. The black resulted from the chemical reaction between tea leaves, fermented walnut juice, vinegar and the iron. Both tea and walnut juice serve as mordants, but even with that protection, this piece was cured in a covered galvanized can for over two months before washing to preserve the wonderful blue. The finished piece which hangs vertically is called Pearls of Wisdom. It's over 100 inches long by 45" wide.
