Processing...

There has been a lot of processing going on lately. In my Digital Tools for Artists class, we have been printing on different surfaces, including fabric and thin aluminum sheet. Above is an example of some aluminum sheet that I printed an image on, which was manipulated in Photoshop.

I decided to see what would happen if I the printed aluminum in my hydraulic press to create a pillow form. My concern was that, because we are using ink-jet printers, the image would warp or crack or tear in some way. On the first round through, there was no warping or cracking of the image, but I did push the press too far and the metal cracked along the bottom.

On the second round through, I put soap onto the underside of the die, so that the metal could move further up into it without cracking. I was able to get a deeper press, but the soap did affect the image, as can be seen above.

 

Here I was just playing around with piercing the metal, imagining it as a series of hollow forms.

I may choose to do more of these, and cold connect them into a chunky necklace or series of brooches. I was actually imagining a series of them with digitally fabricated plants...fantasy plants, if you will, and adding different media.

This is some cloth that I printed an image on to. I cut out a piece to try to incorporate it into a metal form but it didn't work. I would love to fiddle with this some more, once again imagining pillow forms but sewn with different patterns and images.

Another idea is to print over various already-made fabrics. I think the original pattern showing through whatever is printed seems like it could be interesting.

Thanks for reading!