This is a piece that started to develop when my husband, Chris, gave me some metal out of his studio's wood stove.
It's the cutting strip from a celophane box. I had some bark that had already been prepared with paint & encaustic and going through the offering bowl had my creative juices going. So I have a general layout & now this piece is in the beginning stages of preparing the background.
Natures Offering was inspired by an artist that I've been following, Bridgette Guerzon Mills. I'm drawn to encaustic painting because of its natural elements. It's the reason why I wanted to become a bee keeper...little did I know that the wax is the smallest portion of a bee harvest.
It took quite a while to complete because as usual my pieces develop over time. I almost never start out with a vision of a completed piece.
I started with canvas that I distressed using a razor blade & needle nose pliers. At first I was very delicate but as my confidence built I had a heaver hand with the razor. Then I added plasterwrap that is used in sculpting. The pieces were a little flimsy so I backed the canvas with more plaster. I added some oil painted accents along with some encaustic gesso & then I covered everything with encaustic wax.
I love anything rustic and raw looking. A couple of weeks ago my daughter came home for the weekend and we spent some time in the woods. She was able to 'shuck' the bark off of a dead tree and it worked perfectly for my hanger. The bark is very strange and spongy and I've been eying it for quite some time. I was so excited to have it and that weekend happened to be quite windy. I had quite a hard time getting my bark to the car without it blowing away in bits.
Special thanks to Jesika for shucking the bark and to Keith Stewart for saving me the hornets nest. I know he thinks I'm crazy but he's a fantastic enabler.
A while ago I bought some spun alpaca from a friend that is lucky enough to own 13 wonderful alpacas. She made a wonderful cat bed and I fell in love with the finished felted bowl she made. So I just asked her to sell me enough so that I could make my own bowl.
I tried to crochet but I wasn't remembering it quite as easily as I thought I would...nothing like riding a bike. I couldn't seem to pick it up so I asked Jesika to knit me the bowl.
She finished it just before Christmas & we felted it together in the kitchen sink. I guess I should cut the tail off...
I wanted it to be an offering bowl. When I'm over at the property I find little treasures that nature has to offer & I've been collecting them and stashing them all over the studio. Anything from feathers to bugs to bones. So when I was cleaning the studio the other day...I collected some of the items for my Offering Bowl.
