Soft Objects

Pillows and throws are essential elements of a comfortable interior, at least during the winter. Even in the hot summers in west Texas, I keep a fleece throw on my bed. Around 5 a.m. is when I either have to pull it over my feet and legs or actually crawl under my covers; otherwise, from bedtime until then I'm just lying there with a fan.

In decorating as well as making an interior space comfortable, pillows are one of the easiest pops of color you can include. Because one of my modalities as an artist is printmaking, I enjoy silkscreening original designs onto fabrics and then sewing them into useful items.

I just recently moved out of a storage unit I rented from my arrival in Texas in January of 2022 until the beginning of August 2024. I don't even have a storage shed on my property for this stuff, so I really need to get a move on in building one. In the meantime, it hasn't rained much this monsoon, so a tarp and a few plastic bags have more or less sufficed.

Most of what I was storing amounts to art supplies and decor items. I even shipped most of it out here! The boxes were lost and recovered, and I ended up getting a refund due to their being misplaced en route. It's like a treasure hunt or party diving into them.

Unfortunately, my frog silkscreen got paper stuck to it when it rained and the paper bag it was in melded to the screen. I'm fairly sure it can be washed/rubbed off in water. This design was actually a sharpie sketch I did once while volunteering for a group show in Portland, Oregon. An acquaintance noticed it and asked if he could make a silkscreen of it for me. Never having worked with silkscreening at that time, and surprised he thought my sketch was good enough to make into tee shirts, I carefully tore the frog drawing from the paper covering the table where I'd been stationed. A couple of weeks later he presented me with a rectangular screen, and there was my sketch.

I later took a course at an art center in Ashland, Oregon, where I learned the process for creating my own silkscreens. I really enjoyed coming up with new designs for my screens, two in total, each about 18"x2' or so and containing multiple designs.

I used these to create a set of table linens. You can see my post about these HERE.