ALERT:
This video contains flickering lights and very bright colors.
(Flashy Christmas tree ornaments, blinking traffic headlights and slow moving color blocks in luminescent, contrasting saturation.)
The whole thing was shot on the 23rd of December, 2014. From a window of a “design station” (as in design hotel) with a floating lounge overlooking Pacific, then at a Christmas “illumination” event, where the whole town square was lit too bright and over saturated.
The sound, I took it off a webcast at slooh.com for Ursid Meteor shower that was taking place on the same day. I recall it said was recorded in Canary Islands.
Happy Holidays everyone, wish you all a wonderful time. Be safe, keep warm (if applicable), and stay cool. Cheers.
Just as salmons are swimming up the stream, my 5 swatches they had returned from the specialists, with dye particles steam set, settled between fabric grains. (What swatches? Refer to the previous post please.)
The photo above is one of the swatches – number 2, the first try at the “line drawing” – getting a quick bath in dye-fixing liquid.
In the following video I included a short footage of me washing off the excess dye in special solution, tap water and magic portion that prevents dye from staining the rest of the fabric.
Also in the video is the sound of salmons inching up the shallows of the river – the same river as I frequented to rendezvous with spider lilies just a month ago – if you listen carefully you’d hear them making splashes.
Like the lilies, they are here earlier this year. Well what’s up Nature may I ask, but then again, what do I know to question their timings.
As for the dyed lilies on the swatches, the color – red – came out brighter post-setting, sorta suitable for the budding of the project.
ALERT:
This video contains flickering lights.
(Sunlight reflections on stream surface.)
October 08, 2014. On the day of the special full moon, I finished making five dye sample swatches. Each drawn on a different fabric, all silk, holds dye particles in its own way.
The one below is on ivory-colored silk chiffon georgette, so far my most favorite, quite unexpectedly so, as I thought it’d be too fluid even for the faintest touch with a brush-point.
Twenty days in September spent beside red spider lilies had left me with a gift that seems to be growing on its own. Just as the project itself has a life of its own. Last year I drew the lilies off photographs, dragging my feet at times as I study their complex shapes on a series of pencil drawings. Weary, I’d put my pencil down, on, off and so forth. When I return to it though, I found myself, once and again, in ideas and skills, at a place further ahead from where I left off.
Fairies, has got to be. The red lilies and their hired hands. They followed me home and started building an engine, a gift to the repeat visitor and her adoring eyes.
The lilies were here only for a short time; the rural landscape feels even more muted since. But those fairies they never quit, day after day, working on the motor that is fueled by my remembering the special tone of red. The spider lily red.
The blue photo above was taken on the night of total lunar eclipse, shortly after the moon rose above the horizon, just a few hours before the show time. I omitted the moon in the photo but trust me it was there, sprinkling glitters on the darkened surface of the Big Fluidity.
The swatches are about to be sent off to specialists in Tokyo for steam-setting very soon. They are made as the first step for “Spider Lily Red”, the latest addition to my dyed threads series. You can view the progress of the project as well as the Lilies – the muse, sans fairies, in these posts.
For last two weeks, my priority #1 has been to spend as much time with spider lilies, bloom for a short while each autumn.
This year they are back earlier, and seemingly more in numbers.
The blossom has been my muse for sometime now, and here’s why, shown in pictures.
The above two drawings are both dye sample swatches, from top the completed #2 and in-progress #3. On different fabrics – both silk, with slight difference in dye absorption, lines bolder on the #3 just because. This style of drawing is a new trick I am trying out since the above #2 but has been on my mind for much longer.
As for the petals, I couldn’t find a thing to add. Examining them closely somehow grew me muted.
Lately, much of my evenings I spend visiting fireflies.
Early summer rice fields, the plants are already at their full-height. They host a small family of the delicate insects come alive each evening as Twilight falls.
In the pitch dark their fluorescent yellow lights draw weightless lines visible only to my mind’s eye.
Flashing on, off, on, off….I stand amidst the invisible web of Organic Elegance and say to myself:
I get it, it’s that Pulse again!!
Just then in distance a Wave breaks one more time, with its most wholesome assertion Sea replies:
it’s our Heartbeat honey, yours and mine.
The Night then trembles, suspended in time.
Photos are of various beach finds and a dye test swatch for my “Spider Lily Red” series.
The last photo is of a new pencil drawing, incomplete, of a petal of the said lily, for the said series, trying something different from how I usually painted with dyes.
Additional note on April 10, 2019:
This post was originally titled as “Bounds melt. Time stands still.”.
For the reason I do not disclose (i.e. not that interesting to you) I removed this post from this site for a while.
I revived this under a new title and with revised text on April 09-10, 2019. The reason being:
The red lily petal dyed on a silk (the photo in the middle) was the first dye test for this project “Spider Lily Red”. I painted in the same way as all the previous Dyed Threads series (example). And it didn’t quite work.
The bottom drawing is what I came up with as the alternative. The rest of photos are the main sources of inspirations. The drawing – of the same petal, had progressed into 2 part series (references: drawing 1, and drawing 2) – are both completed now. I thought it would be kinda neat to show you how it all started.
On my way to apple store, London UK somewhere, fully lit and ready for Holidays (top), and macro shots of vintage pheasant, preserved perfectly, a gift given to me earlier this year (thank you).
Best Wishes for the last bit of 2013 and beyond.
Just wanted to see how a longish title would look.
As a research for my upcoming dye piece, I’ve been taking way too many photos of spider lily blossoms. Through this practice ideas seem to emerge. Well, they better.
Here I picked the best of, all taken just recently.
Yesterday I heard the last cicadas sing.
And look who arrived on the scene just about the same time.
Studying the shapes of the subject is not the most exciting phase of the dye project. Sluggishness sets in more often than I wish to admit. The insect scene outside shifting from my beloved cicadas to crickets doesn’t help neither.
But before I had a chance to zombify myself, spider lilies turned up, slightly earlier this year, in much like a bull fight fashion.
(Red works for me too!)
Resuscitated, now I’m back on a river-side path where I fell in love with those lilies a year ago. A lady with a dog greeted me back (“I was wondering whether you’d show up this year”). Nice to be remembered as a lily-fanatic with a camera.
This year summer arrived late. Right when it did, I headed west in my little Honda. Along the coast of the Great Channel of Far East (formally known as Japan Sea), until I hit the region called San-in, “in the shadow of mountains”.
I’ve taken city street, cutting through “Japan Alps” at midnight (not the smartest idea), so as to really hear cicadas sing, millions of trillions of them. Each and every mount tall and small buzzed like it is a space craft about to take off, sound that goes well with the blazing summer sun.
Beaches of San-in have minimum dose of concrete holding them in. Mounds of thriving woods in sharp angles and rocky little picturesque islands grow out of glassy teal sea. They perch at the edge of water, appearing wild, but also somewhat reserved. Polite yet unrestricted, the harmonious anarchy.
While treading water impressed, ocean decided to rush into my snout, sending an army of microorganisms as plenty as cicadas in summer hills, on a mission to unlock my senses from inside out. Thanks to them the buzzing intensified, and for a few moments I felt I could almost ‘get’ what their song is all about.
From top:
1 and 2 – Tango Peninsula, Kyoto
3 – Yasugi Beach, Hyogo
4 – Aizu South, Fukushima
5 – Kasumi, Hyogo
All photographed earlier this month.
Heartfelt “Thank You!!” to all of you generous souls I encountered during my trip.
Summer dawn, what’s not to love. It’s here today, not to stay for long.
Up the hill, or down to the beach. Will drive empty streets. Watch the light sneak into the pre-dawn quiet.
I’m the sinister figure looking into your rice field, or up at the sky with my back facing the sun asleep right below the horizon.
What’s she doing out there, which planet is she from, she waiting for a ride back home, oh look, she’s talking, to her friends in the sky, or spirits of frogs ran over during the night…
In fact I’d be talking to myself, can I just not move for a moment or two, which ain’t audible to rural early risers, not until I laugh fairly loudly at my own sloth; I hate tripod.
All the images were shot in late June, 2013 – sometime around the solstice, by yours truly the staying upper, camera hand held.
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