How Does One Record an Ephemeral Experience?

Earlier this semester, I decided to create ornamental patterns based on the documentation of flora and/or natural structures I encounter while spending time in a particular landscape or traveling from one place to another. At the time, I wasn't really sure what form the work would take. I started collecting leaf and pod specimens documenting the time and location of where I found them so that when the time came I would have a lot of source material to choose from. I also started taking pictures of patterns I found in nature, hoping to incorporate them somehow into the work. 

Although sand has been a great medium to depict my memories of landscapes, I do not believe it is an appropriate medium to record impressions of current, day to day experiences.  The idea behind this work is to document ephemera found in the landscape with a medium that has personal significance. Unlike the sand paintings, it is not intended to replicate an actual landscape. I also wanted to employ a medium that gives the impression that the work may or may not be old, but without the permanence of paint. I thought an appropriate medium should imply fragility. It should look like it has been around a long time, but in fact, only a trace of it might remain in the future.

As I spent some time considering what the best medium for this project might be, I thought about coffee grounds. For the past several months, I've been collecting coffee to use in sand paintings.  I occurred to me that coffee grounds might be a more appropriate medium for several reasons:

1. Coffee is personal -- the medium represents a ritual that I engage in daily.
2. Coffee is ephemeral -- it also represents something that I enjoyed for a short time.
3. Coffee comes from a plant that is cultivated by humans and processed for consumption.
4. Textile art references feminine craft traditions.
5. Batik, in particular starch-resist batik techniques, reference African craft traditions. 

My first attempt at this new direction depicts a pattern I created based on observations from the recent Super Blood Moon. I used 3, 12" x 36" cotton panels.

 To my delight, I found this technique to be very process driven. I started with a drawing, transferred it onto a cotton panel with chalk, filled in the pattern with resist, let it dry, rubbed the panel with a paste I made out of coffee grounds and water, let it set for a day, rinse the fabric to remove coffee grounds and resist, let dry. I researched and used 3 different resist techniques: glue gel, soy wax, and rice starch. The glue gel was easy to apply and remove. The final results were nice, but the edges were a little too soft for my taste. The soy wax resist required the additional step of ironing the fabric to remove the wax. This technique yielded a patter with crisp edges that I found appealing but the wax is much more difficult to remove than the other two techniques. I'm currently working on the rice paste resist which takes a bit more effort to create and apply. I had to boil the rice until it started breaking down, blend it, and apply it to the fabric using my fingers instead of a brush. It also has a much longer drying time. I will report the final results as soon as I'm done.

I'm not sure what to make of this new direction. The only thing I'm sure of is that it needs more work, including which resist method to focus on, how to thoroughly remove the soy wax, resolving how to treat its edges (for now I'm attempting to fray the edges a bit and trim them to intensify an aged look) and how to hang it. One thing that I found very intriguing about the process is the fact that it involves the erasure of all of the actual marks/brushstrokes made by my hand on the panel. In a sense it is a negative painting, with my marks being washed or ironed away in the process.