Marbling at Art in Action

In July I spent a day at Art in Action, one of my favourite events of the year. It is held over 4 days in the beautiful grounds of Waterperry House near Oxford. There are some truly superb works on display and as well as watching artists and crafts people at work there is a chance to ask questions and several opportunities to try something new.

This year I tried a taster a marbling taster with Hikmet Barutçugil from Istanbul. I wanted to do a tulip and the results are shown above. I have done a bit of marbling on silk as described in a previous post and would like to do tulips on silk.

Hikmet works on silk as well as paper and also does yardage.

The photos below show Hikmet's wife demonstrating some of the steps involved. 

1 For marbling on paper natural dyes are used. These are splashed or carefully dripped onto a soft gel  like layer made from water and gum arabic.

2 The dyes are manipulated in various ways. The second photo shows the pattern floating on the gel .

 3 a monoprint is made by lowering a sheet of paper onto the surface then carefully pulling it off.

Each artist /crafts person contributes what they consider their best piece for a display that fills a large marquee. Hikmet won the Best in the Best of the Best at Art in Action last year. Shown below.

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