Stain 36

Stain 36, the final work in the Stains series for the foreseeable future, is now on display on the back of the Rountree Gallery in Platteville, Wisconsin. The piece is a 5ft X 10ft mural and, like the other works in the series, was made mostly by spraying acrylic paint through a crochet doily. Usually, the Stains series are created using found antique or vintage doilies, but because of the size of the substrate, I crocheted a 5ft diameter doily using 13 strands of crochet thread and a size 7mm crochet hook. A couple of my 'studio supervisors' can be seen checking my progress. I generally don't need to block the things I crochet, but given the size, I thought I should this time. I accomplished that using some shish kabob skewers and my back yard.

For Stain 36, I ended up using acrylic spray paint instead of acrylic from a tube. I hadn't had much experience using spray paint in general and wasn't sure if the product I found was going to work for my needs, so I ordered some colors and began making some test samples, which also gave me a feel for how to handle the spray paint. I was happy with the results, so ordered the colors for the actual mural and whipped up a couple more test pieces to see how the colors layered and what order I should spray colors in.

Feeling confident enough to proceed, I moved on to the actual mural.

After the paint dried, I went back and outlined sections to create the composition.

Finally, layers of gloss medium were applied and the work was installed on August 13th, 2021.