b mused

August's Postcard of the Month

Chicory.

My commute to the pool (3-4x/wk) takes me past an stretch of early flowering Chicory.

I've always liked the looks of these spiky things. And all the mid-summer greens and yellows that the blues spark against. I dug up this photo of a pastel I did (1986?) of what I remembered as being roadside Chicory.

Or, SO I THOUGHT! HA! It SURE looks a lot more like IRISES to me!! Could there have been wild roadside IRIS there and NOT Chicory as I've remembered it (SO avidly clear) all these years?! Malleable mind.

I also came across pix of this IRIS :/ pastel used as a backdrop for the Sparrowhawk b-day cake that I made for my friend (who'd acquired the married surname, 'Sparrow').

I remember making* this cake very fast - like, in an afternoon (??!). But! Given the Iris/ Chicory biz, I'm sure it's more likely someone else altogether actually made it...

So... Back to the Chicory muse...

I didn't have any really good Chicory-blue papers. So, during the heat wave of early July**, I took advantage of quick drying times in the sun, and made 4 batches of paper.

Some green paper - second batch with added Dill and Asparagus fronds; and some Chicory blue (or so I was hoping) paper, with some Chicory petals in it:

I also made a pale, green-y yellow. All the papers dried to much less brilliant hues than looked so promising in the vats of watery pulp! They still worked pretty effectively though.

Once, I'd settled on a Chicory tableau, I started finding it EVERYWHERE I frequented!

Here, in front of my mailbox:

At the outside door to the studio:

I forgot to snap one of the grocery store patches (of which, of course, there were several), but some of the very best stretches turned out to be right on either side of our driveway!***

And, lastly, the day I mailed out this month's postcards, I spotted some outside my mother's apartment:

So, assaulted by theme confirmation, I started in on some loose prototypes - using my new papers:

Turns out, most of my struggle in finessing my Chicory impression was in trying to figure out how to effectively render the impression of Chicory stems - without involving the intricate placement of slivers of paper. So I made 5 new (from top l., clockwise) 'stamps':

And played around with those and a few others:

And finally was happiest with repetitions of the small one I'd already made:

I also used this lovely Queen Anne's Lace-y/Mustard Weed-y type stamp to perk up the yellows behind the Chicory:

Fixin's (some of the):

Included were small pieces of this delicate, speckled sage-y green paper that my forever bosom bud - Joanne Vecchiola**** - made:

STEPS!

There are photos of only 25 of the THIRTY-NINE actual steps! I only took one shot after I'd placed all 13 blue Chicory flowers, and then forgot to take one when I ink-stamped the yellow... And! Actually! If I count a step for each of the 5 threads that I laid down, it's FORTY-THREE actual steps! (Yes, the math is right - I did take one photo of all 5 threads.) That would have been a substantial little flip book!

And then the dilemma! Should I just leave the card like this? Without the Chicory? There was considerable enthusiasm (including my own) for the composition to be done at this step (middle card does have blues):