I find the words ‘window’ and ‘door’ rather mundane. I can easily visualize any number of them I’ve encountered in the last week or month and all them are little more than a practical means to an end. But for some reason the word ‘portal’ has an un-worldly connotation for me. I imagine invisible gateways to a time and space dimension other than our own. If they exist would they be fixed in time or moving in space?
This piece is all about random patterns. I started with several dark fabrics to randomly piece a background. I added in one fabric with colors I knew I could somehow use in another layer. Next, I applied wonky circles all over with white acrylic paint.
At this point I added machine stitching using a pale grey thread to make random arches across all four sides. I wanted to continue with the circle idea, and add a different texture, so next I hand cut rings out of two shades of silver colored silk. Then more stitching.
It still needed more. I found an iridescent tulle fabric and cut our four rectangles of different sizes and stitched them down....randomly. My last of the six layers of pattern was to add flat iridescent braiding to enhance the four rectangles of tulle. That layer echoes the bits of color in the first background layer. Somehow I knew I would get back to them. With that I knew I was done.
This piece was fun to do. I started out with a vague idea of where I was going and then let the piece take over and lead me through the process.