Aquatic Exercise

Since the main focus of our next FANE group show at the Mahopac Library is color, I've been playing around with my current favorite, this lovely aqua. The title of the piece has to include the name of the color, so I'm calling these "Aquatic Exercise I and II".

I made "Aquatic Exercise I: waterfall" at right first, by weaving strips of sheer fabrics through a piece of painted cheese cloth. At first I planned on hanging it horizontally, but then thought it might look cool with the woven strips either dangling down like fringe, or curled up like the bottom of a waterfall, which led me to the idea of hanging it vertically. Although I like the colors and the thin ribbons of copper running through the piece, I'm not sure it's having the impact I hoped. I want to stitch it to the canvas so the top edge hangs over the top of the canvas, as if the waterfall is pouring out of the wall, but I don't think that will work for the show, because it will leave a four-inch space at the bottom of the canvas and will disrupt the unity of the show.

So I thought I'd play around with my next idea, which was cutting free-form wavy strips of the various sheer fabrics and layering them over each other. Here is the result of that experiment:

I think I like this one better although I didn't expect to (I'm calling it "Aquatic Exercise II: wave theory"). It was very meditative to create, from the gentle cutting of the strips to the stitching of all those undulating lines. I hope it's also calming and meditative for the viewer. It was fairly simple to create and didn't require any special techniques or materials, but maybe this simplicity is also part of its beauty. I'm still debating whether it's finished (does it need anything else?) and if I should leave the edges straight or try to make them wavy to fit the rest of the piece (any comments?)