Having had so much fun earlier in the year with a torn paper collage of a face, I decided I should try it with cut fabric scraps. I watched the DVD by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer "All About Faces" and this is something she did, only using larger pieces and with a much freer hand. She recommended using batik fabrics. I've got a lot of fat quarters of batiks. All of us who love fabrics have little stashes of scraps, left over from other projects. One year my sister in law let me go through her scrap basket and take whatever I wanted - it was a fabulous stash. I'm still using them. In fact I think there are some bits in this piece that came from her basket. One little bit is from my art pal Jackie's stash. We used to mail bits and pieces to each other. The fleshiest tones are from Diane Ferguson in Texas who hand dyed a silk scarf years ago, which she sent to me. Sorry Diane, but I just had to cut into it for this. I drew the face with charcoal on watercolor paper, and then started digging for scraps. Then placing them to complete it. I used liquid gel medium to hold them. When I was done it was a full face, but then when I went to see how it would look in a mat, I found this black one with a smaller opening and a lot of black mat. That's they way I have it frames now, with only part of the face showing. This was taken through glass with reflections, so use your imagination! It's the best I could do. Thanks to friends and family for your contributions to this piece.
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