I finally have a second to breathe after the AMAZING Camano Island and Art-a-Whirl art weekends. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to talk with me about my art and process, and to those who took some of my work home with them as well – both events had an enormous amount of options from artists all across the art spectrum, and I am honored by all of those who chose one of my prints, cards, magnets, or originals in the sea of beautiful artwork to see and purchase.

For those who have been watching my Instagram, they have seen this piece some along since I started working on it in November 2018. One thing that I always try to do is to work within common framing ratios – when someone purchases a print, it is important to me that they can get a standard frame and do not bring it home to realize they have to spend a small fortune on custom framing.

So for the Camano Island show, I wanted to do a panorama view of driftwood of the coast of the area. To keep it within the standard  ratio I decided to try something new and add a border. I started the piece before I knew what the border would be. I had originally planned on some sort of quilting pattern, but I wanted one that had some meaning to my family. Sunnyshore Studios celebrates my family legacy of artists, and my grandma has a story for what seems like every road or plot of land in the area. This view is from my father’s cousin’s property that I explored on an earlier trip to Washington, and I wanted to continue to work with celebrating the generational story. I asked my grandma for any quilts she had and I searched for quilt patterns that referenced “Day” (my maiden name), but nothing was clicking.

In February, I flew out to Portland and was helping my parents go through their home that they have lived in for 30 years. One of the things we came across was a partially-finished embroidered tablecloth that my mom had worked on years ago. Unfortunately, the pattern had been accidently washed out before it could be completed and she couldn’t part with it at the time, so it got packed away with the other tablecloths. I really liked the pattern, and cut off the finished corner and took it with me to adapt for this piece. While I don’t actually embroider in the traditional sense, I like the idea of paying homage to the deep history of fiber arts. This adapted pattern also looks like a sun, tying to the rising sun across the coast in the image and my family name.

I spend so much time with these large pieces and it is a weird feeling when they are completed – a mix of relief, excitement, and awkwardness because now I don’t know what to do with my hands. But here it is! If you haven’t yet, check out the time lapse in the earlier post of me working on a portion of this piece. Now on to the next….