A Little Surprise For the Re-gifter...

Detail of the front of my entry.

Detail of the back of "Ravens Lend A Helping Hand" my piece for the ANHC Health Center Hero Lab Coat Project

The Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center will be celebrating their grand opening in their brand new, expanded facility tomorrow! This new facility doubles their primary care capacity and expands their support facilities such as labs and radiology departments. Access to primary care is one of the most critical needs among the medically underserved and uninsured in Anchorage, Alaska. As part of their grand opening celebrations, artists were requested to use blank lab coats (provided by ANHC) as their "canvas" with finished works to be auctioned off as a fundraiser to help meet the goal of finishing the facility to better serve the healthcare needs of our community.

My white lab coat was immediately turned cyan using RIT Dye and hand painting with acrylic and fabric paints.

 I wanted the coat to have a tie-dye effect with the bottom and edging on the sleeves to be a bit darker so I hand painted and "dipped" those into a small bowl of acrylic fabric paint. Once the coat dried I heat-set the paint using my iron.

Using my original Raven illustrated designs, I sized, then drew the birds onto various black print fabrics and used the applique method for application.

Because I wanted a bit of realism for the medical instruments, I used digital images printed onto Transfer Artist Paper and then applied the images with fusible web to the lab coat.

Front of the Lab Coat -the "Ravens Lend A helping Hand" are popping up out of the pockets and hold a Reflex Tool and an X-Ray. The RAvens on the back are wearing a Stethoscope and have another Reflex tool -for everyone's FUNNY BONE! These were done using royalty free images on Transfer Artist Paper. 

After all the fabric components and digital images were ironed on using fusible web, I used various colors of thread to free motion stitching for the final embellishment.

Viola!

From the ANHC Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/anchoragehealth :

Above: "What an incredible and creative lab coat. This lab coat has nitrile exam gloves as fringe, x-ray film logos, and white gauze accents. Catherine Joan Petersen is one talented artist!"

Below: "Look at this incredible design from renowned Alaskan artist, Barbara Lavallee. Artists across our community are using their talents for the Health Center Heroes Campaign, by designing lab coats. A huge thank you to artists who are helping build a healthier Anchorage. We love it!"

So... speaking of fellow artist Barbara Lavallee -her Lab Coat is featured above on the ANHC Facebook page I've included, she let me have her leftover fabric paints that I used for the sunflower's detail work on my Lab Coat -thanks Barbara.  I love her work. Barbara also has a very successful commercial art business and her illustrations are featured on a number of things including CALENDARS.  Please don’t judge me gentle readers, but under certain circumstances I am a re-gifter. Over the holiday I WAS going to re-gift this wonderful 2012 Coffee Klatch calendar by Barbara that another friend gave me for Christmas, ONLY because I already had another one. Luckily I didn’t re-gift this one but hung it in the studio… because look what my gift-giving friend had Barbara WRITE on the month of September!! I actually shared this story with Barbara AND my gift-giving friend and everyone thought it was funny.