Yesterday’s post on Ragged Cloth Café mentioned a fascinating site – WebExhibits – there are sections on the causes of colour, pigments through the ages, and colour vision and art. Be warned, once you start exploring you just keep finding more to see – for instance Laura Joy Lustig’s very striking Building Views – “abstract, hand coloured photographs of architectural and constructed scenes”.
catching up
Some time seems to have gone by since I last posted. We had a weekend away in Cornwall, and visited the Eden Project for the first time. They currently have a very interesting exhibition of recycled products from all over the world – kNOwtrash. I can’t find it on their web site, but it includes textiles, furniture, accessories and jewellery, and is on till 12 September. I came away with some ideas for my craft session at youth club – braiding with newspaper, jewellery with bottle tops, and flowers from plastic bottles. Many of the items were from groups and collectives overseas, plus some by individual artists including Michelle Brand’s beautiful and eyecatching work using plastic bottles and shop tags. I hope the Eden Project will archive some images from the exhibition on their web site – it was very inspiring.
My daughter Esther is borrowing a few of my samples for an exhibition at her church, so I’ve photographed them before sending them off. These were from a batik workshop with Nell Dale and a feltmaking workshop with Jenny Scott.
The Glass Queen is a lovely old washboard I found on eBay, she’s perfect for fulling felt.
I had an exciting delivery this week – I’d ordered Tray Dyeing by Leslie Morgan and Claire Benn (Committed to Cloth) from the Embroiderers’ Guild bookshop. Wowowowow!!! It’s only a short book but packs in a huge amount of information and although I’ve done some tray dyeing before I was astonished at the amount of control that can be achieved and can’t wait to try.
I’ve been working really hard this week to try and clear a couple of days to do art as I haven’t been doing much at all with being away and having visitors. I was having fun experimenting with colour mixing on paper, but I’ve lost my impetus and I need to get back to it and back into it.
Only a couple of photos in Cornwall – I’m hoping to get a new small camera soon. This jaunty little seabird by the starry water, at Polkerris, near St Austell, and a random lobsterpot decorating the wall of the inn there.
photos from Aveiro
I finally managed to upload my photos of Portugal to Flickr. We had a lovely time in Aveiro staying with Palexa and she took us to some beautiful places. Some of the photos are mine and some are by Alan. I tend to focus on details and he on vistas but occasionally it’s the other way round… Looking at them makes me want to be there again! Such wonderful sun and light. Thanks Palexa for lending us your camera 🙂
time out
The last week has been mad, work-wise, so not much happening, art-wise. I worked in my sketchbook a little, and got round to watching a very interesting ITV1 programme – Harry Potter: The Costume Drama. Ben Shephard was talking to a range of people in the wardrobe department about the way they created the costumes for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They even have a ‘breakdown department’ where people spend their whole working day distressing the garments after they’ve been made or bought. Why did no-one ever tell you about that kind of job at school?
I was particularly struck by the head of the wardrobe department, Jany Temime, and her approach – how the costumes themselves contribute to the acting – fascinating. She also said – never let your ideas be constrained by what’s practical – you can always find a way to do it. Though I’m not quite sure this can be extended to everyday wearable art (the really wearable kind, I mean) since she also said later on that many of the costumes can’t be washed (they make several of each instead)!
[Here I edited this post to delete a link relating to the programme, for copyright reasons.]Part of my work week was setting up a gallery for all the entries to a competition run annually by the UK Embroiderers’ Guild for its members. The 2007 theme was Water, and the brief was to create an original design, primarily hand stitched, though the work could include any technique. Working with all those lovely watery images was very soothing… If you’d like to immerse yourself – the gallery’s on the Embroiderers’ Guild web site.
weekend’s work
I’ve been painting some colour wheels for OCA Textiles 1 – they didn’t turn out quite as I expected, though. I was using Brusho inks and I don’t know if it was the way I mixed them but the lemon and the golden yellow were so similar in hue that I didn’t get all the variations I was expecting. I’ll have another go with some gouache paints. Then I spent a bit of time mixing tints and tones in acrylics and experimenting with mixing in touches of a complementary colour. I could do this kind of thing all day long – I just love it.
I’ve also been painting silk organza and pongee for my appliqué hanging for City and Guilds – one piece of each in reds, one in greens and one in purples. These are fronts and backs to go with these felts. The next stage is to machine quilt the three layers, incorporating shadow applique, then cut back into it to expose some of the felt. The organza will be the top layer.
I found this picture on the camera as well – it’s the sky from my office window, one evening a few weeks ago when it wasn’t quite as wet as today!
