Some little eggs for Easter

The last few weeks feel like I haven't done much, certainly no making as such. I have been resting a bit this week but also putting in the ground work for some new projects, proposals and ventures, early days yet.

So feeling a little out of touch with making I was reminded of the red dyed eggs we were given by our host as a traditional Easter celebration last year in Santorini. So here are my attempts using just colours from the garden; onion skins for colour, fennel, herb robert, rosemary, etc for pattern. I particularly like the way the colour speckled through the shell to make some spotty eggs.

Quipu

Every cloud has a silver lining, so the saying goes. Today certainly didn't turn out to plan, but I have to concede it wasn't all bad. Despite a disastrous journey I managed to get home safely and decided to calm my frayed nerves this afternoon by playing with cloth and colour. Experiments with madder below.

Later this evening I was watching a documentary on BBC4 called 'Lost Kingdoms of South America' and came across the term 'quipu' or 'khipu', a beautiful system of recording information using knotted, dyed threads. I immediately felt a connection with these delicate networks of fibre, they appeared to me to be like maps or genealogical charts. This was a timely discovery for me, having recently submitted a proposal for an installation based on threads as linear maps...

... Connections through time and space.

Workshops

January is always a busy month for me, with lots of assessment to do at college, but I always try to do something creative if I can find the time. Yesterday I was fortunate to attend a Natural Dye & Screen Printing workshop led by Kirstie Williams at West Yorkshire Print Studio. Throughout the day we used four different natural dyes; madder, weld, logwood and alkanet and experimented with mordants to create different colours and to create pattern. I was fascinated to see the different results that could be achieved, layering mordant and colour and radiant results of the natural dyes on cloth. I loved seeing how one dye looks so different on a variety of fibres and fabric types.

Below you can see a few of my photos from the day... I also realise I have been rather remiss in promoting my own workshops. I have just a couple of places left for my spring workshops, which can be booked online here.

In the Wilds

A couple of weeks ago I visited a great little shop in Leeds called Colours May Vary. It has some fantastic design-led books, periodicals and just nice things. I couldn't help but make a purchase of this gorgeous book by artist Nigel Peake.

Light And Line

Last week I took a train to Barnsley to see Light & Line an exhibition by artists Anne Morrell and Polly Binns. Having read Alice's review here I was really excited as we share many similar interests in terms of landscape and textiles, what really surprised me was my response to the work. I have long been a fan of Polly Binns' work enjoying her sense of place and the way she seems to study and analyse surfaces. I was expecting to be utterly bowled over by her work, but as often happens with expectations I was disappointed. That isn't to say that Polly Binns is not a great artist, simply that these pieces on this occasion did not speak to me, they left me cold. Rather than the subtle, yet strong compositions and surfaces I am familiar with, the textile panels felt dead; flat, matte, surfaces with no sense of light or movement. I also felt the compositions looked uncomfortable, perhaps I was looking for something more dramatic.

Happily there were things to delight in the exhibition; I very much enjoyed the simplicity of Polly's etchings, which seemed more at ease with their scale and I loved the way the sequence of marks grew as a sequence of observations of the land.

What really surprised me though were some of Anne Morrell's works. My preference is normally for things with greater subtleties, but despite using bold colour I found her work interesting and engaging. The complexities of surface tension and layered colour were surprising and innovative, her use of textile transformative. Her textile pieces seem to act as a means of understanding the effects of light and water through an alternative media; working things out through making. The exploration of tension is very exciting, using stitch to stretch, pull and hold the fabric. Most of all though I enjoyed the small pieces mounted between perspex sheets and suspended in front of the window, the results being luminous even on a drab day. I really wish I had taken a photo of those.

The two artists clearly have much in common and this dialogue between them has been fascinating. The accompanying catalogue (from which I have added these photos) is also well written and provides useful insights that help us understand the artists motivations. Light & Line is a touring exhibition by Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery and the exhibition will now be touring to the following locations:

2 February 2013 - 16 March 2013
Turnpike Gallery, Leigh

11 May 2013 - 7 July 2013
Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery

You can read another interesting review from Alternative Barnsley here.

Capturing the moment

Despite a cold blue sky today, as the sun lit the landscape it warmed everything with a sepia glow. The colours I see inside my magic box reminded me of vintage film as I was watching True Grit (original version) snuggled up on the sofa this afternoon. It made an interesting contrast with a snatch of BBC news about the latest developments in new digital film and media. It made me wonder if by trying to make everything appear so real this looses something else that film and photography captures? I love the old Technicolour films, with their saturated colour that seems to create something beyond reality, or perhaps something straight from the imagination. In the last few years I have discovered just how much qualities of light effect me both emotionally and physically, I wonder if this is something I should explore further in my own practice?

Making stained glass windows

Here is that lovely exotic purple again, which now has added amber highlights. To clear up the mystery the purple came from elderberries. Well done if anyone guessed it. They were the results of defrosting my freezer and finding 'buried treasures'.

Exotic colours

Although not my usual subdued tones, I am hoping to do something with these papers in time for Bradford Open for Art. Freshly unfolded today, it was exciting to see the marks and colours. Anyone care to guess where the exotic looking purple comes from?

Colour matching celandine

For the most beautiful marigold dyed silk pop over to Clarabella.