Linear Mapping

Earlier this month I travelled down to Buckinghamshire, to hang my installation work 'Linear Mapping' at One Church Street Gallery, Great Missenden. The work, created over a period of several months in West Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire, comprises a series of 'threads' or strands. Each thread represents a short walk I made in the countryside around my home near Bingley, or near where I grew up in Great Missenden. I was delighted to be one of the five artists selected to create installations for the Pinpoint II exhibition, particularly as the gallery is so close to 'home'.

Below you can see some details of 'Linear Mapping', with the work of fellow artist Gizella Warburton on the wall and plinths behind. As I was hanging the work I loved to see the relationship between my own work and the other work in the gallery - the lines in Gizella's work in particular. In fact until I started to hang the work at the gallery I had no idea how it would look as I hadn't had a suitable space to test it. In general I was pleasantly surprised with the weight and light of the piece and I think it is something I would like to develop further.

The other exhibiting artists are: Clare Barber, Sarah Burgess, Robert Moon, Gizella K Warbuton.

Pinpoint runs until 28th February 2015 at One Church Street Gallery, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, HP16 0AX, England. Open Thurs - Sat 11am - 4pm. Tel: 01494 868151

Making threads

Yesterday's studio work. Making 'threads' for Pinpoint II.

Enjoying the little sprigs of green stitch.

Festival Finds

In the past year or two during Saltaire Festival and Saltaire Arts Trail I have found myself demonstrating or exhibiting and therefore missing out on the festivities. This year I didn't get round to planning anything in the studio, so apologies to anyone who popped in t the butterfly rooms looking for me.

Instead I have had a little look around and found myself a few treasures yesterday with some lovely finds from the Rose & Brown Vintage Fair. Many of these lovely old sewing silk reels are in perfect condition, as good as the day they were made.

I have been searching for locally produced sewing thread reels for a little while, since I came across a reference to the magnitude of the local thread industry. Lister's mill in Bradford were 'world leaders' in sewing silks and exported them all around the world. But from what I can gather by the 1930's production of sewing threads at Lister's had ceased due to competition from their nearest rivals. Around this time many smaller mills were taken over by larger concerns or pushed out of the market, so that only a few companies remained.

I find it odd that this aspect of the textile industry is seldom mentioned locally, where the focus is usually on Worsted production. So it is really special to find these little treasures, that would usually be overlooked. I will be doing a little more 'digging' into this subject for  future project so any intersting pointers would be gratefully received.

If you are also a lover of old cotton reels you might find this thought provoking.

The language of lines (through a lense)

Although I only had a couple of hours at the studio and felt quite unfocussed I had a massively productive day. Sometimes when you don't over-think / over-work things they fall into place rather easily.

I was also reminded today of the important lesson I learnt as a student of photographing work in progress regularly. As a student as we were required to document our work and consequently I had to learn to take decent photos using a film SLR. I could never have known at the time just how important I would continue to find that process or how helpful it would become in the digital age of social media. A useful and timeless/timely lesson for life.

The work below is based on Walk 3 towards my installation for Pinpoint II later this year. I have so much still to do but I am starting to feel like I have the beginnings of something.

Stitch and silver

Still working on my silvery thread from walk 2.

Walk 3

From home to studio.

Bingley to Saltaire.

Along the river, through the woods and by the canal.

New green leaves, yellow buds and pottery shards.

An elderly man told me about finding stickleback in the slow water between river and spring 'when we were younger' and told me about the big round marsh marigolds further along the path.

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.

Threads

Twisting, knotting and constructing - threads of ideas coming together...

Found and stitched

A fun day yesterday with Clare and Ellie at my Stitch with Found Objects workshop in Saltaire.

New threads, new workshops

If you feel the need for some creative sustenance come and join me for Nests and Vessels at my studio at the Butterfly Rooms. Below is a little bundle of yarn I have been preparing for the basket making technique I will be demonstrating.

As I finally enter the 21st century (over a decade late) and introduce online payments to my website, I have also added some new workshops for spring and summer 2013. You can read all about them here.

Threads and stitches

 

Returning home with treasures

A big thank you to all the members of the Chiltern Textile & Embroidery group, who made me very welcome on Monday. It was a great pleasure to meet so many wonderful people with a passion for all things textile; some new faces and some I have known a very long time.

I have also brought home a few 'new' treasures to inspire.

A coastal web

I like wandering on the beach on my own. I call it 'poking about'. and I can do it well in lots of different places but my favourite places are at the coast or in woodland.

Children are excellent at poking about; picking things up, investigating, literally poking things with sticks, scrambling, kicking, seeing how things feel, taste, smell...

But I think there is something about the seaside that allows more grown ups to feel it's okay to poke about; draw in the sand, dig, build, splash, collect things...

So I was really pleased that after making this little web and leaving it on a fairly remote part of the beach, a few days later it was still there and there were other things too. Someone else was poking about with sticks and bits root.

I suppose you could call it playing, but there is something distinctive about this kind of play. It is creative, sensory, physical and intrinsically connected with the outdoors. It feels primitive and unrestrained.

When a thread breaks...

... is it a problem or a possibility?

So many ideas from playing with materials sent by Claire.

In Progress

Busy Stitching

The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, and it's been hard to find the time and space to get my work done. However, as always, a deadline does help to focus the mind and two deadlines even more so. I have been working on some new work (towards applying for a couple of things) and after many weeks of waxing, cutting, stitching and pondering, I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere. I had a big breakthrough today when I took the plunge and decided to use the back of the piece. I feel as though I have moved on enormously as a result.

Below are a few images of my stitching, which is more embroidery than I have done for a long time. These are just details but I will show some more once it is 'finished'.