More pile work and lots of thanks!

I would just like to start this post by saying thank you to all the visitors to our Quatrefoil show at the RBSA Gallery. It was a busy and active two weeks in many ways, and we took the show down yesterday. We had a lot of good comments in our visitors’ book, and one or two more opinionated ones. We are very much looking forward to our next show; it’s good to have plans that move your work forward.

Back in the studio, which I am using as much as possible at the moment as I won’t have it for much longer, I have been continuing the theme of working with my ‘found’ materials, [found in my bits and pieces drawers anyway].Here are some more pieces of work.

I used these materials, which include an old map of Denmark, a lino cut print of my chameleon, [which appears in many of these pieces], a t- shirt transfer print of a photograph of a solanum plant I once had, some pieces from an old earring, and other fabrics and papers.

I used these quick drawings as inspiration, from a sketchbook I started a couple of years ago during a study day with Angela Thompson.

This was the first piece to appear, which I will finish as a hanging, rather than a framed piece. It’s about 1 metre by 50 cm, mounted on velvet and felt.

And following on was this piece, which is also on felt, but is smaller, about A2 size. I haven’t quite finished laying it down here.

With these pieces I have left I decided to make some smaller pieces; I didn’t want to consign them to the drawer again.

So I made these three smaller pieces.

This is A3 size, and the next two are A2 size.

This one has a lino cut of a sparrow that’s been in a couple of pieces.

And this collection has been put aside to go into a larger project, which I hope to make for exhibitions in 2013. I have a growing collection of pieces waiting to be finished now, so may have to hold back from laying down any more: well, I do have two more I must do first…

Free chocolate

Quatrefoil are holding their second meet the artists Open Day at the RBSA Galleries in Birmingham this Saturday, May 19th. We will all be there from 11 until 4, happy to chat, and you can look at our show Debut. We will provide chocolates and probably other stuff that’s bad for you too, to eat as you look. Last Saturday was good fun so come if you can. The show closes on that day too, but we hope to be at the gallery again in 2014, with a show at another venue in Birmingham in 2013.

Fun with frift moves on

It’s a busy time at the moment as Quatrefoil’s exhibition is now in its second week, and we have been stewarding the show and also held our first Open Day on Saturday, which was really well attended. This is Annette and I at our demonstration table. Not much work was done, we spent the day talking to visitors about the group, our work, textiles and art in general and the RBSA. It was very enjoyable.

Last week in my studio, and today, I have been working with the materials I sorted for my project jokingly called Fun with Frift. I am simply using stuff I have been saving, and enjoyed putting sample piles of fabric, paper and prints together. I call these piles/collections.

I took some small print offs of the piles to the studio to remind me of the original layouts, mainly because they looked quite nice, and I thought I may even use some of them more or less as they were. This didn’t really happen, as I ended up playing around with the designs, but I did jot down notes on the prints to remind me of the subjects that appealed for each pile.

My little prints.

Then some of the piles turned into more than one piece of work, so it’s all become very confusing, but do your best. Here are some images of the original pile and the resulting work. I have a few more piles to work through, so more images will follow.

This is the original collection of materials for the sea picture.

And this is how it worked out. Stitching next, and it’s about A2 size.

The original collection.

And a possible layout. It is a diptych so it may be the above layout, or the one below; I haven’t decided yet.

This is A2 size too.

This small piece, A4 sized, was a spin off from the diptych piece.

This collection produced the piece below, which wasn’t what I expected at all. I still have quite a lot of the materials left so will do another piece, which will perhaps be closer to the original collection.

This will be called Six Windows, and is mounted on handmade [not by me] paper. A2 again.

This one doesn’t relate to any of the above at all; whilst I was picking up one of my materials piles I spotted these bits of painted canvas from Mist and Grey, a book I’ve just finished, and they took me over for a while. It’s an interesting way to work, not exactly logically methodical, but creative and productive. This is A3 in size.

And the above piece prompted this piece, and then the one below. This is A2 size.

So I was definitely off-pile by then, but I am now back to using the original collections/piles of materials.This one is A4 size. That’s all for now, but there will be more, eek.

Debut

The four members of Quatrefoil and their helpers put up their first big show yesterday, ‘Debut’.  That’s myself, Annette Lucas, Jacqui Calladine and Gwen McQuay.It’s at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery, and we have the second floor Gallery, which is  large and light, and the show looks good. I was quite worried about putting this one up, for two main reasons. One is that I had some big and unwieldy pieces of work to hang, and the second is that I just dislike hanging shows. I do, however, love it when it’s all done, you can then just relax and enjoy. Hanging the biggies went well though, thanks to my husband.

The show is on until Saturday May 19th, open every day 10.30 – 5.00, Sundays 1.00 – 5.00. It’s free to get in, and there is a wonderful ceramics exhibition in Gallery One too, showing work by a friend of mine, Gordon Thomas, who died in 2004 and who is still sadly missed. His lovely wife Nest has worked really hard to put this show on.

Here we are looking a little blurry; well, we had just put up the exhibition. Annette, Gwen, myself and Jacqui.

Here are some pictures of our show. We have 2 Open Days too, on Saturday 12th and 19th May. On the 19th May we will be taking it all down, so the exhibition will close at 4, as we have only about an hour to do it, before the work for the following show starts to arrive.

The following four images show Jacqui’s work. She is currently living in Seattle for a while, and her work is concentrating on a sense of place. It is very beautiful and subtle, and rewards long study.

Next is Annette’s work. She is a textile artist, a wiz at pattern making, garment design and millinery, and also knows a lot about keeping hens.

Next is Gwen,  a retired lecturer in textiles who now concentrates on photography. It’s not digital either, no manipulation, just film; beautiful and atmospheric compositions.

Then there’s me.

I have a wonderful long wall, which is good, as The Moth Pages, here in the foreground, and Beyond Dark Spaces, at the other end, are rather large. Actually the wall looks much shorter in the images, it’s really a long length.

Mist and Grey at the window. The pages may fade; I don’t mind, I like my books to have a life.

The large [ish] Beach piece and its two framed companions.

Fun with Frift

Actually it’s Fun with Thrift, but I felt the need for a touch of alliteration. I was going through what I like to call my mixed media drawers on Thursday, looking for some interesting paper to use in a project. The main drawer is a heap really, but I began to pull out papers and plastics and prints, as well as old cut- up embroideries, and put them together based on colour and colour combinations I liked. It was fun and interesting to do, and I did extract quite a lot of stuff I’ve had for a couple of years, all classed as up/re or whatever cycling, which is very satisfying. Here are the results, and there are now lots of little piles of materials on the studio floor, each waiting for me to make a piece of work from it. I’ve started three, which I will post soon.

The drawer and some of its contents. It’s amazing what a small drawer can hold.

I’m hoping to include these photo transfers of Roman landmarks too. They are weird colours as the ink was running out, an effect I liked. I made these about 4 years ago ago after a brief trip to Rome. I need to go again, it’s a great city, and I am loving the Mary Beard progs on TV about ancient Rome.

Ken the chameleon

Last year I bought a book about the Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, whose work I had seen some time ago at the Museum of Modern Art in Machynlleth, Wales. I loved the work then and the book is magnificent too.

My daughter became a fan of Clive’s and started to read his blog and correspond with him. He is a lovely chap, and is running a maquette exhibition on his blog starting this week. He makes maquettes as part of his approach to constructing some of his works, and also because he enjoys making them. In this scenario I believe the main approach is that the maquette is a jointed figure, and rather than being the preliminary preparatory scale model, is a piece of work within itself. The range of work should be interesting.

This has reminded me of  a Christopher Le Brun exhibition I saw where I enjoyed his room of maquettes as much as his finished work, and that has stayed with me.

Chloe was pestering me to make one, so at the last minute I have. I felt a little guilty as it took up more time of course than I should have allowed, as I have some work hanging on that must be finished [but isn't there always?] but once I got to the articulation stage I was hooked and decided this was proper work. He’s not a scale model though, as the whole is about a metre long.

It’s made from paper, card, and printed material left over from my ongoing Li Carpet piece of work. He has some stitch and bright green beads added too. The moth is a left over from The Moth Pages. I may decide she’s a butterfly so I can call her Barbie. So, recycling too.

Here he is. It’s reminded me how much I would like to do some stop motion animation too; obviously I have been affected by all those years of watching Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.

I took the design from one of my linocuts and drew it out again as I wanted it larger.

Then I cut it out from heavy weight watercolour paper.

Here he is mostly finished; the background will need more stitch work.

And here is his articulation in action.

His eye moves round too, although I forgot to move it for his photoshoot;  it’s all such fun…

Clive’s blog is www.clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com

Just one more

To keep things tidy, here is the last long landscape, just finished.

Distant hills, early spring.  50cm x 25cm.

Decorating done and some finished work

This weekend I’ve been decorating our bedroom [I hope to stop aching at some point] and then it was back to work teaching ceramics on Monday, after the Easter break. I enjoyed being with the students again, and I must post some pictures of them and their work at some point.

I was hoping for a few more outings during the holidays, but this wasn’t to be, what with family and work, so I have some planned for the future, mainly after our Big Show at the RBSA. The room looks better after its facelift but outdoors beckons.

I did manage to do a fair amount of work at the studio, and some at home. Here are some completed landscape pieces, followed by  The Moth Pages, which is done now, mounted on felt, and I even managed to finish the baton by painting it black today. It’s a big piece, about 2.5 x 2 metres. It will be at the RBSA show and then at the Festival of Quilts. I have a storage problem brewing with all these hefty books and large pieces I keep making, but at the moment keep pushing it out of my mind…

Two trees, winter Moon. All these pieces are about 40-50cm long.

Winter Moon, six trees.

Spring Moon, six trees. As you can see I enjoy counting trees.

Here is some of The Moth Pages on the table, being stitched onto the felt backing.

And here is the whole piece on the wall. It doesn’t quite curve in that interesting way, that’s the photograph. I must learn how to take a good image of a large piece, the edges always appear to veer off in all directions. I will be loading individual pages from the piece onto my website asap.

An aviary and Uttoxeter

It’s been a busy weekend. I was teaching on Saturday, a Birds workshop near Kidderminster, with a great group of people. Lovely lunch, good conversation, I felt guilty that I wasn’t working hard enough. We spread the work in progress out on tables at the end of the too short day,and here are some images. The work produced was inspiring in its range and approach. This blog is becoming an aviary.

On Sunday I went to the Quilt and Embroidery show at Uttoxeter, organised by Margaret McQuillan. It was very enjoyable, a really neat little show. I spent most of the time chatting to lots of friends, and I confess to some purchases…some African indigo dyed cloth, chunky glass African beads and a very useful basket, large, round and green like a giant pea. Here are a few images of some work in the show, well, mine and a couple of friends. There was a lot more good work I could have posted.

This is my daughter Chloe’s little landscape, which she entered into the embroidery competition. It will go on the wall at home now if she lets me have it.

This is Gilli Theokritoff’s excellent magpie quilt. She started this in one of my Birds classes, but she doesn’t need teaching. She won a prize for a beautifully made bag too, but my photograph was dire. See more of her work at www.gillitheokfitoff.com

This piece has been on my blog before, but as it’s one of my favourites made by my friend Hilary Beattie [see side panel for her blog etc] here it is again. It was also a prize winner, as was a lovely little bag she made.

This is my Night Frost which won a second in Innovative Embroidery, and below is me with The Secret Jungle which also won a second, in Innovative Quilts. Greta Fitchett’s graphic and beautifully quilt won first prize, it was a lovely piece.

Beaches

I’ve finished the two beach pieces I posted a short while ago. These will hang with the larger beach piece, although I have framed them, whereas that larger work is free hanging,  mounted on very thick khadi paper.

The exhibition they are going into is at the RBSA Galleries in Birmingham. I have a lovely huge spread of wall to work with, and will be hanging a couple of new large pieces, [my new banner, see above, is part of one of them; Beyond Dark Spaces] Beach, and a selection of framed works. I would like my latest artist’s book, Mist and Grey, to be there too, but although it’s not as large as my first two books it’s quite a spread when open and needs to be in a case, or protected in some way.

See image of leaflet below, and please come if you can; it’s there for 2 weeks and we are having two Open Days, on May 12th and 19th. We decided to add the second Open Day after the leaflets were printed. I daresay I will be mentioning the show again…

There will also be wonderful work by Jacqui Calladine, Annette Lucas and Gwen McQuay as well as my offerings.

Here is Beach II, white sky. It’s about 50 cm x 40 cm.

And this is Beach III, spring storm, a little smaller than Beach II. My next job for the show is to finish The Moth Pages, which needs to be stitched onto black felt. I’ve ordered this and hope it arrives soon, I would like to get it done next week. I tried free hanging it but so many pieces strung together were badly behaved, and when it goes to the Festival of Quilts someone else will hang it so it has to be manageable.