Waiting

Anyone whose work combines trees and cups goes straight to the top of my covet-list.  So I eagerly await the next edition of Selvedge magazine and its feature on the beautiful work of Anne Smith.

Charlene Mullen embroideries

I love the pattern and detail in these embroidered illustrations by Charlene Mullen for Selvedge magazine.

The sun shone!

Polly Dunbar illustration

I hope it was a good weekend.  I really needed the sun to shine and it did.  It was wonderful to be in the garden, getting ready for Spring, the boys playing, chickens having a grub-up and the cats looking non-plussed with it all.  Not the best day to escape to the cinema, but a promise is a promise, and Tangled delivered in all the right, Walt Disney ways.  I know it wasn't me who needed the parental guidance, but that witch really was scary!  I also found a grown up moment to sit with a coffee and read the new Selvedge magazine.  Bliss.

I really enjoyed this interview with Tad Carpenter, especially the images showing design development from drawing to digital artwork.  I'm endlessly fascinated by creative process, from inspiration to realisation.

The life of paper

Isabelle de Borchgrave

"Paper is a magical material.  It's thousand faces have the power to attract and enchant us, to direct our lives and change their course, to teach us, to influence our opinion, and to mark our daily existence.

From our youngest years, paper helps us to create our individual versions of beauty - small, clumsy fingers transform sheets of coloured paper into trees, misshapen pieces of fruit or fantastical beasts.  And by making paper into new shapes and covering its many surfaces with colours, drawings, numbers, letters and symbols, we finally learn how to master it.

Notepaper, newspaper, wallpaper, rice-paper, and papier-mache.......Paper, born thousands of years ago of papyrus plant, does not shy from pseudonyms, hiding behind such noms de plume as vellum, Holland, Indian, peau de cygne and parchment.  Tucked into envelopes, it is paper that holds our most tender thoughts and fiery messages.  It has taken the place of our ancestors' silver; paper stokes the greed of forgers, misers and conquerors of every stripe.

And while paper is pleasing to the eye, and proud of being useful, it is just as charming to the ear. 

Paper crackles and trembles.  It whispers and rustles.  When you brush against it, it swishes like and ingenue's silk dress.  And when flames lick around it, it snaps and sizzles and dies with a nearly inaudible whisper."

I love the language in this description of paper.  It's an extract from a book about the work of Isabelle de Borchgrave, featured in the May/June edition of Selvedge magazine.  It perfectly evokes our entwinement with paper and it's journey with us through life.  My studio is swimming with paper off cuts, stretched paper on boards, piles of long overdue filing and offerings from the small people in my life, like this from Rosemary who drew me a picture of Wilma and Shaggy getting married (hence Wilma has removed her glasses).  Thanks Rosemary. x

By Rosemary

Feeling blue

Patched futon cover, indigo cotton with kasuri fragments, and sashiko stitching, c1910-1930

I'm featuring this Japanese textile piece from Selvedge's Utility Issue (05) as it seems an appropriate metaphor for the day.  It accompanies an article by Stephen Szczepanek:

"In general, the process of deconstructing, re-constructing, layering, stitching, reinforcing and casting-off was a continuous and ongoing process.  Recycling grew to become a kind of domestic tradition, and the lifetime of a single garment from its inception to its final incarnation.....could span generations."

From that I am trying to take strength as we move into a new political era.  We're about to get a patchwork government and I can't help thinking that the country would be a better place if that quilt were stitched by women.  Instead I feel Cameron is hogging the blanket and we're not going to have a great end result, but as evidenced in this piece of Japanese textile art, the most beautiful things can happen by working and re-working. 

That's what I'm going to tell myself.

Cultural challenges

It has become very easy to get my creative inspiration from tried and tested places.  I love it when Selvedge drops through my door every other month, I know that in AN magazine I'll find work that's conceptually challenging and my guilty pleasure is Country Living Magazine.  Then there are the galleries; I know where to tap into my comfort zone and see a reflection of my own work.  More recently, unless something is going to look pretty on my blog then it's not worth looking at!

And so it was a New Year resolution to seek out new experiences and new places.  Following on from seeing a BBC4 documentary about the Cuban music scene, I got last minute tickets to see Danza Contemporanea de Cuba at Nottingham Playhouse.  Wow! What an experience! 

Contemporary dance isn't normally my thing and for a few minutes I did think I would get the giggles, as I did when I saw a contemporary opera.  But I was blown away.  It helped to be watching twenty one of the world's most beautiful and talented dancers.  I was taken by the mood, the colour, the strength and beauty of the dancers.  In three acts; the first was intense and discordant,  the second lyrical and passionate and the third dynamic and powerful.  Infused with global dance traditions, it was utterly compelling.  I've not felt a part of such a responsive audience for a long time.  A standing ovation was given to shouts of  "Viva Cuba!"

So now it's Monday and I'm back in the studio with the pressure of producing some new work for the Beetroot Tree Gallery.  In my minds eye there's the colour and movement from the dance, and also the colour and movement from the stained glass artists featured in Monty Don's BBC2 programme on Master Craftsmen.  One experience from the comfort of the sofa, one from outside of the box.

Lunar

I'm enjoying welcoming the moon back. As the nights draw in little by little I'm aware of it up there and have been inspired to produce these pieces. The top one is a postcard sized piece incorporating fabric and paper collage, closely stitched. It was inspired by work on the Spirit Cloth weblog and reminded me of the amazing stitched kantha pieces I saw in India. Postcard sized was about the limits of my kantha-concentration. The second is a tapestry that's still on the loom waiting to be finished. It's the precursor really to the other tapestry (also still on the loom waiting to be finished!).

Work is in progress for the Thoresby gallery and I've been enjoying having a deadline to work to. I'm working toward completing four pieces by the 12th of October and I have two well under way. I've been out and about buying different papers to use for the collaged parts, old books, childrens' books, newspapers. Having had a huge purge of materials earlier in the year it's good to be collecting again.

I've not been out to actively seek inspiration this week. I'm still waiting for this month's Selvedge magazine which is my life line when my world becomes dominated by the lives of two small boys.

Hope the harvest moon is glowing in the sky over you.