The Lady from Del Monte she say yes!

whilst waiting for feedback from Sian i thought i would finish off a piece i had started at Urchfont. i cut it up, cut bits out and inserted new 'frills' of paper and organdie and one of my all time favourites paper 'string' which is great to make.
i then applied these to a japanese tissue and made it undulate! hoping to take it outside sometime for a photo shoot!
Meanwhile Sian has said ok to my initial thoughts for the next resolved item so watch this space and hope she doesn't mind being associated with orange juice! i am having a break over the summer to concentrate on my 'Sketchbook Project' sketchbook and hope to see Sian's (62 Group) exhibition in Glasgow. Happy Hols everyone.

Metallic assessment item (Proposal)

Thought i would try and get some feed back before the summer holidays on the metallic assessment piece which in my module is Chapter 10 but really its Chapter 14! An 'item' of my choice mainly of metallic materials. I have in my possession a collection of umbrella bits that have never been used and i have always wanted to use them for something so this was my first choice when approaching this proposal. Initially i looked at umbrellas and 'dead' or broken umbrellas.
looking at umbrellas it appeared to me that the ribs are very much like bird wing skeletons and Tom Waits sang of 'broken umbrellas like dead birds'.
so i started looking at dead birds/ wings etc.
as part of my face study i drew numerous overlapping faces and then filled in the voids which i really liked and hoped to use at some point. after seeing Sian at Urchfont i realised how much these shapes echoed the bird wing shapes.
i then started playing around with these shapes, drawing various ideas.
image 6 shows some of the metal pieces and card cut outs of the face shapes.
thought i ought to mock up some shapes. 7 with the 'wings' closed.
8 with some of the 'wings' open like 'dead' umbrellas. the wing on the right is jointed which i might explore further.
i then thought about a book i was reading, Paul Auster's 'New York Trilogy' where the language of words was explored, citing an umbrella and whether it can still be called an umbrella once it is broken and can no longer function (sorry if this is too deep)! 'it has changed into something else'. i then started thinking of how umbrellas are stored and i usually hang mine (which is almost broken) on a door handle. then thinking of dead birds, i would like to make a 'brace of umbrella birds'. i intend to make the 'wings' from copper sheet, cut and oxidised black. i want to also use very fine copper mesh which pleats and crinkles like umbrella lining. tape ties would have relevant phrases embroidered on them and they would be hung in some way. i still need to work out exactly how and where to include the mesh which might have a degraded appearance. what do you think?

Textile artist profiles (or not!)

for my two textile artists i have chosen unconventional artists. the first El Anatsui because he uses metal and found metal at that. He also proves that you can create something of great beauty with a simple group of materials. here are two great videos of him and his work. One installing 'Between Earth and Heaven' at the Met and at the Rice Gallery in Houston.

my second choice is Maurizio Anzeri who i have just discovered and who is still quite 'new'. i chose him because he embroiders photographs (which i like to do too)and quite disturbing ones at that!

Finishing faces and resolved sample

For the final part of Chapter 12 i did some self portraits. Sian has seen some of these but i thought i would share with my fellow students. drawing with a candle and without looking at the page, could be disastrous but i quite liked what i came up with!
after about 6 pages of these i got a bit bored and started making faces! the page was then washed with colour and the faces worked into with paint, chalk and pen.
then various images were cut in half and mixed up, oh i have often thought i had a split personality and now i know!
looks like i have 2 mouths on the above one.
then i started playing with torn parts of the face and the next 2 (blue and red) were playing with words relating to the torn piece, such as old blue eyes, eye contact and risk phrases (R36)
'lips' with words such as botox and ruby etc.
Sian had suggested i embellished some magazine adverts but i found the following two photos, one of marilyn monroe and samuel beckett, who i thought looked great with blue hair!
i decided to make my own advert for which i must apologise profusely to Grayson Perry(who i hasten to add i love very much)and mean no disrespect to him but it was such a great image.
Chapter 13, Resolved sample
i chose for my resolved sample the previous image of 'lips'. i played around with photoshop and solarised the image.
i worked mainly in paper! and decided to lay the image on a bed of sequins, i thought the solarised colours lent themselves to the richness of the sequins which i couched down with fishing line. various letters were made from drinks cans, metal sheet and shi-sha. I used metallic threads and machine embroidery on hand made paper and tissue, transfoils were used to highlight areas and the lips(after much trial and error) were made from a lager can. The whole measures 19cm x 10cm and it took 20 hours. hoping this is ok!

the answer is blowing in the wind

i, like many of the Distant Stitch stitchers or should i say printers have just got back from Summer School at Urchfont Manor in Wiltshire. i had a wonderful time meeting lots of people i only knew previously from their blogs. anyway this blog entry shows one of the products of the 2 and 1/2 days 'in situ' around the amazing gardens.
colour was the main theme of the workshop after an initial day of working in
black and white!
waiting for me when i got home was my SKETCHBOOK from the Art House Gallery and the Sketchbook project (see previous posting). the title i have chosen is 'i am a scavenger' which i thought was in keeping with my research of graffiti. can't wait to get going sometime. but meanwhile i need to speed up on Module 2!!!! and will post more later

The Sketchbook Project: 2011 » Art House Co-op | We build art projects and communities

The Sketchbook Project: 2011 » Art House Co-op | We build art projects and communities