From Bristol to Fish and back again

i have been on the TSG (Textile Study Group) annual summer school at Farncombe in the vale of Evesham. Since last year the hotel has re branded and is now The Fish Hotel. Strange name but it's all to do with fish, monks and hills.
This year I chose to work with Jan Miller who was a great inspiration and a lovely tutor. the course was called 'in and out of the landscape' and our starting point could have been 'from postcard to photo; map to novel; JMW Turner to Richard Long; Norman Ackroyd to Hockney; reflection to shadow; inside to outside; images to ideas; your choice' so basically wide open!
i have been working for a while with bus journeys, wet ones in particular ending at the sea, so i went with that. 
we were asked to bring foraged items and things that had been used before. i am not a great forager of natural products(except beach finds) but i love picking up man made discarded items. 

some of my collection of foraged items

 we were able to work on a number of things so initially i made some 'tools' from foraged/found items that i could use as drawing implements.

flint, lolly sticks, plastic and metal tools

we also used tea and other things to colour fabric and papers. again this is something i have never done because i am always concerned about light fastness. Why?

binding a wooden fork with ramie and fishing line

items bound and dipped in tea and ink

some of the papers i dyed were then printed/marked with the tools i had made

abaca, ink, paint and graphite

 i am very keen on making things that will then themselves be made into something else. so i used this paper to make some thin strips that were folded and then waxed.

the strips with added graphite

i then put these aside and learnt how to twine. Jan has used twining in her work to great effect and as i had never done any i was keen to learn. as usual i went small and worked with some foraged pine needles and then the wax strips themselves.

twining

i made the paper threads on the right hand set and then wondered about working with twining 3D items in the middle. these are waxed strips wound into tubes and twined with wire.

i then thought about my 'precious' little tools and decided to make some 'pockets'/'envelopes' to house them in. these were made with various papers from the course and other re-used pieces from previous work.

my group of 'pockets' plus a piece of metal given to me by Helen

i am really pleased with these and hope to use them in the future for something or as inspiration.

collection and samples

there was much discussion about 'collections' of items and how you 'curate' them or place them together with other things. a discussion we were having at work recently is that everybody seems to be a curator now and why not?
it was great to catch up with Helen, another Distant Stitcher and to meet Ali a new Distant Stitcher.it is always an anti-climax coming back down to earth after summer school but it always leaves me with lots to think about and plenty of inspiration.
Last sunday i was back in bristol looking at the Richard Long exhibition in the Arnolfini, particularly enjoyable were his fingerprint pieces which are always a source of wonder and inspiration.