PRISM Exhibition at the Arts Pavilion, Mile End

 i am lucky enough to be part of this great group and yes, we are having an actual exhibition which is on until the 31st of October.

There is no need to book so come along! 

some of my work on display as part of the exhibition

 

 

'Left hand Right hand a blueprint for life' 

'Thumbs up' another piece was working with one of my favourite materials Ramie and mixed media, cutting out numerous baby thumbs from an eighteenth century mitten pattern.

 

binding together to form book shapes which have a wonderful tactile feel once removed from the binding frame

 they can be twisted into many shapes

and another made from adult thumb pattern

For Sian and others

Firstly a general update from two exhibitions.

'Wasted' now well over a year ago!

i have decided and looking back at most of my recent work that I am a 'constructor' i like working mainly in 3D and sometimes need to learn new techniques, although this one is an old (to me) twinning technique using found lolly sticks and utensils.

i was also lucky enough to be part of the 50 Bees exhibition organised by Lydia Needle.

this was based on the large sharp tailed bee,a parasitic bee. the bottom end of the bee reminded me of a pen nib. the yellow was achieved using ragwort and the whole constructed with metal and paper.

now to current work which is emerging from my 'Clutching at straws' piece in the last post for Prism.

one of the 'Rumpelstiltskin' stories had the supernatural helper giving the girl a pair of gloves to spin the straw into gold. i was busily working on the piece when lockdown happened and i thought that gloves have a whole new meaning now. this led me to thinking about glove wearing in life from babies through to mourning gloves and what goes in the glove.

last year i had started working on some pointilist drawings, an extension of 'Stitched Textile Artists' residential at Ammerdown. these were based on a pair of 18th century babies mittens. i started looking at the thumb patterns on these and other gloves. thinking i had been giving the 'thumbs up' sign to people quite a bit recently.

i started making books using the actual pattern shape, i love the process of stitching the 'pages' together on a book frame. and the book structure links in with the original story.

during lockdown and still now our local walk is through a cemetery which has been absolutely beautiful during the spring with amazing flowers and now long grasses. i noticed how many of the gravestones were constructed with metal letters, some of which had dissapeared leaving holes where the metal prongs would have been, this reminded me of my pointilist drawings and i have started a smaller sketchbook of dots and circles.

i have been playing with the idea of birth, work and death. still using thumb patterns from gloves. the above is another small book structure made from a cyanotype of a skeleton hand we just happen to have in the house.

i intend to progress through the 3 areas of life with more books but where from there?!

a few summer holiday extras

when i sprayed my net for the windmills i protected my work surface with newspaper and i have been playing with the resulting sheets.

 i love the voids created where the net was and rather than throw this paper away i have cut it up into strips and been playing with 'books'.

the one in the middle with the really curly pages i placed in resin to see how it would react.
i have used fairly conventional stitching but have also played with metal so they can be bent into shape.

as in this one above and below

and also playing with cut outs as below

all the strips started out 2.5cm wide, some folded once and others more so they are tiny. still playing!