A time for reflection and surprise

Whilst i was in london last week i visited my old work place,the V&A! my intention was to see, at last, the new Medieval and Renaissance galleries which i must say are looking rather splendid and these photos don't do them justice (i blame the camera!)
it was such a pity that they weren't open when i did my Opus Anglicanum study and that it took a funeral for the opportunity to see them. if anyone is working on their Opus study i highly recommend a visit to give you some idea of the pieces 'in the flesh', albeit behind glass and some unfortunately at the back of the cases when they would have benefited from being much closer to the viewer (John of Thanet being one).There are some stunning pieces and the one you can get closest too is amazingly intricate.
it was also a very pleasant surprise to see displayed the small burse panel depicting St.George slaying the dragon and St.Catherine which i had conserved some eight years ago (oh dear cat out of bag!).

Jack Amos 1946 - 2010

I swore I would never use this blog for personal information but somehow it seems wrong not to on this occassion. My brother died recently and much too young. He will be sadly missed by me and many other people. TRIBUTE

Shi Sha continued (this is going to be a long one)

at last i think I've done it! it seems so long ago that i started this study. it was before Christmas i did some of these drawings. see my previous post for photos of the actual textile. in the end i studied 4 pieces, a small box i have been trying to get rid of for ages!,one i borrowed from a friend,another a small Christmas tree decoration i bought from Chadni Chowk and a woman's tunic (chola)i studied at the museum in Exeter and for copyright reasons i have no photos of this.i realised that i haven't labelled these pictures but i think they are fairly self explanatory.
the piece i borrowed was a bit of a patchwork and i was not able to see the reverse.some of the threads were quite flourescent so i used gel pens.

above a drawing from my box, worked in metallic threads.
next one above is the Christmas decoration, the reason i bought it was the fact it had lettering on the mirror, which appealed to my sense of the offbeat!
above drawing from the Chola which had added sequins.
i then did some extension drawings, mainly using chalks (oil and chalk)

above pink was brusho and bleach.
oil pastels on yellow tissue.
then i did quite a few using brusho, bleach and oil pastels. it took me quite a while to get into the extended drawings but i am really pleased with the above one and the following.





i did some on a hand made paper which was brushoed and then stamped with an Indian stamp in bleach and then drawn on top.

finally the stitched study! i noticed in my study how many Indian textiles are embroidered on a patterned fabric that bears no relationship whatsoever to the embroidered design, so i worked my stitches onto patterned paper. the other thing that evokes Indian textiles are the many varied colours, so i chose colours i had observed in my studies. the idea of the patchwork was from the first textile.
chain stitch
buttonhole stitch and couching on a poppadom wrapper
Kutch stitch which appears everywhere and in many shapes and patterns all based on a grid of threads.
the last stitch is a combination of Kutch and two types of herringbone with a back stitch at the base. half way through my study i was having difficulty finding the stitch techniques i wanted so i ordered Anne Morrell's 'The Technique of Indian Embroidery' book through the library. Who would have thought that Budleigh Salterton would come up trumps on inter library loan. Budleigh pops up everywhere, even in Noel Cowards 'Blythe Spirit'!!!

As an aside i have just been to see 'Paper Works' an exhibition of art made from paper at The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, wonderfully inspiring. tomorrow i am hopefully going to Bristol to see 'Celebrating Paper' at the Royal West of England Academy and hopefully pop into Colston Hall in en route to see Matthew Harris' walls!! Oh and i can thoroughly recommend the Chris Ofili at Tate Britain, WOW i want some polyester resin to play with.

Shi Sha or not to Shi Sha

just a few images of the piece of Shi Sha work i am studying.

i have fallen in love with the above stitch called Kutch work, based on foundation threads with other threads woven through.you could go on forever building shapes.
everything is so colourful, even when faded but i have played around with some of the photos!

i went a bit mad with this one.
i love the way some of the pieces are worked on printed textiles that bear no relation to the embroidery.

3D - i think i need help!

after i got the 'go ahead' for my 3D lights, i have been going at full steam. i wanted, or at least 'he who cooks' wanted my paper pulp out of the fridge by Christmas. so this is how i made the light bodies. white plastic bags cut up into continuous thin strips, then knitted with large needles.
i did various samples to work out size for the finished piece to go around my spray can forms.
once knitted they were pinned onto baking parchment and ironed through baking parchment to set.
image 4 shows all 5 layers together before the paper pulp was added. i thought they had potential for future work!
once they were set the wet paper pulp was applied. when dry i felt i had been very heavy handed with the pulp, so i rinsed it all off and re-did it with much thinner pulp. once dry i re-wet slightly and sprayed a black line onto each piece so when the cans were placed together they looked like one continuous wavy line but with each can having its own continuous line. the re-wetting helped to form the pieces around the cans.
image 6 shows one after it was dry and released from its can form. still not happy!!!!!!
so i went back to the plastic. i am becoming an authority on plastic bags! my husband is beginning to get worried because i keep feeling plastic bags in shops! any way i decided i wanted a more transparent effect and much less pulp. the bags i finally chose are a sandwich bag with dark blue lettering which when knitted and melted give an interesting pattern. i am really pleased with them. image 7 shows all 5.
so to the lids and i think this is where my problem is or not! in the end i made the lids as i had suggested but the clear layers of plastic i was going to use seemed too 'clean'. i heat set my layers together instead and the result i am really pleased with, i like the ragged edges and the 'material' i have formed. image 8 shows one lid. eventually after a few trials with different types of eyes and mouths i decided to machine stitch them onto the plastic and cut the eyes out. each one is an individual and has been altered slightly and because each section is formed as a separate piece they are not uniform.
now here is where my problem lies, or does it? i think originally i was intending to have lids that fitted tightly over the bases but these do not because they are not completely dome shaped. they sit on top. the problem is i like them as they are but do they look ok? should the bases be all the same height? or vary? i did try making some 2d 'lids' but came back to these.
they also work by themselves (i think) as smaller forms.
as to the lighting i have thought of many different types such as 'tea lights', glow sticks and eventually LED lights. my intention is to have a different colour in each 'can' using the graffiti colours there instead of the pristine whiteness of the forms. like a blank piece of paper/wall.
the lights are in the lids which work well as it lights the head and still lights the base to give the effect i wanted to achieve.if the heads are separated then more lights can be suspended in the bases which gives more of a lacy light effect. i hope i have made myself clear! the remains of the pulp is still in the fridge but i hope i don't need it again!! in the course of this project i have come across two amazing artists who work with paper, Annie Vought and Susan Warner Keene, check them out.

We have it too!

i hope you're not all bored with the subject of snow but we have it too now! and of course the school has closed so i have been home working on my 3D project whilst the mad banshee that was my son has been out in the thick of it enjoying himself. i would have had a photo of the snow man he helped build but it wasn't the cleanest, what with leaves and bits of mud so this will have to do, our neighbours discarded Christmas tree.

Happy New Year and i still have all my fingers!

Well, Happy New Year to all! Just waiting to take all the decorations down now. we have had a very relaxed and over indulged xmas and new year. this Christmas has been a momentous one for it's the first time i have ever super glued my fingers together! only a small spot but extremely painful and i had to get the scalpel out to release myself from myself! it wasn't as if it was something for me; i was sticking together a Warhammer model for my son! what with him using super-glue and spray undercoat and myself trying to continue with my 3D lights and melting plastic, my husband said he should have got us a fume chamber for Christmas instead of anything else. if i was at work i would have had to fill in umpteen COSHH (Care of Substances Hazardous to Health)forms by now; it is amazing what abuse goes on in the home!!!! this is not to say that i am not taking care.
anyway there was time for relaxing and being cruel to the cat! (what is it with bloggers and their cats?). Bunny the cat here sporting a new collar courtesy of Smarties and looking very much like the Christmas tree lights! the other land mark this Christmas was my son's 10th birthday so now he can go to the Games Workshop all by himself and spend hours painting his Warhammer figures and battling. it hardly seems 10 years ago when we brought him home from the hospital looking incredibly like my 90 year old father! Ah well time flies. will get back into the swing of things soon.