What I did on my summer holiday....

I've sorely neglected this blog over the summer months, but now the nights are drawing in and there's an autumn chill in the air, term is about to start on my new course, and it is time to recap on what I've been up to these past few months.  Also time to get back into the habit of using this blog to record my faltering progress (mainly for myself but readers are of course very welcome) and to track and save thoughts, images and reflections on my work, which is mainly in print-making but also in quilt-making.  And sometimes inevitably there will be stray thoughts about life in the not-so-slow-lane.

Last time I posted, back in July, I was trying to adjust to the prospect of a long summer without any particular commitments, and also trying to find a way to deal with the 'come down' feeling once the Art  Foundation course was completed.  I spend a couple of days exploring simple collagraph and relief prints, done without a press, and using very basic inks and papers from the local children's art supplies depot. 

I was happy to have flexed my print-making muscles a little, but found I was frustrated by poor quality materials.  I've decided to wait a little, see what kinds of inks we'll be using at UWE, and then decide whether and what to buy for use at home.  

Doing this little taster printing session helped me re-dsicover my creative energy, and I spent another few days delving into the gloomy world of papier mache, making a series of small bowls and boxes - none of which had so far been properly finished.  Another task for an empty autumnal afternoon or two.  (and I seem not to have any photos - so will put this right later...)

I have tried to make myself draw regularly, but have found it hard to fit in the time, and my natural reluctance to mess up has kind of immobilised my drawing hand much of the time.  However, i did spend a lovely weekend on an experimental drawing workshop at the Bristol Drawing School in early August, where we played with charcoal and graphite, drawing ink and gouache, and I made some marks and sketches which pleased me.  Here are a few images of the results of the mark-making workshop ...

It was good to loosen up a little, although I have not been good at keeping up the practice at home.  It was the summer holidays, after all, and there are other things I've been doing which have filled a lot of my time....

My old stand-by in times of creative doldrums has been to make a quilt - and this has been a welcome distraction recently.  I have been "commissioned" to make a quilt for a new baby due soon to a friend of one of my daughters, and decided to use some of the hand-dyed cloth which I made last summer.  The first piece, made of very simple 3" square blocks like a simple Court House Steps block, has become a small baby-sized quilt, using a piece of IKEA fleece blanket as wadding (endlessly washable). 

The second piece, made of 3" finished size nine-patch blocks, I turned into a tote bag for days out and carrying books and files.   

This rush of activity was enriched by a trip to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in mid August, with my older daughter Charlie, who is a whizz at quilt-making (as well as many other things) and we had a happy day browsing both quilts and stalls, and managed not to spend the entire contents of our respective piggy banks, only some of them.

It also inspired me to explore a much-loved but now very worn patchwork bag which Charlie had bought on a trip to France about ten years ago.  I unpicked it to find the pattern, and then made a new one using some blue charm-pack squares which had been lurking for a while.  I used quite a heavy polyester wading, to give it strength - but it means that for a while, until it has been weathered a little, it is rather too round.  But I liked the design and might make more to this pattern in due course.

Once back home, I decided to investigate machine quilting for the baby quilt, and picked up on Leah Days Free Machine Quilting Project blog, which has been a fantastic resource and source of inspiration.  Her tutorials are clear and unfussy, and I have been especially helped by her tips on adjusting tension, needle, foot etc on my sewing machine.  I spent a day or two playing with her advice, and produced a series of small test pieces to ensure I had the hang of manoeuvring the quilt and keeping stitches and tension in balance.  It was so much easier to follow her method (where you don't drop the feed dogs but instead turn the stitch length to zero).  Encouraged by these changes, I decided to machine quilt the baby qyukt.  But I think I rather over-did it - so the finished quilt is a little stiff, and a little less cosy and catchy than I had intended.

So I may still make another, simpler and perhaps more traditional little quilt for the baby - which is not due until late October so I have a bit of time left.

This quilting was fun, and I enjoyed relaxing into my old comfort-zone at the sewing machine.  My younger daughter Lizzie moved into an unfurnished rented house, shared with an old school friend, at the beginning of September.  It feels like her first real grown-up home - no more rooms in shared student houses, but somewhere she plans to stay for a couple of years, and can make homely with her own furniture etc.  Among the various bits of household stuff she inherited from parents, were a couple of old and timeworn quilts.  But I decided it was a good moment to make her a new quilt - and so, using the same very simple square block pattern I'd used for the baby quilt, I pieced a new 56" square rainbow quilt for her.  This is it,  in process of assembly: thank heavens for lots of space on bare wooden floors to lay it out and play with arranging the blocks.

Of course, it needed quilting.  And in the light of my over-doing the baby quilt, I decided this rainbow quilt would look best with hand stitching.  And so I have spent 5 or 6 evenings half-watching rubbish tv, and half struggling with the quilt on my knee and rather big quilting stitches in matching rainbow threads.  Oh dear: this is taking longer than I anticipated.  I may be working on this quitl for another week or two yet.  A Christmas present perhaps, rather than a moving in gift. 

Cutting the patches for all these quilts has left me a with a wonderful box full of tiny scraps and the edge trimmings from rotary cutting.  I have no idea what to do with these, but at present I can't bear to lose them....

And on top of all this, I also decided to finish off some long-standing UFOs, starting with a big pile of 1" hexagon rosettes, made back in 2008 when I was extremely sad about life and its vagaries, and sewed a fairly mindless set of pieces, without any real plan for their eventual use.

A lull, and then print-making

Back after a long absence!  Once my Foundation Course finished, I found myself in rather an odd state of listlessness for a week or two, not quite knowing what to do with myself, and probably also just rather tired.  It felt so odd not to have a project to work at, and deadlines to meet.  But at last I have found my energy levels again, and begun to  focus on print-making, as a precursor to starting the MA course at the end of September.  It seemed like a good idea to give myself a refresher course in simple print-making techniques, using materials to hand at home, and without recourse to any specialist equipment.  In reality, I haven't done a great deal of printing this past year, so it has felt like starting from scratch, working initially with relief prints, i.e. lino and collagraphs which I can print using relief methods.  I've been helped and inspired by several books, including ......


I have a slight problem with lino-cutting - a war-wound from too may years spent hunched over a keyboard has left me with a touch of RSI in my right wrist, and I have trouble if I put too much sustained pressure on my hand.  I've discovered that using proper lino is often too stiff and hard, and gives me a lot of pain,  but I have less trouble with the more flexible, and softer, vinyl mat which I can buy at Scrapstore Kids' Art shop in St Werburghs.  I've been using, so far, basic water-washable block printing inks, cheap and cheerful and designed for school use, also from Scrapstore.   


I began with a really simple design to get used to using the tools again.

Which printed out like this...

 I then tried cutting a relief block from card, using scraps of mount-board (also from Scrapstore) which i sit and then sealed with shellac (knotting fluid) to make them waterproof against the ink. The design was from a very simple drawing of my current favourite shoes.

The print came out like this ...

I found that cutting into mount board was a lot less trying on my wrist, and also that it would print reasonably well this way (I have previously used card as the base for collagraphs, but always using an etching press, and had not released they would work in relief mode).  So I went a little crazy, and made a whole set of small card blocks, playing around with textures, with using the peeled-off top layer as a relief on another piece of card, rough side up, and smooth side up.  I tried cutting fine lines, and also removing relatively large sections of the surface.  I wanted to create a kind of sampler of surfaces and techniques, as the basis for more considered designs later on.

All the blocks were sealed with shellac, most with two coats, one or two with more.  Again, I hoped this would help test out the best mix of cutting and sealing, for use as relief blocks.

The heatwave this week has been helpful in making sure shellac dried almost instantly, but ti was less helpful yesterday web I had a mammoth printing session.  The ink was drying much too quickly, both on the ink-slab and on the blocks.  So I added some fluid designed to delay the drying on screen printing screens, and it seemed to help.

Here are some images of my print table in use, and the blocks themselves.

I used a laundry rack from IKEA for drying the prints.  £20 - perfectly serviceable - and brilliant compared with the phenomenal price of "proper" print drying racks from specialist art suppliers, which can cost hundreds of pounds.  It worked perfectly, and folds up neatly when not in use (and could also, of course, be useful for the laundry).

More images soon of the finished prints.


I was fairly pleased with this first effort, although I think the ink was the weakest part, and it will be wroth investing quite quickly in some better quality relief inks.  I have quite a lot of fabric printing ink, so I may also try printing onto textiles with these simple blocks.


Next steps will include making a series of blocks to try two and three colour prating, which will also require proper registration and careful preparation of the design.

Taking it all back home

Today was packing up day, last day in college, and results day.  All rather sad, but also joyful.

It is interesting how much quicker it is to take something down, than to put it up!  College was stripped bare by 10.30, while it had taken days to get it all cleaned and tidy and hung.  Hmm. 

Here is my pile of things, looking rather forlorn, and ready for a taxi home.

I decided to bring all the cut strips home.  I think they still have life in them, and if all else fails, I can turn them into paper mache bowls.....

Oh, and we got our results, and I was delighted and not a little stunned to get a Distinction!

Doing Foundation has been an absolutely brilliant thing, has transformed the way I think about art, myself, things in general. has given me new skills and awareness, some new friends, and a new direction.  I am so grateful to the college and the tutorial team for leading us through it all, and for being such great people. 

So now for a long summer, keeping myself busy (there is lots to be done) and trying to focus a little on print-making and what I want to get out of the MA course at UWE.  And doing as much as I can of drawing, mark-making, printing, photography, looking at art, and thinking.  And perhaps, even, remembering how to use my sewing machine and doing a bit of much-neglected quilting too.

Final Show

The Final Show at Queens Road previewed on Friday night, and then ran until Tuesday, with a rota of students taking turns to steward it.

The opening night was a great success - but ridiculously crowded.  Over 100 students were finishing, and the college space is tiny, so it was quite a squeeze with parents and children and friends all winding round the corridors trying to see all the work.

I thought the standard was generally pretty high, and it was good to see the finished work of so many of the full time students, who we have had very little to do with most of the time.  Here are some images of some of the work I particularly liked, but I fear I did not always securely attach names to images, so some are unattributed.

I really liked several of the painters' work, but especially this one by Georgia Smith.

This was an amazing construction of a garden shed, complete with a full complement of bits and pieces.

These face casts were cleverly located half-way down the stairs to the ceramics studio.  

This was by Maeve Anne, who is going on to do an MA in Dublin, and is about the way we perceive meaning in relation to images.  It was huge, about 4 ft in diameter. 

This complex map of Easton, a Bristol neighbourhood, was by Jo Knight, and represented the women in this culturally and ethnically diverse area, and recorded the places they had come from. Jo did a series of taped and transcribed interviews with the women too.

This is part of a group of pieces by James Norman, called The Departed, which was about the loss of lives in the First World War.  This piece is a relief, rather than a painting, and includes a muddied and battered pair of soldiers' long-johns, and a lot of hatred fruit, and ash, and quite a lot of mud and pva as well as paint.  James also had a small excavation in the college back yard, and a very moving continuous sound accompaniment, of his reading, in dead-pan tones, a random selection of lines from Wilfred Owen's wars poetry.  It sounds chaotic when described like this, but in reality was both moving and visually (and aurally) exciting.  James is going on to do a BA in Fine Art at UWE 

And finally there was my box of bits of paper.  I attached a note to the box, in the hope that people would play with the scraps: 

deconstructing 

a life in words and paper

shredded, scattered and strewn

feel free to touch, delve, build, search find

de-constructing is also re-constructing

It seemed to work - people did investigate, and lift and dig and sculpt with the paper., so I achieved a result in terms of getting people to engage with the feel of the paper, and perhaps to think about how we throw things (including ideas) away, and how ephemeral our work can be.

 People also seemed intrigued by the tiny snatches of meaning on the scraps of paper strip - and they lifted them up to read and wonder about the words, and to search of other interesting snippets.  Someone said it was a bit like getting Fortune Cookies at a Chinese restaurant.  Or a Christmas lucky dip.  

Overall, I was quite pleased with how the show went, and how my pieces fitted in to the whole.  My film was on the show reel with 7 others, os it was quite a challenge for people to sit and watch the whole lot.  But whenever I went in to the film room, people generally were sticking with it, even though there was no punch line.  I didn't hear any negative comments so I guess that was as much as i could hope for.  I rather liked the film, anyway.

Good News!

I heard today that I have been offered a place on the MA in Multidisciplinary Printmaking at UWE, to start in September.  More info about the course is in the link here.

I am very pleased, and not a little excited.

Exhibition preparation

Monday was the day for us to bring in all our work and our final pieces for assessment and for the exhibition which will open on Friday.  It was a rather nice day - college was all clean and tidy with fresh white paint on every wall, and there were lots of students fidgeting with their final pieces, fixing things to walls, arranging things on plinths and shelves, doing last minute adjustments, and setting out research files, sketchbooks and  development work for the assessors.  There was plenty of time to look at other people's work, before what will hopefully be a very crowded Private View on Friday evening.

My installation was fine, I was grateful for some help from James in assembling the open box onto the square plinth, and then I filled it up with my paper.  It looked like this....

I thought this was OK - except there didn't seem to be quite enough of the paper.  I wanted to create a rich sensation of being able to delve into the heap, and it was, frankly, a bit thin.  So I rushed home at lunchtime and furiously sliced up a bundle more women's history magazines and journals from way back, and a few other things including at least one of my essays.  When I could face using the guillotine no longer, I rushed back to college and added all this new material to the heap.  And it was considerably better for being much fuller. Like this..... 

It is now possible to pile up the strips and create little landscapes and sculptures, which is what I wanted to achieve.

I had to do another title for my film on the show reel, too, but I was pleased with the ways the film looks on the bigger screen.  The noise of the emergency siren, coming in the middle of the film, still seems to be OK, even though it obscures the sound of the paper falling for a while.  Anyway, it is all done now, and I just hope it comes out OK in the assessment - and I also hope that the box and plinth will be ok in the bustle of the Private View.  They are just a little vulnerable to being knocked into or knocked over in the place I've been allotted - but I mentioned this to several of the tutors and hopefully it will be moved, at lead a little, before the doors open on Friday.

Finished at last!

I have spent the best part of the last few days doing all the last bits and pieces for my Foundation Diploma assessment and the final show.  Our work has to be delivered to college on Monday for assessment and the final show opens on Friday evening.

I thought I had more or less got everything done, but there was still a lot - including the bibliography and project evaluation.

Well, at last it is all done, and all packed up in boxes and folders ready to take in on Monday.  And here it all is.....

And I am feeling quite cheerful about the work itself, and the way it has all come together. My two complementary final pieces can't be shown here, although I will have some photos later on, once the show is done.  

I am submitting a short film I made at college which is  of thousands of little strips of cut-up paper falling into a big heap on the floor, complete with sound.  

And secondly an installation consisting of a big flat open wooden box, 3' square and sitting on a pedestal about 3' high, which will be filled with those same strips.  Visitors will be invited to delve into the heap with their hands, to pick up the strips and drop them again, to listen to the sounds they make, to pile them up into weird and wonderful shapes and sculptures, and generally to experience the exhilaration of letting go of an old life full of words and papers and essays and report writing, in exchange for a new freedom to create and experience textures, sounds, sights and shapes. 

Well, that's what I hope will happen.  I have a private nightmare that the plinth will get knocked over and the paper scraps will be spread across the floor....  I am a little worried about the location I've been given within the exhibition rooms, and may need to negotiate about this when I take everything in on Monday.

I am so pleased to have it finished!  But what on earth will I fill my time with now?  One urgent task is to give the house a much-needed clean and tidy.  The kitchen has been totally invaded for weeks, and somehow things have found their way into every corner of the house.  

So, given the continuing rain and wind, what better way to spend Saturday afternoon than having a good old tidy? Actually I can think of a great many nicer things to do, but needs must....

And the second thing to do, which is definitely nicer, is to make the Ginger and Rhubarb loaf which my lovely daughter Charlie has just up-loaded onto her blog charliemakescakes.blogspot.co.uk and which sounds scrumptious.    

distractions

I've had a lovely, spur-of-the-moment two day visit from my daughter Charlie and her partner Lu,  which has meant a lot of eating and talking and lazing around, and not much work on my final pieces and materials.   We did go together to see the UWE degree shows, including the Fine Art BA at Spike Island (which I felt was very disappointing:  a lot of rather odd posturing, and very little art which made any sense to me) and a second look, for me but not for them, at the Drawing, Illustration, Photography and Printmaking at Bower Ashton, which was altogether very uplifting, interesting work, skilful drawing and printmaking, professionally exhibited.

Never mind, there are still a few days to go, and I am always best when working under the pressure of a looming deadline....

And meanwhile, since it didn't actually rain this morning, I had a couple of blissful hours on the allotment, planting my french beans...

and exalting in the fact that neither slugs, rain, wind nor rabbits have so far got at the runner beans (below) which I planted on Sunday.

Moira (who is helping with some of the gardening) has planted potatoes which are doing fine, even though they went in rather late.

And I had another go at strimming the grass paths, and generally tidying up.  It was good to be there: it is such a lovely peaceful site - and by the time I got home, the rain was just beginning, so I think I got the timing right and made best use of the best of the day.

So now, no more procrastinating, but back to work for the assessment and show next week.....

almost there

This week is focussed on getting everything ready for the final show.  Monday was spent in college, helping with the mammoth tsp of transforming the relatively small studio space at Queens Road into an exhibition space.  Lots of 4x8 boards of mdf, lots of white paint, lots of planning and direction from tutors and cheerfully willing hands from students.  Amazingly somehow it all works, and quite quickly too.  

Now all I have to do is the fine tuning of my sketch book, project diary, research file, developmental pieces, project evaluation.  So much, suddenly, to do and so few days left.

Yesterday I had my interview for the MA Multi-disciplinary Printmaking at UWE.  It is such a great course, I have fingers and toes crossed in the hope that they will offer me a place.  I've been down to see the degree shows at Bower Ashton twice now: some really great work in printmaking, drawing, illustration.  I so hope I can be part of it soon....

Upfest: spray paint and music

Fantastic! the music has at last stopped!

Upfest has been happening in venues and car-parks and streets all around here, all weekend.   One of the main sites is in a yard immediately behind my house, so I can see all the painting going on from the back windows.  And hear the music!   

This was the view from my little back bedroom.

This is how the website describes it all:

Welcome to our new festival website for Upfest Bristol 2012, by using the buttons above your be able to find all the information of this years festival, from where to find toilets too the location of your favourite artists. Upfest Europe’s largest urban art festival has announced the impressive international line up for its fifth year and has unveiled plans to take over the cultural home of UK graffiti, Bristol.

This year Upfest has attracted over 250 of the most groundbreaking graffiti artists the world has to offer. Descending onto Southville, Bristol they will consume over two miles of the city to paint live for three days and create over 20,000 square foot of artwork. Along side all of your favourite artists, DJ's, Beatboxers and Bands your find a great selection of genuinely affordable artwork.

It is a brilliant festival of urban street art, and I am amazed and impressed at the range and quality of the work on show - all done with spray cans and very quickly.  There have been loads and loads of people about, even today when the rain has hardly stopped.   Quite a lot of the shops on adjacent North Street have had their shutters painted, which will no doubt help cheer the place up, especially the far end which is still a bit neglected.  

But the music has been loud and relentless with a heavy and repetitive bass beat all day long since 11.00 am.  So it is bliss indeed that, on the stroke of 9 pm, the music has stopped - or at least, it has retreated indoors to the Tobacco Factory and several of the other pubs and bars along North Street.   

Here are just a couple of images taken from the work in the yard immediately behind my house....

Tomorrow there will be more - and the weather forecast is OK for Monday, so the painters and spectators should have a much nicer day.   But what a turn-out, even today in the pouring rain: the organisers and local traders must all be very pleased.