Workshop with Lisa Walton

The workshop, arranged by London Quilters, was based on Lisa's quilt "Breaking the Drought". We learned tricks of embellishing, layout, and quilting this pattern. What a scene of concentration. Note the fabrics on the bench - these are Lisa's hand-dyes, and the ones spread open are painted, graded from one colour to another. Irresistible.
Lisa uses her painted fabric for whole-cloth creations. She paints several layers at once - including a top layer of organza. This piece is embellished with lots of beads -
By mid-afternoon we each had a few blocks ready. Here's Lisa giving us some tricks for getting the layout to work -Back home I kept right on working, embellishing all my hand-dyed recylced damasks - there are enough to make a piece 48" square. This lurid photo shows my blocks laid out, ready to sew together - and quilt, of course. The blue border (still to come) will have a block jutting into it -- which, Lisa explained, saves buying huge amounts of fabric, just to cut the long borders along the length.
Of course in a workshop you have to get out of your comfort zone at least once. I really resisted the eyelash yarn at first, but by the end of the day had to ask for some more....

Pierre Soulages

Very exciting to discover this French abstract painter. Born in 1919, he's known as "the painter of black".

His big achievement was the 95 windows of the Abbey of Conques. Here are some pages from the book on this (I now wish I'd bought it!)And some of his other work -

Walking

"Art is, after all, only a trace - like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness." (Robert Henri)

More, much more, about the history of walking is here:

"Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. it is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals." (p.5)

Interestingly, the book has a little pathway at the bottom of each page, along which run quote after quote - about walking, of course.

"In my room the world is beyond my understanding," wrote Wallace Stevens in "On the Surface of Things", "But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four / Hills, and a cloud."

Parker at Ikon

Gosh it was almost a year ago that the CQ committee met in Birmingham. On the way to the Cornelia Parker exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, we were busy with our cameras -
Here's the gallery, a converted school in a renovated area near the canal -

Nice original features -
I found the reflections of the work, in the glass protecting some of the work, as interesting as the work itself - these suspended bits of earth are from the works around the leaning tower of Pisa; the people in the gallery add something that's otherwise missing -
Exhibitions give you fresh eyes to take back to your own environment. Like for this bit of plaster dripped by a careless workman, renovating a bathroom -

The fabric of vision - dress and drapery in painting

You find things, don't you, that you can't quite bring yourself to throw away. This exhibition at the National Gallery in 2002 looked at some of the ways artists from the Renaissance to the early 20th century used dress and drapery to capture the eye with meaning and feeling.My own eye was captured by drapery in a painting by Donato Ceti, 1713, and by this combination of colours:
pale gold
bluegrey
siena
ochre
mustard
gold
orange
scarlet and
dark brown/purple

Rebecca Crompton

Why weren't there any pix of work by Rebecca Crompton (1895-1947) on the web, I lamented some time ago. This English embroiderer, nay artist, should be more widely known.

This is "The Magic Garden", 1937. 52 x 32 cm; cotton applique and free surface stitches.The photo is in "5000 years of textiles", ed. Jennifer Harris, published in 1993 by British Museum Press, paperback edition 2004.

She was one of the first advisers to the Needlework Development Scheme (started by J P Coates in 1934) and "taught the use of simple macterials and simple stitches to create lively and imaginative pieces. She was also one of the first teachers to promote the use of he domestic sewing machine as auseful tool in the embroiderer's repertoire, and, despite initial opposition, various types of machine were soon used either in conjunction with hand embroidery or alone."

You can see other pictures of her work here and here (both those links will take you to rich sources of needlework images, by the way) - and you can get the exhibition catalogue "Rebecca Crompton and Elizabeth Grace Thompson, Pioneers of Stitchery in the 1930s" from the Embroiderers Guild bookshop.

Another Sunday in the country

Off early along the M40 - in the murk.Beyond the Buckinghamshire-Oxfordshire border the road drops down from the hills, usually a great view. This time we were cheered by the brighter sky.
I love this hillside, even in the rain -After sorting stuff out in the boatyard, we headed towards Banbury. Here's the famous Banbury Cross -
And some advertising from pre-internet days -
The town has a great cookshop, lots of temptation --
More murk and torrents of rain on the way home. Photographing the spray kept me busy. Watch out pedestrians!
And then there was this. Most cars were turning back, but we saw a cyclist going through, and the water only came just over his chain -
that water did make the car smell rather. The cyclist looked pretty disgusted, too.

Busywork in the car

Preparing a little shibori -Here it is all gathered up -
And painted with fabric paint (with a bit of purple on the other side) -
Released -
Ready - but for what? - with the threads plaited, ready to be used for another one -
In my impatience to undo it, I ironed it dry, and made these prints in the process -

If you see it, and you like it ...

... photograph it!

Where are they now?

In June the V&A shop was selling these stamps of Chinese characters for £1 each. I limited myself to a few, but the choice was hard. Took them home and put them ... somewhere ...

Now that I've found the photo, I need to find the stamps. They'll be somewhere in the studio ... won't they?

Ah, found 'em! A mantra for Pollyanna -
In case anyone from chinese class is reading -- the character given for cheerful is le4 [fourth tone]; the New Oxford Pocket Chinese Dictionary says it also means laugh. Gracious is en1; it also means matrimonial happiness. Kind is shan4; hmm, this means good deed - or good and honest; wise; friendly; familiar - and also be good at, be apt to - but not "kind" per se. For strong, they got the character wrong- qiang2 is written with a square at top right. This character isn't among the 52,000 in my dictionary and -delightful thought- could be nonsense.

If this bit of Schadenfreude pushes your buttons, check out this website showing misuse of "hanzi" - usually in tattoos. (Or maybe tattoos don't have to make sense?) btw, the word for tattoo, wen2shen1, cconsists of the character for "writing; language; culture - which also means "civil; gentle" and "cover up" - along with the character for "body". If Chinese language (and culture) interests you, you can learn more at chinesepod.com - they have a free trial period.

Errors like this wrong character just go to prove that proofreaders are needed everywhere in the world, and not just in the book publishing industry!

Back to the studio now, though. While looking for the stamps I also found this old block:Wonder what it will look like when it's printed...

Keep on truckin'

It's been awfully quiet outside - no traffic on the road - and here's why, as caught by Thomas, who happened to be walking past the railway bridges at Finsbury Park station -
Full speed nowhere!

Art that flows

"I make art daily--much in the same manner like a musician who practices notes. Often they are just small things--my immediate responses to life. In addition to the daily pieces, I work on larger ideas and have several pieces and mediums going at the same time. These multiple works inform each other with their ‘making’ and with their content. Some I ‘like’, some I don’t. I am happiest when my opinions disappear; one work simply flows into another" - so says Annie Helmericks-Louder, a painter who also works with fabric. See her work here and here (the latter site may have problems launching on some PC platforms), or read about her show on Ragged Cloth Cafe. Here's a detail from the image that fronts her website - fabulous use of fabrics:In the Ragged Cloth Cafe post, Linda Frost says "art should provide a speed bump to the daily race to the finish" - yes!

Via Linda's blog I came to an article about another show in Lawrence, Kansas, called The Dime Bag Show - artists donated $10 to the local Social Services League and filled a bag with "stuff" from which to make art - with wonderful results! The short video shows Linda's two pieces in that show - here's one (love the scaled-down shirt) -

Book making book

Very exciting to look through this book. It has inspiration -
alternating with instruction -
I'd love to go to some of the sessions it's based on, or rises from.

Seasonal glut

They've been falling off the tree for a while, so Tony decided to pick the ripe ones he could reach.
The damaged ones got salvaged and stewed, then set to drip through this contraption.
Yeild so far: two-and-a-bit jars of ginger-lemon-apple jelly. There will also be applesauce and probably some apple chutney, as well as pie(s) and crumbles.

This might lead on to a journal quilt...

Finished at last

Borders decided, quilted, and bound, on a journal quilt started a while ago. The quilting has made the kettles look a bit battered. Something to watch out for next time.