Papercuts

We've all folded paper and cut snowflakes, haven't we?

My first glimmer of what could be done with cut paper was when a colleague brought some back from China in 1978 when he went back to the old family home - there it's a folk craft as well as a fine art -
That, or something else, inspired me to make some - out of tissue paper, which proved hard to mount onto cards. Live and learn.

Scherenschnitt was brought over to the new world to become part of "Pennsylvania Dutch" and similar cultures.

In Jewish culture, papercuts are made exclusively by men

In Poland, papercuts incorporate rich colour -

and probably anywhere there is paper and scissors, there's a papercutting tradition.

Contemporary papercut artists include Beatrice Coron, who often uses Tyvek
Annie Vought,

Rob Ryan, who seems to be "everywhere" at the moment, even on magazines and London Underground -
Laura Cooperman,
Canadian artist Ed Pien who cuts huge sheets of shoji -
and Peter Callesen,
to name but a few, and to leave out Su Blackwell and Georgia Russell, among others.

You can be a papercutter too, if you have an hour to spare - look here for Jeffrey Rudell's instructions.

And have a look at Lotte Reiniger's animated, papercut films - from the 1920s and 30s. There are some on youtube.com.

A little trip to Oxford

You know you're in an ancient university town when you see the punts. These are beside the botanical gardens - no time to visit it -or any of the colleges (these will have to remain "imagined interiors") -
But on the way to my meeting I saw this plaque in an alleyway, commemorating Jane Morris, wife of William -- "Pre-raphaelite muse and embroiderer" -- who was born in a house along this passage in 1839.
The pub at the end of the passage gives you some idea of what it looked like in those "good old days" -
Also in this old university town, the Sheldonian Theatre lies between the Bodleian Library and the History of Science Museum (where Einstein's blackboard is carefully kept) -
Quaint buildings along Broad Street - pretty, yes? -
One of them is the original Oxfam shop, and indeed in 1974 in my first trip to fateful Oxford, I found a lovely 1930s platter for 30p; it's Crown Ducal Ware and the pattern is Orange Tree.
Another excellent part of the evening was the full moon high up in the clouds.

Getting the light

My biggest gripe about my workspace is that, apart from early on summer mornings, the northeast-facing room is gloomy - made moreso by the trees in the garden next door. I love the greenery, but aging eyes need light!

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" - so here it is, my daytime handwork spot - a big piece of wood on an adjustable-height ironing board, near the window.You can't see the boxes of nicely-organised threads that live under the ironing board - the chair fits in nicely among them. And the radio is off to the right, not that I ever change the station away from Radio 4.

Best of all, the messier bits of the room will be out of sight behind me.

Threadneedle Prize

The Threadneedle Prize for Painting and Sculpture is an annual award. Visitors to the exhibition before 14 Sept( at the Mall Galleries) vote on their favourite from the shortlist.

A painting by Lucy Jones was on the shortlist - that's another of hers in the background - wonderful strong colours -Last year's winner, with this painting, was Nina Murdoch - egg tempera on gesso - after checking out her website, I'm bowled over by her work; these are paintings-that-are-paintings -
My own list of artists to look out for consists of Faye Anderson, Nicholas Archer, Paul Benney, Jennifer Godlieb, Beatrice Haines (20 small, detailed drawings of customers on the shop's paper bags!), Lucy Jones, James Judge, Kate Montgomery, Zachary Peirce, and Helen Wilson.

Autumnal

Noticing that Hampstead Heath is changing colour. It's that time of year again.

On the plinth

A sewer took her 100-year old treadle machine up on the Fourth Plinth - at 3am! She had friends give her "just three words", which she put onto cloth - she's sewing them together, with running commentary - click here to see. (Her friend Margaret, who is being talked about as I write this, is obviously a kindred spirit as well as having my name - the three words she chose are "Red, White, Rose" (that's an accent on that last e). Her friend Sue chose "red or white?") Nice to have that treadle ticking along in the background as I write - what a lovely sound!

Anthony Gormley's "One & Other" is a great project - people get an hour on the plinth, doing what they want. Last time I was there, it was a naked man - everyone wanted to be photographed with him in the background -

Another time, a young woman was blowing up balloons and sending them on their merry way, watched by her wire-knitted friend (but not by Nelson on his column) -
Note the ubiquitous presence of health&safety considerations.

Art heros - Pamela Fitzsimons

One of my favourite Australian quilters is Pamela Fitzsimons. I love the simplicity and richness of her work. Her themes are landscape in it details, the effects of human settlement, and "time". Her usual colours are subtle, suitable browns - and she does a lot of hand stitching.

This info comes from her exhibition in 2006 at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, New South Wales. "Ignition suite" (above) was in that show. (Other images are here.)

"This solo exhibition Time and Place: Pamela Fitzsimons is a series of works inspired by the landscape of Bow Wow Creek Gorge, a heritage listed geological site and scenic landscape near Mount Vincent in the Lower Hunter. It is noted for its Permian fossils and remnant rainforest vegetation.

"Living in that landscape has created a new direction in her work which has developed alongside the struggle to have the area permanently conserved through a partnership with the local council and National Parks and Wildlife Service.

"The study of the flora, fauna and geology reflecting the imprint of time on the landscape and patterns and cycles in nature, have become themes explored in the works. The textiles comprise plant dyed and hand stitched elements.

"'The finished work acts as evidence of the processes which produced it. The living in and caring for a particular place: the gathering of plant material, the setting up of the dye pot, then the cutting and piecing of the silk or wool to make the quilt. The hours spent stitching. Family and friends come and go. The seasons change. The landscape remains and is celebrated here in these works.' (Sarah Tucker, extract from catalogue essay)"

More sampling

Just getting an idea of what might happen. No matter how clearly you visualise something, it has a way of being different when you actually make it. Or else, you get started and the idea takes off in a completely different direction. Usually I like those kind of surprises, but sometimes it would be nice to stick to Plan A....

Well that's the background - here are some shapes to translate into fabric -
I have no plan for these at all - let's wait and see what happens.

A fascination with ...

... images like this one, which I found in Dec 08 while looking for photos of the big snow in Vancouver. (I've been tidying up the Drafts file on the blog...yet another aspect of "catching up with myself".)

It's obviously a photo, at dusk, of someone's little old house from the end of the path that goes through the backyard to the lane. They've gone down the path (see the footprints?) and taken a flash photo of the new snow (nearby flakes got lit up by the flash). Because of my summer homework's theme of "imagined interiors", I'm wondering why it's so fascinating ... I wrote when drafting the blog post, back in December, that I really feel drawn to this house, can imagine going in that back door - and back in time to a 1940s kitchen, perhaps. I try to imagine the layout of the house - two rooms in front, and two bedrooms upstairs. And a basement.

It reminds me of my house in Halifax, NS, which had a 1940s kitchen, built on to a late-1920s boxy basic house - in fact we found some xmas cards from 1948 in the little loft above that kitchen. One xmas eve, 1979?, when Barry from New Zealand was visiting, Roger decided to start remodelling the kitchen, so off to the lumber yard they went, got there before it closed - and by New Year the job was done, even the flowery-striped wallpapering above the white-painted wainscotting.

Rather than spend a day or so trying to find a photo of that congenial kitchen -- I used to cook and bake up a storm in those days! -- I'll leave you to imagine it. The large window came almost to the floor - the wooden table was in front of the window, and we rolled out cookies there, and decorated them. Outside was snow for many months (this was eastern Canada, after all), but for a while in early summer, swathes of day lillies bloomed. Lots of colourful leaves fallen from trees in the autumn. We had a ginger cat, a wild thing who let us adopt him. And at the front of the house was a sun porch, where you could sit on a sunny day in winter if you wore a sweater or two, it warmed up so well. Nice place, crazy times ... and then you move on.

Disappearing 9 patch

With two swipes of the rotary cutter, a boring old 9-patch square turns into something entirely different - design elements that can be arranged in a variety of ways. It appeared on lots of blogs about a year ago - there's a tutorial here (and, for dog lovers, here), and this one points out it's a good way to use charm packs. (For me, the charm is of having a project that doesn't need thinking about, just doing and enjoying.)

In order to play with the many possible permutations, I made baby quilts. First off, a cot quilt that now belongs to Daniel Thomas Hamilton, born 28 August 2008:I also made some smaller ones, 16"x20" preemie quilts for Project Linus, as part of London Quilters' "chairman's challenge" last year. They're quick, they're fun, they're useful. This is the only photo I can find -

Inside looking out

A puzzling view! It's from the Guardian's "24 hours in pictures" collection -

Kabul, Afghanistan: A boy walks inside his home at a camp for internally displaced people from Helmand province. Photograph: Dima Gavrysh/APFinally I figured it out - the photographer is inside one dwelling, looking across to another. This leaves plenty for the imagination - but there's not much for the inhabitants.

Surface Design?

The magazine is sent via Hong Kong, with real stamps, carefully cancelled. What joy to receive these envelopes. But I can't remember if they hold the SAQA newsletter, or the Surface Design Association's journal. Both are worth belonging to, for different reasons.

And here are some more stamps; they arrived from Tanzania the other day -

Weathering

You may feel you've seen this before -It looked so good with the fucshia in bloom, I had to snap it again, and to put it in context -

Sampling

Trying to get different greynesses with different weights of thread and density (and type) of stitch -And the sample swatch of machine and hand quilting, on various recycled linens, that I'll add the sample stitches to, in those moments when a bit of hand-stitching would soothe the soul -
Having got this far, though, I've had another idea - different, maybe better? (This is for CQ's "Breakthrough" challenge - deadline November. Better get cracking ...)

Three-legged dogs

On Hampstead Heath, and in Oxford. And have a look at this one.
I'm fascinated by the way the dogs just get on with their lives, even though they have a leg missing. Maybe they have a memory of how it used to be, and sometimes they must find it frustrating to be missing that leg, but somehow I don't think they're moaning that it's not fair - they're just getting on with getting on, enjoying being out for walks and having a caring home.

And finally, from FOQ

FOQ favourites - Ingrid Press

Ingrid Press exhibited with Hanging Together, and also had a stand of her own. I was entranced by her work, and thrilled to see that she is also a basket maker. I concur with her opinion that basketry is the most neglected (indeed, denigrated) of the fibre arts - undeservedly so, as there are some wonderful basket makers out there. (More on this later, perhaps, in relation to sculpture - and in its own right.)

The FOQ catalogue says: "Ingrid works with cloth (which is often re-cycled) and fibre. She likes to arrange things - mainly in rows and grids. She sees beauty in repetition. Texture is also important and is achieved through dense machine stitching of the quilts and through the materials and weaving methods used when making her small vessels. Making things gives her a feeling of being connected to many generations of crafts people all over the world. She subscribes to 'Less is More' and tries to keep her work calm and rather simplistic, which is helped by the use of a limited colour palette."A willow basket with the willow quilts -
Subtle colours and close quilting -
Another detail - those are loose little tufts of appliqued fabric -
I'd love to be able to supply a link to Ingrid's website, but she doesn't seem to have one of her own - more of her work can be seen, though, on the Hanging Together site.

FOQ favourites

Sheila Dunscombe, a member of CQ, was "student of the year"; she's been studying at Missenden Abbey -Paula Ozier had come up with some spiffing fabric designs
"Parallels" was the title of thecollaborative exhibition by Sarah Welsby and Christina Ellcock. They use paper lamination a lot -
My favourite piece - sold, or I would have bought it! - is Christina's "9 bowls" - the image is large and beautiful on their website: