Ceramics - buttons and beads course

Day 1 - of two. I'll be making some beads and perhaps even a button or two, but mainly I want to get on with foldy dipped shapes (started in "textiles into ceramics" earlier this year). Here are some I prepared before the class -

At the outset, this crudité -

Then the serious work of dipping -

dipping paper into porcelain slip

dipping heat-set, pole-wrapped metallic organza

the dipped fabric curls but keeps its pleats

Before next week I'm aiming to do some pole-wrapping and steaming of other kinds of organza ("metal" in the kiln is a bit of a risk - though I used a fair bit of metal in ceramics during the foundation course) to see what happens to these sorts of pleated fabrics.

By then these laboriously-dipped objects will be out of the kiln -

Note the beads among them! The anticipation is to see what happens - and the challenge is to respond to that on the only other day of this (very) short course. I feel a need to work through this systematically, step by step, rather than striking out blindly with "will this work? what will happen?" and not being able to take it further, either by "making it better" or by doing something different because of previous results. I'll be looking for a weekly class, or place, to be able to develop this, with some time to think in between. But two concentrated days is a booster.

Someone commented that my "foldy-books" were like walls, which isn't something I'd thought of before, but will continue to think about...

"Why did I take this picture?"

Not much of interest here ... I could remember that it was taken in passing, from a bus, and knew the building, but it took me a while to figure out what I was trying to capture. Ah yes, the hollyhocks! Unfortunately they are in the shade and hardly to be seen -

For many years, when I worked just around the corner from St Pancras Parish Church, the hollyhocks grew thick against the fence and I took photos of them with the morning sun shining through -  this pic by Adam Clark gives a better sense of their colour and stature, and that's one of the caryatids on the church's erichtheion porch (1822) -

So the photo brings all that back for me ... and as well, closer examination shows things in it that make this snap not entirely a dead loss -

The air of mystery added by the strong sunlight

The crisp shadows of leaves

But that's scraping the barrel, rather - another photo for the recycling bin...

Monday miscellany

Last week included Canada Day (1 July). What do you know about Canada? Take the quiz ... but bone up on inventors, actors, sport and singers first ... have a browse in The Canadian Encyclopedia.

And if it happens to be art you're interested in, check this list of Canadian artists, among whom is Betty Goodwin (1923-2008) -

Two Vests by Betty Goodwin (soft-ground etching, 1972)

Another of my favourites is David Milne (1892-1953) -

Glass Jar by David Milne (watercolour on paper, 1943)

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Yummy french knots and satin stitch -

by Stephanie Sykes, 2006 (via)

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150 years of named clouds ... a celebration near the home of Luke Howard, "the father of meteorology" - well, it has passed, but meteorology is a good thing to commemorate - the clouds are always with us, and how various they are! This pic is from The Londonist's alert to the event -

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Seen in the wild

Daily painting project - new this week

Last week I was lamenting not trying anything new. This week I had to remedy that ... and happened to notice the way the orange sang through from the back when the stripey painting had been sanded yet again -
Not sure if you can see it in this photo - maybe in the yellow, top left of centre, or in the blue, bottom extreme right?

Anyway, in conjunction with the results of colour application in the Structural Textiles course, it brought to mind a midnight sky with stars - with constellations - maps of constellations - and here are the first two attempts to put on paper what is in my mind .... the orange making a halo of the "stars" in the dark sky ...

Really tricky to photograph!! And ... how DO you paint stars?? What you can't see is the lines connecting the stars that make up the constellation, which I've scratched (embossed?) into the orange layer that went down first. (Those lines are important in showing the constellations.) The words are scratched through the blue-black paint mixture with the end of the paintbrush.

It's not quite "my vision" yet ... a little more work, some lateral thinking....

Large Sketchbook - week 8

Penultimate class ... it would be good to have the sketchbook filled, but if I keep adding extra pages that isn't going to happen! The extra pages extend outside the book and fold in at various points - it makes for a complex structure and many different juxtapositions.

Some cutting on the left, some painting on the right

The back of the cut page - something for photocopying next time

The crescents  came from the newspaper that was used as a cutting mat

A bit fiddly - but the white paint holds them down

It took hours to get this far

The right-hand page needs developing

This right-hand page might be ok the way it is - when the left page flaps back,
the spread is all white

The page is flapped back and opened to the previous spread

Simple cutouts are more effective! Look what happens when the pages curl.

Photocopies of rollered textures, made through stencils

Colour, cutouts, scale, materials - great!

Enlarged, with some collage and paint for the heads - ready for details of the bodies

It's salutary to see how large and bold people are working. I've got into small again and must make an effort to be bold without being messy, large without being pressured to fill the book with "just anything".

Also we're working back to the drawings we made at the start of the course - which are very different from the drawings made in the cast courts.

Structured Textiles class - week 4, final class

Possibilities for the day

 I'd been up early, getting a few things ready - stitching a dull sample from the previous class to paper, with a view to giving it a good press and then removing the paper, for instance - and folding up different types of synthetic for colouring in the heat press and/or steaming.

Stitched with neon thread ... and needing other bright accents

More neon thread, with a view to using the yellow thread for gathering and leaving the orange threads in

First results from the steamer - a velvet scrap and a composite piece

 A simple technique - making slots in paper and pulling fabric through -

So I tried it, with a view to getting some colour onto the top "puffs" and also onto the spread of fabric below. To catch some of the excess colour from the transfer-painted sheet, there's a layer of metallic organza over the puffs -

After the heat press, the reveal

Undersides

I coloured several sheets with diagonal stripes, using a battered, spiky old paintbrush, for colouring the folded sheer fabrics, with more or less subtle effects ... and found that the little plastic stars on one of the sheers melted in the heat press and stuck to the paper, what a mess -

However that strip, along with some thread circles, coloured the satin acetate and a silvery fabric; the circles stuck to the sticky bits of the coloured paper -

 Pole wrapping some of the sheers; they've been folded in various (bookish) ways before wrapping -

 and have become ... quite different ...

Some of the pole-wrapped pieces are still to be opened up

 "One I prepared earlier" got coloured yellow ... and some of the blue from the protective sheet bled through, which makes for interesting effects. I'll add more stitching and gathering, and steam it later (just to see what happens) -

A show'n'tell of our day's work -

all my bits ... now what ...

Norma's georgette looked beautiful without colour - she was brave, though, and
decided to take the plunge - doesn't it look great? And it's wonderful in motion...

Margaret's experiments with fine steel mesh and colour 

Antonia and Nicky - colourful and crinkly

Ann used all sorts of inclusions

Clara's layered colours worked especially when textures were added

Poetry Thursday - Optimistic Little Poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

... silver in the beggar's hat ...   (via)

Optimistic Little Poem

Now and then it happens
that somebody shouts for help
and somebody else jumps in at once
and absolutely gratis.

Here in the thick of the grossest capitalism
round the corner comes the shining fire brigade
and extinguishes, or suddenly
there's silver in the beggar's hat.

Mornings the streets are full
of people hurrying here and there without
daggers in their hands, quite equably
after milk or radishes.

As though in a time of deepest peace.

A splendid sight.

 by Hans Magnus Enzensberger; translated by David Constantine (via)

Enzensberger (b.1929) is a German author, poet, translator who lives in Munich. He is part of the last generation of intellectuals whose writing was shaped by first-hand experience of the Third Reich, says Wikipedia - an interesting thought in relation to the poem here.

Optimistisches Liedchen

Hier und da kommt es vor,
daß einer um Hilfe schreit.
Schon springt ein andrer ins Wasser,
vollkommen kostenlos.

Mitten im dicksten Kapitalismus
kommt die schimmernde Feuerwehr
um die Ecke und löscht, oder im Hut
des Bettlers silbert es plötzlich.

Vormittags wimmelt es auf den Straßen
von Personen, die ohne gezücktes Messer
hin- und herlaufen, seelenruhig,
auf der Suche nach Milch und Radieschen.

Wie im tiefsten Frieden.

Ein herrlicher Anblick.

From the embroidery book collection

Getting out some embroidery books

... and then putting them away, I couldn't resist opening one or two to a random page. "Celebrating the Stitch" continues to be a favourite (it was published in 1991 and I've looked at it a fair few times over the years). 

Today it opened to "Thinking about... the role of the stitch" and this quote by B.J. Adams:

"Most people are more comfortable with a stitch than a brush stroke. Maybe that's why it hasn't, in most instances, been recognized as a 'fine-art' technique in the same way the painted brush stroke has."

She also said - "The stitches are now the medium to draw/paint the designs. The whole piece is stitches, stitches, stitches, to the point where they may be disregarded, except for their texture."

She celebrated a significant birthday by making 80 artworks, 8" square, on a variety of subjects - see them at http://www.bjadamsart.com/80at80.html -

Sign of the week

Struggling to dance

The tap classes have ended, and I'll admit they've been a struggle for me ... getting the feet to do the right thing, and then remembering the sequence of steps. Practising between times has been a big help, as have various videos on the internet (search for "beginners tap steps"). Gradually the feet get quicker at picking up what needs to be done, the weight shifts from foot to foot at the right time, even the arms get into the act sometimes. 

A struggle is a sometimes good thing, though. Like many people I've talked to recently (even some in the class!), I'm not a natural dancer - which makes it really interesting to see people who are, and to make some progress on learning how to fake it. There have been moments when I actually knew what I was doing, and that felt really good. These were rather outnumbered by the "ohmigawd, what's going on" times, hey ho...

In our comfort zone activities, the struggle is at a higher level - we've mastered the basics and the nuances become more important - we want our work to be not just good but better. Struggling with the basics in an area where we have to learn new skills is a different story - intense frustration, feelings of worthlessness and stupidity, a strong desire to walk away from it, these have to be overcome. 

Undergoing this sort of self-imposed torture gives you an insight into what some people struggle with on an everyday basis - dealing with maths, speaking a new language ... there's a long list of things we take for granted that cause others real problems. In this "optional" activity, I was lucky to have a patient teacher and could also work independently, but kids who can't recognise numbers, migrants in a new country, etc might not be able to access the right resources, and what they need to be able to do is essential rather than optional.

A new session of tap classes runs over the summer, but I'll give it a rest till the autumn. It's fun and good exercise - and I've learned a lot. Shirley Temple step, anyone?