Ah, Saturday morning

Saturday - a chance to catch up - or to relax. I plan to do both, so have been cruising around blogs and websites, following links, getting excited ... the way you do ...

It was supposed to be a morning of "set the timer for 15 minutes" - 15 on the computer, 15 doing housework. This is "reading week" - no classes - a chance to do the essay and go to exhibitions (and catch up on blog posts) - I don't want to spend it in a messy environment. "Be good to yourself" and all that.

First discovery was the website of Kyoung Ae Cho - whose "wood quilts" I recognised from the Quilt National books. These images

are shamelessly plundered (and not good quality) but you must go look at the entire website for yourself - the body of work is wonderful, and it's so interesting to see the development. She exhibited in Kansas City in conjunction with the Surface Design conference in 2007; here's what a newspaper write-up said:

"She has always worked with natural materials, exploring nature's rhythms and our cultural relationship with nature. "Path," from 1999, is a 22-foot-long, 16-inch-wide trail of small wood squares that Kyoung Ae has cut against the grain. The blocks are mounted in pairs on black fabric, the ends of which are rolled into scrolls. It's a luminous and varied trail of changing grains that undulates across the length of cloth. A formalist whose attention to material is always critical, Kyoung Ae lets her conceptual impulses provide her forms with additional depth and context.

"In many of the pieces, she has used corn leaves, sandwiching them between silk organza, which makes them appear radiant. In 2002's "Continuation," a wide and narrow piece, she has cut corn leaves into small pieces, pressed them between the fabric and then hand-stitched around them in contrasting thread to create a horizontal line across the vast piece. Her works' delicate appearance suggests the fragile relationship we have with the Earth."

On the other side of the world is Raft Artspace, with many wonderful exhibitions on line, currently Imbi Davidson's "Lost at Sea" - paintings on found mailbags.
If you're near Parap NT, you can see the show until 31 October. If you're not, and need to see a bit of colour, check out the previous exhibitions here. Pink, anyone?

Today there's a grey sky, it's a wet day in London town - nice and cosy at home, inside - but yesterday was gloriously sunny. My walk to the tube station is wonderful at this time of year

especially on a day with blue skies and strong shadows -
And now, "work" calls - put on some music, set the timer!

Road works

The orange barriers bring out the patterns in the pavement, somehow...

Shagreen - a metaphor?

What would a quilt about ageing look like, asked someone on the Quiltart list, after a long discussion on decade birthdays - and birthdays in general. (imho they should be celebrated and appreciated - and welcomed.)

My own "ageing piece" would have a wonderfully smooth surface, as though burnished by loving hands (ok that's going a bit far!) -- overlying all those lumps and bumps that represent all the things that life has thrown at us, and we have to cope with somehow.

What comes to mind is shagreen - a decorative finish that was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and again in the Art Deco movement. Also known as "salmon leather", it starts out as fish skin -and after polishing and dyeing, ends up like this -to be used on a variety of small items - spectacle cases, cigarette lighters, boxes, even furniture.
Also, I like the idea of using something humble, even ugly, and making it beautiful by intensive working.

Animals and us

Every morning at 8am The Guardian pops into my inbox. I scan the headlines and then head for the "24 hours in pictures" link. These are from today's assortment -

Minsk, Belarus: A squirrel reaches for a peanut from the hand of a woman in a park

Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP

Kledkaew island, Thailand: A sailor gives a banana to a long-tailed macaque

Photograph: Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

Cali, Colombia: A chimpanzee eats its lunch with a spoon at Villa Lorena animal refugee centre

Photograph: Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters

Breaking out

At last, real action on the quilt for CQ's Breakthrough challenge. A chance remark at the Knitting & Stitching show led to the purchase of silver and white textile printing paints. I used potatoes to print these "eggs" -Before printing, section by section, I bonded snippets of bright fabric -
Sometimes they stuck to the potato, but the random blank areas seemed to work just fine. So did the more heavily printed sections. Mostly I used a paintbrush to apply the paint to the potato, but there was also a foam pad in intermittent use. And sometimes I took two prints from one inking. White and silver were used randomly.

Though I'd drawn out a plan for the sections, using three sizes of "egg", it got adjusted along the way, and once the middle area was done, each new section was a new decision - what size egg? how many rows? what colours of fabric?
The size of the black linen (salvaged from some unwanted but hardly worn trousers) was 70x70 - I'd planned to cut it down to 60x60cm, but that would have diminished the piece. So I left it as is, and started printing another piece of black cloth - marked out to the correct size.
Also, I added "breakout" pieces to some of the eggs - and some strips printed on velvet. Those would be caught down by the lines of vertical quilting, about 1/4" apart. This pic shows the quilt before quilting, trimming, and binding.

Sculpture week 5

After some health&safety info (and a scary story about a schoolgirl who had her hand in quick-setting plaster and lost 8 fingers as a result), we had two 5-minute presentations about "an artist who influenced us". Charlotte chose Sidney Nolan, and this was a revelation to me. I knew of the Ned Kelly paintings, but not the background - or that Nolan painted vast friezes and muralslike this one, The Snake (Peking Mural), 1973, 30 panels in "wax crayon" (encaustic?), each measuring 112 x 81 cm and consisting of six images -
I talked about Dorothy Caldwell and how she abstracts the landscape and makes "spaces for contemplation". These images from Robert Shaw's 1997 book, The Art Quilt, were my introduction to her work -
I brought in "The Lake/The Moon" - and almost forgot to take it out of the bag. Of course people were longing to touch it - so I let them ... the red dots are french knots, and the smooth areas are tactile too -The work of the morning was to clean out our plaster moulds, coat them with dissolved soap and then with oil, and then cast the cement fondu. To mix it, you add the powder to the water (whereas for mixing plaster it's the other way round) -
The coating needs to be tapped in, to make sure it's right close to the plaster.The rest is poured in, and scrim can be added for reinforcement. This all has to happen quickly. Then, as cement fondu needs moisture to set, the mould is wrapped in wet newspaper and put in a plastic bag.
Here's mine waiting for its coat of oil -
Wear gloves - and use your hands for mixing it, so as not to have lumps -
In the afternoon we worked on the project for in front of the building. One of the items that was there is this manky hairbrush - yes, that's a representation of a head louse -
We developed our ideas in sketchbooks or on worksheets, and talked about some of them.
My project seems to be evolving to make more of the "doors" rather than the "rooms". It still doesn't feel quite right, but one of the constraints of this project is time, so it would be best to start somewhere and keep going, rather than dither about what to do.

"Silly Saturday"

Rather than turn on the computer first thing, I had a relaxed sort of morning. Drank several cups of this tasty coffee that's on special at Tesco at the moment -
Sorted out my course notes and tucked them into their tidy little box, doing a bit of review along the way, and thinking about the essay topic. And finished watching this DVD of the "Date with an Artist" programmes that were broadcast on BBC years ago, in 1997 in fact. I saw the ones with Cornelia Parker, Andrew Gifford, and Chris Ofili (but had totally mis-remembered some of them!) and the others were interesting too: Catherine Yass photographed eastender Mr Archer in the lift of the tower block he was living in; Peter Randall-Page made a stone bell for percussionist Evelyn Glennie; Nina Saunders did some upholstered swarms of bees for the sitting room of a beekeeper (who thought they were wonderful) and Brad Lochore painted some shadows for a visual-perception researcher.
Then I got out the fountain pen and wrote a long letter to a friend who's not all that comfortable with email. Took it to the post office, and bought a newspaper.
Noticed that the sign in the fish shop: "SNOEK now available". Researched snoek when I got home - this involved turning on the computer, and writing several long emails to neglected friends. Wonder why the greetings-card manufacturers haven't invented an international "get in touch with neglected friends" day...

Next, a bit of tidy-up of the room, leading to all sorts of discoveries - and a review of my notes and cards from Origin (week 2) yesterday (note the major purchase, ring by Gail Klevan) -At Origin I had good chats with ceramicist Lok Ming Fung, wood sculptor Chris Elmer, tried on one of David Poston's amazing bracelets, smiled at Catherine Tough's african-fabric owls and Hanne Linding's wristwarmers, and coveted a jumper from Ollie Zwitserlood Knitwear (but resisted), and just before rushing off to a talk by Gabrielle Koch, chatted with Fenella Elms about her ceramic wallpieces.

The washing was ready to hang up - that is, drape over radiators, bannisters, and doors -
Another discovery - neglected post! - quick, open it -
And from under that pile of paper emerged my carry-along sewing -
Big decision coming up: can this stapler be fixed, or should it simply be thrown out - such a nice colour, but rather useless -
Did you know that if every one of the UK's 10 million office workers used one less staple a day, that would save 120 tonnes of steel a year?

My next purchase will be a staple-less stapler - this one will clip three pages together, how often do you need to staple more than that?

Midway through Saturday afternoon, I've enjoyed adding all the links and following up websites and finding other scrumptious stuff - thank you for following my ramblings - it's time to do some real work now!

Ceramics, week 5

The saggar box, packed with pots among the layers of sawdust, lentils, banana skins, etc etc and fired and cooled, is opened -Here's what came out of it - a lot of charred "organic matter", and some sooty pots - lovely!
Elsewhere, my "barnacles" have matte white glaze now. I'd like to make the outsides glossy (transparent glaze) while not affecting the insides. Or vice versa, maybe ... or both?
More glazed results - the scratches need to be deeper to retain "enough" glaze. And the "midnight blue" inside the round pot is disappointingly pale and uneven (because the bottom is too lumpy) but this is all a learning experience -
On to the demonstrations of the day - using a press mold -
and a slip mold -
Results! The air bubble makes the paint tube look squeezed. The "waster" at the right (where the clay was poured in) makes it look like a caryatid ... could be interesting to have a row of those, said Robert -
Next, glazing - consistency of glaze, and the dipping technique. This is glaze waste, so the effects will be unexpected (and probably unrepeatable) -
You can just about see the lumps, from the bottom of the bowl of glaze, sticking to the pot - wonder what that will look like when it's fired -
A more structured use of glaze - layers of white and grey, with some sgrafitto along the way -
My leap forward (if such it was) is to use glass shards (thank you Joanna!) to texture one side of a slab, which had already picked up a loopy texture from being rolled out on this cloth -
This is what went onto the shelf, for bisque firing during the week -some Richard-Serra-like shapes, and some slabs with patterning. The newspaper at bottom left is hopefully forming the clay into a slight bowl shape -
Next steps? I'm still overwhelmed by all the possibilities (and my lack of skill), but it's time to start focusing on the term's project - imagined interiors, thresholds, doors, black spaces, enclosure,insides and outsides - something along that line.