Setting up

When I arrived at City Lit (after work) people were gathered and clearing out the various rooms that would be used for the exhibition. These marks on the floor will have to be scrubbed off later -The plinths and boards are ready - they just have to be moved to the right rooms. Just about everyone turned up to help set up, so there was plenty of people-power -
Easels have to be folded up small and stacked on the sink area -
Paying close attention to the health&safety talk -
The familiar sculpture room, crowded with benches, suddenly looks very spacious -
As luck would have it, the first corner to be put up is part of "my space" -
And here it is ... suitably gloomy -
The room next door is larger and will be more complicated to set up -
Once all the rooms have been configured, the painting of screens starts... some time tomorrow ...

Sculpture week 11

Hard to believe that I spent almost the entire day painting my surface. First the two layers had to be glued together - two full panels of foamcore for the top layer, and a full panel and two half panels for underneath. That had to dry. Next step - cover the top with a layer of net, held on with more pva glue. That had to dry, and then the surface could be turned over and the edges of net brought round to the back. And glued on.This textures the top a bit, as the net doesn't want to lie flat - here's a closeup on my sample, after painting with emulsion paint. Also, putting the net round the edges makes them look more finished -
This (porcelain) ladder to go up the side didn't take long to make -It came home wrapped around the invitation card, so it wouldn't get tangled up -
And here's the invitation - and click here for the link to info on the City Lit website.
Looks like I'll be stewarding on Weds 12-2 (and at the PV 6-8), Thurs 2-6, Friday 4-8, Saturday 10.30-12 -- in room 308 -- so if you happen to be in the neighbourhood, do drop by!

The weekend - and Monday - is for setting up the show, and looks set to be fairly busy.... On Tuesday, it's the internal assessment - we get a day off. The external assessor goes round on Friday - and we take all our stuff home, somehow, on Saturday afternoon.

Coexisting agendas

Ceramics week 11

Last ceramics class before the show ... busy day! First, a comparison of paper clay (top) and porcelain - the paper clay edges are wavier, but that could have something to do with the waffley fabric they were rolled out on -Little nails have been used in two ways - as inclusions, and to make impressions, by putting them under the bottom fabric and on top of the top fabric (so they don't get stuck in the clay). Where they cross, the clay either gets holes or gets very thin and transparent, all depending on thickness of course. I haven't been "technical" about making these - the evaluation will come during the setting up of the installation, when I'll be looking for the "best" ones - based on transparency, edges, patterning, shape, size.

I was using paper clay again today, and rolling out on hessian, patterning with folded top fabric, a long screw, a rubber finger-tip thingie - all sorts of possibilities for patterning, in the found objects around you -
While I was busy, more finished steps/plaques arrived, fresh from the kiln. This class has been like having Christmas every week - always a surprise coming out of the kiln! I love the noise of the little bits tapping against each other, which reminds me of the rustle of heavy silk; can these fragments be joined into a "textile"?

These had beans and lentils rolled in - which burnt away to leave interesting holes. But about a third had broken up in firing.

The bigger picture - other people at work, putting on the final touches for the show. I'm really going to miss this class but hope to keep working with clay in some way.

Today's output - two trays like this.
The necklace is a collection of stems from old clay pipes, found on the foreshore of the Thames last year. I still haven't gotten around to making beads to add to it.

Core studies week 11

Last "core studies" class - recently it's been a chance to get on with your own work. Attendance has dropped because of people "getting on" at home, or else they're working in the digital studio or wherever. Which leaves more room...I brought in my portfolio to get looked at - what shouldn't be shown, what order should things be in, that sort of thing.

At lunchtime, browsing Crafts magazine turned up this drawer-on-stilts (Faux Pas, part of Les French series by Studio Glithero) and part of a quilt (The Presence of Absence) by Jennifer Vickers -
as well as In Silence by Chiharu Shiota, which is on show at Haunch of Venison in London until 27 March.
"Remembering the distressing memory of waking up one day and feeling as if her entire bedroom was entwined or knotted in black, Chiharu Shiota started working on 'room-filling', impenetrable installations made of black thread ... the actual installations arise from the artist's desire to 'draw in the air'."

At some point in the afternoon the first lot of "screens" for the exhibition arrived -
Room plans are available, but times for stewarding are still to be negotiated. Looks like everyone will have to be there at some point every day.
I'm in Room 308 and aim to be there Weds 24th, 12-2, Thurs 25th 2-6, Fri 27th 4-8, and Sat 28th 10.30-12. At noon on Saturday the exhibition closes and we take all our work home....

Construction

To build a table base for an installation, first send your Studio Assistant/Chauffeur/Domestic Cheerleader/Etc out for supplies -Wood needs cutting to size, priming, and painting. The paint is sample pots of "Licorice" colour in the chalky finish -
I was really enjoying the way the white turned black.

Next, drilling for the screws - SA/C/DC/E checks that I've done it right -
As it will be taken apart (easier to carry on public transport), I've numbered the corners for accurate reassembly -
It'll need wiping down and some touching up when reassembled.

The plywood will support the foamcore, which will extend 20cm beyond the base -
From this angle, it looks suitably scary -
The legs are 110cm high - and it hardly wobbles at all (at the moment).

Aiming for a series

For this year's journal quilts, I intended to do a series based on doors and doorways - because in January that's what I thought my final project for the foundation course would be about. So the January journal quilt (7"x10") started out showing a doorway that was open a crack - but my goodness it was boring! So it became a house with a strange background. Lesson from this - think before you sew.

February - doors again, with a bit of thought this time -
This has a lot of layers, and I got quite confused figuring out what got sewn where, when, and whether it should have been quilted before or would be quilted after.

Version 2 is similar but even less successful. Hey, it's about learning, isn't it?
I enjoyed inventing a "ladder stitch" to go around the door (on the green).

March - it's the rickety steps, the steps on sticks - my current preoccupation! They don't translate well to fabric - or at least they don't like being sewn into fabric. Applique might work?
So far, then - the 2010 JQ aren't exactly a visual treat. It's nice to sit and sew for a few hours, but these poor offerings were a struggle - and show it. Each has taught me something, though.

And the series? Doorways, no; it might become a "construction" series. Or it might go off on another tangent, who knows?

More ceramic steps in the making

On Friday morning either a momentary sense of panic set in, or else I was "in the zone" - there was a lot of rolling out of porcelain clay going on in the kitchen -
By rolling it between two cloths you can do some interesting texturing - here are a couple of examples, being pierced by the sticks that will fit into those holes. The clay will shrink a bit - but it's better to sharpen the stick than to have the holes too big and have the step sink down...
The nails were put on top of the cloth before rolling - it makes a great texture.

This is one of my favourite stamps - a piece of Victorian (?) glass that Jo found along the Thames at low tide -
The old dishcloth is great for texture -
And the lentils will burn away in the firing.

Another good texture resulted from two layers of net -Some of these have dried beans in the clay - I hope when they burn away, there will be lacy holes, or at least thin areas to let the light through -
Underneath the high table holding the rickety steps, on the dark floor, will be a puddle of clay holding just a few steps-on-sticks. Here it is taking shape -
and here it is with underglaze colour added -it'll be fired next week, as the clay has to dry a bit and it's quite thick (but the colour had to go on before the clay was too dry). Fingers crossed it works -
There's one more day for making more - and all this "raw clay" will be fired to stoneware on Friday, ready for setting up on Monday (22nd) - a bit last minute ... yet again.

Getting back to fabric

Faced with "the void" after the art foundation course ends - very soon - I have signed up for a two-day workshop at the Festival of Quilts in August.

The workshop is Mixed Media Collage, with Judy Hooworth - here's a detail from one of her recent works, Creek Drawing - see the whole quilt here - it's gorgeous! I chose this workshop solely because I greatly admire her earlier work, and only on writing this post have I seen the recent work. (Coincidentally, in the past 24 hours I've been seriously considering working only in black and white for a year or two ... quite an ambitious objective!)

I'm interested to see whether my approach to (a) going to workshops and (b) using fabric has been changed by the course. Apparently the supplies to bring are fabric scraps and threads - already I am wondering whether to take lots or few; a range of colours or just certain ones ...

There's been discussion on the CQGB yahoogroup about the value of taking workshops, prompted by posts on Kathleen Loomis's blog on "finding your voice". She suggests setting yourself an objective before going to the workshop, and afterwards, reviewing what you've learned and figuring out how it fits with your current body of work.

At the moment my objective is to approach this workshop in an "art" way (start with a concept) rather than in the spirit of "let's add a little of this and then a little of that", which is my usual approach.

As always, I love the possibility of surprises, and the inevitability of the unexpected.

Here's an earlier quilt by Judy Hooworth, from Quilt National 2001 -There's a yellow one that sticks in my mind, but I can't find an image of it....

Stairs

When the idea of the fabric stairs as the focus of my display space took root, I started looking more closely at stairs - and at spaces under stairs.Mention "a room under the stairs" and people always - always! - say "oh yes Harry Potter". Which upset me at first (you mean it's been done to death already? it's derivative, old hat?) but the other side of the coin is that if this is what people think of ("small and dusty, and lots of spiders"), how do you use that expectation - either to build on it, or to subvert it (preferably the latter, of course).

"Under the stairs" also often conveys the "glory hole" jumble of unwanted items. Or perhaps, carefully organised storage. Use of unused, perhaps unusable, space. Call it "dead space" if you will...
Perhaps it intrigues me because I spent my formative years in a house with no basement and no attic. After which, it took only a short while of living in basement rooms (the haunt of poor students) to make "upstairs" very desirable. Now I live in the top two floors of a house converted into flats, and what would be my understair cupboard is in the downstairs flat (surely there's a metaphor in that...).

Another thing that makes the understair area so fascinating is my lifelong love of "cupboard beds" - the idea of having a cosy room-within-a-room, with favourite books to hand, completely private. This goes back to some story read in childhood, no doubt. A cosy and safe place in which to read scary stories. It's the "tiny house" thing ... the "child cave" phenomenon.

Yet another cupboard-under-the-stairs story is of my winter in Menorca, living in an old stone farmhouse with no water or electricity or heating, and very little money. We would keep warm of an evening by taking our chairs and gas lamp and books into the cupboard under the stairs, which got reasonably cosy - and then it was time to jump into the icy bed. (Ah, we were young...)

You might recognise these stairs - even if you've never seen them before -
Yes, the piece is by Rachel Whiteread. Another variation on the "back stairs" design?

"A murder of crows" and other diversions

Great phrase, isn't it - and it sends me on all sorts of tangents:
-it's the title of an exhibition in Edmonton, Alberta - which literally sounds like a nightmare-an exhibition, or rather a project, a guided walk in the East End, by Janet Cardiff - which I never did manage to do, though it was highly recommended; she and George Burres Miller have put together many walks as artworks (and their installations are interesting too - have a look at the sequence of photos for The Secret Hotel, for instance)-the fascinating book Crow Country by Mark Cocker ("a prose poem in a long tradition of English pastoral writing" in which "he uncovers the complexities of the birds' inner lives, and the unforeseen richness hidden in the raucous crow song he calls 'our landscape made audible' "). I bought it during the drawing day at the Natural History Museum just over a year ago, have read it with great pleasure up to page 143, and will get back to it one day soon...-the other amazing collective nouns - an exhaltation of larks is the one that comes first to mind, and is the title of a book of engravings that's been around for a long time ... I'm trying to find it, but it's not "Of a Feather: An Avian Alphabet" by Colin See-Paynton, which is a wonderful collection of engravings - Gregynog Press has produced a wonderful edition-another book of that title is by James Lipton (it's about "the game of venery" - !)-my journal quilt last year for March, "crow moon" (the yellow one!), for which I had to start looking at and drawing crowsI've had a great time putting this post together, but that's altogether enough tangents for the moment.