Stairway to nowhere

One thing leads to another, and my travels round the art-internet this morning (via the work of Kristina Jansson) brought me to the story of the Winchester House in San Jose, California.
It was built by the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune ("the gun that won the West") on the advice of a spiritualist. Because the "architects" were the spirits that she consulted, the house is full of strange rooms, staircases and doors that lead nowhere, etc. The spiderweb motif and the number 13 are everywhere. Read more about it here (and how it has become metaphor here) and see pix here.

Seen outside London

A field of spheres

This image appeared among thumbnails of paintings by artists from Scandinavia (the Carnegie Art Award show, 2009) - I thought it might be cloth -It's by a Finnish artist, Hannu Väisänen (b.1951), and consists of a background with a video projection. I was intrigued by the description - a field of small, painted spheres - they look like small beads. The work, Nulla succede per caso (Nothing happens by chance) measures 485x214cm - too large to fit over the sofa -
Here's the description from the art award site:

>In the painting Nulla succede per caso (Nothing happens by chance) Hannu Väisänen elaborates on a visual style that has characterised his work for some time. Inspired by the Roman philosopher Lucretius’s book De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), in which he establishes the main principles of the atomic universe, Väisänen has meticulously constructed an enormous field of countless small, painted spheres that together form a dense, strange surface. Taking the Italian expression as his motto, he initially let the pattern in these works develop randomly, so any similarities the final shapes may have with existing objects have arisen unconsciously. The exceedingly time-consuming work on a large painting has been documented continuously and is shown as a projection on the canvas, animating the otherwise entirely two-dimensional pictorial surface and conveying a slightly vibrating sensation.
>In addition to being active as a painter and graphic artist, Väisänen has also been acclaimed for his ability to lend colour, volume and depth to words: in 2007, he was awarded Finland’s most prestigious literary prize, the Finlandia Prize, for his second autobiographical novel, Toiset kengät (The Other Shoes).

Another appearance of the "spheres" motif:
And something a bit different, "10,000 Creatures" from 2005 -
Väisänen writes about a lovely little painting by Sasseta, encountered in Budapest, here.

Signage

Somewhere in Muswell Hill...

Next project

This was started about five years ago and was meant to be ready for my son's 30th birthday.

How time flies....

It currently measures 74" x 51" and hopes to get to double bed size, in a sort of quilt-as-you-go fashion. We decided to put oblong blocks of various dragon fabrics as the next round. On the back of the central area is a painted dragon, which is already quilted; around it will go some plain fabric and then oblong blocks of the "ladies", then more plain fabric. On the front, after the dragons, the subsequent round will be more of the stripey border, and then some wave-pattern fabric, which I hope to find at FOQ. It would be marvellous, nay miraculous, if the quilt was that far along, a month from now!

The midnight laundrette

Solar plate etching

Earlier this week I spent two days at The Institute, learning a lot about printmaking.The print studio is in a spacious new building right next to East Finchley tube station -
The metal plate used for printing is coated in a light-sensitive polymer. You have the image on a transparency - either by drawing, printing, or photocopying; you expose the plate to UV light, and then wash off the chemicals in a tray of water, agitating it for a minute or so. Then the plate has to cure for a day before you print with it.
My experimental transparency was made with a sponge dabbing masking fluid onto acetate; a skeleton leaf was added. You can see the detail of the veins on the leaf - but I should have been more careful with my own marks!
Inking the plate is a science and an art -
My larger plates were this tracing of a tube map - which somehow went wrong on one side (too much washing perhaps) - this kind of accident is a chance for experimentation, of course -
As well as intaglio printing, these plates can be used for relief printing - the ink is about to be spread out by a roller -
The first of the relief prints. French chalk was dusted over the plate before inking so the blue of the lines wouldn't print -
The intaglio print of the other plate, which is a photocopy of some of the TravelWriting in the Sketchbook Project book -
and the relief print: badly inked, and not consistently cleaned -- in other words, an experiment -
My output for the two days -

with a closeup of the best print, which gives me various ideas - and shows many ways that it could be improved, starting with having the two images the same size -
It's been really instructive. I'm thinking of stitching into one or two of the damaged relief prints.

Cake for breakfast

(Doesn't happen every day...)

Button, button...

These have all been collected from repurposed garments over the past two or three years. They barely fit back in the jar.

And here are instructions for crocheting covers for your boring brown buttons (is there anything more boring than a brown button?)

Printmaking

I've attended a very enjoyable, all-too-short printmaking course at The Institute, right next door to East Finchley tube station. It went by in a flash, and already is a bit of a blur!

Danger signs - Bishop's Avenue N2

Amid the gated mansions on Millionaire's Row, this decrepit alleyway -- and a bit further along, this desperate signage -
One of the houses for sale had a sign with an aerial view of part of this palatial road -

CQ summer school - continued

Collaged and held down with cellulose paste, here are my conglomerations of paper and fabric, drying in the sun -
During a coffee break I'd used the plastic that held paint used for monoprinting, doing a bit of layering and adding some hand stitch - that piece got forgotten in the excitement of making the bigger pieces, but got its own smaller setting (about A4 size) -
Some momogami - papers thoroughly crushed, ready to be inked on the back to get colour coming through - I'll use these later, sometime...
Demonstration of using windows to select pieces to cut out and recombine -...another demo of machining from the back, to get surprising placements of motifs -
And at the end, laying out the work and discussing it -
Cas suggested we put the pieces away for at least a week. That's my excuse for not having a photograph of the version developed with stitching ...

There was a bit of time to go round and see what the other workshops had produced - this is Edwinna Mackinnon's dyeing workshop, using potassium permanganate for browns and of course indigo -
Linda Miller's machine stitching - very intensive! -
Summer school has always been a great weekend - long may it prosper!

Time passes

...experiences and photos accumulate. Too many to keep up with; life is good. But now that I have a moment, this computer (a very ancient Mac laptop) doesn't let me post photos to the blog, or even download photos from my camera. That will have to wait.

As this blog is an aide-memoire for me, I'll quickly note the important events of the past week or so, in chronological order.
Monday 28 June - talk at Jerwood Space - David Mach and ?Giles ?? about "making"; followed by an unremarkable week
Friday 2 July - "Star Book" course at City Lit with Nesta Davies - I'd double-booked, forgetting that my train to the CQ summer school (nr Preston) left at 1.30, but took away paper for making the book later
Friday 2 July to Sunday 4 July - course at summer school with Cas Holmes
Monday 5 July - talk at Jerwood Space about selecting their "Contemporary Makers" exhibition
Tuesday 6 July - kerfuffle and many phonecalls about a bonfire lit by builders next door; making couscous, broad bean, spinach and feta salad for lunch with Vicky; home-made pizza party (Thomas's friends) in the evening
Wednesday 7 July - to V&A with Sue to see "Architects' small spaces" - by chance there was a lunchtime lecture by the curator; then to the preview of the Farnham degree show at the Bargehouse (this involved a walk across Hungerford Bridge and along the South Bank - always lots going on there)
Thursday 8 July - a trip in the "other direction" on the Bakerloo line (for the TraveWriting sketchbook, which is now half full), then from the end of the line into town to meet Jo and look at art along Cork Street - Matisse, Paula Rego, Andy Warhol, Pierre Soulages, Luis Tomasello, John Piper, Mark Boardman, Annabel Gault - and by chance David Nash, one of my art heroes, was talking about his work that evening and tickets were available
Friday 9 July - "Crossed Structure Binding" course at City Lit with Nesta Davies - result, two books (before the class, finally a chance to make the star book from the previous week - got it done but didn't follow the instructions entirely correctly)
Saturday 10 July - time is running out for getting the ESE journal together, so I spent all day on that; in the evening, made some folded books with tiny scraps of fabric sewn onto paper
Sunday 11 July - more folded books; frustration with ancient computer; trip to Brent Cross and unexpected purchase of wine-dark patent-leather shoes for Self and of a panama hat for Sir

The printmaking course I've signed up for, next week, might not run (too few enrolled), which may be an opportunity for catching up with everything else.

Workshop at CQ summer school - 1

"Work" started on Friday evening. Cas (Holmes) took us out into the walled garden and had us drawing without lifting the pen off the paper - a very freeing exercise. Back at our tables, we spent some time "translating" the drawing onto some of the papers we'd brought with us -Ready to get going on Saturday morning. It's always hard to know how much to bring along to a workshop -
We monoprinted, using a plastic bag to brush out the ink onto, and did relief prints -
The doily is from the tea-tray at breakfast. I put tissue under it when printing the holey bits and got a nice abstract stencilled design. Other bits of tissue were the resists from monoprints - the acrylic paint on them could then be used to stick the tissue back onto the print. The bits of fabric are printed with the end of a pen and the edge of a lid.

The other resist I used on the monoprint was a ginkgo leaf. At coffee break I collected some different leaves to use for relief printing. Getting the paint onto this one (with a brush) left a nice random pattern on the newspaper -
Next - how to use the papers we'd printed and fabrics we'd brought. Cas demonstrated using cellulose paste to layer up. The advantage (over pva) is that it's reversible - even when dry, you can prise apart the layers to insert thing, or remove bits altogether. Best materials to use are thin, natural materials - rather than synthetics.
Then we got on with our own layering up.

Imagination and time

"Imagination seems to project time so that the present is already a part of history. The past is made alive through art." A quote from Noguchi, who revived the traditional Japanese akari lamp - now ubiquitous.

7/7 memories

A sad day: five years ago 52 people lost their lives, and more than 700 were injured, in the London bombings (more than you want to know is here). A No.30 bus blew up outside my office building, the British Medical Association - 13 dead.
The building has been repaired; a plaque marks the spot -
Londoners rallied: "They're not going to disrupt our city!" and defiantly got on with life as usual.

One man and his serger

My neglected serger/overlocker is finally getting used - by my son for making T-shirts, prior to printing them:
Stage 2:
Rear view, with logo:A T-shirt in a heavier double-knit is proving more difficult altogether - but it's all part of the learning curve - for me too, as my knowledge of sewing knit fabric is practically non-existent.

Art I like - Fred Williams' red landscapes

I blogged about Australian artis Fred Williams a couple of years ago (here). Before getting down to work this morning I'd like to revist his "red landscapes" - the Pilbara series.

Painted in 1981, they were hanging in a large room in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne when I visited (wish I'd spent longer there...)

Iron-ore deposits in the Pilbara region, in the extreme north west of Australia, make the soil red. Williams went there in 1979, as large-scale mining was just getting going. This article talks about his experiences and the genesis of the paintings:

"Williams was fascinated by the spindly vegetation of the Pilbara. Trees in Australia, he once remarked, looked as if they sat on the earth rather than grew from it. While in the Pilbara he spent quite some time, he said, “trying to work out a kind of symbol for the fascinating white trunked small gum”. The calligraphic shorthand that he developed to describe the tree occurs several times in Red Landscape, where it takes on almost anthropomorphic qualities, like a struggling figure. The rest of the vegetation is painted as smudges or blots and at the line of the horizon these become actually detached from the land, as if to suggest the vulnerability the painter saw in the landscape."

The 18 gouaches (some of more than 100 Williams made on the spot) and 13 paintings (done in his studio) were donated to the gallery by Rio Tinto.

I'd really like to get the book, which is out of print ... will try to find it in an art library first.