To Ridley Road market

We took the 236 bus ... an interesting journey. These ladies with their traditional dresses in amazing fabric were on the way to the market too -At the African fabric stores we bought just this one length -
Next stop, Dalston Mill Fabrics - wow! The front rooms have high ceilings with shelves and shelves of all sorts of fabrics -
Further back is a room with buttons, trims, etc -
Further still, to a room with woollens; and up the narrow stairs to the room with silks, behind which is another low-ceilinged room with more silks (note the padded lintel!) -
Incredible.

Type

Also seen from the top of the bus - in fact right across the road from the painted movers' van - this shop sign -

On the move

"Rock Steady - Trusted Movers" was spotted from the top of a bus between Brick Lane and Liverpool Street Station -Perhaps not the firm to use if moving to, say, Hampstead Garden Suburb ...
(in fact, rather disturbing...)

Art I like - Margaret Boozer

This is one of her "Red dirt drawings" -

"In these installations of unfired local clays, Boozer's graphic compositions of color, pattern and texture create small geologic events, manifestations of cause and effect celebrating clay's physical properties. Colors change, shapes warp, cracks emerge as counterpoint the artist's hand in these fragile and mutable works that cross genres between painting and sculpture, abstraction and representation."

Here it says: "Clay, especially as Boozer uses it, is an unruly medium. She lets the material and not the desired result dictate the terms of her work, which not only has the look of clay as you find it in the earth, but also emphasizes the geological processes by which clay is formed over time. As a sculptor, Boozer encourages the unpredictable results of the material. She disguises her own hand underneath the distortions promoted by the drying process. The duality of this effect is brilliant - and because the manipulation of the media is driven by the randomness of the result - unexpectedly recognizable as a variety of subject matter that crosses genres between representation and abstraction, and painting and sculpture."

It's that randomness - the unruly material - that interests me in her work.

See more on her website www.margaretboozer.com

Instead of college

...a meet-up for art etc. The aim was to see the 20th century drawings at the British Museum, and we eventually did get there - and also to other galleries, including Early Mesopotamia and the display of jewellery from Oman, and costumes from the Balkans -

At one point we found ourselves at Cornelissens (est.1855) -

and at Margo Selby's shop, admiring the fabrics, scarves, lampshades, shoes ...
Coffee and lunch were taken, and progress on projects discussed, at the London Review cake shop, where Janet couldn't resist pattern-making with my snippets of printed fabric -The bookshop proved very tempting and I photographed many book covers for my wish list (You are not a gadget; The unwanted sound of everything we want: a book about noise; In pursuit of silence: listening for meaning in a world of noise; the Crow and several other volumes in the natural history series; The wisdom of birds: an illustrated history of ornithology; Periodic tales: the curious lives of the elements) -
These came home with me, to join the teetering tower of books-about-to-be-read -- books about memory; sanguinity; photography -

Book du jour - journey lines book 2

One sheet of A4, cut in half to make a double turkish-map-fold and a small quadruple version, in progress -
The tiniest one just didn't happen! The double version with just lines seems like a dead end (even after some extra folding of points back on themselves), but the quadruple version could have possibilities for storing or displaying small slips of paper...
I like how the lines meet, and "someday"will see what happens with rectangles folded this wa. Perhaps the print needs to be on one side only?

Found in books

This might have been published sometime between 1890 and 1910 - when knowing about illness could save a lot on doctors' bills. The photos of bandaging were fairly ludicrous, but at a price of £5, it stayed on the shelf. (I did buy an old dictionary, with intact spine, for £2.)

Fold away bookshop

Created for London Architecture Festival 2010 by Campaign - read more about it here. "A bespoke cardboard vitrine" - hmm....

Book du jour - turkish map fold

What you can do with one sheet of A4 paper - one big fold and three sets of double folds (glued together) - the sliver at the bottom is all that was left -

I used these instructions but found I preferred folding up the paper before making the corner folds -
Turn them over and what do you get? -
Another discovery was that, under pressure, the printing inks (or rather the binder - these are for textile printing) will stick together.

Next, cutting an A4 sheet in half to make ... what ...

Trailing off

A crossroad in the making? I took the vestigial path on the left and found that the going was very boggy indeed. Uphill might have been a better choice. But let's not get too metaphorical.

Hares in London

Two of Barry Flanagan's hares - at Admiralty Arch. There's another at Broadgate, and one appeared in the Royal Academy courtyard a while back, not to mention some in a gallery on Cork Street. Something about these hares really grows on you...

Early talent?

"There's a little spaceship - I made a dot for that shape and a dot for that" -

"a fishing rod for boys" and "a snail"
The artist is some months short of four years old. It's the kind of thing kids do around that age. I'm glad I wrote down his description - and dated the page. You never know what will turn up...

Skybirds project

There must be something in the air - here are my "flocks of the sky birds" in a window on Oxford Street. Or rather - on the window, in the air (driven by the gears), and on the panel behind. Not to mention on the awning, casting shadows.

Journey line books

This morning I gathered all the sheets of paper printed during the past six weeks or so - they amount to 25 sheets of A2 size, 43 sheets of A3, and 28 sheets of A4. All are printed on both sides, the smaller sizes with up to six colours, but mostly two or three colours.

Now come the great questions of how to make them into books, and what kind of books - big floppy books? small springy books? interwoven books? concertinas, codexes, or crazily complicated? Should I leave the sheets intact, or should I cut them up into ever-smaller pieces?

The first step was looking critically at my rather random results, and documenting (preserving!) the ones I found particularly pleasing - inevitably they were the simple combinations (click to enlarge) -

The two sides of a sheet have no relation to each other. Many combinations are possible. It's all a bit confusing at the moment - not least because they are double-sided.

Asia House fair

Lovely textiles from India, Japan, Indonesia and elsewhere; some jewellery; and lacquer from Vietnam and Cambodia - plenty of interest, and traders happy to talk about sources, techniques, production - at the Asia House fair last weekend.

Among my favourites - these double-weave scarves by taran taaran -
a silken dragon embroidered on thick, shiny indigo-dyed fabric, next to the sheerest fabric with gold woven in -
At Joss Graham's stand, akantha scarf made of two layers of silk - yellow thread in the white areas of the shibori side, and red in the blue areas, making a pattern on the plain side - simple and beautiful -

Book du jour

When giving a purse as a gift, it's customary to put a penny in it (or nowadays it could be a pound) - the gift of an empty purse curses the receiver to poverty ... wish I'd know that years ago!

I researched various customs and superstitions about pennies and made a wrapper (a book?) to hold it. It took half a dozen tries to get it to print in the right place on both sides of the paper, which gave me a chance to try out various fonts.

A penny for luck

A penny for your thoughts

There'll be pennies from heaven

In for a penny, in for a pound

A penny saved is a penny earned

and

Put a penny wrapped in paper, keep it to avoid your debtor.

Spring

Cow parsley in the wild area of Queen's Park, and drifts of blossom on the pavements -

"International" textile artists

This list was compiled by Dijanne Cevaal, who is a considerable international textile artist herself! She posted it on a mainly-US quilt forum, so international means "non-USA" in this context.

Chungie Lee (pojagi) http://chunghielee.com/noflash.htm

Ina Georgetta Statescu http://www.ina-statescu.fr/

Eszther Bornemisza http://www.bornemisza.com/pub/_content.html

Charlotte Yde http://www.yde.dk/charlotte

Mardal & Hougs http://www.mardal-hougs.com/quilts.php

Els van Baarle http://www.elsvanbaarle.com/

Juliette Eckel http://www.quilters-insel.de/

Marlis Egger http://www.marlisegger.ch/

Bea Bernasconi http://beatextile.blogspot.com/

Mirjam Pet Jacobs http://www.mirjampetjacobs.nl/

Gisele Acker http://sites.estvideo.net/artstextiles68/ArtsTextiles68/Arts_textiles/Arts_textiles.html

Clare Smith http://usershttp://clareplug.vc.net.nz/.actrix.co.nz/smith_c/

Clare Plug http://clareplug.vc.net.nz/

Mags Ramsay http://www.magsramsay.co.uk/section464022.html

Bodil Gardner http://www.bodilgardner.dk/

Bente Vold Clausen http://www.bentevoldklausen.no/

Monique Gilbert http://www.moniquegilbert.be/webpages_big_quilts/galerij.html

Wendy Lugg http://www.wendylugg.com/

Maggie Grey http://magstitch.blogspot.com/

Christine Peyret http://www.photo-broderie.com/index.php?page=galerie

Lutgard Gerber Billiau http://www.lutgardgerberbilliau.be/

Odette Tolksdorf http://www.odettetolksdorf.co.za/gallery.html

Leslie Gabrielse http://www.gabrielse.com/

Elaine Barnard http://www.fibreworksart.com/Barnard.html

Maria Luisa Sponga http://www.sponga.com/

Elizabeth Grevey http://www.elisabethgevrey.com/real.php?idth=2

Sarah Louise Ricketts http://www.sarahlouisericketts.com/

Ozquilt Network http://www.ozquiltnetwork.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=32&Itemid=

Southern Lands- some fab Aussie artists http://southernlands.webs.com/

My Place some more fab Aussie, New Zealand and South African artists http://www.myplacequilts.com/

South African Fibre Artists http://www.fibreworksart.com/Members.html

Quilt Art Europe http://www.quiltart.eu/index.html

I would add a few more from the UK:

Louise Baldwin http://www.62group.org.uk/artist/louise-baldwin/

Caroline Bartlett http://www.62group.org/artist/caroline-bartlett/

Helen Parrott http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=393

Jo Budd http://jobudd.com/

Diana Harrison http://www.clothandculturenow.com/Diana_Harrison.html

Anne Smith http://thepainterlyquilt.blogspot.com/

James Hunting http://jameshunting.com/

Matthew Harris http://www.matthewharriscloth.co.uk

Michael Brennand Wood http://brennand-wood.com

Clyde Olliver http://www.clydeolliver.com

Of course there are many, many more....

Un-writing

One of Austin Kleon's "newspaper blackout poems" - see more on his blog http://www.austinkleon.com. And see other people's blackout poems here.

Last week at college

This week - and next - are the Easter break. Last week consisted of two thought-provoking seminars, two near disasters, and two sessions of screen printing. The "research practitioner" lecture was postponed.

The first seminar, at X marks the Bokship, was a discussion of James Langdon's writings in the "Book" book, and Ulises Carrion's manifesto of what a bookwork is. For instance, a writer doesn't write a book - a writer writes texts. Artists' bookmaking crosses the boundaries between disciplines that exist in traditional publishing, often in the form of a collaboration (but at risk of losing excellence or even competence that are the result of specialisation).

Random notes:

-"we learn to read so that we can communicate" - or, so that we can receive communication?

-comparing text-in-the-printed book to electronic text

-the novelty of photobooks in the 1960s

-tearing pages out of a book as they are read (Sir Humphry Davy was said to do so)

-when the book has been consumed, what do you do with what's left in your head?

-piracy in Peru - often sections of the pirated book are changed, eg, adding a chapter

-in a blank book, the title is the container [of information], not the book itself - the object speaks through its elements, and its context

-"binary books" - we take the pairing of pages for granted, and ignore the discontinuity of this formal division

-for some poets, the form of the book gets in the way of the words - they don't want to see their poems printed

-a project consisting of stories of why people chose a certain book to add to a library

Books, artists, authors, etc to find out about -

The Form of the Book

The Book Show (Eastside projects)

Again A Time Machine (Book Works travelling show)

Bookworks Revisited (trailer on youtube)- summary here

Emily Pethick

Gossip, scandal and good manners

Mirtha Demisache

Artists and archives: Susan Hiller, Hans Peter Feldman, Peter Pillar, Celine Duval

1000 journals project

Faction - a group of bookmakers

The art of work: an epitaph to skill by Roger Coleman

First disaster averted - realising, after having coffee after the seminar - t in time to retrieve it, that I'd left one of my bags at the shop...

Next day, the first session of screenprinting - lots of space to spread out, and I needed it, to fill in the remaining blanks on the remaining sheets -

The day after that, the second seminar with Maiko Tsutsumi - we all brought an object we had made, or a found object, for discussion and consideration of "what is it that makes the object speak". It was a fascinating two hours; I shall try to be brief..

Coat hanger - away from its function and location; cheap, ubiquitous, but sophisticated processes, time, labour to produce it; what makes it "not valuable"; tied to a sense of temporariness

Wallet made from recycled tetra pack - noisy for carrying money; not recognisable at first; more valuable than previous use?; how to draw out the quality of the material used; mending the broken object

Glass jar with lid - "handy" and homely; details like ridgy pattern on bottom; "holds a lot" (memories of grandmother making pickles); why not use plastic..?; how was it manufactured; mismatched lid

Brick - can be used as ashtray and strike match on side; alchemy of making house from bricks made from clay taken from site of house; bricks used for patterning; function of the shape

Medals hanging on found board with hooks - patinated resin, printed fabric; flocked back; the lucky find of the board, and treating it to fit with the medals

Packet of rubber gloves - discussion of using hair and properties of hair; laquerwork brushes made of babies' hair; jumpers knit of dog hair; using gloves, slipping on & off, blowing into them to pop out the fingers; colours of gloves (black for boys?)

Coconut - sound of hooves; aesthetics; comforting shape; egg-like qualities

Painting - different when laid on a table; not touching the surface; material of making a painting, esp linen; seen from the side, it's like the spine of a book; pleasure of making a good surface before painting on it (a process not revealed or talked about); authorship when someone else does part of the work, eg stretches the canvas

When it came to my money-bag panacea object, reaction was that they were theatrical, like fantasy costumes or ritual - a bit new age - which indeed they are, in the way they are based on belief in talismanic objects. I seemed to spend rather too long - again! - explaining about Goa stones...

Second disaster averted consisted of remembering, before leaving the building, that I'd left my portfolio in the seminar room -
Over in the screen printing studio, I was able to tone down some of the unfortunate areas, and tie the set of sheets together somewhat, by overprinting in pale, opaque colours -
Some old fabric samples turned up recently in a box in the "avalanche corner" of my studio - these date back to the days when Stroud Green Road had several sweatshops, which sometimes discarded interesting things. They looked great on the screen
and I ended up with a heap of little treasures -
With that project finished (all except for putting the books together, of course) there was time to print some "flocks of the sky birds" on scrim, organza, and mull. Another project in progress...