Art holiday, part 2

Everyone seemed to enjoy the "draw each other" exercise. Helen had brought a roll of cellophane and cut off long lengths, which we held in the air (and stood on the bottom) and our partner outlined our face, hair, arms, clothes (aprons!), shoes with a chunky marker. Instant amazement!

Another task was to make a "group costume" for the party on Thursday night. The theme was "sci-fi" and "silver and white" - we made spock-ears, supported by headbands (sometimes embellished) -

 Ready to party -

 Some of the other groups had gone to a great deal of trouble, producing mini-plays -

Back in the studio ... I spent the final days revising some of the less successful drawings - often with erasure -

 ... and overpainting with ink and, hmm, coffee I think - the paleness is channelling Ian McKeever's palette -

 These swoops of ink should have gone straight in the bin. They are a bit gestural and totally meaningless and unpleasing -

They became a trial of white paint and powdered graphite applied over oil pastel. The paper around the pastel came off in crumbs and became part of the texture, which the graphite enhanced -

Still not much of a design - call it a spaceship to go with the sci-fi theme?

But what a great texture!

Three charcoal rubbings of different types of ground (twigs, path, etc) happened to be circular -

and inspired the composition on another erased sheet of paper, with a little white paint on the old lines for augmentation, and string laid onto the central whorl because it was too dark -

Using nature's brushes - bundles of twigs or bark

This rubbing of bark and stumps

was overlaid by an alphabet of big-flat-brush marks -

The drawing on cellophane influenced this

Some of the less successful efforts were transformed by being made into one-sheet books and I was so happy to pass this process onto the others, whose work became really interesting in book format, allowing a close look rather than being an overwhelming network of lines/marks.

(Also, it's easier to take home when large sheets are folded up!)

One of my bundles, crow feathers (used to scratch into swathes of ink) was lying on my open sketchbook along with some card I'd used as a template, and Helen pointed out how the separate elements complemented each other. An eye-opener! -

In my small notebook I'd been making "mini-McKeevers" -

 ... which got the "add something" treatment -

The afternoon of the final day was a chance to round to the other courses to see what they had produced. Which meant showing what we had produced, and every surface was covered -

 Tidy-up in action -

 Result = display of interlocking one-sheet books -

I'm amazed at how important "nature" was in all this, and how
I enjoyed being direct rather than twisting the work into
complicated concepts (note to self: Remember This)

 These trees-that-drew-themselves (using brushes from their own twigs) are one of my favourite pieces -

 also this, which involved washing off a lot of fussy marks and changing them to a simple branch (but the feathers stayed)

This was made early on, with a feather dipped in ink, and brought on thoughts about the kinds of structures found in living things - how is a feather like a tree? -

This started from a big flint, enlarged - it's become, what, a fish swimming into murky water? Or maybe it's just a shape and some tones -

 My favourites -

Goodbye new friends, goodbye room 45 (open window) -

Hello rain, hello train! The heavens opened and the rain pelted down for hours. I'm so grateful to Jan for a lift to the station, through the lakes that had formed everywhere along the roads.

Reuse is not abuse

A rubbing on tracing paper, from the 100 Drawings in a Day course last week

Mark making with an eraser

Rubbing away the rubbings

But some traces are left

 And now for the design work. (There was no particular reason for doing it on tracing paper, just that I knew I'd enjoy the erasure process! Trying out various types of pencils on the paper was fun too.)

I drew eight rectangles and marked five divisions on the top and down each side. The aim was to "connect the dots" ...

Much more rubbing out as better ideas emerge

Tidied up, and the best candidate moves to Round 2

Redrawn to fit the purpose - transfer to a fabric sample

Fabric pinned behind paper, then sewn along the lines, on the machine

Removing the paper is easier if the lines are perforated
with a dressmaker's tracing wheel

Et voila, it's going to be a ceramic pot! ... in the fullness of time
(yet another experiment)

The five spots on the sides match up so that the lines are continuous, and the threads at the top will be used to suspend the pot during the dipping process.

The machine stitching (large stitches) is easily threaded with the frizzy, thin metallic thread, unravelled from a very scratchy scarf. It makes an interesting line when left to its willful ways, but sometimes breaks during sewing, so threading it on the surface is worth a try.

Exhibition log, November

This'll clear up those bits of paper that will never get looked at again...

The East End Gallery Trail leaflet is widely available in East End galleries; it's an initiative launched by the Parasol Foundation. Keeping up with gallery openings and closings is quite a job...

East End Gallery Trail (via)

9 November - Frank O'Hara: In the heart of noise - wonderful evening of poetry and music at King's Place

Protest (17 artists) at Victoria Miro, including Sarah Sze's newspaper works - with a twist (went twice to this)

Calendar Series (via)

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Portals, at Victoria Miro - "apparently everyday scenes"

Alex Hartley, A Gentle Collapsing II at Victoria Miro - "encapsulates the classic modernist tropes"

Robert Therrien at Parasol Unit - all works were called No Title ([short description])

Antony Gormley "Fit"at White Cube Bermondsey - "a series of dramatic psychological encounters in the form of a labyrinth" (went twice to this)

Room III (via)

King's Place - sculpture trail leaflet

Crossing the Circle - Philippe Vandenberg at the Drawing Room - abstract images expressing his "existential despair about the world, as well as his dark sense of humour"

Peter Waechtler at Chisenhale - the narrative in the animation in the show is, he says "my attempt to make the film and to make the song"

States of Mind: Tracing the edges of consciousness at Wellcome Collection - nice illustrated leaflet, for bedtime reading, includes pix of neural cells, rather like these, by Ramon y Cajal at the turn of the 20th century; seeing them was made possible by a new staining technique -

(via)

Samson Kambalu, Capsules, Mountains and Forts at Kate McGarry - documents from a copyright dispute. (His recent PhD examined how the problematic of the gift animates various aspects of his art practice.)

Stuart Brisely, From the Georgiana Collection at Hales - Georgiana Street, northwest London, had a hostel for the homeless - photos of domesticity in a public space; buttresses; a procrustean bed; Brisley is often hailed as the "godfather of performance art" (in this video (one of the Tate Shots series) he considers painting not as an object but a performance)

Hugh Mendes at Charlie Smith - "ongoing, obsessional series of obituary paintings"

Jutta Koether at Campoli Presti - "Questioning the traditional hierarchies of painting, her work deconstructs the distinction between copy and original"

Annette Kelm at Herald Street - constructed photographs of ordinary things

Maureen Gallace at Maureen Paley - "carefully adjusted visions of houses and landscapes visited and reimagined as a subject over many years"

Early September (2016)

(notes:  

Martin Wilner - NY psychiatrist; rule-based process; music; micrographic writing

Hew Locke - sculptor, Brixton - colonial; symbols of power; cultural identity; Queen; ships)

Rosenfeld Porcini - Across the Divide - works by Chao Lu, Leonardo Drew, Keita Miyazaki

Ceramics in the City at Geffrye Museum - more than 50 potters