September 2005

1st / 2nd September

Now the summer is passing and I've created yet another month in my log files, there is a distinct need to "get on with it". My next few weeks will be fragmented by a week away, teaching, and other commitments and so I must work out how much and what work I need to make for the next few months. I have been invited to send work to a Christmas show at Patchings Art Centre, Nottingham. It's called The Art of Christmas and will run from November 5th - December 24th. Exhibitors have been selected from Design Gap, an organisation that represents and promotes design-led contemporary artists and artist makers. Then I hope to show at a two day event in Plymouth on the weekend of 10th / 11th December. Plus supplying other regular venues...

Ever since I went to the Scilly Isles I have managed to keep my drawing going. It's surprising how just a sketch or two a day keeps observational acuity active, but if I leave it a few weeks I have to make a major effort to recover the eye-brain-pencil link. I think of everyday sketching as fitness training but try to think of all my drawings, large or small, as exploration so that the end result is kind of irrelevant anyway. Trying to do a "good" drawing is a pre-poisoned activity, but one does sometimes become seduced by the idea of producing one!

I also know by experience that observational accuracy in drawing helps me to be more accurate with my textile work; as well as accuracy of line there is an internal development of self-criticism and assessment that makes me, perhaps, less forgiving of things that aren't working.

In the next few months I need to prepare teaching materials and make the "coat" for the Guild of Silk Painters Celebration event. Actually, it isn't really a coat and I shall have to think of another word to describe it. It isn't a wrap, it isn't a kaftan...But I decided how to cut it and need to do the sewing now. To begin with, I just twist-dyed a long length of fabric because I couldn't be sure how it was going to work without seeing the fabric. This carried the risk that I might not make enough, but I had a feeling from other things I've made that by making a back and front from wide fabric I could slit the centre front for an opening and it would drape nicely. And it does. Fortunately. But I have had to dye a large width of the same mousseline fabric black to make some bias-binding, as I will need quite a length of it.

The interesting thing is this. I had an idea of how I wanted this fabric to look; I twisted and dyed it in stages, and opened it up. Utter disappointment. Not that I hated it, but it didn't fulfill my set plan at all. Too many colours and not enough black. But I hung it up for a few days to look at it. The rather wonderful things is that it has "become itself" and is something I am amazed to have made because I now almost feel someone else did! I now think it looks great. This is the joy of shibori processes - uncontrolled control.

4th September

Three days making new batch of 12 twist-dyed scarves. Because yesterday was very hot I dyed the backgrounds outside by dipping the scarves into a plastic tub of diluted dye, wringing them out and hanging them in the sun. They were dry in about ten minutes. I then did the twisting listening to two radio plays: one a rather dotty one fetchingly called Radio Play - and the other one a much more serious affair about a triage nurse recalling her life in Vietnam. I dyed them in the afternoon and left them to dry in the sun, and steamed them today. I steamed the conventionally twisted ones as they were before untying. The others I had made with a new formula: a spiral flattened tube, folded and bound. I didn't think the wrinkles in these would be pretty so I haven't steamed them but have untied them and will iron them before doing the usual thing with a paper roll in the steamer. As ever, results unpredictable but I think I am getting more consistent results. Out of 12, I think three are duds and will have to have to go round the block again. A better result than my first efforts in this technique where it was about half and half.

Here is the batch. The spiral tubes are in there but it's hard to tell as they all look much the same once bound up tight.

5th - 8th September

Below is a sample from the same batch as above, opened up post-steam. No spiral tube designs in there yet as they have to be steamed separately and I haven't done them yet.

And below is an image of the coat / wrap / thingy. Taken at night with a flash so the whole thing looks too orange but you can see the darker hem area and the type of patterning on the main garment. The detail below right is nearer to the correct colour.

I simply twisted and tied the whole uncut length, then dyed, steamed and untied. Next I made a vertical slit up the front, to the half-way point.I dyed some more fabric to make bias strips as I am going to bind the front openings and the neck. As the neck will be under stress and the fabric is very fine, I have stay-stitched about 6 inches of the raw edge dead centre before tacking the binding on. Hopefully this will give it some more staying power. I intend to join the side seams but as yet not sure how high the seam will go. This will depend on how it looks once I have finished the neck and openings. I am going to do all the sewing by hand.

Shows the black binding tacked onto the front opening

Where I live, there is a local and very active auction room and from time to time the most interesting items arrive for sale, usually of agricultural origin. I have been looking at a very curious carved trough as I have driven past recently and today walked by with my camera. It has been carved so that the figure would appear to float or swim - in the full trough. The feet are delightfully carved, soles-up at the lower end! As is the wont of humanity, the trough was thoughtfully filled with fag ends, baler twine and a Mars wrapper floating in unpleasant goo so I cleaned some of it up before taking this photo.

Feet at lower end!

I was surprised to see it from close-up as I think it could be Balinese. There is something about the humour in the design, and the costume is certainly right. I wonder how it ended up here in deepest Devon. It isn't a new piece.

9th September

More work on the next batch of twist-dyeds. I am sticking to one twist-formula this time to enable me to compare results, and am going to make them with a dark border as I felt the last ones lacked definition. So I dyed backgrounds the same way, on a breezy day, wringing them out in dye and allowing them to dry in the open air. Most of this batch were dyed twice, with a random squirt of another colour after the first dye-and-dry. Then I bound them up. The effect of the 12 reminded me of those pastel sugar-coated almond sweets given away at weddings, or at Easter. Tooth shatterers, and disappointing sweets as almonds are not my thing.

.

Just to prove how amazing the macro is on my camera, how about this:

This shows how the dental tape makes a nice thick line which doesn't do the silk damage when it's pulled up really tight.

September 10th-12th

Dyed the next batch (pictured at stage one, above) and made an attempt at a dark border on each. After steaming and opening this has only been part successful, and the ends aren't dark enough, or wide enough. Probably I should actually start the binding higher up the scarf ends. This will allow a less textured dark area to make more of a defined border. But the new ones are more rewardingly coloured and I have managed to achieve more of an integral look by concentrating harder on what I'm up to as I apply dye and ensuring there is a logic to where I place the colours and also tones of colours. Random in terms of "just bung it on" is sometimes ok, but deliberate-random seems to work better. I seem to remember reading in some Zen treatise the idea that you cannot make random marks anyway.

I will be away in Malta for a few days so there won't be updates until next week. I am taking my sketch book and the Celebration Coat to sew (see entry for 5th-8th September). I have sewn the bias binding on to the front openings and now need to turn and hem the binding down.

Another view of the latest batch, dyed backgrounds, bound.

September 13th - 26th

Back from my travels for quite a few days, but not able to get into the studio much. In Malta I managed to do some of the exercises I have devised for a student who is having difficulties in using colour. I had read an interesting essay by Suzanne Roy called "Igniting the Creative Spark Within"* She was outlining ways in which one can establish and improve creative focus. I wondered if a modification of her written focus approach might be successful with my student. I suggested that my student concentrate on a colour and write a kind of stream-of-consciousness on its meanings and associations for her.

The general idea is to uncover some personal meanings but also enforce concentration of the colour itself. To do this, one sits with a piece of paper and five minutes of spare time and starts to write anything that the colour evokes, and to concentrate on the colour itself. If the mind wanders, which it does, the word of the colour must be written to draw the mind back. This was mine on the word and colour red:

red red red notebook black lettering corridor shiny fall red book
nosebleed disgrace fall hurt blood blood red red red red hunting horror
of blood streak on cheeks red stirrup cups wine red bordeaux burgundy
shiny glass ruby cracked glass egg aunt table red garnet jewellery with
twisted hair mourning Victorian red blood periods menstruation horrible
sanitary towels school disposal pain aching fainting periods childbirth
blood bleeding pain nosebleed key down back rubbish red flannel dye
madder plant indigo madder turkey red turkey comb blood red horrible
blobby fleshy turkey beak thing squash animal road blood car red shiny
shiny streak happy car red coat child in red coat Schindler's List
child in coat Auschwitz blood sunset red gold reflecting red night sky
sea with sunset Stein Skye days west sun aurora borealis red red red
carpet kilims red abrashes red red red pink salmon red pink smoked
salmon red pink cheeks flushed red hot flushes heat fires bonfires
interiors potatoes hot hot red heat matches hot coal fires red heat
comfort red

I found this interesting to look at afterwards. Some of the personal stuff explained:

I had a memory of falling in a long slidy shiny corridor aged about three, to pick up a shiny red notebook. I hit my nose, which bled. We were supposed to be behaving ourselves as children, so the episode was associated with my mother being cross, and a sense of disgrace. If my aunt is reading this (I know she does..!) she will know exactly when this was.

My great-aunt had a cracked ruby red egg on a coffee table which I think was made of amber. I was fascinated by the light within it as a child.

Blood is going to come up for most people meditating on red. For women in particular, regular blood is ever-present in adult life. I imagine the reason we associate red with danger is because of blood, and also fire. And heat can be good or bad, depending.

And so on. There will be things we may all feel about a colour, such as blood and fire, and some things which are personal. Other things might be specifically cultural, like red pillar boxes for the British, or red buses, or the coats of the fox-hunting crowd.

Clearly, one's personal understanding and experience of colour is not the same thing as learning to use it in creative work with effect and with confidence. But I felt that getting to grips with inner meanings and experience might be a place to start.

*From the book Inspiring Creativity, published by Creative Coaching Association Press. It's an anthology of essays on the subject, edited by Rick Benzel. I have to admit that most of the book's thoughts don't work for me and the way I am and thus I could not necessarily benefit from them. But there are some gems in amongst the chapters and Suzanne's practical approach to focus was very interesting.

I made three pages in my sketchbook with the writing for green, blue and white. I stuck in the odd related image or lettering as I went into the paint-out phase of the exercise: Here's green:

I looked at what I had written afterwards and then selected some colours that felt definite in my mind or memory and attempted to paint them accurately in gouache. This was an interesting exercise in colour mixing, but held some unexpected discoveries regarding something I can only describe as "colour memory".

1. Some colours are remembered only in clear conjunction with another colour: an aunt's suit (I seem to be big on memories involving aunts!) was emerald and black. She was a very elegant woman and I always liked the things she wore when I was a child. This combination, at the time, made me think that the black made the green more green - and the green also made the black more intense. I also remembered a favourite jacket of my own which was a brilliant green plaid but had an amazing fuchsia colour running through it. In these two cases the colours brought a friend with them.

2. In the blue study (above) I identified a colour I thought of as the baby-blue-for-a-boy colour. One of my sons had a furry rabbit in that colour.. sorry boys, but I don't think you read this stuff anyway so you are probably safe from uncool street ridicule. I painted the colour. Then I chose to paint the colour I associated with the Virgin Mary from statues I saw as a child. One and the same colour. But I didn't know they were the same before I painted them. Interesting. So what is happening here - something to do with the storage of memory, associated emotion, colour etc being held in different places in the brain?

This could be the reason why it's ok to have a colour in one context (wearing it, for instance) but in certain circumstances an emotional relationship / with the colour might make it uncomfortable to think about. I wonder who has studied this sort of stuff and where it is written up. May do a Google forage.

3. White, which is definitely a working colour for me despite the science which says it is all about reflected light, had memories for me which, when painted out, weren't white at all. Shadows on snow was in the "white box" but turned out blue in colour. And, interestingly, shadows on snow also turned up in my blue study.

4. White had more emotional associations based on concepts (absence, virginity, pure, death, mourning) rather than colour. This isn't surprising, I suppose, despite my observations in 3.

5. Many of the important colour memories that came up were very early ones, experienced as a child.

6. A lot were associated with textiles!

7. As an exercise this has been very intriguing and I am anxious to hear how my student has fared. Maybe she will experience something totally different. I do think that once you have done this for the first time, it would be hard to re-do with the same clarity. Like walking on snow - once it's done there are marks. And shadows.

September 27th - 28th

A conversation with an artist friend last night veered towards these thoughts I'd had on colour. She is a watercolourist whose work I admire hugely, and we are lucky enough to own a few of her paintings. She observed that were she to think of doing a similar exercise to the one I'd been doing, she wouldn't do it with colour at all, but with tone. Moonlight is her favourite light. I don't want to misquote her here because I wasn't taking notes. But tone is a major force in her work. Colour is important, but more as a vehicle for the tone, and her palette is always highly controlled and limited. She was lamenting the fact that a certain watercolour red is no longer made, because its colour and tonal properties are irreplaceable. (I then remembered the weeping and lamentation on the Dyer's List at the disappearance of an MX red called Chino).

So this made me think more about the colour exercise and how colour is a motivating force for me, supported by tone and line.

I am nearly finished with the sewing of the Celebration Coat and will post a picture in due course. The front and one armhole is bound and I've completed the side seam. A normal French seam looks fine and I am not going to stitch it flat. It would have been better if I had cut the binding strips slightly wider as I am not satisfied with the way the inside of the binding looks when it falls open, but I don't think I have the time to re-do it so it will have to stay the way it is.

Some ramblings wth no conclusions...I am still reeling from the NASA report about the very rapid shrinking of the polar ice-cap in the Arctic and the fact that there may be no sea ice left in 60 years. The implications are just so astounding that I can't take it in. We humans are like voyagers on a ship in a hostile sea. If we bore holes in the hull, trash the ship, and don't co-operate with other members of the crew, we are soon going to be gasping around in large expanses of sea water, and not for very long.

As an artist maybe I should have something direct to say about this in my work. I certainly feel very angry. (Back to my early scribbles on the political scarf in January). But I am not a natural agitator and feel I can only try to reflect the beauty and variety of what I see around me, so much of which is disappearing. Environmental anger directs me back into the natural world rather than into agitation and directly into politics.

I watched (no doubt with countless others of my generation), the Scorsese film No Direction Home about Bob Dylan. This was shown here in the UK over two nights this week. As interesting as hearing Dylan talking about himself was film of the political, cultural and musical context of his early years. There was footage of Civil Rights and Vietnam marches - collective employment of anger to engender political change. Dylan was more than once described as politically naive in the film and yet his early songs are totally inextricable from that period of the marches and protests and somehow embody the anger.

My only major march was one round Greenham Common some years back and I had no personal sense of achieving anything at all although I do think such vast collective public expressions do sometimes make governments think, if only about votes.

I must ramble back to the silk now - I have been waiting for stuff to dry before another wax layer goes on.