Tuesday 21 January 2020

Surface, Structure, Stitch at City Lit: Week 1

 I really enjoyed the first session  of  ' Surface, Structure, Stitch'  with Louise Baldwin  at City Lit. Although I've done lots of drawing and painting courses there, this was the first textile  course I've done . The session with Ruth Brison  during EDAM gave me a taster of the possibilities of combining drawing and stitch and I'm interested in moving more into 3D  work so it seemed the prefect combination.  I love  Louise's work, and bought a small piece for  our wedding anniversary in 2016 and I'd heard  from other students  that her teaching  and encouragement  were excellent. 
EDAM  Limpets in paper and stitch 

 The course  is 12 weeks , the first 7 weeks exploring techniques  and the final 5  applying them to a  theme  ' Held by Nature' . We started off with a  mind-mapping session in small groups exploring ideas around the starting point of  containers that occur in nature. 



There was a wide selection of shells,  seed pods etc   available and we made  several sketches of the textures  on sheets of paper divided up with masking tape ( good tip   to give frames around the marks ) 
After lunch we worked from these sketches   using  a variety  of different white papers  ( tracing paper , photocopier paper, tissue paper etc )   and gluing, stapling , stitching  to hold them together .  

 I loved the effect  of crumpled tracing paper   and once home , I scanned some of my  paper textures  ( Louise had taken some peoples work to photocopy, to show the effect  of  change of scale  and multiple copies )


 When she came to see what I'd been doing,  seeing how prolific I was  ( !)  she suggested taking one  or two of  my ideas and producing lots  and lots of them and join them together  in different ways
  I had good intentions to make more of these knots  but concentrated instead on ripping photocopier  paper and gluing  them down  with  torn edges slightly raised ( based on drawings of oyster  shells.)

  We finished with a Powerpoint showing images of  how  a variety of artists had interpreted natural objects , creating relief or 3D structures . Some like Debbie Lyddon  ( who I'll be doing a course with in July )  I was very familiar  with,  others less so.  

The next session is on machine quilting ( my main challenge will be getting used to  the college sewing machines !)  and homework  to start collecting images  to do with the theme. 


  I'd certainly like to  continue to explore  mussels  further. 
 From last years sketchbooks I'm inspired by the ' pod' forms of Junko Oki  and  Fabienne  Dorsman Rey 

  Chestnuts might feature 
   And  limpets of course!






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