Drawing Tuesday :More Coral at the Beaney

 Drawing Tuesday this week  was at the RAF Museum , Hendon, a bit too  far  for me  to get to easily and anyway I needed to take my laptop into Canterbury  for repair ( tracker pad and internet not working) .So instead I went back to the Beaney and after my fascination with coral at the NHM, found some different structures to sketch. I only had about 45 minutes, the one below will have to wait for my next visit !  

 I walked a different  route from usual from the repair shop into the city, past the Castle  and  lots of interesting  shops. I was lured into the  Stark Gallery and couldn't resist these earrings made from old  watch faces

 Nor could I resist this combination of peeling paint - enough inspiration for a whole series !

A very satisfying day out  and I've just had a phone call to say that my laptop is ready to pick up , all fixed for £35 'MOT'  

Art Adventures

  Bela Kolarova ' Swatch of Snap Fasteners 11'

 Josef Albers 'Homage to the square:post autumn'

 Lygia Clark 'Red Matchboxes'

Klara Liden 'Untitled (Poster Painting)'

 My first week  since finishing work has mainly been spent sorting out finances and paperwork  with  visit of estate agent to value property and beginning to sort out my stuff for retreat next week at Rydal.  But yesterday was my first expedition up to town to visit art galleries during the working week ( first of many  I hope).  The current Whitechapel Gallery exhibition ' Adventures of the Black Square'   was  definitely worth the entrance  fee (alas,  I had to hand  in my staff pass which got me in free to  many exhibitions   when I left Kew).  Besides the familiar Mondrian and Albers ,more  powerful in reality than in print, there  was  much that resonated in terms of subject matter ( peeling posters of Klara Liden; crumbly walls and doors of Clay Ketter; David Batchelor's 'found' monochromes ) ; so many artists new to me( many of them women); such imaginative use of materials.  Textiles featured prominently - I'll be writing more about  that in a Ragged Cloth Café Blog post  including  Anni Albers; Rosemarie Trockel; Adrian Esparza; Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
As with the Emily Carr  exhibition I had to buy the catalogue straight away - I couldn't wait to have it posted!

 Besides the  biological recording  courses I'm doing to revive my rusty botanical skills , I've just booked for 2 courses at City  Lit  to  give my art-making  a kick start - ' develop your drawing'  and 'printmaking  on Mondays starting 20 April.

Cure for Post-FoQ Blues

 It's always a bit difficult getting started again after being so overwhelmed with beautiful  work at Festival of Quilts. But the  deadline looming for submission of JQ's for CQ challenge by end of August focuses the mind! At least I've been posting mine monthly this time rather than having to submit 4 in one go ( which rather defeats the object of a journal quilt  in my mind). Augusts offering 'Door scraps I' is made from the offcuts of the sample below which I mounted on a canvas for Cwilt Cmyru 'meet the artist'.  

 It was made with photos of doors and acrylic paint applied over masking tape stencils rather then the paper lamination of 'Peeling Portals' below ( which I've just posted off for Harrogate quilt show , cross fingers!) . This technique does have potential, far simpler than paper lamination but it doesn't yield such complex results

 While my offcut basket was out ( just some of the trimmings from finished quilts...) I had fun composing some more 'door' pieces - so September is sorted out !

This   door JQ (scraps of African indigo fabrics) has been on the go since February, a nice size to hand stitch on  train journeys, it might get finished for October. I initially thought the 8inch size would be too small for my liking but this years challenge has proved a delight, permission  to play and see what happens.

Another little quick project was making a present for  intern Ebrailon  who has been such a help in the lab, particularly chopping up slices of orchid roots we've collected to see if they have any fungi in.  He goes back to Brazil next week  and we'll miss him.  I printed some photos of root samples on Jacquard cotton sheets and ironed them onto  a cotton bag with bondaweb

Sandown Inspiration

 

On Friday I went to Sandown for the National Quilt Championships, partly to drop off my 'Unfini-SHED'  donations for Quilters Guild tombola and partly to buy some more fabric from Jo Lovelock!(below). It's very straightforward to get the train to Esher but as there are only 2 trains an hour, as I'd just missed one on my return (despite running up stairs and over the bridge), it gave me plenty of time to  observe the splendid peeling paint ( above)

I also bought some  fabric from  'Images of Egypt' - dyed linen for overdying in indigo and some discharged  cotton and looked at some quilts. There seem to be fewer and fewer competition quilts which is a shame  but there were several  displays by both individuals such as Greta Fitchett as well as groups that were well worth a look. Pieces in 'Elements of Nature' in the 'British Art Quilt Gallery' were particularly interesting. It looks like most of the artists are also involved with  Art Textiles :Made in Britain  - I look forward  to their show on 'Idendity' at FoQ.

Among that group, I was less aware of the work of  Louise Baldwin ( above) than the others but I loved the lively stitching in her small framed pieces.

These contrasted with the controlled machine stitching of  Pauline Barnes - it was great to see such a large diverse display of her work.

 

Inspired by my visit and catching up with various people I headed home to put some serious hours in on my 'Dilocation' quilt while Ian was at his parents. And  it paid off , entry completed and submitted ahead of deadline (just!) Just have to catch up with the housework now... 



 

Remembering Cloth and Memory

My blogging has been rather patchy this year,  mainly with so much going on in work and play ( which is a good thing!) that there's been little time to reflect. Looking back through old posts as I do towards the end of the year, I realise  that  on several occasions I never got round to  reporting in full  as I'd promised on what I'd been up to.  For example in a post from July, I never did elaborate on seeing Bellowhead at 'Kew the Music';my starring role  (wearing orchid earrings!) in a film narrated by David Attenborough; on my trips to various orchid sites and  to Hampton Court Flower Show or to re-write my post on RA Summer Exhibition  that I accidently deleted while attempting to blog with my tablet!

Too  late now  but  before I forgot completely I did want to mention my visit to Cloth and Memory 2 at Salt Mills Saltaire. It's nearly 2 months ago when I  had a day trip combining handing over some precious Lady's Slipper Orchid seedlings with  seeing this exhibition. It had some of the same exhibiting artists as ' Bite Size' a couple of years ago but obviously on a completely different scale!!! The space, the  168m long spinning room, was amazing in itself and the way that the work  was derived from  its different qualities and memories was thought-provoking.

My  favourite piece was by Masae Bamba ( who also  made 'Black  Water' for 'Bite Size'): a large scale 'sea' of indigo cloth  printed with her daughters' first attempts at writing.

The peeling paint layers left on the walls were wonderful and I liked how Rachel Gray had referenced these, with several narrow brick-like works  of layered, patched, embroidered, printed images from the archives local to Saltaire  

 

Yoriko Yoneyama's  instillation of a web of dried rice threaded on fine thread was intriguing, reminding me of the rain outside ( and occasionally inside, there were strategically placed buckets...) blurring the images glimpsed through the camera obscura ( by Hannah Leighton-Boyce ) placed in the ventilation cavities.

You were encouraged to add your own memories of cloth - mine was photographed but didn't make it to the website. 

 

My CQ Journal quilts this year have the theme of indigo, many of them assembled from scraps. I was thinking of my experiences  at Saltaire when I was putting this one together: the  crumpled indigo  dyed strips of  'jemima' laid over dyed cotton wadding, slashed and peeled back to reveal underlying layers;  the fine  machine stitching using  white polyneon thread(slightly shiny); the effect of clouds and rain.    

A lick of Paint

 Of the wonderful peeling paint at Boxhill and West Humble Railway Station ( seen above in it's glory days), all that remains is fragments on the floor.

 It's been repainted in the livery of Southern Railway -green and yellow.

 At least the station has retained other gems like this 'Ghost House' a bit like the one in Lille I based a Journal Quilt on.