Illuminated!

It may seem strange to have a language inspired piece alongside a variety of 'natural environment' inspired pieces.  However, I believe language is very much a part of our 'natural environment'.  It is the tool we use to express & communicate what we see, hear, smell, taste, sense & feel. The physical representation of that language...writing... is in itself a wonderful landscape of lines, curves & dots that individuals throughout mankind's existance on this planet, have designed to mean something.

One of the great gifts of travel is to not only see the places where other people live, but also how they express themselves...their written language. The photo above is the NEW Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which I was privileged to visit in 2012.  The exterior is decorated with examples of language from all over the world. What struck me was that, not speaking any other language but English...I didnt know what most of those line & curve combinations meant, therefore I was able to appreciate them for their structure & beauty, instead of being caught up in their meaning!

It occured to me in my recording of 'short & curlies' that some of those combinations looked like they could form a written language!

So I started selecting a few of those combinations & started respecting them as potential 'words'....albeit meaningless words!!

It was time to do some more research! I started looking at Manuscripts & Illuminated Gospels, all things I find exciting and beautiful. I noted the layout, the style, where letters were bold & where they were muted.  I made notes on borders and backgrounds. Ideas started to form....

 

Returning to the sketchbook, I wondered how I was going to create a regular repeat pattern from irregular 'hair' designs! By using mirror image & repeat patterning ofcourse!  Eventually I had an arrangement of 'words', which I would surround with borders to create the effect of some form of forgotten manuscript!

Time to think about colours & fabric choices. Medieval manuscripts & Arabic texts have a richness to them that I want to bring to my work.  GOLD was a must!

By laying my designs out on the gold background, with sections coloured in, I could better see, which fabrics I wanted to go & where.

The borders were developed seperately, with a view to attaching them AFTER I had created the   script. They were completed first because it took me a LONNNNNNNNNG time to sort out  the order in which I wanted to place my words!

Then I needed to play with a few samples to see what colour & fabric combinations would work in the practicality of using contemporary reverse applique, to sew those words onto the background!

And what would work best alongside those borders?

LOTS of sewing, lots of cutting & then lots of handstitching later it all came together & here it is...

The working title throughout the development of the piece had been 'Illuminated'. However, I had a few other titles swimming around in my head, so I asked some friends for their preferences & they agreed to 'Manuscript of Hair & Now' as being the right title for this piece!!


*Please respect my ownership of the images & text above & do not copy without permission. Thank you

Pictoglyphs Of The Cleaning Cave

I'd escaped to the ocean's depths & the sky's heights, & I'd played around in the garden...it was time to explore the landscape!

In 1992 I was heavily pregnant with my son, when my husband took me away for a pre-'our-life-is-about-to-change-forever' holiday!  We went to the Dordogne area of France (we were living in the UK at the time!!) and whilst there saw the wonderous caves of Lascaux. Well....the reproduction of the caves! Even there we werent allowed to take photographs, so I am grateful to have a few precious postcards to remember the visual impact of those cave paintings! I was smitten with these paintings created by ancient hands & reaching across centuries to me! An interest in cave art had begun!!

 

On a more recent family holiday, to the South Island of New Zealand, we went on quite a trek to see these Maori cave paintings.

And here, on my most recent holiday, someone has left their mark on Lord Howe Island!

For this body of work, I wanted to represent mankind's marks in a landscape, in such a way that they looked natural together.  The working title for this series of pieces became 'Pictoglyphs'.  However, it SHOULD have been 'Pictographs'!!!  Petroglyphs are rock carvings, whereas Pictographs are pictorial symbols or signs! (Always good to learn something new!!)

It occurred to me that the record I had been keeping of the 'short & curly' shapes, would be a perfect source for my pictographs. I looked through them all & made a small collection of possibilities.

In terms of style of presentation, I wanted to try a different abstract approach & was very interested in the design formats of work produced by textile artists; Dorothy Caldwell, Fenella Davis & Alice Van der Veleen. The only way to learn was to study their work, so I took notes, analyzing how they structured their compositions. During this process, I confirmed to myself that I wanted to have patches again, but in a less structured way than I had used before. Aside from patches representing tiles, I also see them representing a moment in time...a memory,...a snapshot of what is seen and experienced. 

At the same time I was reading Sybella Court's book 'Gypsy'.  Her practice is to create a colour palette of 10 colours that represents the 'feel' of the place she is inspired by. So....I got together as many photos from magazines that I could find, of the type of landscape I wanted to represent...

...and came up with a lot more than 10 colours! Pruning away a few of them, I was left with a colour palette I was happy with.  The idea being that not every piece would have all the colours, but that there would be 10 represented across the whole body of work. Ideally, that would mean a sense of harmony!!!

It was time to start experimenting & playing around with ideas. For me, sample making is as important to the process of producing new work, as drawing is.

For this body of work, I also prepared some hand painted fabric....in this case using solar printing. 

As the designs were coming together, it soon began to be clear that there were two distinctive TYPES of pictograph styles I was producing. The first looked more like a letter or word from an unknown language...

...whereas the second was coming together more like I had hoped! What to do?  Did I split them into two seperate bodies? Did I just leave them together & hope for the best!  I knew I wanted to do a language based piece...would I be better to keep the more letter-like ones for that? All these questions were whirling away in my head when the answer came from an unexpected source. 

I had just started reading Bruce Chatwin's book 'Songlines' , and on page 15 after describing the Aboriginal Creation Myths, he said;

"...each totemic ancestor, while travelling through the country was thought to have scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the line of his footprints, and these dreaming tracks lay over the land as ways of communication between the most far flung tribes."

  He followed this up with suggesting that the land mass of Australia could be read as a musical score! How utterly BEAUTIFUL! It made sense of the variations in style within my body of work.  The concept made such an impact on me that I decided to title it 'Singing The Land' instead of pictographs.  Although I had many design possibilities, only 6 were created!  Here they are...

*Please respect my ownership rights to the images used above. Thank you. :-) 

Up in The Clouds

Having just dived into the depths of the ocean with my last piece, it seemed only fitting to soar high into the sky with my next creative endeavour!

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has looked up into that wonderful expanse of blue & just wanted to float on up there with the clouds!

Just as I'd found hair shapes from which I could conjure up jelly-fish forms, so too, did I find shapes that lent themselves to being human-like forms...dancers....or in this case a Harpist! As shown in previous blog posts, I developed each form until it worked for me.

I worked up some sample patches of strips of sky blue fabric, and then photocopied them together to see how it would look as a background.  On to this I drew a few of my designs & thought they looked GREAT as black outlines against the blue....but how would they look as WHITE against such a busy background?

Using contemporary reverse applique I created a sample piece to see whether my ideas would work.  I was VERY disappointed with the results!  In my head it looked so much better!  A friend pointed out that perhaps if I had the stronger white's against the lighter colours & the softer whites against the stronger blues...it might work better! Excellent suggestion...I put it in the creative crockpot of my mind & proceeded to develop my background instead!

Instead of patches made up of strips of fabric, I would have the strips go across the the width, visually broadening what would be another narrow piece of work.  Instead of machine stitching over the top of all those strips, I chose to kantha stitch instead. Labour intensive but the results were worth the struggle...look at the texture those stitches create!  Here's a close up...

Onto this pleasing background I started to pin my shapes, working out how many to include &  where to locate them.

Eventually I cut the number down to only three, keeping it simple (a cloud, a harp playing musician & a dancer) thus allowing the viewer plenty of visual access to the background.

I started by applying the 'cloud' shaped contemporary reverse applique 'sandwich' to the bottom section. Sadly it just did NOT work for me.   It is very seldom that I will unpick contemporary reverse applique, but I did on this occasion. It was time for a complete rethink of how I wanted the cloud, musician & dancer to look on this piece!

This is how I re-did the cloud & I am so much happier with it.

With the Dancer & the Harpist above, this made a very harmonious trio. Below is the end result, which I entitled 'Dancing With The Clouds' &  the short poem with which it belongs...

                                                If I could
                                                    I would
                                                Fly  and
                                                Float  and
                                                Twirl  and
                                                           take GIANT leaps
                                                 Of weightlessness
                                                           to DANCE
                                                           in the sky
                                                  With YOU
                                                                   Clouds.


*Please respect my ownership of the images above.

Under The Sea

I love being in water, whether it be the sea or the shower! I particularly enjoy that sensation when I submerge myself fully in the ocean & the sound of the outside world is immediately drowned out & all I can hear is the waves & my heartbeat.  For me, that is a very relaxing & calming experience. (If only I could hold my breath for longer!!!) So when some of my 'hair harvesting' produced shapes that could be interpreted as jellyfish-like forms....it was only natural that I develop a sea inspired piece!

For many MANY years I have had this scrap of paper in my 'resources/inspiration' folder. It is a piece by Spanish artist Joan Miro. I kept it not only because I liked it, but  because I could see the potential for using contemporary reverse applique to produce something in this style. I loved the irregular patched background with the simple formed motifs in the foreground. Quirky & intriguing! This work became an inspiration for my 'sea' piece!

In my workbook I developed the shapes that I was particularly interested in using. (This shows the development of one of those shapes.)

I then cut them out & started playing with them....moving them into various compositions to see how they looked with each other. 

I tried variations with some of the forms and then others...

 

I tried various sized  options...

At the same time I started playing with colour options (this is where a printer/photocopier is a very convenient tool!)

I was also thinking about what was happening BEHIND the forms. My initial idea was to have the background as patches of white fabric, as I had done for the Plantaria series, again referencing white bathroom tiles.  However, when I came to start this piece of work, I was so SICK of white that I decided I needed to have a coloured background... for my own sanity!!!!

I started playing with ideas...

...and even more ideas!!

Eventually, I had a design & a background concept that I was happy with....I was going to make a long thin piece, with the jelly-fish-forms coming up to the surface from the bottom.  The background was going to be a patchwork of sea colours, intense & deep at the base, getting lighter as they came up to the surface.

The design process for this piece of work took MUCH longer than any of the others! It was such a relief to get to the point where I could start looking at fabric choices.

I spent hours pinning patches to my pin board, trying variation after variation until their placement 'felt' right. During my fabric consideration, I had found some batik fabric with wonderful spirals throughout.  There wasnt enough fabric to put throughout the whole background, but with a little careful placement....& later some embellishing....I could see that it would fit in PERFECTLY!

With so much colour energy happening in the background, I needed to be very careful about what colour & fabric choices I made for the forms in the foreground. I opted for shiny fabrics to catch the light & solid plain colours.

When the time for embellishing the piece with beads & embroidery came, I was also thinking about including words in the piece, as another element of depth.  However, by the time my fingers were pin-cushions & bruised from the hours of kantha stitch & beading, I opted for the 'less is more' approach! As  a compromise I exhibited the piece with the short poem I'd written instead!

On completing the piece, I looked back at the Miro inspiration & realise that I am a beginner in the development of 'abstract' design & I have a significant apprenticeship to complete before I really get THERE!! I am happy with the end result of this piece though & enjoyed  the combination of fun & challenge in the process.

 

Here then, is 'Coming Up For Air' & the words that go with it;

                                                       Wash over me
                                                        Drown the pain
                                                        Restore
                                                        Refresh
                                                        Revive
                                                        I'm
                                                             coming up for air again.





*Please respect my ownership of the images above. Thank you.