Studio Saturday - micro-sorting leads to discoveries

The day started out with a little sorting, to find some silky bits for urgent repairs to the lining of a venerable (favourite) jacket -

It's looking a bit chaotic! 

and immediately spread to sorting through a few little bags that had found their way into the scrap drawer - a drawer that is currently just half full. Or, is now half empty. (I'm trying to keep only those that "spark joy", rather than used it to dump all leftovers into.) (And many of the tiny scraps do act as "sparks" either to inspire or to add visual fizz.)

The bags yielded some tiny grey scraps which cried out to be laid out and maybe stitched down, and also the lovely ikats that Mags Ramsay sent last year, or maybe the year before?, to be used as book covers for the woodblock prints I was doing then. It's especially good to come across them at this moment, as I'm laying aside the "water" woodblock for a while and would like a different subject ...

... why not ikat ....

One thing led to another and before I knew it the search for a little bag of pieces of bondawebbed silk turned into a "hmm what's on this high shelf" sorting/chucking experience. Many encounters with old work, drawings from various courses that have been kept for years, for instance. Some people would advise getting rid of them - their value was in the doing and the initial reflection on them - but I find it helpful to come across old work and look again. Who knows, it may be vital in sparking a new project...

From that high shelf, some byproducts of the Colour Dictionary project - 

To fit the loose pages into a folder I had to trim them down and this brought on thoughts along the lines of "if it's worth keeping it's worth keeping it nice", which takes us back to "why not throw it out right away and save all that bother", and to more thoughts of how our storage needs, indeed our need to hang on to things, changes over the years. Many people have told me, "I got ride of lots of things and haven't missed any of them" - and I'm sure they're right. Having to remember what's in the cupboards is an art in itself: less is more, yet again. It seems that so many of us struggle with this - and those books about decluttering are simply not applicable to tools and materials we use to make art or craft.

The original painting of the pages of the dictionary was finished in 2013, but there were spinoffs in 2015. I loved having this project to work on every day, "doing my dictionary stint" every morning, and before long it was done and then the thinking had to start again!

Not much thought went into this big (A3) sketchbook also found on the shelf -

... just random blobs of colour, any old marks, a bit of thread stitched on some pages...

The series of cutouts, page after page, looked great in someone else's sketchbook, but she already had a proper subject and the cutouts enhanced that. Just goes to show how important it is to know what you're doing, ie, having a clear intention.

 It did yield some ideas on the "Ikat" theme -

 Also found: a bag of book-making ingredients for taking along on a long train journey (sometime...). The little stitched books were great fun back in 2011 but aren't really where I'm at, at the moment. And - dare I say - probably are not something I'll go back to. But never say never... I do like to keep the options open, to keep hope alive ...

Also rediscovered, the directions for Single Boards Binding, as demonstrated by Anna Yevtukh-Squire, and a postcard with an image by Vanessa Godfrey which stirs up a few ideas for other woodblock subjects (thanks, Mags). 

All that by 9am. After breakfast, the tidy-up led out of the studio and to the drawer full of greetings cards and letters received over the decades. Sometimes they get weeded out and in making a bit of space I found one letter dated 2002. The weeding is not systematic, and the very thought of doing the whole drawer in one go is overwhelming.

 In that drawer was the little notebook I used for making countless lists when packing up the house in Halifax NS in 1982 before returning to England. This little drawing ("North West Arm") brings back a lot of memories of the two years living there -

 On another page are some things my 6 year old son wanted to know:
- are there poisonous spiders in England
- how do nettles sting you
- what is donkey's poo called
- how do trees grow
(Answers on a postcard please.)

Somewhere I have a (small) collection of "historic" paper bags, which will bite the dust when it surfaces - this one from the drawer is gone already -

Faced with the prospect of spending all day on various sorts of sorting in different parts of the studio, without obvious outcome, I focused on the "dump corner" of the workbench, the area near the door where things end up (every home has one). That heap of papers has been resisting decimation for months now -

 Some mark-making hit the bin -

 ... and some usefully empty bags emerged from the other side of the room, but that heap of papers is still only reduced by half. The shoebox is collection all my pens and pencils and is on the list for sorting "someday soon" -

Which leaves a couple of tasks for today and tomorrow - glueing a few broken bowls etc -

and the fun of making a little stuffed toy from a pattern (more of a shape than a pattern) found in that heap of papers. It's a sort of giraffe with a loopy mane, and I'm giving it four legs rather than two

Not that the grandbaby needs any more toys -

Studio Saturday

With only a week to go till the Open Studio, most of my studio activity has been of the sifting-and-sorting variety - contemplative rather than active.

It's a good opportunity to have a clear-out - not necessarily of work, but of all the objects and appurtenances that accumulate around the making of work. Even after just six months, my workspace is cluttered with useless things. Here I can be ruthless!

A week ago I was still thinking of making last-minute pots

but by the time what's on hand had been looked at, there seemed to be enough for a varied display. Not everything was 100% perfect, so I kept thinking about how to make the most of the imperfections - eg, those breakages could be enhanced with a little kintsukuroi-type mending...

Forgotten items emerged -

The glass of the beads makes areas of glaze

Adding pins and staples

 Groups formed -

 The pots started talking to each other -

 not always amicably....

 Could my woodblock prints be incorporated in the "staging"?

The most exciting development is the arrival of  bling  - a tongue-in-cheek nod to kintsukuroi - on slightly chipped and otherwise unwanted items. Judiciously used, of course - the price of gold (23 3/4 carat) being what it is, less is more -

Before - paper-clay pots from a few years ago

After - "precious pots"

The home studio is getting a bit of a turfing-out, in search of other ceramic lilies to gild and repair, not necessarily in that order -

Street kintsukuroi

(via)

The ancient Japanese art of pottery repair, also known as kintsugi, is brought to the streets in the work of Brooklyn artist Rachel Sussman. The technique traditionally involves the process of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, resulting in an a repair that pays homage to the object’s history. On the streets, the "repair" of worn and weathered surfaces will itself eventually be worn away.

Another facet of the work is photographic "studies", the photos treated with enamel paint and metallic dust -

See more at thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/street-kintsugi-rachel-sussman/

I've written about kintsukuroi in the past (2013) - here and here - and these posts have proved very popular (thousands of hits). 

More and more we are being advised to stop buying, buying, buying and have just a few "good" things; knowing how to look after (and repair) them is part of that ethos. You can order a kintsukuroi kit online, or use a quicker method, with waterproof glue and gold paint, that gives the effect. This might not apply to mending the street outside your home, though......

Making time to make and do

Meeting up with people and going to exhibitions and talks is all very well, in fact I love it, but sometimes you discover that lots of "domestic maintenance" and other things below the Radar Of Fun need to be sorted. And in the worst case, you don't even remember what those "things" are ... there's just a terrible half-awareness that there are a lot of them...

So I've carved out a block of time by cancelling everything for a few days, and putting the Radar Of Fun onto go-slow in terms of taking on new events, just for a wee while.

To start with, in terms of sorting out What is What (or where, or when), I reinstated the morning pages (remember those, from The Artists Way?) and found a book from 2005 (!) that had some blank pages, probably enough for this particular rescue mission. I used to enjoy starting the day with a coffee and the fountain pen, filling three pages in the book - dumping the troubling stuff out, and/or thinking about the ins and outs of the current or future art project. 

The dense writing of 2017 contrasts with the spaciousness of 2005

This morning I also had my List Pad to hand, open to the page with the list started 18 September, of which I've crossed off practically nothing. And some of the items on it are so inconsequential, would take such a short time, that they hardly merit being written down...

But the idea of the Long List is that everything is there - and then you choose only 3 items to focus on each day. Sometimes not all 3 get done; never mind; you might well find that some of the other items did get done. "Do a little of everything, and eventually it will all get done" is another approach, and it's not incompatible with my "3 things" method - having written down what the tasks are, you don't have to keep them in mind, and can do them without feeling pressure. Unless there's a deadline, of course .... that's a whole nother strategy ....

Freed from pressure, and with sunshine luring me outside for a walk, my perverse subconscious would not let me go - "just tidy up that kitchen counter" it said; "remember how nice it was, back at Wrentham Avenue when the estate agent might drop by while you were out so you had to keep it very tidy at all times, how nice it was to come back to those perfectly tidy rooms? At least do the dishes and shine the sink." Which I did, and somehow that turned into an hour of degreasing the cooker hood, wiping down the tiles, deranging the undersink cupboard somewhat, etc etc - but how good to see it sparkle -

Knife block made my my brother, cutlery drainer a gift from Daphne (last century!), and the cups each have their own stories. Cooker could do with replacing, but not this week. The kitchen was built in 1994 - to cut costs I did a lot of painting and varnishing, and also the tiling.

And then, the Parkland Walk -

 Eventually a spot of lunch in one of Crouch End's myriad cafes -

Back at home, a little gentle mending - the ravelled sleeves of care are getting "knitted" - looks a bit clumsy but the colour matches at least -

The "rest cure" is starting to work; everything no longer seems completely impossible. I'm trying to open up some time for art and/or sewing.

Sometimes you need to stop ... only it's not really stopping, is it? 

Mend and make do

The other day this Work In Progress resurfaced -

It's a bit of almost-finished mending on my favourite teatowel, which was an irresistibly useful extravagance many years ago. Made in Sweden by Ekelund, with an interesting four-colour weave to be double sided, it was much used and now, let's face it, it's pretty well worn out, appropriately in the area of the coffee pot.

But I'm not afraid of darning - indeed, it's a peaceful activity with lots of scope for listening to the radio or podcasts. I'm trying to make time for peaceful activities with a listening component...

And there is a growing pile of mending - hems needing fixing, moth-holes needing disguising, hanging loops needing adding, that sort of thing. So instead of heading off to a coffee shop, I "should" be settling down to get on ith it. (Wouldn't it be "interesting" to sit in the coffee shop and do some mending there - a "mending morning" sounds like a community-minded monthly event that coffee shops, libraries, or bookshops could undertake ... but I dream ...)

Back to reality and a zingy cardigan bought during the art foundation course (2009), which I still love, silly stitched-in writing notwithstanding. Its appeal lies in the colour - and yet, it's the colour that's the problem. Darning wool is wanted, but is not to hand, and my extensive cache of embroidery threads doesn't have a match.

The search for something that might just do started with the totally unsuitable rosy colour to the left, got a bit nearer with the perle purples, which are too thick. The stranded-cotton drawer had plenty of offerings and reminded me that "Tone does the work, but colour gets the credit" - so it became a search for the right tone. The red and the purple seemed the best candidates.

A tiny trial shows the purple to be too dark, as confirmed by the mend on the left -

Using one strand of red and one of purple seems to work (to the right of the buttonhole). It'll do...

Once the small holes are mended, the crunch will come with the frayed cuff -

Needle felting is a possibility - so is turning the cuffs under and stitching them down.

Plan A, though, is to try to get some (tapestry) wool to match, which involves a trip to London Bead Co in Kentish town, a 45-minute walk - killing two birds with one stone, to use an unfortunate turn of phrase - or three, if a pit-stop coffee and cake is factored in. Something to do before, perhaps, "making do".

1600 chairs

Or maybe only 1550. The place: Istanbul. The artist: Doris Salcedo. Her theme: Art as repair.

" In 2002, Salcedo placed 280 chairs at the Palace of Justice in Bogotá "to pay homage to those killed here in a failed guerrilla coup seventeen years earlier." In 2003, she filled the Istanbul Biennial space between two buildings with 1,550 chairs "evoking the masses of faceless migrants who underpin our globalised economy."

"Salcedo's work provokes many questions after a first look, but she does provide answers to the mystery. The approach she takes to portraying these messages are unique and bold although she is using everyday objects like chairs."

Image via pinterest, text via mymodernmet.

Year-end findings

At the end of the year I like to do a clear-up, to start off the new year on the right foot, tidy and fresh. As you tidy up, you find little scraps of things that you don't want to throw away "just yet" - like these -

Taking them left to right ...

Emily Jo Gibbs had an exhibition of her work at Craft Central in October - beautiful stitchery. She now does portraits and still life

but you might remember her amazing handbags from years past -

Photos are from her website; see more of her work there.

The tiny card is by Alice Fox - it seems to show stitches arising from ceramic -

I'm looking forward to a ceramics course next term, and this will make an excellent starting point for developing "something".

Another tiny card, this time by Janet Bolton, whose work I've always enjoyed for its liveliness and complex simplicity -

She has an exhibition coming to Cowslip Workshops in June, and teaches at West Dean as well as giving workshops and slide lectures.

Rachel Fenner is an environmental artist/sculptor; the oil painting "Channel" is from an exhibition in 2005, and I love the waves and wind, light and dark, changing weather and viewpoints in it -

"Lungs" by Robin Blackledge was shown at the Wellcome Collection some years ago -

In a talk about his work he said: "My interest in healthcare lies within the opportunity to effect positive change in the built environment. My early work in performance, I believe, shapes how I view public buildings, their daily cycles, and the myriad of roles played out within by the staff and users. As an artist working on these environments, one has to be aware of what is expected of you, and act accordingly. In projects where lead artist roles are required to develop an art and design strategy within new build or large refurbishment projects, this role is pre-defined, and the artist takes on more of a consultancy role and is usually a member of a core design team. In later years I ventured into 'Public, digital and interactive art' and now have made a body of art & design work which has been made calling upon skills & experience gained in various methods of art production."

Which is all very interesting, but I've kept the little picture because it reminds me of some pre-digital photos taken early in spring in Epping Forest, the trees just in bud, looking up at "rivers of sky" between them. A breathing space between the branches.

The small paintings by Gro Thorsen , exhibited in 2009, are some of the 366 called "Seasons" - each is 6cm x 6cm. You would be drawn in close to see the details - and yet the views are of things seen from a distance.

Finally, "Another Perspective" by Lindsay Madden, advertising the ING Discerning Eye exhibition last November, which I forgot to go see....

Painting on those old rulers ... a theme of children growing up, parents watching their children growing up. Lindsay says: "Objects associated with childhood communicate the longing to hold on to the past, while the combination of chalk and paint acknowledge the ephemeral nature of youth. My latest body of work comments on our experiences of school, the notion of continual measurement – physically, mentally, academically, against peers, conformity, uniformity, isolation, insecurities and freedom." Lindsay also has a set of works on chalkboards.

And now for something different, also a "found object" - some abandoned mending has resurfaced -

Rescuing socks that are wearing thin, giving them a few more years of life, may seem like a waste of time and effort, but it's a way to be stitching when "nothing more creative" is going on. I love to sit in the studio, catching up with the radio, stitching on "something" - and colourful darning fills the bill. (Who knows where it might lead?) The secret is to do the darning before the hole appears - holes are trickier than thin fabric - and to darn from the wrong side.