Studio Saturday - the table by the window

Since the sudden clearing of the table by the window I've been enjoying sitting there first thing in the morning, sometimes to get on with a bit of woodcut

 ... and sometimes to sit and think and plan -

 ... and sometimes just to focus on the marks on the table (once a door), perchance to photograph them -

 This week I've sewn not just one pot -

 but several -

 Four small ones in a row, their documentation stowed within -

 ... and the fifth, ambitiously large, with some double-sided, woodblock-printed "envelopes", a project that has almost reached its end -

 A "bit of a cleanup" was thwarted by finding this old bit of calligraphy, from the early 2000s if not before -

In sum: the window-table is usable, the workbench is still piled high, a few pots are ready to dip ... but when will I get to the studio? All next week is spoken for, by the summer school at The Drawing Room, and the joys (horrors?) of getting there by tube in 30-degree temperatures.

Drawing Tuesday - Tate Britain

On the way to the museum I pondered "what to draw" and remembered something that popped into my head on the verge of sleep - a vast expanse of blue covered in writing - so I decided to look for text and writing. But first, the expanse of blue - the college art shop, conveniently to hand, had various blue papers...

and around the gallery were various sorts of writing, text, and marks-that-might-be-writing -

 Getting into it ...

 Using the "research"...

Nope, they're not what I saw behind my closed eyes! I'm still working on it, attending to that little idea to see what will happen. At least it has been realised to some small extent.

Jo's horse and rider, with his fantastic handbag or would that be a saddle bag? -

 Carol's sheep from the Holman Hunt's "Strayed Sheep" -

 ... and animal heads by Henry Moore and Georg Ehrlich

 Sue's political prisoner sculpture -

 Judith's Henry Moore...

 ... and metal punchers -

Extra-curricularly, Carol has been experimenting with knitting a lacy texture and threading it with various ribbons ...

Reading books + writing words = making art

The artwork of Diane Samuels is based on how reading has shaped her life. For instance, this piece contains the first line of over 1700 books in her personal library -

Do go to her website and have a look at the photo there - a click on the image enlarges it and you can move it around on your screen. 

"First Lines is comprised of 1,740 small rectangles of handmade paper. On each Samuels has painted, drawn, collaged, and then hand-transcribed the first line of one of 1,740 books in her library. The 1,740 rectangles form a map of the world and a map of the books that have shaped her understanding of the world." (via)

The very last "first line" - Call me Ishmael -  segues into another large work, 47 feet long in fact, the size of a small sperm whale. On it she's written the text of Moby Dick, each page of the book as a horizontal row.

Here (via instagram; carlow_gallery) she is working on it -

And also via instagram, here she is with the finished piece and in the background, Scheherazade, a hand transcription in microscript, on 10,000 fragments of painted papers -

There is much more on her website. To finish here, this work (via instagram; carlow_gallery) doesn't seem to be on her website -

A two-part interview from 2014 is here.

Cola pens

I first heard of "cola pens" in Denise Lach's book Calligraphy, which isn't about writing text so much as drawing with letters (and other marks) -

"It is not difficult," she writes, "to cut into an aluminium can with scissors, so you can easily make nibs of various shapes yourself. The cut-out piece of metal is then folded to create a reservoir which - when open - allows the ink to flow through. The sharp edges of the folded metal can be smoothed with emery cloth or crocus paper. You can write with the cola pen in any direction: it lends itself well to pushing as well as dragging."

I made some pens (various videos and instructions can be found online) and had a play.

For some reason one pen makes a little click  when used in certain positions, and a spurt of ink results ... which might be unwanted, but could be useful -

This one, with the square tip, can be held upright and twirled to make perfectly circular marks -

Next time there's an empty "cola" can around the house, I shall make some more of these playthings...

Three arty experiences

A Friday-ful of art, today. First to Sway, a Japanese gallery near Old Street. The bull in the window was made of strips of newspaper - headlines - and some gilded, with what looked like asemic writing, but turned out to be a Japanese script known as Kana, which has all but disappeared in the modern world.

 The work is by Kaoru Akagawa; title: Capitalism - 2015 - Information Bull. The written text is the names of about 450 companies listed on the total market capitalization. "Bull markets [markets on the rise] can be suppoorted by speculations and also partly by manipulated information." All that glitters is not gold... The yellowing of the newspaper with age is also part of the concept: "all information will someday become old and outdated".

Some of the small pictures on the back wall show how the script is used for tonal effects -

Use of burning

Cut areas "inspired by Lucio Fontana"

"Moonlight Sonata" - the text is the notes of Beethoven's music,
interpreted into Japanese syllables

 Moonlight Sonata again -

Detail

 Then to the British Museum to see "Living Histories: Works on paper from the Arab world" in room 34, the Islamic gallery. The works can be seen here - prints, photography, book art... I was fascinated by Issam Kourbaj's "little boats" made from mudguards of old bicycles and burnt matches; they encapsulate the pain of the journey out of Syria, of leaving the homeland.

"Dark Water, Burning World"

On starting to write this blog post I discovered that the artist, and poet Ruth Padel, were talking about refugees' stories - exploring, through poetry and art, the visible and invisible scars of loss scorched into escaping Syrians by the separation from their homeland - this very evening; too late, though, to get to the talk...

(via)

Third on our agenda was Cafe Sketchers, meeting this week at St Pancras station, right beside the Eurostar platform. We had a bite to eat before starting our drawings - lots of riveted, decorative girders and brick and stone...

 I quickly discovered that I couldn't actually see the rosette that caught my eye, but the camera came to the rescue, allowing a good closeup view on the big screen of my phone -

The drawing, straight to biro, is an example of a learning curve, including experimentation with various (chaotic) ways of shading ... but first you must notice the different tones in relation to each other.