Not necessarily packing light!

You may be wondering what I have brought with me to Australia for my Artist in Residence time which starts next week.    Of course you might not be wondering but I'm going to tell you anyway!

My plan, such as it is, is to actually read 2 books that I've bought and follow the instructions rather than just look at the pictures.  In addition I am going to do the Making Books and Gel Plate Printing online workshops I've signed up for, but not done anything with.  For example, Jane Faase courses on gel printing and Toni Harthill's workshop Unbound.

So of course, I needed to bring gel plates and brayers.  There were more gel plates and brayers originally but they were culled due to weight.

With gel plates I need paints.  I was going to buy the paints in Australia - another weight cutting exercise - but Hobbycraft had a half price sale so each of these tubes was £2.  On Amazon Australia they are around £8 each.

I will be buying a ream of printer paper here in Australia to use, but have brought a plastic bag full of a variety of tissue papers, and 3 Khadi concertina books.

Other media that made the cut were my Neocolor 1 wax oil crayons, 3 ArtGraf water soluble graphite blocks, a Koh-i-nor watercolour palette, Inktense Blocks - I have the pencil crayons but these are lighter, and my favourite Matte Medium.

 

Choosing a sketchbook has always been my difficulty.  I actually use them as workbooks rather than sketchbooks and over the past few weeks various combinations of sketchbooks have been laid out and then discarded.  I eventually settled on 2 8" square Pink Pigs and an A6 concertina.

 And finally various tools which eventually included paper scissors, a ruler, pens and pencils.

I will be blogging my progress, hopefully twice each week, during the 4 weeks of the Residency.

I applied for this in May 2024.  And now it's finally here.  It starts on Monday.

Watch this space.
Bernice 

Summer School

I have spent a lovely 4 days at Littleheath Barn taking part in Summer School.

During the first two days we printed our fabrics.  The theme overall was the colour of the seasons.  I chose Autumn, not because I want to do work about a season, but because I'm hoping to do some work on my Australian Connections.

These are my fabrics washed and ironed.  The brown pieces, bottom left, are actually more purple than brown.  Despite all my years of breakdown printing, my screens didn't breakdown and the fabrics look more stencilled - not a look I particularly like.

 

However I carried on and started making a book.  I tried out some Cotton Woven Fusible  Interfacing as the base layer.  It's okay but not really suitable if the fabrics are also lightweight eg. muslin, cotton lawn, organdie.

 

Here are some of the pages for the book. 

 

 

I also started making another book in a different colourway.

I didn't like the big orange bit in the top one and eventually covered it up.  I experimented with transferring images to the pages using a paper lamination technique with bondaweb.  The original pictures aren't very good so I'm pleased that it worked at all.

At the end of the 4th day we had a Show and Tell.

You can see how I covered up the bright orange next to the ship!

I've got lots of fabric left so who knows what will become of it!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice 

A finished series

Over the past year I have made a series of work about the negative labels we put on ourselves and that society puts on us.  I also looked at the positive labels and how we change our view of ourselves.

I started with a piece called I'm Fine -NOT!  This started with a sketch a friend had made of me during lockdown.  I had it made into a Thermofax screen and printed it onto the fabric.  I painted the grey dye over the fabric leaving the white masks.  I embroidered the words that you might want to say when someone asks you how you are and you answer 'I'm fine' when you really are not fine.

Three months later I did a workshop with Leah Higgins and dyed and printed the fabric with the theme of labels in mind.  The workshop was about building layers of print so these fabrics were busier then the fabrics I had been printing previously.

I didn't necessarily make all the next pieces in the order they make sense but here I'm going to show you them in the order they will be exhibited.

Piece 2 is called Negativity Chained.  There's a possibility this title may change!  

Following on from this is Cancelled.  On this piece I stamped the words and machine stitched a line through them to cross them out.  I embroidered the opposite word over the top to cancel out the negative with the positive.

Piece 4 is a transition piece between the negative and positive thinking and feeling.  It is a fabric hanging attached to a canvas.  It is the smallest of the pieces but shown large here.  The gold scar uses the repair idea of Kintsugi.

The next piece represents how we change our thinking from the negative to the positive. It's currently called Restored.

The final piece takes the original I'm fine - NOT! and becomes Confidence.  I put the original drawing into ChatGPT and asked it to remove the mask and give the drawing a nose, mouth and chin.  Then I asked ChatGPT to give the drawing a smiling mouth and then asked it to remove the shadows.  I had each of the three images made into a screen.  These were printed onto the undyed calico with yellow ochre fabric paint.  The words below the faces are positive words that give you confidence.

These 6 textile hangings will hopefully be hung in order at Forge Mill Needle Museum in 2027 when Becca and I have an exhibition entitled Expressions Too.

Thank you for joining me today
Bernice