Getting Ready

Next week I am going to Littleheath Barn Studio for the first two days of a four day Summer School.  The second two days are a week later.

The theme is Buildings.  I love buildings and architecture and few textile artists seem to use this topic so I was excited to sign up.

However!

Do I use the redbrick buildings I love along the canals in the West Midlands?  Or do I use the beautiful architecture found in Venice as inspiration? 

I decided I would get out all the things I have related to the two topics.

Canals

Books

 

Sketchbooks

Photobooks

My poem as a Thermofax screen

Lots of collage material

Venice

Books

Sketchbooks

Stamps and Stencils

Thermofax screens

Another book, map, photos and postcards

A box of collage fodder and other inspiration

Well, it was good to find out what I had.  BUT!  I'm no further on in my choice.

Come back next month to find out what i did.

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice

Ziggy zaggy

This week I have been playing with some more with concertina or zigzag books!

I had previously made some monoprints on mixed media paper so that I could make books. Here's the pile of prints and left over collage bits.

I used my own poem A Poetic Conundrum on this one.

I made this into a beach themed book and used words from a scrapbook paper pad

This third one used the words of another of my poems

You can read the poems on this post: Oh my word!

Thanks for joining me today.

Happy Easter

Bernice

More concertina

In my last post I showed you the beginning of a new concertina book.

I decided to use the theme of Florida rather than just do abstract painting.  I used some paper napkins I had bought in Florida many years ago and glued them onto the pages.

I worked on the book 4 pages at a time and then opened it up to see what it looked like.

I forgot to take a photo of the first four pages so I have had to crop it from the photo above.

Then I started adding layers of thinned down transparent acrylic paint.

I did the same with each of the sets of 4 pages.

When I had finished all four sets of 4 pages I again opened up the paper to see what it looked like.

Now it's all dry I shall go back to it and add more layers with pens and crayons.  And possibly some more collage papers.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

So where was I?

Oh that's right.  I was working on Free Up Your Sketchbook with Karen Stamper in between making collages.

Although there was some collaging onto the pages.  Plus mark making with pens and pencils and Artgraf.

And in week 2 we added acrylic paint.  Only black, white and payne's grey.

This week, week 3, we had to choose one colour and collage bits of paper in that colour.

 

 

And then paint over with shades of orange plus some black and grey.

I liked being back with colour.  I deliberately chose orange as a change from turquoise.  Although you all know turquoise and orange are my go-to colours.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Collage and a poem

Continuing with Visual Narratives I started playing with the photos I had printed out which I mentioned in my last post.

I cut up a sheet that I had intended to be a zine to make snapshots of marks.  I put them into my sketchbook.

Then I tried making collages with  the different surfaces - paper, tracing paper and ohp film.

They're not totally me.

I had also printed one page of photos onto address labels. I peeled some of them off and put them in my book.

I also took words I had found and wrote them on the page using ink and then added water.

These sentences are part of a poem I wrote about canals using the phrases and words I had found in the book Canals: The Making of a Nation by Liz McIvor

The Cut
I was once a stark man-made corridor
Cut by sweaty, swearing navvies.
Now a ribbon of calm, spiralling out from the centre of the city.
Cutting lines through scarred landscapes
And meandering through verdant countryside.
Iron bridges tower over me
Looped lines from shadow lattice patterns
Fall on my surface
Disturbed by ripples from coots and moorhens
As they scurry into my reeded banks.

 
Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

In conversation

In conversation with a friend about creativity, making a series of pieces of work and other related things, we began talking about how we move from one piece of work to another.  And I said that it was a good idea to reflect on a finished piece before moving onto the next as the first piece might inform the next.  Brilliant point!

However it's not what I do!  Do you?

So practising what I preach I'm going to reflect on all my map series at once.  Too late to do it after I finished each piece!  As several of the pieces are going to Eclectica exhibitions and need naming, I thought I could do that at the same time.

Hanging Book
Size: 114x10.5cms

I have made several of these before as books.  They usually fold up and have a button and a buttonhole.  This one has been made as a hanging with D rings at each end.  Making this was well within my comfort zone.

Map Collage #1-6
Size: 10cm square collages within a 20cm square box frame

Mapping
Size: Box frame 27cms square.
6 small fabric collages 3x approx 7x5cms, 3x approx 5x5cms

I had started the small collages before I started the Shelley Rhodes online course.  However I've done a workshop with her and have done lots of collage.  These collages were in a series with them laid out on the the table and different bits of fabric auditioned on the different collages to see where the best fit was.

Map Abstraction
Size: 42x45.5cms

The five pieces of fabric were left over from setting up 'Bits and Pieces' and the hanging book.  They were lightly bonded to the calcio.  Acrylic felt wadding was bonded to the calico and also to a backing calico.  I handstitched through the layers and finished the piece with bought bias binding.  The running stitch followed the marks on the fabrics and extended to the edge of the piece.  This piece was different from other pieces I've made - more abstract - but still within my comfort zone.

Bits and Pieces
Size:53x41cms

This was the first piece to be assembled and almost the last to be finished.  It has a mix of machine stiitching and handstitching.  I wasn't sure how much handstitching to put on. It fits with the other pieces in the series but I don't know to what extent this influenced the other pieces, and vice versa.

What Three Words
Size: Closed 19x15cms  Open 40x15cms

I had made the book using one piece of fabric, because I like making books.  It was made by folding into 16 and cutting along lines - the red lines in the diagram below.

The pages hade been bonded together and a cover added before I knew what I was going to do with it.  The blue fabric had been painted with dye whilst narrow masking tape had been stretched over it.  White paint had been stencilled on top.  The pages were too dark and patterned when I decided I want to stitch maps.  Stitching on organza was suggested.  It worked well but I don't think it's a technique I particularly want to repeat.

Maps & Grids
Size:  Closed 20x15cms   Open 40x15cms

Of all the series, this is my favourite.  It's more adventurous but still not particularly experimental. It contains both the running stitch element and the collage element with a few extra media - paper lamination, hessian strips, OS maps and machine-gridded paper.

On reflection

This has been a worthwhile activity although not necessarily informing a new piece from the previous piece in a series.  One reason for this is that I'm looking at the whole finished series.  The other is that when I work in a series like this I tend to have all of them on the go at once.  This enables me to work on which ever piece catches my attention on any particular day.  Or how much time I have to do something.

In actuality I suspect they all inform each other. But in looking back over the series in this way has been useful.  I think I will be looking to develop some of the ideas in the Maps & Grids book at a later date, possibly in another book or look at how I could make wall pieces.

But that's for the future.  For now, I'm going to have a rest from textiles and do some messy, painty stuff and also the Sally Tyrie workshop I signed up to and haven't done much with.

I started with a conversation with a friend which led to me having a conversation with my work.

Let me know in the comments below whether you reflect on finished pieces to see what you have learned about them and about yourself.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice