next outing

The exhibition at the Ropewalk is now over.  I had some lovely feedback from people visiting it and, all in all, it went really well.  I'm looking forward to returning there in June to run a workshop on printing with rust.

The next venue for Textures of Spurn is Gallery 49 in Bridlington's Old Town.  This opens on 6th April.

In the mean time I have some work that is related to the Spurn project in this lovely exhibition down in Cardiff: A Personal Perspective.

open studio

Alongside the exhibition on 21st-23rd at the lighthouse Ruth Brown of Stone Creek Silks will be opening her studio to visitors.  Therefore there is a chance to take in more than one event in the area at the same time.

Ruth teaches a range of taster sessions plus one, two and five day workshops on a variety of textile subjects as well as exciting, new, City & Guilds courses in Textile Decoration (Art cloth) and Creative Computing. 

She will be opening her studio, Stone Creek Barn, to coincide with my exhibition, so you can have a look at the Studio and see her demonstrating some of the techniques you can learn. The Barn will be open from 10am to 4pm on the 21-23 September. You will also be able to meet her friend Jane White, who is a brilliant couture dressmaking and pattern cutting tutor. 

Ruth is multi-talented and has helped me publish the book I've put together to document my residency. 

printing

Time marches on and deadlines are getting tighter.  The little book I'm publishing to document my residency is almost ready for the printers thanks to the wonderful Ruth.  In between entertaining holidaying children I've managed to get a batch of rust prints over-printed with collagraphs that will hopefully dry in time to get to the framers...

 

Meanwhile, I'm waiting to hear when the BBC Look North feature will be aired (in the eastern part of the region I understand) and when the article in the Journal Magazine (a publication in Hull) will be out...

feathers

On any walk on the beach I pick things up, sometimes more actively than others.  On my long walk last weekend I just collected feathers.

I've experimented with printing from these, having turned some of them into a collagraph plate.  Their solid shafts mean that there is quite a difference in heights on the plate so a relief print using just rollered ink is patchy, but I love that uncertainty about what will print and what won't.

marks on silk

As well as the fabric wrappings that I left at Spurn to gather marks from the groynes, I have also made bundles at home with rusty things collected on the beach.  These are all unwrapped now.  The silk practically glows with reflected light and the prints are a curious mix of subtle and strong.

I am planning two large textile pieces for my exhibition, as well as a series of prints on paper.  In terms of a space for showing art the lighthouse is pretty challenging: it is large (!) and there are generally low light levels.  This means that the subtle shades and natural tones that I am drawn to working in won't have much of an impact.  So I must bear this in mind when preparing work to go in the various rooms.  The one space that does have good natural light is the lamp room and this is flooded with it, even on a cloudy day.  I am going to make the most of that and am planning one of my large pieces for this space, where the viewer will be able to see the work very close and in good light.

I will be using the silk that I've dyed using rust and tea and making a kind of art quilt.  I'm going to start putting this together and working on it in earnest next week, when I'm at Farfield Mill.  The painted sketches I did last weekend will help guide me when putting this together and I'm really looking forward to having the space to spread my fabrics out and start fitting them together.

ghosts

I've been developing some collagraph plates to print from.  This is a slow process as things have to happen in the right order, with one layer or process being completed before the next.  I'm working with two different ideas: one is to use collected items from the beach, glued onto a base; the other is to build up texture based on my drawings using collaged paper and stitch.

I'm experimenting with different types of found item: plastic fragments (which should make an interesting print but are not easy to glue down effectively), textile fragments (which glue down beautifully) and seaweed fragments (which glue down with mixed success).

 At this stage things can look disappointingly boring but there is the hope that they will produce some really interesting textures and marks once printed.

Everything has to be sealed so that when it goes through the printing press with damp paper it all holds together.  Some things also need a kind of primer to help stabilize them for when ink is applied.  The gesso I use for this transforms the plates into ghostly versions of themselves (see the image at the top).

My hope is that I can use the textures to print onto both paper and fabric, the second of those to feed into the 'Spurn cloth' that is developing from the fabric dyed on site.