count down

The countdown continues with just a week to go now before the residency exhibition.  I've spent most of this week quietly stitching away on Spurn Cloth #1 in my studio at home.  This 4.7 metre long piece is a patchwork of rust-dyed silk and I've used stitch to add further texture to the marks already there.  Some parts I've left without stitches: this space is important.  The stitches confirm the creases in the cloth giving movement, like ripples on the ever-moving water out there, or the ripples set in the sand each time the tide comes in and then out again. 

In the lamp room this will be hung in a curved form so you can't ever see all of the piece at once.  The visitor will walk round it on their way to the platform to look at the view.  This piece quietly reflects that view, with a horizon of sorts along the whole length of it.  Soon it will be time to roll it up in my studio ready to go back to the lighthouse.

spurn cloth #2

I started constructing Spurn Cloth #2 today.  Again, this was a case of laying things out along the floor of the studio and playing about with things until they looked right.

It was good finally to be able to see how all the textures and patterns I've been collecting on these pieces of linen will work together and how they relate to cloth #1.

Joining all these strips together is a quicker process as I'm using the machine for this one.  This cloth will hang in a very tall space in the lighthouse where the light levels are relatively low, therefore the detail isn't as important on this one.  I've concentrated on creating a cloth with bands of texture that will give an overall effect rather than be viewed up close.  There will be time to add more detail before it is shown elsewhere (with better lighting!) after the show at Spurn if needed.

 It's been a quieter day at the Mill today with fewer visitors.  The weather is still damp and grey, but there was an hour or two of sunshine this afternoon to throw some good light into my studio.  I'm also preparing for my talk here tomorrow afternoon, picking out the key images to tell the story of my project.

progress

I've stitched fairly solidly today, apart from doing a phone interview for a press article.  Progress is slow but steady.  People come in to the studio every now and then to see what I'm doing and I have a welcome little break to chat to them.  Most people are wowed by the scale of what I'm doing.  I'm fairly daunted by it too at the moment, but I will persevere as it is right for the space it will be seen in.

let the stitching commence

I started stitching this morning.  I have rather a lot of it to do.  Of course I knew this, but it is only in actually starting the process and spending a good part of today on it that it is clear just how long it will take me to do it all!

The stitches serve two purposes: they fix the silk pieces to the felt and they add texture and marks to those already in the silk.  They can help to blend the different pieces together and accentuate certain areas.  I am purposefully keeping some of the creases in the silk as the reflective qualities of these are what give a similar feel to the reflection of water and wet sand.  My stitches can help to fix these in place and add reflective qualities of their own.  In placing the stitches I am responding to the marks on the silk, using the boundaries of colour already there and thinking about how material is sorted and arranged on the beach.

sand stitches

 

Ripples in the sand in stitches

On the back: foot prints made by a wading bird.

 

I walk out onto the sand making a beeline for the water.  Bait diggers’ sand piles litter the beach.  I spot the marks of another bait hunter: a wading bird.

Lines of footprints wander around.  Then the trail changes to a swathe of distinctive marks made by a long beak systematically thrust into the sand whilst slowly moving forward.  The trail loops and curls then goes off in another direction.  At one point it comes to a full stop: a different mark revealing where treasure has been dug up by the hunter.  
(from Spurn diary 18.5.12) 

ripples

The patterns in the sand left by water as well as the patterns of the water itself have really grabbed me and given a focus to my sketchbook work.  These both present their own challenges for drawing: the water is constantly moving and, although the sand is static when I can see it, the ripples are part of such expansive areas.

On my last visit I experimented with a borrowed camera and took some little movie sequences of both.  There was a keen wind that kept the surface of the water lying on the beach moving.

I've never tried adding movies to a blog post before and I suspect they might be too large so the other ones are here, here and here. The last and longest one was taken walking across the beach looking at the ripple marks in the sand as I walked, approaching the sea.  It wobbles a bit in places but I think it shows the scale of things well, from the detail of small ripples to the expanse of water and sand stretching away.

I started to experiment with how I can create textures based on the ripples for print.  I'm developing drawings with pen into ones using stitch: