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. 

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.

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.