I've recorded a couple more beach walks by weaving little squares of colour and texure from things collected on the beach.
A little snippet of plastic rope was found and collected. As I carefully tease it apart I end up with little lengths of green that sit nicely on my narrow warp.
These then become a block of colour in between strips of other ropes, a piece of red fabric, black plastic and held together with the linen I'm using as a base.
Another group of items from another walk have a very different feel to them.
Working with these gaudy bits and pieces forms an interesting contrast to my focus on the naturally occurring patterns in the Spurn landscape. People visiting my studio over the last few days (I've been doing an open studio event) have asked what these pieces are going to be. They aren't necessarily going to become anything other than what they are now! I see these as a way of recording a walk; bringing together the colours and textures of a moment on the beach; combining the natural and man-made items that are mingling in the sea and on our shores.
When I walk on the beach I am always noticing what is around my feet and the Spurn beaches seem to attract a particularly interesting mixture of items! I am constantly fascinated by the intermingling of the items that wash up on beaches, the interweaving of the natural and the man-made. Sometimes it is blindingly obvious into which camp something falls, but other times things can be so combined that it is confusing to try to separate out the rubbish from the natural detritus.
As I walk I collect things in a small scale way, being quite selective. I pick up items that I think would be suitable to print with (either direct printing, relief printing or to make collagraphs), these might be scraps of plastic or textile; and I pick up things that might be possible to weave with: bits of rope, fishing line, seaweed. I am only choosing very small things, just enough to experiment with and explore the possibilities of.
When choosing what to pick up I'm not sorting by colour a all, just concentrating on the shapes and textures. It is really interesting to see how the plastic rubbish gets worn by water and weather, in the same way that natural items, wood, stone, shell, are being worn. The fragments are slowly being weathered down and broken up, becoming more and more like each other.
This was the contents of my pocket on one day:
and then the next:
I have experimented with weaving found items quite a bit before and I know the frustrations and limitations of some of them. Therefore when I got home I used a linen yarn (not a found one) to make a small warp and also used this as the basis for the weft, to secure the found items in and give the little pieces stability.
Beach walk weaving #1:
Beach walk weaving #2:
