Is it really 20 months?

Interior scroll

Scroll

Sundays are a good day for reviewing where one is up to and it is such a long time since I blogged here.  Do I start a new blog or resurrect this one?  I am quite fond of this old thing and it has been with me for a few years now, so maybe it just needs a little housekeeping and tinkering around the edges.

Having finished the first OCA Textile course (which required a separate blog - wordpress) and received feedback from my lovely tutor, it is time to take stock and decide what to do with the vast amount of information I have gathered over the last 20 months.  I certainly wanted a new direction but had no idea that textile art encompassed so many areas.  I took my printmaking knowledge with me and used it to produce the little piece of work above but added to it new details in stitch and a woven the backing.  There are so many areas that I now want to explore before I begin another course, even the little scroll has so many ideas attached to it for future work.

It has been a fascinating journey and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I am not sure it has taken me to a medium that I want to focus on to the exclusion of everything else but rather opened up other possibilities.  I like being a maker and picking up whatever works for me in expressing an idea and the course has given me so many more tools to play with and a lot more confidence.

Textile Art

It's been a while since I posted but that doesn't mean I haven't been making art. I have been both painting and printmaking.

However, during the summer I decided that I needed a change of direction and scanned the horizon for something that would give me a new way of thinking.  It's difficult to maintain focus after you leave an academic/artistic environment and that has been the case increasingly for me since I left the city and moved to a rural environment.  I don't think it's lack of inspiration but rather finding a focus and a reason for producing work that is the problem.  I am constantly inspired and full of ideas just lack the impetus at times.

It's the oddest thing but several art friends seem to have reached this stage at the same time, so perhaps every ten years or so it is time to spin the wheel. 

So, I decided start a Textile Art course with the OCA so you will be able to catch me over at the associated blog heaveninrags.wordpress.com

What happened here?

I turn my back for a few months and everything on the blogger interface has changed.  I am sure I'll get used to it...

I have been working away this year with a determination towards exhibiting. Today I was about to enter some work for a printmakers exhibition and was so put off by the commission charge of 52% + entry fee that I gave up.  Even if you want to sell work at a reasonable price by the time you add this it becomes prohibitive.  I really don't want to be adding that kind of fee.  It makes it expensive for buyers and not worth the effort for the artist.

Still developing a working practice for gelatin prints.  It's such an interesting medium that I keep returning to. This little image is called 'bye bye birdy'.  It's about children leaving home.

From The Little Shed at Foggy Bottom

Talking with a friend today about exhibiting work and marketing opportunities and trying to come up with a suitable name for my little space, we came up with The Little Shed at Foggy Bottom.   Before I moved to the Shire I worked from the Little Gallery on Main Street, which really did not fit at all well living up a dirt track, under the woodland.


This is a pretty rotten image of a gelatin print I have been working up as a series.  I have been test driving a new digital camera to see how it stacks up against my DSLR - not good. Being lazy!

Funny Old Life

It has been such a long time since I touched this blog or anything else to do with my art practice.  I was given a diagnosis of MS after having severe sight problems for months.  This seemed particularly cruel for anyone creative.


However, now that the dust has settled and I can see once more (a bit dodgy round the edges maybe), I am ready to pick up where I left off with a greater respect for myself, my health and going with the flow.  It certainly gives you a new perspective on life.


I am currently in Australia and picked up a sketch book and some crayons the other day to 'play' with whilst I am here and have gained inspiration from gallery visits and the beautiful landscape and colours.  For the first time in ages, I am looking forward to getting back into the studio and working.

Quiet Sunday

 

A quiet day in the studio after a leisurely start, coffee and a walk in the sunshine.   Played around with trying to transfer images using wundaweb and gave up after a frustrating couple of hours getting nowhere.  Will have to rethink that one.

The image here is one of a series using collaged material, acrylic paint and oil pastels - it's quite a long canvas and I have cropped the centre for the blog.  Enjoyable experimental stuff really.

in the absence of feeling

 

Unbelievably, here we are wending our way through March.  Despite the fact that I have been largely absent from blogging, I am busy painting which was my main focus for 2011.  A week away with the laptop for company and I have been catching up with digital imagery,  playing with Photoshop and trying to gather a photo collection to use in my artwork.  This little image came from gazing out of a window and not being able to recall feelings that I'd had about a situation.

I notice that many of the blogs I follow are having a quiet time, so hopefully we are all enjoying a period of high productivity or complete relaxation.

Most Useful

The Telegraph Saturday Review had a really useful list today of online archives - here are a few of them and a bit of blurb taken from the article. 

www.moma.org/collection  - for the most comprehensive modern archive by a single institution to date.

www.vggallery.com/letters - Van Gogh's 902 letters - £450 for the new Thames & Hudson book - or free to view at this site.


www.books.google.com - 15 million publications - I just checked out the complete collection of Life magazine - worth a look at the front covers dating back to the 1950's.

www.europeana.eu - By 2016 all public domain masterpieces in Europe  should be accessible through this site.  It currently has 15 million to view.

http://threadsoffeeling.com/ - Tokens; mainly a tiny piece of fabric, left by mothers to identify babies left at the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760.  Heart-rending.

Work in Progress for January

mixed media & collage on canvas

I am so sorry not to have posted for such a long time.  Christmas and the infections of the season got in the way.   But it's back to work now and on with a plan for 2011.  

In as much, as one can plan for anything, I intend to let printmaking take a back seat this year and concentrate on painting again.  I did a bit of a swap over last year and experimented quite a bit with gelatin print, digital and collographs but by late 2010 I was itching to get messy and started to dig out some failed works to paint over.  Less stressful than staring at a white canvas and wondering where to throw the first blob of paint!

I  decided it was time to rejoin the artistic community and signed up for the local Visual Artist Network.  They have a nice exhibition space and I felt it really was about time I put myself out there more. 

I've also joined a photography group in attempt to improve my grasp of this weighty subject.  I really feel pretty hopeless about the most basic information required to take a decent shot.

And then there's the Latin to think about...New Year Resolutions and all that:)

London Trip

Returned last night from a weekend trip to London and a flying visit to Tate Britain.  Had a peep at the Saatchi Gallery and ended the visit at The Royal Academy to see the Glasgow Boys ( http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/glasgow-boys/).  Tate Britain was full of greatness and a joy to spend a couple of hours before it closed looking at some old favourites.  The Glasgow Boys was a really good exhibition of artists with whom I was not previously familiar and whose capturing of light and colour held me spellbound.  It was well-attended but I managed to see everything without being trampled underfoot.  

I found most of the Saatchi gallery's current collection predictably dreary.  It neither excites nor shocks any more.  It was however, interesting to hear a guide trying to justify some juvenile dross to a party of schoolchildren.  Despite the no entrance fee policy these days, it was very quiet, with a collection of gallery attendants who were barely civil.  It all felt a bit parallel universe.  But hey I'm only a punter.

Collagraph II

 

A second run of collagraphs with chine colle.  It's starting to feel like a race against time before the Festive Season takes hold  and everything grinds to a halt for a few weeks.  Although it is good to get work out at any time of the year.

Collagraph

Been painting, making little boxes, small sculptures and working on some collographs for a change.  This little landscape is a collagraph with chine colle and is headed to Australia with 3 others in the series.

I have also been working on making the studio a warmer place to work during the winter months.  Last year was a battle with condensation damp getting into everything and the summer was such a non-event that I knew I was going to have to get some heat going.  I now have curtains at the windows, some old underlay and carpet on the floor and a thermostat on an oil radiator to keep the temperature level.  So far so good.

Book Binge

 

Yesterday I came across a second hand book store with a table outside and a sign saying 'free to good home - help yourself'.  And needing no encouragement, I came away very happily carrying four old hardbacks and some ancient engineering plans to use as Altered Books, including this poor battered thing with a very beautiful cover that I am sure can be brought to life in some way.  Funny isn't it, the small things that can brighten the dullest day?

An Origami Moment

 

I have been exploring ideas for One Hundred Boxes and have been folding paper in an origami kind of way - immediate apologies to any origami purists for this folded work in newspaper and tracing paper.  A few months ago I started looking at ways to use all the bits of artwork lying around the studio - files and files of paper experiments that hadn't quite worked out.  I began a journal with some of it and then the boxes were born and the focus has shifted in that direction as a way of recycling with an autobiographical emphasis. 

I am finding it interesting to see where the wandering, creative mind travels and the little boxes are proving very useful in giving a structure and starting point to the work, whilst allowing free-reign to fill the boxes with whatever is developing from one to the next.  The discipline of recording each one is very useful for progress.  Some of them still need changes and some are on the shelf awaiting a bolt of inspiration to move them along at all.

Feel a bit more blog-happy this week - moved the furniture around and changed the decor a bit. (Blogger seem to have dumped a lot of their design templates?)

Mid-Blog Crisis

It's coming up to 2 years since I began the blog. Perhaps this is the time to take stock, maybe there is a 2 year hiatus common to bloggers:).  There are times I enjoy posting and times when it feels a chore and I would rather be in the studio or vice versa!

Living in a rural environment, I do feel isolated from other artists and very much enjoy looking at other artists' blogs for the inspiration and the camaraderie I miss, having previously enjoyed a city-based studio practice.

But this does not solve the current dilemma of where to go with This Artist's Place.  I quite like the format on One Hundred Boxes - no dialogue and just images with media description.  I don't think I gave much thought initially to blogging and it has evolved in rather an untidy way with my posting whatever I was creating at that moment - more a sketchbook of ideas and thoughts than a coherent entity.

I have noticed that many of the bloggers I follow have moved, created additional blogs, given up, been amalgamated into zines.  There must be a natural lifespan to blogs with  many changes on the journey.  Where do all the dead blogs go?

Steve McCurry Retrospective, Birmingham City Art Gallery

Called in to see the Steve McCurry Retrospective at the Modern Art Gallery bit attached to Birmingham City Art Gallery and was quite bowled over by his absolutely sensational photography.  Amazing colours, thought-provoking images - check out his website http://www.stevemccurry.com/main.php or better still if you are in the Birmingham area,  go see it - it runs til October 17th.

Small Object

 

Sometimes everything goes to plan and at other moments it's an uphill struggle and this week has been the latter with a brain in underdrive and frustration levels in overdrive.  I have been working on the latest small box and just can't get the composition right.  I think it might have to rest on the shelf until I find out why it won't hang together.

I've been doing some camera practice today to take a break from the studio - closeups of small objects like this old tin box that houses my pins, needles and cottons for those repairs I never do.

September in Shrewsbury Town

A Small Collection of Boxes

 

The boxes now number six - although I want to make some changes before I post the latest  on the One Hundred Boxes blog.  The last box contains a butterfly that died in the studio resting on white painted twigs (the black box above).  The box itself has a glass window and I have placed mirror card at the back of the box to catch the reflections but which looks fine in the studio but is proving problematic to photograph.  I also feel that it needs something else and am not yet sure what to add.

Serendipity seems to be at work too and I am finding boxes everywhere to use - not quite a hundred yet but getting there slowly. 

One Hundred Boxes

Lying awake last night, it seemed a really good idea to start a new blog for the Autobiographia Boxes (?!?).  I thought it would spur me into action to set a goal and see what happens along the way.  So I have entitled it One Hundred Boxes.  I may never actually reach the hundred but it should be a good way to concentrate my mind and build a body of work for this project. 

So just the boxes, notes about the size and media and keep it simple.