I have kept forgetting…

to post pictures of the book I made from Photoshopped pictures of an early tubes piece, now named ‘Chronicle 1’, as it is made from an old copy of the Hampshire Chronicle [a newspaper, at least nominally]. 

As you can see, I was exploring different paper treatments when  I printed the images. The binding is the drumleaf, which I found in Dorothy Simpson Krause’s ‘Book + Art’, and like very much – it’s firm, feels good in the hand, and looks professional, while not being difficult to do [just slow]. This is destined to be a Personal Cloth, if only because it is too good to be a sketchbook <g>.

I actually finished it a couple of days ago – nothing much college-related has been achieved today due to  a circular tour round the Hants/Berks/Surrey borders.

Sandy kindly alerted me to an exhibition in Bracknell – and regular readers who look at the image here will know why! The tubular piece is by Margaret Hodges, who is exhibiting with other artists from New Greenham Arts – which is another discovery. It is quite a small exhibition, and all visible from outside the gallery if it isn’t open!

We followed that with a return visit to the Watts Gallery, which we haven’t been to since before it was restored. The restoration is superb, but I find the art puzzling. Obviously the allegorical/historical type of subject is of its time, which is not ours, but Watts seems to have painted in so many different styles. Is this more obvious because there are so many pieces by the same artist displayed together? Do other artists change their styles as frequently? [The website seems to suggest that his ‘ceaseless experimentation’ was a bit of a problem.] Some good portraits – but why did none of Watt’s sitters ever smile? 

No time to visit the Watts Chapel, which is much more to my taste, but lunch was good, and we had a pleasant drive home along the Hogs Back, with stunning views because the air was clear and the leaves mostly off the trees.

The art of procrastination.

It dawned on me a few days ago that it is now only a month till the hand in date fro PC and PMS – I’d been telling myself it was December – which it is – but the middle of December, nit the end.

So I panicked quietly and then I decided to sort out my Picasa files. Not because this would help with either the PC or the PMS, you understand, but because it was something I’d been putting off since having an internet conversation with Margaret Cooter about it several weeks ago. It suddenly became high priority…

In the process I did remove a lot of dross from the files – and from ‘My Documents’ which I moved on to when I got bored with moving Picasa folders around. In the process I did find my ‘History of British Embroidery’ which I thought I'd accidentally deleted – not that it's relevant to the degree but someone suggested I put it on line so I might just do that [more procrastination].

The VIbirthdayP on Saturday went very well – Babybel’s clever mummy had won a free party at a local ‘children’s edutainment centre’ –or place for running, jumping, climbing, swinging, sliding, chasing, dressing up, playing ball and shrieking – so a good time was had by all. Even the VHC found something to his taste.

Sunday [in our case] was spent recovering from the VIBP.

The rest of the week seems to have gone by in a bit of a blur. The artworks in the garden were photographed a couple of days early because it was a beautiful day. I’m glad to say that some of them are beginning to look a little tatty. Today at college we were introduced to Module 13 [I hope not a significant number]. This one is ‘Professional Practice’ – learning about running a business, plus preparing for our graduation exhibition.

Part of the former is setting up a web presence – and unfortunately a long-established blog won’t do. We have to look at, and be prepared to discuss good and bad examples of artists’ websites – so if anyone can suggest good and bad ones, especially the latter, I’d be grateful!  I have some good ones on my Gimmee bar, but of course I don’t add the lousy ones – you know, so picture heavy they take a year to load, so clever you can’t work out how to find what you’re looking for, and in grey on black so you can't read them. Artistic? Yes. Good at communication with potential customers? Forget it.

The latter involved setting up a committee [i.e. all of us] and having an amicable discussion over lunch about what we might do – which given that things like dates, locations and contents are as yet undecided, was a bit diffiult. Yours truly was unanimously elected treasurer [this of course is because no-one else wanted to do it]. However, as we are only seeking to raise a little money to pay for publicity, I don’t think I’ll be able to retire to South America with the proceeds…

It’s official…

Thursday is now photography day.

Outside - 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and inside.

I am also now officially bored with LAF, and I think I will abandon it at the end of the month. It’s too uniform, and printouts don’t have the same connotations as all those lovely envelopes.

 

 

Something else is happening outside.

We have had problems with our soakaways –we are not on mains drainage so getting rid of rainwater into the sewer is not an option.

Given that said soakaways are probably about 60 years old at the back of the house, and 90 at the front, and that the pipes turned out to be full of tree roots, this is not surprising.

We have had a hole, a spoil heap, some pipes, and a skip full of chalk. Those of you who are gardeners will have realised instantly that we can’t grow azaleas – given that we only have about 6 inches of soil on top of the bedrock, we can’t grow much of anything. However chalk soils are very good for soakaways – once you’ve dug a big enough hole and filled it with gravel. Two fit young men [in both sense of the word ‘fit’] laboured mightily in our back garden and the job is now finished. Then they are on to indoor repairs.

I have preserved a little of the chalk for drawing purposes, plus this, which the younger FYM thinks is a fossil.

 

 

 

Yesterday we left them to it, and went down to Stourhead, because W. wanted to look at the trees. We were a bit too late to see them in their glory but there were still some leaves on the trees – and some lovely reflections.

  We also indulged in a little retail therapy in the excellent Stourhead Farm Shop.

We spotted some more colour on the way home 

 

 

 

 

 

and some people standing in a field with a lot of old stones.

A bit bigger than the ones in our skip, and definitely not chalk.

The last two images were taken from the moving car, so a bit blurry, I’m afraid. We didn’t stop because we’ve done the old stones before and I always find them disappointing – I think the scale of the landscape is such that the true size of the stones is lost. The landscape, on the other hand, is stunning – chalk is also very good for hills.

Today has been much less exciting – catching up with POT and LAF, which got neglected yesterday, and another session of ‘add glue and wait for it to dry’ on a little book of photos of tubes. Don’t suppose much will get done tomorrow either as we have a VIBP [very important birthday party] to attend. A home made Thomas cake is promised – can’t wait!

As promised…

 

a photograph of POT, showing A.’s kind donation. She felt he was looking a little blue, so posted me an envelope in her favourite colour, to cheer him up.

POT is getting increasingly difficult to photograph – next time I think I will have to stand on a chair.

 

 

 

I got out the glue gun today, not to glue anything, but to draw with. 

These are the best of my efforts – the yellow one is on fabric, and I’m not sure how firmly the glue has adhered. I tested it by adding some gold wax, as the white needed toning down, and it seems to have survived – so far. I am thinking of adding some stitch in the gaps.

The other one contributes to my current obsessions with brown paper and stripes, and my long standing obsession with trees.

My third arty thing today, although it wasn’t on my original 3 a day, was a visit to the ‘Place-ment’ exhibition at the Discovery Centre. We thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the work of Tina Bird Wallbridge – although not all her paintings are of Hampshire, I think it is probably of most interest if you know the area- she says that she looks at one’s sense of identity linked to the place one lives, and her art really raised those sort of feelings in us.

Then we came home and Wensleydale’s lap top died when he tried to pay some bills on line. Two identical laptops, bought at around the same time, one used daily and one used weekly if it was lucky. Guess which one is still going strong? [Is there an emoticon for ‘fingers crossed’?] We have invited the compute doctor over, but I’m not sure whether even he can do anything but rescue useful stuff off the hard drive…

And then there were nine.

‘Personal cloths’, that is. I just need to think of a name for it – apart from ‘number nine’.

This one was made from a collection of plastic zip-up storage bags whose zips had gone. After rolling I added smaller wrappings with shrink wrap, zapped the whole lot with a heat gun, and then incised them with the soldering iron. [I was very good and wore my Darth Vader face mask throughout – which meant I didn’t realise what an awful smell I was making till I’d finished…]

 

Then I sponged them with black acrylic and wiped it off again, before knotting them all together, rather untidily, because of the lumps and bumps.

It is hanging in the front garden, while I try to resolve my dilemma about whether to hang one in public [it’s litter! I haven’t got the bottle! They out to be out there! Think of it as [non] knit hacking!]

Insomnia struck again last night, but I kept to my new resolution to do something constructive, and made a little collage. The word was on a bag from Compton Verney and seemed very appropriate.

Nothing to do with tubes, but it’s going into the sketchbook as an idea when I get bored with rolling things.

Speaking of rolling things – POT and LAF continue to grow. I received an interesting donation for POT last week [thanks A.!] – all will be revealed in my next post [if I don’t forget…]

What a difference a day made.

At 2 a.m. on Wednesday I was convinced that my college work had wandered off up yet another dead end – I didn't know where it was going, didn’t think it was saying anything, and I was missing stitch – to the extent that I got up and worked some blackwork samples inspired by security envelopes.

But I took some photos of the tube-y things I’ve made so far into college and begged for a tutorial.

Amazing what a difference someone's positive reaction makes!

Suddenly everything seemed much better than I thought it was:

• it’s not just doing the same thing over again, it’s ‘working in a series’
• POT was ‘ a very strong idea’ and I should consider doing something similar with e-mails
• the photos I’d taken of the other pieces outside were very good and I should put them all outside and photograph the changes over time – this was before I’d mentioned that T&T were living outside
• I should use some of the photos, enlarged up to A2 [!!!] as part of the degree show.

So

• all the other suspended tube pieces have gone outside permanently and been photographed for posterity.
• POT has also been photographed, for the sake of consistency

 

 

• and I have started a new piece – hereinafter known as ‘Love and Friendship’ [LAF]. I abandoned the idea of using all my e-mails – or even all the spam e-mails – there are just too many of them – and decided to use just selected ones in white [you can guess which from the image] – plus e-mails from friends and family in green.

Mmm – perhaps I need more friends?

I was very tempted to call it ‘Love and Freindship’ [especially as it was an epistolary novel] but decided that trying to show off would just lead to most people thinking I didn't know how to spell.

I have plans for 2-3 more in the outdoor series – and then I'm done up till Christmas  – apart from the paperwork, the contextualisation, the work book, and the PMS.

But I still like the blue blackwork security envelope patterns…

Student does college work shock!

OK – not very much of it – but I am back in the mood, after finishing this [sorry about the c**p photo] and running up a bag from the leftovers for the recipient’s big sister.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rolled a few envelopes – not many this week, POT has only grown by a couple of inches – although it depends whether I measure him contracted or extended. Doesn't it always?

 

 

 

I played around in my sketchbook – I like the yellow pages stripes on the left, which I may translate into tubes – if i can work out how to tie them together.

 

 

And I finished some plastic tubes I started the last time I was in college, nearly three weeks ago – except I then decided they needed wrapping with shrink wrap, heat gunning, soldering and rubbing with black paint – original in the middle, zapped on the right, painted on the left. For some reason W. says the last one looks Japanese. I just think it’s a lot more interesting than the virgin one in the middle.

So far I’ve only done the one – but intend to tackle the others tomorrow.

 

Plus I've done a bit of paperwork, and got ready for college [not difficult as I didn’t really unpack after my last visit…]

And as the icing on the cake, I’ve found some good examples for contextualisation – now to Google the maker, Dorothy Liebes and ‘rigid weft’ weaving.