Xenotopia II and III at K&S

K&S at Ally Pally came and went and we (HUE) were pleased with the response we got to our exhibition. Lots of people told us they had read 'The Old Ways' and lots of people said they were going to read it as a result of our exhibition and it's nice to think we have inspired people enough to read the book. If Robert McFarlane sees a spike in sales, I hope that he will link it to our exhibition 😊. 

My previous post  only showed one of my pieces, so if you didn't get to the exhibition here are the other two pieces in the series.

Xenotopia II

This is the detail of my square stitching near the horizon which I rubbed with white fabric paint to suggest a white salty surface on Xenotopia II.

Xentopia III

Xenotopia III had stitched paper in the foreground and appliqued rocks on the horizon line which I now realise I still need to photograph. 

One of my favourite comments in the visitor's book was 'I felt I could step into the Salt Flats', and I'll take that any day.

As well as our 'main' pieces, we each created another work which was the same size and colour as the book but in the style of our 'main' pieces. Each piece would be sold in aid of Macmillan nurses. Mine is in the middle of the top row although the detail is difficult to see in this photograph.

I know these pics of the gallery don't do justice to the work and talents of the HUE members but hopefully they will give you an idea of how the gallery looked and if you didn't see it at Ally Pally please come and see us in Harrogate,  if you can. I'll be stewarding on Saturday and Sunday (25th and 26th November).

I was only able to steward on the Saturday but I really enjoyed talking to the visitors. I spoke to a number of people who knew me through my blog and it encouraged me to try to post more frequently. I hope that I do but I have also just started back to full time work and I'm feeling quite enthusiastic about it at the moment so let's hope the new girl enthusiasm doesn't leave me any time soon. I've lots of other salt flat ideas that I would like to pursue.....and that's just the way I like it....

Xenotopia at the Knitting & Stitch Show

I'm very pleased that my Atacama Salt Flat pieces will be exhibited in the HUE gallery at the Knitting & Stitch Shows this year. I dyed a lot of fabric in my quest to get the effect that I was looking for and there were many, many times when I thought I wasn't going to get the results I wanted but I'm so glad that I didn't give up. 

This piece is called Xenotopia I and if all goes to plan it will be joined by Xenotopia II and III in the exhibition. Each piece is approximately 1 metre square. You can see some of my original design ideas here.

Across the horizon is a bright red line but the impact is lost somewhat in this photograph. Thinking about the salt in the Atacama, one of my early experiments was to pour strong salt solution on cloth and wait for the water to evaporate, revealing the square-ish shape of the salt crystals. I printed this shape on the fabric and used it to inspire the rocky elements in the foreground. In my other two pieces I have also used square stitches to add rocky elements but more of those in another post. 

Xenotopia I - detail

The work in the HUE exhibition has been made after we all read Robert McFarlane's book 'The Old Ways' and we have all responded to the book very differently. The book is about walks in the landscape which I was pleased about as most of my work is inspired by landscapes. In his book Robert says that we need a word to describe....

'somewhere we feel and think significantly differently......how to describe the lands that are found beyond these frontiers?  ‘Xenotopias’, perhaps meaning ‘foreign places’ or ‘out of place places’, a term to complement the terms utopias and dystopias'.   

Xenotopia seemed to describe my experience of the Salt Flats. It was like nowhere I'd been before and I certainly felt differently when I was there and almost three years on and it is still inspiring me.

For some time I've been thinking about getting fabric printed with an image of my piece and making a top to wear when I was stewarding but have been put off by the cost of digital printing, particularly as there was a risk that I would make a mistake and not align the image to the pattern pieces correctly. Fortunately though I recently came across Fashion Formula who had more favourable prices.

The colours of the top are more olivey than my artwork and more olivey than this picture shows but overall I'm very pleased with it. It's gone from design to coat hanger in less than a week, which is just as well because the exhibition opens next week. Maybe it's just me but I think it will be wearable on other occasions too.

If you're going to the show I hope you enjoy it and if you're on Saturday 14th, you'll know how to spot me!

HUE exhibition opens in Bishop's Stortford

Yesterday we installed HUE's 4th exhibition at  the Rhodes Gallery in Bishop's Stortford. There are 40 textile pieces exhibited, 5 of which are mine.  

Three of these pieces are the first of my Atacama series to be exhibited, with the one on the right only being completed late on Friday evening. Tight? Definitely! It took longer to install the exhibition than I anticipated, perhaps they always do, and had planned to take a couple of close-ups when my pieces were hung but at the end of a busy day, I completely forgot. 

I have previously posted about the 'Hidden Pathways' piece is here and I will post about the other two pieces just as soon as I have some more detailed photos to show you. If you are able to why not visit the exhibition? It's free to enter and there is a lovely variety of work on display.

A new piece of work finally finished

For all the reasons mentioned in my previous post, it's been ages since I finished a piece of work but finally I have and hopefully there'll be a couple of others finished soon. As you can see I'm still being inspired by the Atacama Desert and think I will be for sometime to come. I loved it!  

I don't usually like to cut things up (cowardly me?) but found it easy to cut this one, probably because I didn't have a fixed image of the end piece in mind and therefore wasn't worrying I would ruin the thing I was trying to create. The blues in the piece represent the big blue desert sky and the underground water supply whilst the other colours represent those created by the minerals in hard salty landscape. 

The piece is made up of layers, the top layer is paper laminatation that I created from one of my designs....

...which I bonded onto a simply printed piece of fabric which just happened to have running stitch going around the edge like a frame. The under stitching is very difficult to see in the final piece but I liked the effect  this created and would like to experiment more with this technique although I'm not sure how motivated I'll be to stitch knowing that it will be covered up by another layer.

The layered fabric was then cut into squares and rectangles and moved around until I achieved a composition that I was happy with. Each cut piece was then layered on black fabric with black thread couched along the edge to neaten it.

Not all the pieces were stitched but I rubbed white screen ink on those that were to emphasis the stitching and to represent the crusty salty surface of the desert. These were then applied to a mono printed background and additional stitching added to represent the pathways linking the elements of the desert together. 

Stitching the pieces to the background should have been the easiest task, but it took ages with lots of unpicking and re-positioning until I was happy....funny how the tasks you think will be quick and easy often take much longer than you think..

New studio - up and running!

Having a studio to work in has been a dream of mine for a long time and now I have it. The benefit of having thought about it for so long is that I've had plenty of time to hone my requirements and so I am excited to say that my finished studio meets all those requirements and ticks all my boxes! I am very, very lucky. So what did I want from my studio? 

I wanted somewhere with a print table large enough to cater for my large pieces of cloth and and area I could print and dye without worrying about the long term effects of spillage on furniture and flooring. . 

A sink and a washing machine that never needed to be used for household washing. Those small particles of dye get everywhere and are difficult to see and can easily ruin clothes and sheets in my case. Although I've had some accidents, I'm really surprised and grateful that I haven't had more dyeing incidents than I have.

Somewhere I can leave my sewing machine set up, ready to go and a large pin board which I absolutely love having. Not sure how I did without one of those before,

Storage space, now which textile artist doesn't need more of that? So this is the mezzanine level, which still needs a banister and a loft ladder to get to it and then I can start using it.

Good light available even when it's dark outside and the light in the studio is brilliant (no pun intended). I have 3 large velux windows and lots (and I mean lots) of LED daylight bulbs. All the research into light temperatures, light output etc were worth every hour we spent on it.

And these are supplemented by the bespoke window which I am rather keen on but for obvious reasons the builders less so. 

The whole thing took a lot longer to complete than we thought but it has been so worth it. It wasn't until 11th January that the studio was fully fitted out and had that all-so-important heating working. 

It has been difficult to do much textile work in the last 6 months with the chaos created by the building work, the lack of space, the research and ordering to be done, so I have lots of pent up creativity to get down on cloth but I've started. I've been experimenting with creating texture and layering colours but lots more work to do. I have just finished one piece though,which I'll show you next time, which I hope will be soon.