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!

From Chile to Chilly....

I have recently returned from a fabulous trip to Chile and Easter Island. We saw some amazing scenery and often it was right outside our hotel window. We went from desert to lakes to glaciers and from worrying about sunburn to wearing a coat and gloves and wishing I'd brought a hat.

From hot and dry to cold and steamy at the geysers...

And all of the early starts were so worth it...

I took over 1000 photographs and these here are just a few (!) of those I expect to inspire future textile pieces.

And on the textile front, I saw lots of knitting and weaving. They have a strong tradition of weaving and the textile gallery at the Pre-Colombian Museum in Santiago was excellent with lots of well preserved pieces. I was disappointed that no photography was allowed but I was very pleased to find that their textile gallery guide is available online and in English.

I saw lots of contemporary weaving too, especially on hotel walls

And sometimes more unconventional items were used to weave with, this one is woven using tape measures:

But when it comes to knitting, I think the Peruvians are ahead. It didn't matter how hot it was, people were knitting and trying to sell the garments. I even saw a lady knitting a toy llama on four needles made from cactus spines....now you wouldn't want to drop that knitting in  your lap! And I did see was lots of people knitting figures, who were well.... knitting.

Putting knitting aside, if you ever have the opportunity to go to Chile, do. The landscapes are fantastic, there's lots to do, the people are very friendly and the food's good - especially if you like avocados, which fortunately I do.

New Inspiration: Close to home and in Italy

I seem to have been busy busy busy, recently and not enough stitching has been going on but I have been enjoying myself! I need to get on and finish my current work because I have been collecting new inspirations. Last week we had a long weekend in the Italian Lakes, which had previously inspired my Lake Maggiore piece and I think it's the sunset pictures that I will turn to again for inspiration.

In February, I had a new camera for my birthday but it only came with very brief printed instructions and it wasn't until I was on the plane to Italy that I got to read the electronic manual that I had downloaded.  The next two photographs used two of the settings I discovered.

I like the effects they created but unfortunately I can't remember which ones I used!

Back in England, we had friends staying with us this weekend and yesterday we enjoyed a very warm trip to the Hampton Court Palace Flower show. Philip is the gardener of the household but I couldn't resist buying this plant. I thought it looked like a living pin cushion.

Today we walked through the fields at Hitchin Lavender and now my trousers smell nicely of lavender - I should be very nicely relaxed by bed time!

Although the lavender fields have been opened since 2000 and I live quite close, I didn't even know they existed. The entrance price entitles you to pick a bag of lavender, so looks like I could be relaxed for some time to come! Although it is very nice to come back with some lavender, it was the seeing the purple fields that I enjoyed the most.

Hopefully, I will be able to get some stitching done this week.....deadlines are looming....

Gearing up for my next landscape piece

Now that my Italian lake quilt is finished, I have started to consider my next landscape piece. I decided that my album of local landscapes needed updating so one nice evening I set off in my car, camera on the passenger seat, looking for some inspiring landscapes and I was not disappointed. The pinks and golden yellows in the fields in the early evening light were lovely. The only problem was that I had left my camera battery at home in the charger! So yet again I was relying on the camera in my phone. 

I started to work in sketchbook to investigate how I could simplify them and use them to as inspiration for my next piece. I started using markal sticks and wash as I had in my recent post but just couldn't get anything I was pleased with.

 

 

 

I did try very hard but I wasn't happy with what I produced and just put my previous success down to beginners luck and decided to try out another technique. This time I painted the page with gesso, added colour and then cut the page up into similar shapes I could see in the field and I quite liked this effect.

 

This is pretty small, so I decided to repeat the method but to make the design larger but again beginners luck seemed to have left me and I couldn't produce anything that I was as pleased with. 

  

Maybe it's not beginners luck but rather that more pleasing things come from being more spontaneous? Or maybe it's just that the first time you try a technique it will always have the element of surprise and interest that subsequent pieces can never replicate? Anyway, it does seem that in writing this post I am more pleased with them now than I was earlier, perhaps just because it's been a few days since I created them and I'm looking at them with fresh eyes. I'm off to Committed to Cloth next Saturday and whether I like the designs or not, it has given me a number of ideas of where to start with the piece which can only be good. Like the Italian lake piece, I know it's going to take lots of time layering the colours to get it anywhere near where I want it to be. 

Drawing Inspired by Landscapes II

It was good to have the time to work into my sketchbook but just as my ideas were coming together and I thought I might be on the brink of something 'big', I had to go back to work! Hopefully, the ideas are brewing nicely, somewhere in my head.

I was working with a photograph where the light made the soil look a dark maroon colour and it reminded me of a collage I created using a limited selection of papers. If I wanted to represent trees and I only had pink paper left, then pink they were. I quite liked the effect of using colours you wouldn't expect to find in a landscape. So I used a pinky colour in some of my sketches. 

This one was created by rubbings and ink washes on paper, which was then torn to represent the field structure in one of my landscape pictures. 

This one was created with a wax and wash technique.

This was created with two small mono prints that I stuck together and coloured to create a simple landscape. The dark patch in the sky area looked like a tree when it was in black and white but strangely, became less tree-like once I had added some green.

 

This is a section of a larger piece which I folded in the same way as the folded paper in my my last post . It suggests rocks and water to me and I plan to work back into this one. .

 

 

I really liked the technique of folding paper to create different perspectives. Simple but effective. I also tried it on a photograph of Lake Louise and whilst it is a magnificent photograph, which is more to do with the landscape than my photography skills, I find it a little overwhelming. Where to start, how to represent it? But folding the image without thought to where abouts in the image the folds would fall, takes a lot of the dithering and decision making away from you. The folding created a number of lovely images that I could work with. I'll be doing this again.

Drawing Inspired by Landscapes

It's not often that I take time off work to go on a course but today I went to Amanda Hislop's landscape sketchbook course at Art Van Go. The first thing that I did was to draw (quickly) from one of my photographs using Markal stiks and inks. Firstly on one side of the paper and then...

...on the other side.

 

The paper was then cut to create a book-like structure.

 

The cuts and folds create mini pictures and new perspectives and here are just some of them:

 

 

 

I guess you could achieve something similar with a pair of 'L' shapes but I think the cutting and folding does make you consider combinations you may not otherwise have done.

 

It's been really nice to be 'forced' to take time out to draw into my sketchbook. It has also made me have another look at my C&G landscape sketchbook and I have been surprised by how many of the ideas still interest me enough to take them into textiles. I have many more ideas than I have time to pursue but it's probably better that way round. Of course, I won't be starting anything new until my lake piece is finished!

 

Just in case you were wondering, I did do a lot more than this today but I left the sketchbook to dry in the studio. It's a two-day course, so I've got tomorrow to look forward to, too. Hurrah!

Post Sampling

I couldn't put it off any longer....I had to tackle the pole in the water. So using an off-cut, I trialled 3 ways of adding a pole to my fabric.

I tried painted bondaweb, Markal Paintstiks and fabric paint. I was convinced that the painted bondaweb would be the best method but it wasn't. So glad that I trialled it!

The painted bondaweb (right) was a bit plasticy, once I'd added enough paint to achieve the desired colour. The fabric paint (bottom left) was OK but was a dense all over colour and was also a bit plasticy. My clear favourite was the Markal Paintstik (top left).

So I bravely set about adding a pole to the main piece, which I think gives it additional interest and depth.

Even though I'd trialled the techniques, I was still a bit nervous adding the Markal as it was going to be really obvious if there were any mistakes but if there are any I haven't noticed them yet. So now to the stitching....at least you can unpick that if you make a mistake!

Inspirational weekend in Italy

We're just back from spending a lovely long weekend in Italy with Peter, a friend of ours. We were very well looked after and spoilt with nice food, beautiful scenery and a packed and interesting itinerary. I really enjoyed seeing the autumnal colours even if it was sometimes through the rain!  Here are just a few of the many photographs that I took.

I love the colours of autumn and was really pleased to see these beautiful landscapes and seeing the autumnal colours of the land reflected in the lakes was a bonus. I wouldn't be surprised if these didn't inspire some work in the very near future. Watch this space but don't hold your breath!