When I was making or remaking embellished work of this type a year or more ago I categorised them all as part of sets called either Meltdown or City, (1,2,3 etc) but later some of them seemed to find other names. This one is now In the Sun. Most of the pics I put on this blog or elsewhere are quite low resolution by current online standards but this one has a few more pixels.
It can be satisfying to take colour to an extreme.
Fukushima is in the news again, as it will be periodically for the rest of your life and beyond. This time it’s for starting to dump toxic water into the Pacific, with partial blessing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who are trying to hedge their bets, or just lying through their teeth. And a Netflix drama series about the 2011 events.
Anyway I thought I might re-post the piece I made for my Masters degree.
I have managed to lose most of the files, sketches, notes, images &c. I collected for the project and for the rest of the MA, probably when I moved home, twice.
My overall feeling about this piece is that I would like it to be darker and with bigger and bolder images, but at the time of making I was thinking of the confusion surrounding the 2011 events, and a recent visit to the COBRA museum, Amsterdam https://cobra-museum.nl/ where the anti-art movement of Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam (post World War Two) is displayed.
I am having a clear up and out, and I came across these small pieces from a few years back when I was pursuing an MA in Multidisciplinary Printmaking at Bower Ashton in Bristol. I made them with the Fukushima fiasco in mind, knowing that would be a topical issue all my remaining life and beyond. Fukushima is in the news again as the authorities want to release a million tons of radioactive water into the sea, Uproar Over Japan’s Decision to Disperse Radioactive Fukushima Waste Water and the situation at the site remains dire. I made about ten, gave some away.
I’m thinking of re-framing them perhaps as a single piece, but undecided about the type of frame, a black painted board? These scanned images are fuzzy, the originals have a lot more detail.
This patchwork and machine embroidery quilt was made from a piece of patchwork originally destined to be dolls clothes, but I had so much that it had been put aside and forgotten. The quilting lines show in this picture but the metallic threads do not. There are a lot of shiny silver and blue metallics here and many of them and vaguly flower shaped.
The quilting lines are mainly broad curves, often inspired half or quarter moons or those slivers of the new moon.
Using Kind of Blue as a title feels very cheeky, but the Miles Davis masterpiece is often playing in my studio and the dreamy, sensuous curves of the music are always in my mind.
Moonflowers would reflect my hippy youth, back when work of this kind was unknown, or just consigned to ‘women’s work’ and ignored by the art world. Now there is a wealth of fabulous textile art, many examples may be found on the web.
There is something I find satisfying and rewarding about doll making, although I can’t claim to know what that is. These four dolls are button-jointed in the Jan Horrox style, about 60 cm long, their clothes are made from embellished and embroidered scraps and may be much longer. The fabric scraps are often silk and satin and have many metallic threads but these shiny things do not show in these photos.
These dolls might represent both birds of the British Isles and the four regions, Scotland – Magpie, Wales – Red Kite, Ireland – Greenfinch and England – Tawny Owl. I think the Magpie, the first one I made might be my alter-ego, a Scottish Prince!
I don’t make many art pieces but I was sorting through my fabric and came across this forgotten piece of work that I had put aside for some reason, possibly a left-over from a double-sided cape of some years back. It was patchwork blues, slightly embellished and overstitched, looked quite attractive so I thought why not quilt it.
I found a length of black cotton just the right size, then a layer of wadding and finally some thin cotton from a sheet. There is a lot of silver thread used in the embroidery and the quilting but it doesn’t show in this pic.
I’m using a free motion embroidery foot to quilt circles and flower patterns, takes practice but gives me a distinctive style.
Almost finished the owl doll, her costume is mainly silk embellished from scraps. The embellishing machine is great for using up even the tiniest of remnants and bits of thread. Embellishing needles get used up (broken) fairly quickly so I always keep a stock. Just a few final touches needed, her limbs and neck and around her face need to be darker .
I’m making another in a series of bird inspired dolls, this one is vaguely based on the Tawny Owl. Button jointed dolls are fairly easy to make, I always follow the pattern and instructions of Jan Horrox, a wonderful and inspiring doll maker, then modify things according to my wish. The most challenging part is to put a face onto the head.
These dolls have needle sculpted faces, which takes some practice, then the features are drawn on with Micron pens and water-based coloured pencils. A steady hand is essential and the results can’t be guaranteed.
Once the face is drawn then it has to be sprayed with artist’s fix, the solvent type. These dolls are more ornamental than play, although I try to make them robust enough for older children. Next stage is to attach the head, then make hair, or in this case feathers of some sort.
It’s not unusual for me to take the scissors to a fabric work in progress but I rarely hack away half in one go. But sometimes it just has to be done. Anyone who has ever made anything knows the feeling – it’s just not working – but a frequent sin is to fall in love with ones own work, or perhaps just not be able to see where it’s going wrong. I suppose that’s what editors are for.
FlagFly 