Farfield Mill Exhibition

The exhibition ‘Cloth and Stone’ has just opened at Farfield Mill  near Sedbergh, Cumbria. The show features quilts and blankets lent by renowned collector of Welsh quilts Jen Jones, interspersed with pieces of my own work,  some of which took Welsh quilts as a starting point.

We had a long day setting up the show……

 

 

                                                                

 

This is my ‘Welsh Quilt’ piece.  The slates rest on shelves, but to prevent accidents the slates are usually tied to the wall with hidden strings behind each separate slate. However, Wilf the technician has glued each of them to the wall with a little dab of silicone, which he insists will simply rub off after the show. 

You’d better be right Wilf!                                                  

 I’ve worked with textiles from around the world, in particular tribal textiles, but I never cease to amazed by the wonderful textiles made here at home in the UK  - and at how little attention they are usually given.

The day ended with a  Private View.  Jen and I swop stories and enjoy a drink.

Thank you to Farfield’s director Clare Hamilton and also to June Hill, who curated the show.

‘Cloth and Stone’ runs till September 19th. 2007  at Farfield Mill.

June Hill has written about the exhibition in the current ‘Embroidery’ magazine.                         

So Far……..So Good……!

I’m intending to embroider designs and images over the top of carved slates, but at this stage I don’t know if the process will actually work!  I’ve sellotaped paper templates onto the slate so that I can drill at regular intervals around the templates, thus accurately transcribing the design onto an uneven and difficult surface. 

Once all the holes are drilled I can begin couching thread onto the surface of the slate…….

 Couching

 Close-up

 So Far….So Good!

At least the method works!

This is just an initial mock-up to get a feel of how the process might work - and how I might be able to exploit it visually. The background may need more work in some parts and ‘knocking back’ in others to get a good balance between carving and stitching, and I’m still very unsure about colour v. black and white. Nevertheless, all things considered, I’m fairly optimistic about the piece!

Over the next two weeks I’m busy preparing for an exhibition and then running a workshop for the Scottish Region Branches Summer School, so I will get a little break away from ‘Studies’. 

It will be good to let the work rest for a bit while I consider it ‘out of the corner of my eye’ and plan the next stage.

And if there’s time I may even get a few more of these little flakes done…….

Sail Away……

This boat is one of the last images to be carved  into the slates which I am about to embroider 

 Urn

With the last big slate carved I think at last I’m ready to hazard some preliminary stitching…….

 First stitches on ‘glove’

O.K. I know it doesn’t look much at present – but just wait till I get going!

These pale blue stitches are just temporarily tacked in so that I can stand back and see what they look like - when I’m satisfied with the whole thing all these temporary stitches will come out, to be replaced with properly finished ones. 

A big question to be resolved is colour – I’ve always imagined the embroidery in colour, but black and white may prove more effective.

Eventually I want to create a sort of counterpoint between the carved surface of the slates and the stitching. With this in mind  might ‘Palimpsest’ be a more appropriate name for the piece than ‘Studies’?

Scraping….and some stitching

For some reason I’ve just started stitching into little slate flakes - this one is about 2″ (5cm) high.  I didn’t give it any thought – just sort of found myself doing it.  A waste of time or the start of a new piece? 

Meanwhile, scraping slate panels for ‘Studies’ continues……..

 Workglove

 Tree

(The stitching round the sides is just chalked in as a possible idea)

I plan to show the complete ‘Studies’ piece at Loch Lomond in spring 2008, and although  the exhibition is months ahead I want to keep working at the ‘Studies’ while I’m ‘on a roll.’  However I told the Embroiderers’ Guild I would make a large scale embroidery of a human figure during my scholarship year, and that’s what I really should be getting on with.

The stitched slate flakes may turn out to be something to do with the proposed  embroidered figure. I don’t know if they are but I hope so – I really need to get started on him soon!

Still Scraping

 

These slate panels, which form a part of ‘Studies’, have been carved and painted. When the paint is dry they will be ready for embroidering.  Here are more slates in preparation -

   Face at the Window

 Detail of figure

 ’Picasso’s Wineglass’

 Sketch on Scraperboard

This workglove was the first scraperboard sketch I was happy with. Initial attempts suggest it’s not a good medium for exploratory sketches since it’s fairly unforgiving and not ‘physical’ enough for me  – you can’t get angry with it! (I broke the scraping tool at my first attempt)  Nevertheless  I’ll persevere between bouts of  scraping away at the slate ’Studies’.

A sort of Deja Vu….

This is a photo (the A2 original is too big for the scanner) of a recent pencil sketch I made for the scratched and stitched ’Studies’ piece I’m currently working on - (see previous posting) 

And this is one of the many slate ‘Studies’ panels still in progress.  

The ‘photo-negative’ effect has got me thinking about  experimenting with  scraperboard as a sketching medium – it might be exellent for preparatory drawings and I plan to have a go just as soon as I can get hold of some.

 

There’s been an interuption to work as ‘Odyssey’ are making a video about my work. In anticipation of the film-makers’ visit I had a bit of a tidy-up, during which I came upon this crumpled old postcard of the West window of Coventry cathedral……….

 

We visited Coventry when I was a child and I particularly remember this window with its etched angels. I recall Dad dismissing them as looking like ‘a load of old scallywags’   but I loved them and bought the card.  Happening upon it now I can see the connection between the scratchy angels seen 40 + years ago and the figures I’m gouging out now (albeit in a more modest way!) in slate.

Isn’t it strange how things we’ve seen as a child and seemingly forgotten nevertheless still manage to surface later in adult life?  

A Cheery Blaze

Today I burned nine old sketch books…………………….

 

  - they made a lovely blaze and it cheered us all up!

‘Studies’

While I’m busy on ‘Boulder’ I’ll show some on-going work already started:

 

This is a small sample (19cm high) for a large-ish slate work I started a while back – (working title: ‘Studies’ – see below) The sample has been carved and scratched, then painted white.  When the paint is dry I scrape it off with wire wool so it remains lying in the troughs and crevices. The process makes me think of etching – a medium that I love the look of but have never tried.  Although there is some stitching on the sample it is only there to ensure the slate can take it.

This is ‘Studies’ in its current unfinished state. It is just shy of 1.50m. tall, and difficult to photograph!  At present some of the slate is already carved while other bits are just roughly sketched in in chalk.  There is no paint or stitching on it as yet.

  I first got the idea from a Picasso painting -

This is Picasso’s ‘Studies’ of 1920. In it he mixes Neo-classicism with Cubism in a kind of loose patchwork style, so it seemed a very appropriate model for what I want to do -  mix drawing, carving and stitching in one work. Having different images in the one piece (rather than one all-over design) will allow me to experiment with various approaches in different parts, as Picasso has done.

I began by making a loose transcript of the painting, then making exploratory sketches:

 

Soon my own interests and obsessions took over – genders changed, and rather than borrow Picasso’s themes I’ve referenced and parodied some of my own work.  Although a few direct quotes from Picasso do still remain, on the whole his painting is just a dim memory.

 

As a piece of work with a ‘patchwork’ feel I think it is coming along nicely. I expect to finish the work with intense areas of coloured stitching floating like a counterpoint over the images, but this will all come later.  At the moment I’m enjoying exploring various possibilities to see where they lead …. 

  

Ivano Vitali

This is Ivano Vitali whom I was lucky enough to meet recently. His work is amazing and his web site worth visiting: go to www.artnest.it or just click on his name above.   (To get an impression of the scale of his work click on ‘arazzi’ at the foot of his home page).

New Drill

 

New drill has arrived – work begins!

 

Inklings that after all the ‘Ruins of Athens’ might not be a family of stones amounting to one work but rather a body of quite separate sculptural embroideries that nonetheless (hopefully) will speak to each other.

 The ‘Portland Boulder’ might look something like the sketch below: