Hand-Made

Last year, I worked with a group to create hand-made bags. They were quite simple tote bags. We didn't have the space or time to do anything more complicated than that.
This was the one I made; I usually like to make the 'thing' that is being created in a workshop, whether that be books or bags. It gives me the opportunity to show different techniques, and use my object, as the 'sample'. After we'd made, and pinned the basic shapes of the bags, some people took theirs home to complete. Others, who didn't have access to sewing machines, gave them to me, and I sewed them all together.


I had a white cotton canvas tote bag, which I took home, and in typical artist fashion, painted! I was inspired by Peter Randall-Page's sculptures from an earlier exhibition at the YSP.   

Yorkshire Sculpture Park - MIRO

Off to visit the YSP last Tuesday, to see the big Miro exhibition on there. I liked some of the work in the Underground Gallery. The large black bronzes (tautology?) outside were too solid and...well, black, for me!

But there was a lovely quote from 1959, on the wall of the Underground Gallery which I thought worth repeating. Particularly as the grounds of the Sculpture Park could be regarded as a massive garden.......

  'I think of my studio as a vegetable garden. Here, there are artichokes. Over there, potatoes. The leaves have to be cut so the vegetables can grow. At a certain moment, you must prune. I work like a gardener or a wine grower.

Everything takes time. My vocabulary of forms, for example, did not come to me all at once. It formulated itself almost in spite of me. Things follow their natural course. They grow. They ripen. You have to graft. You have to water, as you do for lettuce. Things ripen in my mind. In addition, I always work on a great many things at once. And even in different areas: painting, etching, lithography, sculpture, ceramics.'

The River Dearne; birches; blackthorn in bloom; all signs of spring on the way. The land beginning to awaken, open, and push us into the coming season.

Reminding me, I too need to get my gardening gloves on, and begin the work of planting, and tending. 

And remember, 'Everything takes time.'