Fire & Fleet & Candleleet

'Fire and Fleet and Candleleet'

The slideshow projection is ready for the Artwalk tomorrow. So for the rest of today, I shall be busy making origami boats, for people to sail away, powered by tealights!

The title, 'Fire & Fleet & Candleleet' is taken from the folk song, 'Lyke Wake Walk', a walk taken on a corpse road, over the north Yorkshire moors. The version I'm most familiar with is by Buffy Sainte Marie, though other people have recorded it.

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.'

Plant Dyed Fabric

Another piece of fabric, using plant dye to colour it.

This one was folded, which is why there are dark striations of pattern on the fabric.

Knitted Book of Mining

 

And here are the completed pages of my 'knitted book'.

The Knitted Book of Mining

A peek at the 'Knitted Book of Mining' I completed recently. It combines knitting with stitched images; of the pit-head, and the pit shaft; and fossils embedded into the geological strata.
I used the collection from the National Mining Museum for England as inspiration. There are some wonderful objects in the collection, and some of memorial pottery uses blue glaze/transfers to show mining disasters. That blue, was the starting point for my thread, when embroidering the stitched drawings. 

Felt 4

A piece of shibori felt I made for my City & Guilds course....now, thankfully completed!
The coursework has been finished, and portfolio handed in. I'm using the final session to make a piece of felt that is just for me! I made the first section last week; tomorrow I'll make the second section. Then it will be a case of adding embellishments and joining the two pieces together. I can do that at my leisure.

Catkin Clootie Tree

The Twisted Hazel is dripping with yellow catkins; decorated like a clootie tree! In the bright spring sunshine, they glow. This photo shows the shadow cast by next doors fence. The catkins at the bottom, are in gloom, like ghosts. An unexpected effect. 

Fire Light

On Wednesday 28th March I will be presenting a light show at Westgate Chapel as part of Wakefield Artwalk.
It will involve fire-light, and projected light, and it will be in the grounds of the Chapel. Let's hope it's not chucking it down with rain, as it is today on this very wet Sunday!


There will also be music; the Chapel has just had its organ restored, so the inside of the building will reverberate to air passing through pipes!


Hope to see some of you there!