tree dressing

Yesterday I went out with my friends, Gail and Emma, to some local woods, where we did some simple tree dressing. Gail and Emma had been on a day workshop a few weeks earlier, and thought they'd like to do something creative in the countryside. They invited me; so I did a quick stitched piece that included a heart-shape (seems to be my current theme!) and decided to include an acrostic poem; one which spells out a word made from the beginning letters of each line). 

 Here's the oak tree I attached both pieces to; either side of the trunk.

Last winter I made lots of these small fabric decorations, instead of xmas cards, for friends and family. I have some left, so thought it would be nice to take one for this outing. After all, they were designed for (xmas) trees!

 Gail did this; tissue and flour and water glue; TRUST.

 Emma took a simple and effective red ribbon. Tucked away, discreet.

And this is the landscape I visisted on Wednesday, when I went on a 'Wild Drugs' walk with Sue Salmon, a medical herbalist. She talked about the many different herbs and plants which grew wild, that could help to heal us. We've been using them for millennia; so they work very well with our bodies. They are compatible with us. Some of the plants she mentioned, nettle, plantain, dandelion, all grow in my garden. I was moved to consider using them. So if anyone complains about the weeds in my garden, I shall explain I am cultivating them for a purpose!

sample #2

The second sample I've completed for the City & Guilds course. It's made on a piece of re-cycled silk, a sleeve from a shirt. It was dyed with tea-bags, then printed onto it by transfer paint. Further embellishments were wool corded on (at the top) seed stitching (in the centre) and a strip of rust-dyed silk (at the bottom).

And here is a close up of those seed stitches. I seem to be quite obsessed with this stitch! Not sure why; but I suspect I like the way I can almost freewheel stitch! Can put the needle where I want, then step back, and add, or remove. In this way, it feels a bit like painting? Mark-making.

linder @ the Hepworth

This exhibition ends this weekend at The Hepworth. I've been down twice to see it.

 'Linder (b 1954, Liverpool, UK) has been working with the principles of collage for over 3 decades: from her 2D work on the late 1970's iconic Buzzcocks posters and record sleeves, to more recent collages presented in light boxes.'

Being of that particular age, and 'demographic'! I was interested to discover Linder's work again, after seeing her record covers from the 1970's. At first I didn't make the connection, as these collages on show at the Hepworth have seemingly very little in common with those punk, D-I-Y collages. Her current work is big, glossy, full technicolour, presented in light-boxes. They look more like expensive perfume ads than punk collages. 
Lots of ballerinas, and natural forms such as shells, and animals. Some of them look at bit randomly composed. Others have an internal structure to them; the curves and forms of the nature objects, echo and emphasise the human forms.
I actually liked the old-fashioned photos of the dancers; going into the darkened room where these light-boxes were on display was like going back into the imagery of the 1950's, with added 21st Century technology!  

halo moon #2

Another painting gone.
'Halo Moon #2', above, is another painting from my series '13moons', from 2008. One more, left the nest! Gone to a good home.
It's all to the good to be able to move paintings on. Whether sold, or gifted, it's good to make the space. Artistically, creatively, as well as physically. 
I'm in the process of trying to get tickets to go see the exhibition of Ice Age Art at the British Museum. No luck so far; but we'll keep trying!

'Blue', my textile work, above, has been chosen to be part of an exhibition for the next Wakefield Artwalk, on Wednesday 29th May. It's going to be shown at the Theatre Royal, Wakefield. For the Artwalk I'll be helping out at Westgate Chapel, just down the road, with the exhibition there. 

paula tod

In March, for the Artwalk, Paula Tod had an exhibition at Westgate Studios Project Space. Here are a couple of her paintings. 
She paints oils on canvas, with wonderful evocative images of landscapes. She and her husband are moving up to Eyemouth, near Berwick-on-Tweed. Where she'll have fabulous landscapes to inspire her! I'm looking forward to visiting her later in the summer.

At home, the garden is greening up; and the rhubarb started to come through, at last. Spring's late this year.

And, some sea holly, from my visit to Spurn Point last winter. I went to see Alice Fox's exhibition from her residency there.
Last week, I went to see the exhibition of the work at the 49 Gallery, at the Old Town in Bridlington. It was a lovely day; the exhibition worked very differently in a more domestic setting than the Lighthouse at Spurn Point. And the light is very different at this time of the year. We walked on the beach; paddled in the VERY cold North Sea, and experienced sun, hail, and snow, all in a matter of minutes! 

'Halo Moon;Be Alone'

A painting from 2008, when I was busy creating a series of artworks reflecting the lunar year. Thirteen artworks for 13 months. It took me longer than 13 months to complete the set!
This is a big painting on canvas, so I asked the Well Women Centre in Wakefield if they'd like me to donate it to them, as they've recently moved premises, and have some gorgeous big walls to fill.
And there it hangs.

collography and stirch #2

Above is one of the collography prints on paper; in Textiles yesterday I used the sewing machine, and stitched into it. I used a 'foot' that creates loops of stitches. Gives a gorgeous textured surface to the paper!
Below is the plate I printed from; nylon rope pieces, and some lace/net.

collagraph print

Using the information from the course I did at the Arthouse, and from Val Holmes' book, my first experiments in collagraphy printing are beginning to bear fruit.
Above is the print I've just made; printed onto a cotton/linen mix fabric.
Below, is the same print made onto Fabriano paper.
I intend to stitch onto both. Wait until they're dry though.

Below is the 'plate' I've printed from.
It's a mix of plastics and fabrics; all glued onto a 'plate' created from a beer can that was thrown away into the field near where I live. All the materials are recycled/re-used/second hand. 

'knitting ninja'

Outside Mocha Moocho, a favourite cafe in Wakefield, is this knitted collage. It's attached to a railing surrounding a silver birch.
I've no idea who 'knitting ninja' is; but they've created a lovely 'art intervention', of knitted foods, in the main precinct, close to the Cathedral. It adds a much-needed splash of colour in this grey winter light. I like the idea; public art created and installed by the 'public'! Good work, knitting ninja, whoever you are!
I wonder if there are more of these, adorning the streets of Wakefield? I'll keep a lookout.

studio #3....Bonfire Night

When I was inhabiting A13 studio in Westgate Studios, I had fantastic views over the city, and to Emley Moor mast...which until the digital age, delivered our television signal, locally.
This was a particularly grey, yet glowing sky, from winter 2008.

Today I've been working in my home studio; with the heater on I was nice and cosy.
I was putting together my City and Guilds portfolio, for my course tomorrow. It was great to sit and spend some time on it. The day's been bright and sunny, though as the light has faded, the temperature's dropped, and it's got very cold.
The cats are all sitting in front of the fire; and I've made sure they're all in for the evening, as tonight is Bonfire Night, and there are fireworks going off all around us. We're keeping warm and safe, away from all harm.

Last Friday I went to Leeds, and called into the Art Gallery, and the Henry Moore Institute next door. 
There was a small exhibition of Helen Chadwick's photographs. Large, cibachrome, richly coloured photos. She used flowers, fruits, and household cleaning fluids, such as Windowlene, and Swarfega. She also used Lime & Lemon marmalade, and Germolene, to give vibrant colours and textures to her sculptures, which she then photographed! They are beautiful. I love the way she incorporates ordinary 'domestic' materials into her artwork. 
Well worth a look, on the Henry Moore Institute website, here

Spurn Point; 'Textures of Spurn'

View through the lamproom window of the lighthouse at Spurn Point. Looking to the north (east) of Spurn Point.

We visited Spurn Point yesterday, to see Alice Fox's textile (and print) exhibition 'Textures of Spurn', on show at the Lighthouse. It was an opportunity to not only see the work (I've been following her artist-in-residence blog) but also to go inside the lighthouse, which is no longer in use.

Despite the weather; cold, windy, cloudy, with occasional rain; the views were fantastic, and the shape of the spit of land was made visible. 

The clouds were dark and threatening; the wind hummed through the telegraph wires like an Aeolian harp; the sea boomed and crashed.

It was an elemental place, and we were scrubbed clean by the sand blown across our bodies; faces and hands, scoured. I returned home with sand in my hair; dishevelled.

We walked the 3.5 miles from the car park, down to the lighthouse. Walked the steps up (and down) the lighthouse. Then walked the 3.5 miles back to the car. 

It was an exhilarating walk. A walk of memories, of previous visits to Spurn. And worth the walk, to climb the lighthouse steps, and see Alice's artworks. 

Alice Fox's enormous textile piece, 'Spurn Cloth #1', tied, and displayed around the circular space of the lamproom at the lighthouse.

 Another view of the lamproom textile piece, 'Spurn Cloth #1' by Alice Fox.

'Spurn Cloth #2' by Alice Fox. Hanging down two floors of the lighthouse space, at Spurn.

You can see Alice's blog, which tells the story of her residency, at www.spurnpointartistinresidence.blogspot.co.uk

sarah lucas @ Leeds

Above is the cover of Sarah Lucas' catalogue from her exhibition at Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. The sculpture, 'Gourd', is a cement cast of..well, of a gourd! One of a series of cement casts of fruit and vegetables. 
The catalogue reads;
'her concrete marrows and squashes have the fullness of the votive vegetables offered to fertility gods around the ancient Mediterranean.'
I like the contrast between the softness of the fruit and vegetables, and the hardness of the concrete; the greyness of the cast, with the real-life colour of the grown produce.

Below is the sculpture, 'The King', created from casts of plaster and wood.
The catalogue says of 'The King', that it is 'a mechanistic spiral of dagger-like paired plaster penises suspended over wooden blocks.'
I saw a whirling wheel; a swastika; a cross; an altar; a circle; action; movement. Delicacy of structure - it hangs from wires looking as though a sudden draft would cause it to fall. And solidity of materials - casts of wood and bone.
It has memories of archaeology too; the ancient picks used by neolithic people, made from deer antlers, with which they built Stonehenge, Callanish, and sundry other stone circles and monuments.

The catalogue says of this exhibition;
'In 'Ordinary Things', a selection  of thirty-one works spanning 1993-2012, these processes take in cutting, moulding, handling, stuffing, displaying, and assembling , utilising conventions that move from the monumental to the ready-made, the formal and quick-build, via the representational, abstract and true-to-materials.'

and;
'Lucas' use of found materials could be straight from the strategies of Arte Povera, that loose grouping of artists whose sculptures are resourceful compositions of objects and materials bearing the traces of use, responding to changing economic and artistic contexts.'

and;
'Sarah just didn't think about making art that could easily be exhibited, or sold, or archived, or consider the practicalities of flogging it. In that way...her work was women's work, done because it had to be done, for its own sake. Its currency, like the flesh of the animals and vegetables Sarah uses as a medium, was soft and vulnerable, not hard and bankable.'

'nature print'

Interestingly, as we moved into the digital age to create photos, and the old way of making photographs using darkroom, and rolls of film has been overtaken, there has also been an interest in making photos using 'non-digital' methods!
Above is an example of something called 'nature prints', which is basically placing objects on top of photographic paper, and exposing it to light. Instead of using an enlarger as a light source, these sheets are exposed to sunlight, and then washed in water.
We used to call them 'photograms' many years ago when I was studying art at college.

It's very low-tech, which I actually like....a lot.
I used it with a group I worked with. The results were variable. I'd done this beforehand, and exposed it in direct sun. This works much better than diffused light.
The group saw lots of images in it; an anchor; a sea; waves.
I like the subtle shapes and tones, and the ambiguity of it. I'll do another one. And we'll make another attempt with the group; when there is more sunlight shining through the windows.

Members Open at the Arthouse

I've put 2 pieces into the Arthouse Members Open Exhibition.

The top one is oil and tempera on canvas, and is called 'Axis Mundi', and the bottom one is a photo-montage of a sculpture called 'Woodbook'. I don't know which will be selected, so I'll have to wait until the preview evening on the 25th July. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like as part of an exhibition...whichever is chosen.

Chun Quoit 2

This is the drawing I did at the Hepworth a couple of weeks ago. It's of a sculpture that Barbara Hepworth made. It's a small drawing, in an A5 sketchbook.
The sculpture was titled after the neolithic tomb, that I drew in situ when I visited Cornwall.
It was good to see the sculpture, after knowing about its' existence for years!

Chun Quoit

The pencil drawing I made of Chun Quoit in Cornwall. 
This is an A1 version I did, after the smaller sketch I made in situ. 
It's a passage grave that Barbara Hepworth used as inspiration for one of her sculptures, which is on show at The Hepworth Wakefield.
When I went to the Hepworth on Sunday, I did a small pencil sketch of the sculpture. 
The sculture is nothing like the real Chun. It's smooth, and upright, with an incised circle drawn into it. The stones of the passage grave are heavy, rough, and marked, though not by any workings that can be seen. Though I'm sure the stones were worked in some way.
As I wasn't allowed to take photos, I can't put up an image of the real sculpture.

Earthworks

Sitting on the backseat of Blanche is a painting I've recently completed which incorporates oil paints and egg; a tempera experiment. It gives the canvas a chalky, textured surface. I'm looking forward to working with this media more in the near future.

The image itself is taken from computer 'indications', and aerial photographs of some ancient earthworks within Wakefield district. They are no longer in existence, and are only able to be seen as cropmarks when the weather is dry enough.

Wakefield Archives very kindly gave me access to their images, and gave me printouts and photocopies which I used to work from.

London, Nancy Spero at the Serpentine Gallery

Yesterday I went to London for the day to visit the Serpentine Gallery where an exhibition of Nancy Spero's work is currently being shown. Trust me to pick the hottest day of the year so far! As I decided to walk from King's Cross down to Hyde Park (and then walk back again afterwards) I was walking in hot sun, amongst busy streets, with traffic and bodies adding to the temperatures. Ah well; once in Hyde Park, the greenery created a cooller space.
The exhibition has come from the Centre Pompidou in France. As this is a much bigger gallery than the Serpentine, I expect that a selection has had to be made, from that larger show.

In the entrance was a 3D work, 'Maypole', which is a central pole from which hang flat aluminium heads, faces, all in expressions of pain and agony. This was quite different from the rest of the work, which was all on paper. Spero is quoted as saying 'I was working exclusively on paper; part of my resistance as an artist in the 'War Series' was a decision not to work any more on canvas. I shifted completely to work on paper.' The 'War Series' dates back to the 1960's.

I remember as an art student in the 1980's being involved in discussions about the uses of materials, and how our personal choices of materials expressed particular ideologies. I explored art history wearing feminist spectacles, aware that what I was taught was the history of 'dead, white men' of famous artists. It seems that questions of 'what materials?' nowadays, is more concerned with recycled, and environmentally harmless materials. I think these issues would not be addressed without feminist artists from the 1980's asking related questions. Personally, I now use canvas and oils; as well as other materials.

Spero's paper work is flawed, imperfect. Lines are blurry; prints are double-imaged. It has a 'home-made' quality, though this is definately not amateur! There is a fierce intelligence here; though Spero is creating her own iconography, and this is not always obvious, or easy to discern. Even as an artist, who is a feminist, and who has familiarity with some of the goddess-images she uses, I found myself adrift at times.

'Azure' (2002) works particularly well, I thought. It is beautiful; rich in colour and imagery; multi-layered (literally as well as in meaning); using images from the ancient, and the modern world.

There are figures that viewers will be familiar with; Egyptian goddesses, Babylonian goddesses; Greek images (from vases?); the styles and figures are 'readable'. We know where we are. There are images from modern pornography, synchronised and in opposition to the ancient images on show. Here again are images we have become familiar with. Spero re-produces; re-presents; re-images for us. I need to go back and re-read my Mary Daly!

Spero is known for the movement in her work; there are running women, naked and free. Blurred and repeated images emphasise this movement, creating an almost film-strip quality.

'Azure' is a massive piece. In the catalogue it says it is 39 panels, of various dimensions. All these are displayed in the central space of the Serpentine Gallery. I needed to sit with them, and look, and think about them. There were no seats though, so I ended up sitting on the gallery floor. Not ideal when the amount of work meant that they were placed 4 of 5 panels deep, on the wall. Works on paper bring particular problems for curators; they need low light levels to be viewed in so they are protected. With many of the panels high up on the walls, and low light levels to view them with, I found it a bit of a struggle to see the higher placed panels. Which was a shame, as sitting on the floor, trying to look at the 'whole' thing, I was struck by the colours and textures, and could see more clearly where Spero had placed her repeat prints.

I didn't like 'Codex Artaud'. Not being a French speaker or reader, I couldn't make any sense of the words, and the visual patterns were created using text. With a lot of white space. It seemed very much of its time (the 1970's). As this was an exhibition celebrating Spero's work and life, then it made sense to include it. But for me it lacked the richness and depth of her later work, such as 'Azure'.

Ari Up

Not an 'art' blog this time, but a music blog.

Heard the news on Radio 4's Woman's Hour this week that Ari Up formerly of the Slits, had died of a long illness. Word is it's cancer, but one never really knows.
It's not really how she died though, it's how she lived.

I was one of those few (?) people who bought 'CUT', the first Slits album....in vinyl in those days. Had to travel to Leeds to get it from Jumbo records. And Jumbo records, like me, still exists!
I couldn't get it in Wakefield, as we only had 3 independant record shops. They've all gone now; we now have one HMV which increasingly sells DVD's and games rather than cd's and music.

The Slits did a tour, and I went to see them at Bradford. Still have the ticket somewhere! I used to save all my tickets and things in those days. Before the days when I was up to my eyes in 'stuff'.
I was at art college in Wakefield, doing my Foundation course; 1979/1980.
Went straight to Bradford from Wakefield. It was a sparsely attended gig, it has to be said. Not a sell-out. But I loved them; the space in the sound, the loping reggae rythyms. I danced around to the beat. A couple of my friends were there, and afterwards we talked about what we'd thought of the Slits. I was enthusiastic; thought they were great! My two friends hated it! Hated the ramshackle-ness of them! Wanted more 'musician-ness' from them.
But how cool was it to see those 3 women on stage doing just what they wanted; playing with stereotypes of what women 'should' be. I was inspired. I didn't go and start a band; couldn't play an instrument (well it never stopped the punks, did it?) and I never knew many people who were interested in starting a band. Funny that; we all loved the punk ethos of D-I-Y, but never did the music ourselves.

But I did go and D-I-Y the art; I went off to University to do my art degree.
'Cos art colleges were where much of the music of the 1960's, and the Situationist-inspired London punk scene emerged from.
By the time I went to art college, it had changed slightly. Not very revolutionary or Situationist up here in the provinces.
But I continue with my D-I-Y ethics; in my art, my creativity. Re-using and re-cycling; planting parsnip spirals; planting Morning Glory plants to make into give-away books.
And at this time in the world, where we have a government hell-bent on finishing off the job that Mrs Thatcher started, and cut-backs in public services, the D-I-Y ethic is going to become more and more important.

Ari Up and the Slits inspired me to be a woman as I wanted to be. I may not be a screeching musical banshee; not even a screeching artist. But I make the noise I want to make, the sound of brush on canvas; the sound of pen and pencil on paper. The sound, to mis-quote Seamus Heaney, of a 'hunter-gatherer of meaning'.

I'll dig out my old Slits badge from that Bradford gig, and wear it in honour of Ari, and all the inspiration they streamed out to us women who saw, and listened, and went out....inspired.