Paris - Sheila Hicks at the Pompidou Centre

Well, what can one say other that when you hear that a major exhibition of Sheila Hicks' work is on show you have to go! 

I just adore Hicks' work, and as fibre art seems to be having a bit of a revival she and other fibre artists are being shown - with Olga de Almaral being shown in Bruxelles and Annie Albers at the Tate Modern in the Autumn it is a good time to catch up on seeing the actual works that one otherwise just ends up looking at in books or one the web. So off I went to Paris for a night so that there would be one full day for the visit to the Pompidou Centre. I stayed in a small hotel near by, with tiny rooms and even smaller shower cubicles which you had to squeeze into. 

Here's a view from my hotel room to the building opposite:

And as the very first thing to see at the Pompidou Centre was of course the Hicks' exhibition, Lifelines - I took lots of photographs but do not want to infringe copyright so will not include any here. But I can tell you that it was quite a spectacular show, with many large scale works and a lot of her minimes, the small weavings she weaves on a small mobile loom - these spanned her whole life of making, so there were weaving from 1958 or so and onwards.

There was a lot of colour in this work - and it was quite a controlled use of colour, palettes led by main colour keys and lovely textures of woven, wrapped and untangled rope-like materials. There were a long series of films covering her more recent her career from the 1980s onwards. I spent a couple of hours in the gallery, watching all the films, studying the smaller works and wondering at the larger wrapped works.

I could spend a lot of time describing my exaltation at being at this exhibition. How wonderful to have been around at a time when the fibre arts movement was at its early beginnings as Hicks was, to be given the opportunities to travel, meet fascinating textile cultures in the South and Middle Americas, to experience encounters with architecture and sculpture, photography and yarn and synthesise all these impressions. Hicks' work was really ground breaking sitting alongside the other textile Modernists of the 1960s and -70s as the early voices of monumentally scaled work that related to space in particular ways. 

In one film she discusses discovering the use of the repeatable textile module and using this in many different permutations. Various works were described in the films and impressions of her work methods. The exhibition was really a gift and something I will try to remember for a long time - and it gets even better: she was sitting nearby my table in the museum cafe, and I summoned up the courage to go and ask for her signature in the catalogue I had bought, and she kindly wrote a dedication in it! I am so thrilled that she was so generous and didn't seem to be bothered that someone quite excited came up to her like that.

The rest of the photos will show a few impressions from the Pompidou, starting with the grafitti in the women's loo, where people had written into the grouting between the times, which showed a but of inventiveness:

On the 5th floor there was a very nice outdoor gallery of sculpture or sculpture garden. The day was very hot so the water that was the reflective base for the sculpture was a cooling relief.

And a pigeon also found the water useful, he landed just in front on me and drank plenty, creating his own small figure in the water.

The building reflected in the water 

A tapestry workshop in April

This post will be brief - just enough to say that I went on a tapestry weaving workshop recently which was absolutely great, mainly on colour and thinking about simplification in design. It was taught by Fiona Rutherford and the conceptual premise of the workshop was to think about colour in the context of the Bauhaus weavers - how colour is used in a disciplined way. My natural inclination is the opposite - no simplification, more complexity, so this was a lesson in pulling back and away from intuitive impulses and reflecting on working in a more controlled fashion. 

I made two pieces, one is almost finished and one is still in progress.

This piece is photographed still on the loom. I have concentrated on greens and a browny orange using a singles mohair yarn blended with wools and linen to make is slightly less hairy in the weave.

The piece in progress was intended as a continuation of the controlled colour, but letting texture take over. I used a fairly lengthy length of yarn for the rya tufts. They are to contrast with the woven squares on the right, but I think the rya is a bit dominant at the moment so I may need to trim the tufts.

Sampling tapestry weaving

Although I have a number of tapestry weaving looms including a smallish Mirrix loom, an Ashford and now a Dryad rug loom I have been looking for something I can use on my lap when I am at home, and had the idea that a large beading loom might be useful. And it has turned out to be a very useful thing. It is not large and it does of course present its own limits such as the sett, you can only use a thin thread and either weave on a single thread warp (which is really too fine for my liking), or you stay satisfied with weaving over a double warp which has more sensible scale when using woollen weft and wanting to blend several strands together.

So here's the loom with a sample in progress on it:

 

I am using a knitting needle as a shed stick. As far as I can work out the largest pieces that can be created this way are around 12-13cm by 15cm or so. Not a bad size, and as you can see you can do a bit of knotting (although slow as the warps cannot be pulled to far out as they then pop out of the slots provided as spacers at each end. A bit of a fiddle.

 

A side image of the loom shows why I has trying the knotting technique here (Turkish or Ghiordes knot) - the left side used mainly a cream yarn with a little white and even less pink, while the right side shows how the same cream takes on a blueish-whiteish tinge when additional pure white and blue is added. Basically I am trying out effects and textures and seeing what different yarns do when woven into a tapestry.

 

One thing to say about the pictures here is that the colours are a bit paler than in real life. I photograph in the kitchen with a light that is a bit bright, but the pictures do show something of the effects:

 

The first one here shows four different green yarns woven in blocks, clock-wise from bottom left - a handspun two-tone wool, a handspun (acid-dyed, I think) wool, a blend of wool and cotton and finally, bottom right, a synthetic knobbly yarn that it quite soft and undefined but might be OK if mixed with more substantial yarns.

 

 

 

The next sample shows from the bottom: a strange commercial rayon-cotton which has randomely placed shiny paper-like pieces projecting out of it and in the middle a soft variegated yarn which I think some may call an 'eye-lash' yarn which created a tufted surface which I like as a contrast against the flatness of the weaving around it and lastly a blend that included a brushed mohair. I liked the mohair in a different piece I made where I blended it with several strands of yarns than was possible here and I think the lustre of the mohair is a good quality to have in the weaving. And I don't mind the hairiness on the surface if it is used as an aesthetic device against flatter surfaces.

 

 

This sample was a more systematic attempt at weaving using floating wefts over an increasing number of warps, woven fairly densely as the width of the floating elements expanded. This worked well there is some reasonable balance between the two halves. 

 

 

Here I was trying to create a soft effect thinking about some other weavers I know of, Silvia Heyden and Berit Hjelholt, both of a certain generation of weavers who learned in Germanic and Scandinavian environments. An 'old-fashioned' technique using eccentric weft of handspun synthetics, mohair, wool and so on, and again trying out blending. The waving sectional panel on the bottom half has worked well and I think I might like to try this out in other colours, perhaps as a background cover for something else at a bigger scale, and perhaps less as rows and more as sections. I think it has some potential.

 

I once did a course with Pat Johns who had woven these smallish samples in different techniques, including a -snakeskin- technique of her own devising. Her samples were a little larger than these, and she hadn't mounted them to let students look at the back, but I like them mounted so they look like finished pieces and still tells you quite a bit about the technique if they are not attached fully to the paper backing.

 

The blue-brown combination in this sample was purposefully developed and I tried to graduate the blending of the blue into the brown in a subtle and gentle way. I didn't follow a formal blending recipe such as the one provided by Carol Russell, just increased the blue a little on each weft change  and mostly I has worked. The centre section of a separate box with some subtle joining that can't be seen too much, so this was in the end a satisfying element.

The one thing that went wrong, and this can be seen in the bottom left hand corner, is the lack of knotting rows at the start and the end. This was intentional, to see what would happen - and as you can see the top edge (which was the bottom during weaving) behaved reasonably well when I cut the piece off and prepared the sample for finishing. Unfortunately the second edge must have been woven more loosely and when I cut it off the weave opened up. Although a learning exercise it was a shame in this case because it would have been a quite pleasing sample had it been finished properly. That is what samples are for I guess, to learn just this type of thing.

And finally, a sample using indigo dyed and natural wool yarns, a bit of silk yarn and lurex. I am not sure whether this shows properly on the photo, but there are a couple of areas of textural techniques, included a thickened soumak section and a few chain-stitch like lines, which in a smooth and strong Wensleydale yarn made quite soft 'stitches'. In Silk-cotton the same stitches where flat and lifeless.

 

And there we are - I am now sewing on the machine and it cannot be compared to tapestry weaving for the gentleness and quietness of making. A loom is a fairly silent thing, especially a small one or a frame loom. The only sounds you hear is the yarn pulling though the warps and the beating down of the yarn using a bobbin or a fork. That is it. And you get to feel the surface, look at the colours and fibres and work out how it all fits together.

 

A sewing machine by comparison is an aggressive thing - noisy, fiercely fast and almost has a life of its own which you need to temper purely through the pressure of your foot on the pedal. The machine lies between you and the work, and the stitching is applied, although integrated into the fabric it is not integral in the way woven weft is. Yes, I do prefer the weaving, in fact I adore it, the calm you have, the choices you can make and the freedom and tactility of it. So it won't be long until I return, but right now I need to make some large pieces fairly quickly, and that is what the machine can help me do.

Completed tapestry woven works: Crapapple in white and green and a white textured piece

Crab apple

Throughout December until now my work has mainly been on tapestry weaving. In a previous post I showed a work in progress where I wove on a wooden block and it has turned out to be a fairly respectable piece in two parts.

I should say that these blocks were quite hard to weave; I used a kebab stick as a shed tick and had to needle weave to complete the surface. When the work got to the top and the last rows had to the be woven I had to sometimes/often lift individual warps with a pointed implement to get the needle underneath - a very slow and laborious process.

The warp was linen and the weft was a varying mixture and blend of all manner of handspun and commercial yarn: wool, silk, paper, linen, angora, viscose, latex covered yarn and more. I used only natural and white for one block and white-greens for the other. The greens were mainly dyed using Dylon cold water dyes.

They were photographed in more of a studio setting and so the colours seem a bit more enhanced, but they work together and suggest plant shapes as I had planned:

 

Here are some details of the different sides of it:

 

Basically I have wanted to work with interlaced wrapped elements for a while so this was opportunity to try this out, and as you can see the top of the white block was a mass of interwoven twisting elements.

 

Trying to work out how to finish off the linen warps around the nails, I platted the threads around the nails and tucked them under which in the end was the tidiest and allowed the threads to be cut and they now lie flat against the wood. 

 

 

Another couple of detail images showing each side of the green-white block: Here I used some twisted wrapped elements but used more as features on the surface rather than as a mass, and on the other side I woven in a more graphic pattern partly inspired by Bauhaus type compositions, weaving it flat without any surface additions.

 

 

White texture

 

Over Christmas and into January I was working up a largish sample (26x54cm) in white tones using a mixture of handspun yarns, commercial natural and synthetic fibres. I had bought this raw silk which had a very interesting texture, quite stiff to the touch (although it went soft in handling during the weave) and I had wanted to wrap a number of warps to enable the yarn to be shown off properly.

 

I set out to create a sample that would be big enough to be a wall hung piece and would show off the different textures of mohair, paper yarn, rayon, wool, cotton and linen, and which would provide a neutral background to the raw silk.

Here's the final tapestry, off the loom but quite finally mounted:

 

You can see that I built in some areas using small squares woven in paper yarn to make the background area a bit more interesting than eccentric weft only - the squares were pretty randomly placed and spanned either 3 or 4 warps.

 

Close up you can see how the texture on the right works - the raw silk lies in bunches over 3-5 warps:

 

Looped mohair was also used and I think this needs to be used sparingly if used in this sort of work, or as features in large tapestries as it projects out from the surface and can be a bit too much of a contrast if the surface needs to be flat. In general I should mention that with so many different thicknesses and qualities of yarn I needed to keep an eye on how thick the weft became. Sometimes it probably got a bit too thick or thin, although overall the final piece feels fairly even. I think that you can use the density of weft to good effect in a textured tapestry and I want to explore this some more once I get onto my new loom (an old Dryad rug loom - more to follow soon).

 

I am quite satisfied that the bunches of yarn around the warps worked as I had planned. I wonder whether you could wrap around even more warps and then use that effect in particular ways, but this would probably need a larger piece. As it is a couple of people have said that the  final effect feels like fungus on trees or perhaps more like the texture of birch bark, so I am happy that the organic feel of trees has been captured in this way.

I like the use of paper as a design detail in the squares, but see that I probably need to continue learning to control my edges as they tend to move in and out a bit depending on the thickness of the weft.

Tapestry weaving again

Although I am working on various things in the studio, I am currently veering towards tapestry weaving at the moment. It has been the main occupation of mine this winter, partly because I decided to submit something for an exhibition and partly because I just enjoy working in this way.

Tapestry weaving is tremendously stimulating, whether you spend a great deal of time designing or whether you think about the process as you build up the work through weaving. In the autumn I  went on a short course led by Fiona Hutchison which was very good for running through various techniques and introducing ways of thinking about tapestry weaving from a process perspective.

During that weekend I made two samples. One was an assembly of smaller elements each introducing a technique. A very useful way to explore colour and the way various yarns and fibre work together:

 

The warp was a multi-coloured cotton crepe, quite thin, so that I had to consider how dense to make the weft. I should say here that I am not a purist in terms of weft threads. It could be said that tapestry weaving needs to be woven using a smooth worsted wool or mohair (or some other non-elastic and tightly spun yarn) or perhaps a nettle yarn, and then only use these fibres throughout to gain a uniform work. I think this is an approach following in the tradition of gobelin weaving, however I feel closer to the experimentalists of recent decades who tested scale, texture and process.

 

So, I am less concerned about the purity of the weft: whether using weaving or knitting wool, synthetic novelty yarns, metallic or lurex or different types of braiding yarns, they can all contribute something to the texture of the weaving, and affect the way the light is reflected from the structure. I once found work by a Baltic tapestry weaver on the Web who was equally liberal in her use of different weft yarns and she made very large-scale works that looked quite spectacular. Using various different yarns in the weft does present its own problems: you have to look at how thick the different combinations of yarn work together, and I learnt on the course that hand-spun yarns may require more packing (probably because they can be loosely spun, but that depends on the original purpose of the yarn). Basically it would be difficult to achieve a smooth even surface with mixed fibre wefts. I usually combine knitting yarn with firmer yarns, linen, cotton and denser wools and this works OK. I am also exploring  the possibilities of showing warp in the weave. This is something Scandinavian weavers do well, and if work was done on a very large scale the warp could potentially become a dimension of the final fabric object.

 

The second sample was using a single technique I had wanted to try for some time:



 

This is a way of creating texture building up sections that project over each other. I really liked this and can see some good potential for future works.

 

The sample was quite robust. Weaving loosely would not work in this case as you need to build up the weft to force the warps to space out. So I wove this using fairly thick weft elements and that feels quite good too, as in this case I could work out colour mixes along the way.

 

 

Over the Christmas holiday

 

I mentioned that I have been working on something that would be submitted to be assessed for an exhibition. This work was something I worked on most of the holiday this winter and I have now submitted it. I can provide a brief glimpse of it here, and will add pictures of the final thing once I know whether it has been accepted:

 

 

The wooden block with the weaving is one of two pieces that together make a 3D work I have called Crab Apple in Green and White. There is quite a lot of wrapping going on, and as my work concerns itself with nature and the notion of the organic there are suggestions of branches, twigs and growth. This has been quite a fun thing to work on as the format created constraints and I was able to work in a looser way with the weft to think about the way the relationship with how the warp sat on the blocks would work. Overall it was a satisfying work and I think the final dynamic between the blocks and the synthesis of the weavings is coherent.

 

 

West Dean 5th course - Intuitive drawing

So, it has been a while since I did a course at West Dean and in late August I attended the 5th course in my series of 10. Half way through, and having looked back at soem of my work for the OCA I have to say I think the work is improving, and going to West Dean somehow gives you permission to think in a focussed way about what is happening with the work.

The tutor was Christopher Gilvan-Cartwright. A thoughtful and inspiring teacher who brought us many techniques to try out to give us a tool box of ways of creating surfaces, textures and mark on paper with charcoal, graphite, acrylic paint and ink. There were flattish marks and heavy textures, there were analyses of line and working over te paper in blocks of colour or mass of substance in charcoal or ink.

We each got a table and an easel and he pointed out that we could think about how we want to work - at three levels: on the table, on an easel or on the floor. I tried all three and they each gave something different to how the work developed: in the table  or floor your pour ink, on the easel you can sit back and really look at the work as it progresses.

Here is my table and bit of the floor with work in progress in sketchbooks and on paper (drying where ink or oil bar was applied):

Surprisingly I tried to keep tidy, as the space on the table was quite limited. We were mostly working on A1 or A2/A3 depending on whether finished work was being made, or test pieces to try out techniques were being made.

The 'intuitive' bit in the title suggested we were going to work with Dada automatic drawing, which we did do on the first day, but after that we simply worked very freely with the new techniques being taught. He did mention the idea of the exquisite corpse drawing and I read in the course description that we would be sharing work, but in the end we didn't do much of that, and just got on with our indendent work.

I used up paints in mt sketchbook, used collage and added to some books I had brought that needed to be thought about in a drawing sort of way. The tutor gave some very valuable feedback for the FDAD side of things, so overall it was a helpful and valuable course.

Here are some works I made over the weekend:

A lot of the work was done in black and white, but I did use some of my XL graphite as it leant itslef well to the large scale of the work and sits well with the charcoal and ink,

These long coloured things are the concertina books I had brought from home to add to - I have also started stitching on them, so this brief piece of work was just to add a bit of texture in paper or paint.

A drawing based on the moon's light that looks better in reality - the black sugar paper is already greyish, but looks even more so here.

Recent holiday to Germany

It has been while since I have written about something of interest. Not because there was nothing to tell, but because time is passing with busy things to do, both at the weekends and after work - vegetable dyeing, acid dyeing, knitting and felting. So for now I will add a few images from a holiday we had to Germany in June. We went to Hamburg and Lübeck. Both cities are great for different reasons: Hamburg is a big vibrant city, with fine museums, a large river, the Elbe, and an interesting history. Lübeck is a smaller city with an ancient city centre on an island in a river, the Trave, with many, many churches and great old buildings. We also spent a period further north and went for walks on the coast.

I should say that I don't take many long view photos of cities as I always feel that they look flat when I get home, and by focussing instead on particular details you can find new interesting things that may be useful for future art work.

Hamburg

We have been to Hamburg before and have done some touristic things like sailing on the Binnen Alster boat that gives you views of the city from the large lake in the city centre, whilst this time we returned to the Kunsthalle and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. This time we went for a walk to parts we hadn't explored before and found some amazing architecture to explore - Chilehaus and the building that houses chocolate museum (which we did not visit), both lie in the Speichertsadt, which also includes canals and warehouses.

Here's a detail of the Chile Haus - a solid dark bricked building with a jagged sharp-edged facade.
 

 

The building opposite was softer with a curved facade running along the road and sculpture by Lothar Fischer:

 

 

Near the historic office distric which is now a Unesco world heritage site the old warehouse buildings sitting next to the canals still look grand. I am guessing that many facades somehow stayed standing even after the bombing of WWII as the walls and brickwork looked old and not at all 'renovated' and some looked quite run down, although other are clearly now being used as trendy techie offices.

There were quiet moments for coffee and looking out into court yards with beautiful trees 

 

And on the way to the Kunsthalle we came across a grand building that must have been an important building as a kind of providential society or other:

 

We also came across a place that looked like a closed bar - it had a large folded paper polar bear in the window which was quite a fantastic thing:

The Kunsthalle was showing a temporary exhibition of Manet's work, which was good, with many small works and interesting connections made to for examle Berthe Morisot, and then we went around finding things that might inspire - this time I concentrated on the modern collections and was happy to find work by Gerhard Richter, Robert Morris - a very impressive piece of felt folding down by force of its own weight - and a white painting by Robert Ryman. Then on to the historical collections to see the German impressionists including Lovis Conrinth, and a room dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich, whose work I never tire of looking at. They also have fine modern art including a fish by Paul Klee I like and next to a Giacometti sculpture they had a painting by him to again make connections I guess of influences and how stylistic characteristics echo across media and disciplines.

We took a boat trip this time as well - but on the Elbe - along a couple of canals and then out onto the river proper to see the port. A huge place, with ship building, repairing and all manner of freight and blossoming culture. I did not take too many long views, but looked at the side of the canals and the concrete walls running along the river in places, some conceret decaying:

 Here's more decaying paint and iron:

Paint work on boats can be very painterly.... but it also so very available and visible, it is almost ubiquitous in harbours and in old yards of different types.

There were many cranes and large metal structures to study on the river:

Along the coast to the North

There was also a trip to the more Northern parts and I walked nostalgically on the beach, enjoying the sunshine of summer and listening to the sea and the wind in the trees. These environments were some of my favourite places in the past, and it is great to go back and enjoy them again:

And the seaside always have wonderful things to look at and touch and pick up -

A dried up section of orange:

 

On a ferry we took, some thick rope - which is a great source for thinking about thick textile objects:

Sea cabage:

And lovely seaweed floating in the water:

We took a short trip to the Nolde Stiftung again, it is a great place and every year they put out a new set of paintings and water colours, so it is worth a re-visit. Nolde's work really is some of the best water color work I have seen. I am always amazed as the way he used his colours.

And there was also a day trip to Schloss Gottorf on the outskirts of Schleswig: a large castle on an island with great collections acorss the full spectrum of human culture - achaeological collections, including the Nydam Boat, historical collections, decorative arts (a set of Jugendstil gallery and a brilliant modern art collection, with expressionist work based on a collection, Sammlung Rolf Horn. There was so much to see you couldn't possibly see it all, so I concentrated on the most important things that I thought might inspire my own work.

On the way to Schleswig we stopped by the Dannevirke wall, which is a Viking-medievan earth work which was built to protect the Norther lands from certain tribes:

There was a small informative museum narrating the history of the building and the archaeology of the site. Some sections were also used by the Danish army during the war with Prussia in the 19th century - a real gem. If we had had more time there could have been a good walk along the wall, but we were headed to Schloss Gottorf, and that was itself a gem of a place.

Lübeck

Lübeck is an old Hansestadt. It is famous for its old Holsten Gate, which appears on postcards - of course without the busy roads that run on each side of its gardens, so here's a reality check:

 

The city is very beautiful, there are many old buildings and many churches to visit. Again we had been to Lübeck before, but that was to go to the Christmas market several years ago, and new museums have opened since then, and and there was plenty to do in the summer sun.

So we visited churches - these grand old places of spirituality and power. A lot of effort went into church architecture and so there is always some interesting architecture and art to study in tese places.

Here's a small example of the fine puppets in a museum devoted to puppetry:

This museum has both Western and Eastern puppets, a lovely Indian puppet elephant, and when we went they had an exhibition on Pinocchio with a puppet from a Soviet film from  the interwar period, and sections of the film on a loop showing the 'making' of Pinocchio. I love puppets and it was good to see a few films of stop-motion animation and so on, as puppets hanging on their strings look a bit sad. They are so much better animated and telling a story.
 
There was a church near the Puppet Museum which had been whitewashed and in its simplicity looked very grand:

We also visited the St Marienkirche, which is where JS Bach went to learn organ music with the local organist. This church is very grand with large areas of reproduction medieval murals. It is also a very beautiful place. In one corner the churchbells which fell during the bombings of WWII have been left with a candle as a reminder of peace and reconciliation:

In one church there was an ancient set of benches with carved wooden arm rests of head of monks - they had worn away with time and looked soft and shiny in the light:

Oh, and then there is the occasional piece of functional street furniture that is worth a mention, like this great door handle-cum-door lock:

As usual I took many photographs and will probably use some of them in the future, but just to end this short story of my visit I will add one on a rococo ceiling detail from a museum:

 

And a single example of a quick draing I did one evening in the hotel: