Visit to Denmark - photography

Once a year I travel to Denmark. This year I was lucky to catch some open studios that were going on and some of the work was very good. There were guest artists from Sweden, Iceland and Germany, some textile art and we managed to visit a large art group that have been set up in  a now closed town hall, resurrected as an art studio.

It was all very enjoyable and of course I stayed with my family and there was time to relax and do a bit of photography.

This is what I will mainly deal with in this blog. in the village I grew up in there are buildings now standing there decaying, as no-one seems to want to live there, as the young people move away, the remaining population becoming elderly and so not having the energy to spend on buildings that are becoming broken with time.

I will start with a few from a building that was leaking water, concrete bleeding minerals and creating stalactites, leaving old electrical equipment rusty and walls and ceilings flaking, dripping and cracking.

It is kind of sad seeing a building which once housed a family and which has had the beginnings of a new extension now left unused and worn looking. Of course decay is photogenic, and the light was bright, so shadows were hard in the sun.

The concrete ceiling and its stalactites

A concrete panel with green (likely to be algae of some similar organic growth) was striped with water

And even in the decay some signs of life 

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.

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.

First tutorial on the FDAD at West Dean

I thought I would share a couple of things that was said during my first tutorial. On the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at West Dean you get two tutorials. I had planned to have done four courses before my frst tutorial but having swapped a course I have only done three and a drawing day, which coincided with the tutorial day. In the end I decided that it might be good to have a tutorial at the start and maybe have the other at the end, and if need be I could pay a bit and get a third somewhere in the middle of the course.

You get one hour with one of the art tutors and are asked to bring some work for discussion. I saw a tutor who is a print maker. He is interested in a variety of things and was keen to discuss anything that I showed him. I brought my computer to show him the things I had done at West Dean so far, and I brought a couple of sketchbooks from OCA to discuss approaches. This included the box of bits that I had done as part of the sketchbook which I had been quite satified with, but which my OCA tutor had not commented on. So, in short, a variety of things that might trigger conversation.

Anyway, I found the tutor positive and interested, and he had several suggestions for my continuing work and artists to study. 

His first impressions were interesting:

Although purposefully placing herself within the sphere of constructed textiles, Lorna is    operating akin to a sculptor that has a painters’ feel too. This is very healthy and can only benefit her approach to making in general. She has very eclectic research material and is open to possibilities offered by materials, techniques and outside influences. This, again, is an excellent creative habit to continue with and I suggest keeping this intensity of research/sketchbook going.

Michael Brennand-Wood had said I used 'gestural marks', and here was a perspective that suggested some of my work is sculptural. This is encouraging as I have been thinking about free-hanging and voluminous making, and it also fits in well with my process approach. I asked him about 'voice' and he said I had this already.

On my sketchbook box of different elements he said:
 

You display a great sensitivity to materials; some of your ‘samples’ (although I see them as finished pieces) use minimal colours and texture to great effect - many textile artists fall into the habit of overworking pieces so that the viewer becomes overwhelmed by a mass of conflicting information.

.........

Consider working in a vein similar to the sequences made for your OCA course - A4 pieces (hundreds of them!) that can have small gestures applied in small yet significant moments. Over time these will build into a concrete body of work. Whilst working towards an open studio next year is a positive goal, don't pre-empt what it is you could be showing. Consider hanging different/ important work (made on Cas Holmes’ course) in studio to show how differently you can work when pushed.

This last bit refers to a goal I have for this year to make some works that can be shown at next year's Open Studions in my area. Overall there were useful pointers as to how I could build up some coherent works in a smaller format - and it might be useful to just keep making and then decide whether to show things in series.

He concluded by saying

We discussed 'design' which you felt to be difficult - however making small thumbnail sketches to adjust positioning/placement of elements will hone and improve this skill.

You are visually astute, embedding different media well; continue to question, make and enjoy.

I had showed him my themebook, which he looked through and suggested I continue making books like this as they are concentrated ways of working.

So, overall a good session with plenty to think about. I have a couple of studio days coming up so will carry on working on felting and weaving, and will try to work out how this will sit with these suggestions. Definitely a worthwhile exercise to get a bit of feedback occasionally.