Thorn

May 20, 2018

In between periods of working on the Wicken Fen project, over the last year or so I made a group of small works called Thorn. The making was spread out over the whole year with long gaps between stages and the thinking and process were quite different.

I was interested in making a group of pieces within a limited set of parameters: size, format and colour palette. In some ways this was quite a formal exercise in composition. The emphasis was on balancing the colour and texture contrast between the plain and printed sections to develop a group of pieces that work both individually and together.

Thematically, the group is related to the Blackthorn series. At the time I was working on this group, I was listening to Dowland and reading Peter Davidson “The Last of the Light”, while on my morning walks I was noticing the effect of frost, raindrops and mist on the hedgerows. I’m drawn to the way these phenomena both highlight and obscure the underlying forms.

Thorn detail Helen Terry October2017.jpg

There are 11 pieces in the group, which can now be seen in new exhibitions at Gallery 57 in Arundel and at Bircham Gallery in Holt. Bircham Gallery is also showing work from the Wicken Fen series. Exhibition details below. If you can't get to the galleries, work can be viewed on their web sites via the links.

Gallery 57: A contour, a curve, the lie of the land. 19 May -27 August 2018

Bircham Gallery: Spring Mixed Exhibition. 19 May – 13 June 2018.

A Marginal Space -Detail-Helen Terry 2017

New work

May 7, 2017

Although I have not been writing about it here, between visits to Wicken Fen I have been working away on a new group of work. It is a continuation of last year’s “Between the Lines” series in that it repeats the imagery and themes, but is sufficiently different that I have given it its own title, “A Marginal Space”.

There were several aspects of “Between the Lines” that I wanted to develop further so, over several days in January and early February, I filled a sketchbook with collage experiments. Working with paper and on a small scale meant that I could work fast and try out lots of different ideas without getting too precious or hung up on any one of them. And to help me think differently, I set a series of “rules” in opposition to my previous approach. I found it was relatively straightforward to translate what I learned from this exercise into cloth.

I’ve made fourteen pieces of work in this group and spent several days recently photographing them. I love these detail images. They really focus attention on the marks.

A Marginal Space detail 2 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 3 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 4 Helen Terry 2017

A Marginal Space detail 6 Helen Terry 2017

Several pieces from this group will be exhibited at Gallery 57 in Arundel for the exhibition, Gaze, Glimpse: A look at landscape (24 June – 6 August). This is a lovely gallery, run by Ann Symes, and I am thrilled to be exhibiting there alongside a wonderful group of other artists. In fact you can see a preview of the new pieces here.

In the meantime, I also have some work in Bircham Gallery’s current Early Summer Exhibition, which is on until 24 May.

Diana Harrison: Working in cloth

September 25, 2016

The Crafts Study Centre in Farnham is currently showing an exhibition of textile art by Diana Harrison. I have seen individual pieces in the past – at Cloth & Memory in Saltaire in 2013; at the V&A’s Quilts exhibition (2010) – but this was a wonderful opportunity to see a comprehensive body of Harrison’s work, together with samples and reference material.

Diana Harrison: working in cloth, Crafts Study Centre 2016

So often, all you see of an artist’s work is the completed, final piece on a gallery wall – the resolution of the process. You don’t see the things that inspired them or the trials and experiments they worked through on the way to that piece. Nor do you often get to see several pieces of work that cover a sufficient period of time to allow you to see how one piece has grown out of another or the themes that recur from one to the next.

I often think that this leads to a distorted view where all the focus is on the final product rather than the process that led to it or its wider context. And so far my own experience has been that that is not an effective way to work. All my best ideas have come out of the process of exploring and experimenting without necessarily knowing where it would lead.

In Harrison’s case, it is particularly valuable to see a more complete picture because what came through for me was how her work is underpinned by a deep and thorough engagement with her materials and techniques and a consistent interest in edges, structures, folds, worn surfaces and transitions. A long, low shelf displays collections of objects and samples – material references – worn, flattened, packaging with marks collecting in the folds and creases; creased or folded papers; small samples and trial pieces that provide a rich context for the finished work on display.

Diana Harrison material references Crafts Study Centre 2016

Harrison’s work creates an impression of strength, simplicity and quiet sophistication. This is achieved through a complex layering of repetitive and sometimes intricate mark making and surface treatment using dye, print, discharge and stitch. In several pieces, the cloth is pierced or burnt away so that only a framework of stitches holds the piece together. This is fascinating to examine close to, but when you stand back, the focus shifts to composition: simple forms, subtle tonal progressions and contrasts between light and dark. I love the interplay between simplicity and complexity in this.

Line (2011) was my favourite piece. Six long, narrow panels (12cm x 640cm in total) that reference separate decades of life. Each panel was different and could have stood on its own; but there were delicious transitions from one to the next. Trying to photograph all six panels together, the image read on my camera screen as a single line. I even tried to see if I could persuade myself to read the actual piece as a single, continuous mark, like a stroke of charcoal drawn lightly across a rough surface, but could not quite - there were definite breaks and changes in the rhythm and texture that resisted this. Which of course mirrors how many of us actually experience different decades of our lives.

Pillowcases (x6), a new piece of work, was another favourite. Six ordinary pillowcases that had been deconstructed and alternately dyed, printed and stitched. The fascination was in the way the cloth had been folded over and back on itself, exploiting the contrasts of dark and light to make different forms and shapes. I loved the way the folds interrupted the flatness of the cloth and the juxtapositions of different tones and textures.

The V&A produced this video of Diana Harrison talking about the inspiration for her piece, Box, in 2010.

Diana Harrison: Working in Cloth is on until 8 October 2016. Diana is giving a lecture on 5 October and there is an excellent and comprehensive catalogue, available from the Crafts Study Centre.

All the work shown in this post is by Diana Harrison, please give credit accordingly if you copy or share these images. I am grateful to her and to the Crafts Study Centre for permission to take photos.

In process: screen printing

August 27, 2016

Reviewing a new set of screen prints. Each time I do this I think of different angles to try - one of the advantages of working on several at a time rather than just one piece. I'm about to do some more so am thinking about colour, format, marks, layers.

Screen print and dye book August 2016 Helen Terry

As a way of organising myself I wrote out a list of all the steps I needed to take in order to print these. It was salutary to notice just how much of the process relies on the relatively mundane preparatory tasks - cutting up cloth, mixing dye, sampling, rinsing. Making the screens and actually printing the cloth is only part of the whole. It is useful to remember that when I am managing my time as it is frustrating when I have set aside time for printing to find that I need to do some preparatory tasks first, that could have been done in those small chunks of time between other things.

Screen prints on the wall August 2016 Helen Terry.jpg

I pinned up some of the prints on top of some plainer painted cloth to get a feel for possible combinations. This is all work in progress - much more to do before these become finished pieces of work.

Explorations

August 14, 2016

I seem to be both revisiting ideas from earlier this year and investigating new ones.

I’m working on two separate strands at the moment and they each present a different challenge. In the first, I’ve gone back to the themes and techniques I worked on for my exhibition in February. There were lots of loose ends – things I wanted to take further – so I’m starting to develop a new series of prints in the Between the Lines and Transience series.

I had to overcome a surprising reluctance to this. Having done so much work before I think there was a sense of going back over the same ground. I didn’t want to repeat myself. But of course it doesn’t work that way and as soon as I actually started working on this again, new things emerged. New marks, new thoughts. It’s like my daily walk – when everything is so familiar I can take it for granted. But when I pay attention, there is often something I hadn’t noticed before or something I hadn’t expected to see.

The other strand is the work I’m doing on the Wicken Fen project. This is very different. At the moment everything is exploratory. Sally and I have now made two visits to the Fen and I am playing with my photographs, drawings and making collages. I have no idea where I’m going yet. Well, perhaps I do, but it’s too soon to tell whether it will lead somewhere.

I'm reluctant to share too much yet. These images give a flavour of how I'm working but none of them represent a fixed idea at this point. I think what I'm really trying to do is generate lots of interesting beginnings.

From Clarke's Hide Wicken Fen June 2016 Helen Terry.jpg

Wicken Fen: a new project

June 19, 2016

I am very excited to be starting a new collaborative project with artist Sally Tyrie and on Friday we made an initial research visit to Wicken Fen. This is one of the National Trust’s oldest reserves (acquired in 1899) and one of the last remaining un-drained areas of the East Anglian fens. It is an exceptionally rich wetland habitat.

At this time of year, the dominant impression is greenness. The fen is a mass of tall sedges, grasses and reeds in brilliant emeralds and yellow greens, threaded through with traces of red and rust orange. Flashes of yellow, magenta, blue violet from the many marsh flowers – including orchids. It was gorgeous … but I am really looking forward to seeing the Fen in the winter when the green is bleached out and the underlying structures are exposed.

I’ve visited Wicken before but it was a long time ago and therefore it was like discovering the place afresh. There is that initial phase of orienting yourself within a place – finding your way around, noticing what you notice, what you choose to focus on. As ever, I was consistently drawn to details – marks and traces – reflections, linear marks, particularly of the reeds and sedges at the water’s edge.

But it’s interesting to experience a place with someone else – two pairs of eyes. Sally noticed things that I might have passed over – expanding my awareness, widening the range of things I noticed.

We were drawn to the hides – both the structures themselves and the experience of looking out of them. As well as the viewing hatches, many of them had random holes in the walls (Birds? Knot holes?). So there were lots of ways of looking out, looking through, peepholes, slits, cracks.

Worn and weathered plastic windows veiled and obscured the view – they simplified what you could see into shadowy outlines, veiling and obscuring as much as they revealed. –partial information, selective. My attention moved between the marks on the surface of the window itself and what you could see through it.

Marks on the surface and shadowy landscape beyond

(By the way my new “dream studio” is a wooden shed on stilts, with hatch windows and a good view … although maybe not for wet work.)

No preconceived ideas about what work might result but lots to think about. There will be more visits, visual research, drawing and thinking with a view to developing work for an exhibition sometime next year. So expect to be hearing more about the fens over coming months.

Visit Sally’s web site to see her work and follow her side of this collaboration.

Rafael Perez at Contemporary Ceramics May 2016 1

Rafael Pérez: looking for the unexpected

May 8, 2016

London was bathed in sunshine yesterday and I spent a fine, if tiring, day visiting galleries, bookshops and sitting in cafés.

Among other things I caught the final day of an exhibition of sculptures by Rafael Pérez at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre:

“The driving force behind Pérez’s work is surprise and curiosity. He sees ceramics as an art form that offers a labyrinth of possibilities with infinite variables, making a viewer find their way through his pieces to search and explore. In recent years, his work has been focused on the desire to distance himself from the final object, on leaving the “authorship” as a matter shared between the fire and himself. The surprise of ‘non recognition’ between an object that goes into, and then comes out of the kiln, this ‘seeing with new eyes’ (as if the work was done by someone else) is what interests Pérez.”

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

Pérez cuts and layers clays with different properties, such as white porcelain and black earthenware. Some of these clays expand during firing, allowing the object to swell in the kiln. Layers peel apart. Surfaces crack. Forms twist and tear. The resulting forms are reminiscent of obscure archaeological objects – twisted, eroded and encrusted until only a sense of the original form remains. The layers were like book pages or layers of cloth in the process of coming apart from having been coiled and wrapped around each other.

Pérez says that with years of experience he can often predict what will happen but that invariably it is still a surprise with every firing … and it is this element of the unexpected that inspires him.

“… the backbone of my work has always been research and experimentation … I constantly pursue any sign, accident or occurrence with more of a sense of fun than scientifically …”

“ … test pieces clutter up my walls and shelves … but it is out of all this bustling, chaotic activity that my work springs. I am particularly interested in the “other use” of techniques and materials, maybe doing something wrong so as to discover new paths. I love the search in its own right and especially getting results which seem “alien” to me“

Rafael Pérez in Exhibition catalogue

Rafael Pérez at Contemporary Ceramics May 2016

Unexpectedly, this was a theme for the day. Earlier I had been to a discussion between Helen Carnac, who works with metal and enamel, and bookbinder, Tracey Rowledge, at Contemporary Applied Arts on the theme of how they manage, harness and embody “mistakes” in their work.

In summary, while Carnac feels that her work is all about the accidental, chance marks –“mistakes” – and not quite knowing what will come out of the kiln; Rowledge described a more problematic relationship with “mistakes”. On the one hand, mistakes in the construction of a book binding are a “no”, because they undermine its integrity. But on the other, she talked about looking for the unknown, the unexpected, because if the work is always “perfect” and predictable, there is something uninteresting about that and, what is more, your work never moves on.

In my own case, I love the accidental, unexpected marks and finding ways to approach the work so that I have less control and there is room for these accidental, unintended consequences is inherently more interesting to me. That's not the same as being “sloppy” – it’s important that the work is well finished. It’s a balance between practicing the knowledge and skill built up over years of experiment and practice and leaving room for the materials and process themselves to affect the outcome in ways I can’t completely control nor predict.

Drawing

April 10, 2016

Last weekend I set aside some time for drawing. None of these drawings are for their own sake but a way of testing ideas and I had some specific things I wanted to try. The results were mixed and I have some conflicted feelings about them.

First I did a series of ink drawings where the focus was on exploring layers of ink wash. I had not planned that they would turn into a series of “mountain-scapes” but they did. The first was simply an intuitive response to what I was doing at that moment, but then with the next few it became progressively more deliberate … and I became progressively more dissatisfied. I’ve been pondering the reasons for this dissatisfaction.

What I don’t like is that the drawings became more explicit, more literal as I went on – too much so for my taste. They are unequivocally mountain-scapes, leaving no room for alternative interpretation. Yes, they are atmospheric and “pretty” … but in a way I find rather predictable – even trite. They encourage a superficial response. The ones I like best are the simplest and also the more ambiguous.

Piling up drawings - some of the accidental combinations were far more interesting than the individual drawings

It’s as though I had followed a path that, while perfectly pleasant, was not leading me somewhere that I wanted to go. Although I sort of recognised this at the time, it was hard to change direction rather than continue to follow the track I was on. Once my initial crossness with the drawings had passed, over the ensuing days I started to think of ways I could take the method I had been using and push it in a different direction.

The second set of drawings was something I’ve had in mind for a while. They are based on photographs of recently cut hedgerows and inspired in part by Brice Marden’s Shell Drawings. I was interested in developing the calligraphic qualities of the twig shapes.

Hedge drawings - Indian ink, ink wash, charcoal

Curiously I didn’t enjoy the process of making these drawings that much, although I forced myself to do enough of them to expose a reasonable range of options. I do like the results better. The challenge here is how to develop them further. Initially it felt like a dead end – how on earth could I use these? Their monochrome character, which is part of their appeal, is problematic with dye. But gradually I have been identifying some ways forward.

If I had written this post last weekend it would have been a stream of irritation. It’s lovely when I do something and it just works, but there are lots of times when they don’t. Sometimes I need to allow some time to pass before I can see where to go next. And sometimes I have to recognise when I’m going the wrong way and need to retrace my steps.

Between the lines, Transience and Blackthorn

February 10, 2016

That period immediately after finishing a group of work is tricky. Having worked so hard, I knew that I would need a break. So I haven’t worried too much about what I’ve been doing in the past couple of weeks. Which is not very much! But I’m starting to prepare to get back to work.

Part of that is reviewing what I have just done. Looking at the group as a whole, I’m noticing different aspects that I want to develop – composition, marks, layering. And within the group, the work falls into one of three variations. I decided not to give pieces individual titles this time so they are named for each of these sub groups.

The main group, Between the Lines, was the most “planned”. This includes the larger pieces, including two of the largest pieces I have yet made. These use some of the ideas I explored in my drawings and are inspired by horizons and places where water meets land. A second group, Transience, is closely related but evolved more freely once I started working with the actual marks on the cloth I had made. To me these are more specifically about things that are in the process of moving, flowing and changing.

Both are about liminal, ambiguous places – tidelines, creeks, estuaries – where things are in constant flux and neither completely solid nor completely liquid. But they are also reflections on another sense of “liminality” – the psychological space between not knowing and knowing. Such as when someone is in the midst of learning something but has not yet properly understood it. It’s the parallels between the two that fascinate me and I shall continue to reflect upon and explore this.

One of the things I enjoyed about this series was the way that the monoprinting process resembled these processes. Each print was the same but some details were lost and new ones emerged from one to the next. Between the Lines 2 in particular exploits this transition, being built around three consecutive prints. You can look at it as a continuous “horizon” or as three separate snapshots of the same space.

The third group, Blackthorn, is more distinct and grew out of my print experiments last summer. It uses completely different imagery developed from photographs I took on an icy, foggy February morning several winters ago. At first I felt these were unrelated, but when I consider them, their attraction to me is also related to their diffuse edges – neither solid nor empty space.

The process of photographing all these, particularly the close-ups, also helped me to see them differently and suggested new ideas. I particularly liked the more extreme abstraction of some of the cropped images. I’m starting to make plans for the next phase of this series. … which means it’s time to get back into the studio.

In the meantime though I have a short break in Norfolk to look forward to. A large proportion of this work will be in the exhibition at Bircham Gallery which opens this Saturday and runs until 6 March. All the work can be viewed on their web site.

Working

January 17, 2016

In early December I planned out all the work I needed to do. An exhibition in February means work has to be ready for framing … around now actually. It was all perfectly possible on paper. But it’s one thing to block out time on a plan and write “stitch work”, for example, and quite another to actually do it. In the studio I surveyed the pile of work I needed to finish and felt slightly terrified.

A deadline is a wonderful thing for getting focused. I dropped or deferred everything that did not contribute to getting the work done (including this blog) and settled down to work. Apart from a couple of days with my family, I stitched all the way through Christmas.

It goes something like this. I pull out each piece of work and lay it on my studio table. In this case I had already stitched them all to a backing fabric. Canvas this time (I had my reasons but never again – my poor fingers). I lay out different threads on top of the work until I have a palette I want to work with. Silk, rayon, cotton – some matte, some shiny. Mostly very fine in weight. I look at the piece of work for a clue as to what to do and where to start.

Mostly I work with the marks on the cloth, sometimes I work against them or look to add marks where there are none. I will have an idea what I want but not usually a plan for the whole piece when I start. I will know where I want the emphasis to be but otherwise I will ask myself as I am working what the piece needs.

Occasionally there is a piece where I don’t know what to do. When there is a type of mark I haven’t worked with before. Or the marks in the cloth are so subtle that I am really not sure what to add – or whether to add anything at all. In this case I just try something. If it doesn’t work, I pull out the stitches and try something else. Change thread. Larger stitches. Smaller ones. A different kind of mark. Dense layers of marks – or sparse and widely spaced. I take photographs – sometimes it’s clearer what you need to do when you look at an image of it.

For two weeks I worked like this for six to ten hours a day. I listened to music or radio documentaries. Sometimes I worked in silence. If this sounds relaxing, I can’t say that it was. There was a tension between the slow, patient hand work and the underlying sense of pressure to get everything done. This was a consequence of working to a tight schedule, not the experience of slow stitch. And there wasn’t time to play around or experiment too much.

As I worked, ideas came to me – things I want to try. Not just stitch ideas. I jotted them down in my sketchbook so as not to lose them and kept working. I was mildly frustrated that I couldn’t afford the time to stop and do other things. Which made me ponder the value of both work and play. I remembered how earlier in the year I was frustrated that I didn't know what to do and was not “working” and used play and experimentation to keep myself going. The work I am doing now derived from that period.

Anyway I am now preparing a pile of finished work for the framer. I have some admin things to do but otherwise I will soon be through this phase of work. Then I am going to do something else for a while.

Exhibition details:

I will be showing some of this new work in an exhibition alongside paintings by Stephanie Stow and Elaine Cox at Bircham Gallery in Holt, Norfolk from Saturday 13 February until 9 March.

I also currently have some work in a mixed show at The Bank in Eye, Suffolk. The exhibition, Abstraction of Form, runs from Tuesday 19 January until 28 February.

Setback

November 8, 2015

Setback. Noun. A reversal or check in progress, relapse, placing (of project) farther back in space or time than it might have been. Synonyms: problem, difficulty, hitch, issue, disappointment, complication ...

I had 15 silk screens prepared and have been printing and processing them a few at a time. I processed the first set and the results were ... disappointing, lacklustre, uninspiring. The colours were boring and the print quality was poor.

In retrospect I had taken rather a lot of chances with these prints, without testing things out first. Since I was repeating techniques I had tried earlier this year I thought I knew what would happen. Never think you already know what will happen with dye if you change the cloth, colour, value, and especially all three at once!

Frustrated. Cross. And interesting how it brought out all my self doubt too. None of which is terribly helpful of course. So I walked away and did something else for a while. Then armed myself with a cup of tea, pinned everything up and had a closer look. I wrote a little rant in my sketchbook about everything I did not like ... but then started to work out what had actually gone wrong and what I could do about it. My main concern was the screens I still had left to print rather than salvaging these prints (I can always over-print or over-dye those).

There were some things I couldn't change, at least not without totally undoing hours of preparation. But there were a couple of things I could do something about that might be enough to improve the next set of screen prints. Fingers crossed, so far these look much more promising.

Ambiguous edges

October 25, 2015

I had spent ages mixing a palette of dye colours only to feel that the results were not what I wanted. I seriously considered discarding them and starting again. Fortunately I couldn't bring myself to throw away all that work - or waste the dye. So, I spent another couple of hours painting the dyes onto cloth. In an "I don't really care what happens here" frame of mind. Then leaving the dyed cloth to cure overnight. And finally several more hours of rinsing out and processing. All with fairly modest expectations of what I might get ... although increasingly more encouraged. Then I laid out the results on my studio table.

A dance-around-the-studio moment.

The photos could be sharper and the colours are not quite accurate (the camera struggled with these colours under artificial light), but never mind. It's the edges I am most pleased about. Looking at the photographs, I particularly like the way you can't readily distinguish the real edges of the cloth from the painted ones. I spent some time, moving pieces around, overlapping them in different ways, considering the possibilities.

On the wall

September 20, 2015

Having spent weeks finishing pieces for the exhibition in Knebworth, it has been quite difficult to get back to developing new work. I moved furniture around; made cushions (at least that involved cloth); hung pictures; rearranged books ... productive, but displacement activity nonetheless.

At the end of last week, I took advantage of a day at the Committed to Cloth studio to spread things out. Sometimes it is really helpful to just pin everything on the wall, step back and look at what I have. The bigger the wall, and the further back I can get, the better.

I pinned up drawings, photographs and samples, some of which I hadn't looked at for weeks. Then I started to pull out pieces of dyed and painted cloth, looking for echoes - colours and marks that seemed to relate to what I wanted. Trying things out. Eliminating some options - developing others. Some of the accidental combinations that occur as I spread things out on the table generate ideas in themselves.

What works in my head doesn't always look so good in reality. Some of my initial ideas collapsed all too swiftly when put to the test. Frustrating ... but that's the value of doing this. After a few hours of moving things around, I had a stronger sense of what would work. And a list of things to do next.

A daily practice - part four

August 14, 2015

In the studio, I am still stitching. I took some finished pieces to the framers this morning and am now finishing off some smaller ones that I think I will show unframed. This is all for the exhibition with Clive Barnett at Art Van Go that starts 2 September. I've pinned everything up on the studio wall to decide what goes in ... and what doesn't - and to choose titles for the ones still unnamed. It is all hard work - and there's lots of associated admin, none of which makes for a particularly interesting blog post.

However, I have not shared the details of the last round of mark-making / drawing, so ...

This was the fourth round of forty days of daily mark-making. In fact it was forty-two days and finished at the end of July. I've only just got round to sorting through the photos. This time I had decided it would be interesting to work on loose sheets of paper, which is what I would normally prefer to do anyway. But, having worked in a sketchbook for the previous 120 days plus, I found it surprisingly difficult to get going. Despite the increased freedom, for the first week or so I could only manage my minimum one page a day.

There's something about working in these blocs of forty days - each develops its own rhythm or character. And each time, there's been a period of adjustment at the beginning - uncertainty about what to do, having to find new strategies for working. And at the end, I have sometimes felt that it was becoming predictable, routine, that I was just repeating myself. It's curious and I wonder whether it would be the same if I had committed to a continuous practice rather than a time-limited one.

I value activities that put me in a position where I don't quite know what I'm doing. So this period of adjustment each time is not a bad thing in my view. The difficulty is a sign that I'm having to find my way and learn something afresh. I actually prefer this to feeling that it is too easy, automatic and I am not having to think.

The value of this practice (for me, I don't know about others) is the engagement with the process and the materials. This is more important than the quality of whatever results. I think what I'm looking for is the development: changes in the kind of marks, the ways of organising them, finding different methods for making them, effects I haven't seen before.

So, what happened in the end, once I got through this awkward adjustment phase, was that I found myself alternating between two contrasting strategies. The first was that I took full advantage of the loose sheet to manipulate the page: folding, crumpling, rubbing, scratching and piercing the surface. It was more of a collage approach - and sometimes I layered two pages together, making holes in one so you could see through to the next. It was quite intensive and I usually worked on no more than two pages at a time or even worked into a page over two days.

The second strategy was to do a series of ten (or more) pages, working quite quickly with the same media (mostly ink) and a similar theme. This led to series of very similar looking pages but I found it very informative. It was an excellent way of trying different combinations or layers of marks - variations on a theme.

Since the end of this fourth round, I have accidentally taken a break. Accidentally, because I didn't actually decide to do so in advance. The immediate cause was first, that I went away for a few days; second, that I hadn't prepared either paper or sketchbook for the next round, which just proves how important it is to do this if I want to keep going, in my case at least. The secondary cause is that I'm in two minds what to do next with this. I do feel that my mark-making is becoming a little too repetitive for my taste. I could just carry on and work with that, keep pushing things on until there's a breakthrough. But I'm also thinking it might be valuable to spend some time on more observational drawing to train myself to make new marks / combinations of marks. But then that would be a decisive shift towards drawing rather than mark-making ...

So, while I'm working on finishing the final pieces for exhibition, I'm allowing myself a break to figure out which approach would serve me best. ... And if I fail to make up my mind, I shall just start anyway and see what happens ... once this exhibition is up and running that is.

Close focus

July 19, 2015

Limited space and limited time mean I tend to focus on either one thing or another in my studio. It's hard to switch back and forth too quickly between screen-printing, dyeing or stitching. So although I have developed more monoprints since my last post, I was conscious how much I still needed to do to get work ready for exhibition in September. So I am back in stitch mode.

I joked to friends that I am "panic stitching"! An exaggeration, because in practice I have plenty of time, but there is that (rather helpful) sense of a looming deadline that is driving me to get the work done. I know I won't feel completely settled again until it is.

The stitching phase is so different from any other part of the process. It means spending hours at a time with a single piece of work, studying minute marks on the cloth and deciding stitch by stitch how to respond to those. I can be quite fidgety and so it can be hard to settle down at first. Listening to good music helps. Another tactic I've found is to set a timer for one hour and work until it goes off. All the usual distractions have to wait until then, by which time it's reasonable to have a short break anyway. In practice I've usually settled by then and am happy to keep going.

I'm stitching the largest pieces first so the task will get easier and progress faster as I go on. The first two are always the hardest as I work out my approach. False starts, trying things out, changing my mind, starting again until I'm happy it works.

In the meantime the experimentation hasn't completely stopped. I've reviewed and organised all my samples, pinned everything up on a wall to have a look and done some drawing. Plenty of time to think about all this while I stitch.

Resistance

June 21, 2015

Quite a lot of "resistance" - in Steven Pressfield terms - this past week. I have struggled to get into the studio and get going ... even though I had eleven screens ready to print. And then when I did start, I managed to make preparing cloth and mixing dye last a whole day!

I think in part this is a perverse response to the fact that things have been going well. I like the samples I've already printed so much as they are ... and yet I know they need something more. So there's been a subconscious reluctance to "meddle" with the process and just keep doing more of the same - play "safe" ... maybe just change scale.

The other factor I think is that this is quite a change in my process. Preparing and printing the screens involves making different kinds of decisions. And at an earlier stage in the process of producing cloth. I'm having to adjust to this.

And yet another factor is that I am unsure how I am going to work with these pieces. I love what's happening and know that this is a direction I want to pursue ... but I have no idea at this point how I will turn these into finished work. (And, yes, I do know I don't need to have the answers to that yet!)

I always draw comfort from Pressfield's assertion that if you're feeling resistance to doing something, you're getting somewhere. And the only useful response is to get back to work. I got my act together and printed over half the screens. I experimented with different kinds of cloth and started to bring in more colour and layer marks. The one above was printed on muslin with a plain cotton underneath. Well, it had to be tried but this was not one of the more successful, or most interesting, trials. I want to evaluate the results before I print the remaining screens, but it's looking promising. One thing that has helped has been to bring in elements from previous work. It's helping me to find my way in.

Not many images with this post. I'm wary of sharing too much when my ideas are at such a fragile stage. This is actually a good sign - it means I think I'm making progress.

Experimentation

June 6, 2015

Over the past few months I've been experimenting with different ways of making marks on cloth. While I love the linear marks I have been producing with shibori and other techniques, I don't want to just keep repeating myself. So I've been shaking things up.

I started by looking through my library of photographs and identifying certain qualities that interested me. I also collected images with similar qualities from the internet and elsewhere to expand my ideas about what I might do. Then I thought about ways I might achieve similar effects on cloth.

Since February, I've been engaged in an extended, on and off, process of experimenting - in between making new work for exhibition. There have been some outright failures. Dip-dye techniques are now crossed firmly off my list of possibilities. But there have also been some interesting beginnings.

I've deliberately investigated methods I tend not to use much. I generally avoid screen-printing because I'm not interested in repeating designs. But mixing screen-printing with drawing and mono-print techniques has led to some exciting results.

I also don't normally use screen inks. But I wondered what would happen if I used them to resist the dye ... and there were some surprises with interesting texture effects.

There is still loads to do. I need to solve some technical issues; refine techniques; think about colour; develop the marks and imagery ... and all just to develop an initial collection of different fabrics. Only then can I start to play around with ideas for new work.

In the meantime I carry on making work with my existing fabrics. Although In practice, some of my new ideas are starting to creep in anyway ...

A daily practice - part three

May 10, 2015

Forty days of mark-making, round three. Although in fact I am on day 43, because I have several pages left in the sketchbook and want to fill it. This time I have focused on ways of changing the surface. Rounds one and two were dominated by drawn marks - additive marks. I wanted to make myself think about the surface itself more and experiment with subtractive marks and texture. Scratching, creasing, rubbing, crumpling, piercing, sanding, combinations of different media ... any way of creating visual or actual texture.

There have been some really bad pages - experiments that didn't work ... and couldn't be rescued. When I was tired sometimes all I could manage was a wash of ink over some wax crayon. But there have also been plenty of good or interesting pages. Some are impossible to photograph - all the camera can see is a plain, dark page, not the subtle texture or fragile marks. So the pages pictured here are just the ones that do photograph well.

I got excited about the possibilities of gluing different kinds of paper to the surface and painting over it. Different papers take the ink in different ways, just as different fibres react differently to dye. There were lots of ways to make interesting edges. I gathered up tissue papers, rice paper, pattern paper, packing paper, tracing paper, handmade papers, book pages and played around. I also played with masking tape and double-sided tape, applying tissue paper or rubbing graphite or crayon over the top.

The sketchbook is another handmade one with different kinds of paper in it. So every now and then I would turn the page to be faced with something challenging. Tracing paper. Or thin photocopy paper. I eventually learned to exploit their tendency to cockle and shrink when wet rather than fight it. But there were other types of paper I started to look forward to, such as a fine lokta paper that could be rubbed into holes when it was wet.

Dealing with the restrictions of working in a book has been part of the practice. Although I think it will be interesting to repeat this with loose sheets of paper. That would increase the range of things I could try too. I also still like the restriction of forty days. It is useful to have a focus. Whenever I find myself reverting to my default marks, I bring myself back to the idea of changing the surface in some way.

Although I consider this a mark-making practice, many pages are effectively drawings. I've wondered whether I should stop myself, concentrate more upon just making the marks. It is plain, looking back, that I have little interest in pattern making or repeating marks. In fact I am more often looking for ways to disrupt patterns or create interesting negative space. I also notice that I'm as interested in the surface and the impact this has on the look and feel of the marks. I think the important thing is to keep this exercise open and exploratory. Which means allowing myself to experiment with other design elements, if that is what draws my attention.

Sketchbook

April 28, 2015

I still have work to finish but in between I've been working in this sketchbook. I normally prefer to work on loose sheets of paper but I thought it would be interesting to work into a book for a change. So far I am finding it more restrictive but on the other hand I like seeing the lines of thought emerging.

The pages below are from last week. I'm just trying things out. Testing ideas, ways of looking at things. I've been working from photographs of estuaries and marshes, making quick drawings and collages. Then cropping some of these, or turning them round, to look at them in different ways.

I've also been playing with words. This helps me to find connections and associations that I don't necessarily get from the drawings.

I always have several sketchbooks or notebooks on the go. The two main ones are my journal, in which I reflect on things I've done, seen, read, heard. The other is my studio sketchbook, which contains technical notes, sketches and photos of work in progress, random ideas to try, dye calculations, lists and plans. These two are my working books. They are not pretty but they're the most important to me. Then there is my dye book, which contains swatches and records of all my colour experiments, and there is a shibori book, which records outcomes of various physical resist techniques. At the moment there is also my daily mark-making book - I'm now on the third of these.

Sometimes all these things can seem disconnected from each other but it's all research.

Stitch details

April 12, 2015

I have been immersed in stitching a group of new work. This involves hours of sitting closely with each piece, listening to music or iPlayer radio documentaries while I stitch. I made a decision with this group that hardly any of the stitched marks would be functional. The cloth is held together with invisible stitching and the visible stitches are there solely as marks. This gave me more freedom to play with the edges of the cloth. Sometimes, it looks as though the stitches are holding pieces together - but then they tail away or wander off somewhere else.

I also experimented with stitching from the back. While the results have some of the loose, erratic quality I like, I think I could have pushed this further. Too cautious this time.