Life like most things has a way of over taking the best of intentions, hence my very shameful lack of blogging of late. But what wonders I have to fill you all in on, that’s if you don’t already follow me on twitter, where you probably would have heard this all before!
Well where to start.....I put my ‘Lost Voices’ project on hold for a short time to focus on scouting competitions and projects that could get my creative brain cells firing away and hopefully get my work out in to the wider world, the idea of which I always find mildly terrifying. I think that’s pretty much true of most artists to be honest, we are experts in the field of self-doubt and those of you who aren’t I am more than a little jealous. Much to my suprise my endeavours have paid off rather handsomely I started by taking part in the Creative Review and Tate’s Blast/Bless project being run in conjunction with the new Vorticists exhibition at Tate Britain, my piece was “blessed” and can still be seen on the project website.
Next to catch my eye was QR-3D an exciting project being run as part of the Manchester Science Festival looking at whether QR codes can be made using textiles. My first piece unashamedly involves a bit of self promotion with code sending people to this very website. But to stay true to the ethos of my work the code is sewn as part of a hand sewn old postcard, complete with foxing, using a very British tool, tea. Not forgetting the postage Her Royal Maj makes an appearance in the corner (1st class of course!). My second piece was a bit more playful, a yellow duster with a QR code that sends people to the Good Housekeeping website, pinned in its frame like an old butterfly specimen. I’m happy to report that both pieces have been accepted in to the exhibition and will be on display from Sat 22 - Sun 30 October at the Cornerhouse.
There is still more great news to follow but I shall leave that for my next post otherwise I feel this entry may never end, always leave your audience wanting more......I hope! It feels great to have my work out there and to start to get feedback from others, always a scary prospect, but worth every nail biting moment! Do not fear my next entry will follow tout suite, I’m too excited to hold it in for long.
Dear Stanley,
I was very pleased to have your letter this morning before I set off for business, and I am sure that you will appreciate the difficulties we are in visiting you on Thursday. I asked your Aunt Hetty to write you in the event of my not being able to do so by return, but i will take this home and include it.
On this very important occasion I should have been most glad to have given you our moral support, and our joint blessing. We trust that it will initiate a period of such happiness as is only known to perfectly matched couples, and if you will bear in mind the experience of your parents and ourselves, that the first forty years is the worst, you will overcome any trifling difficulties that will only add to your ultimate mutual happiness later.
In enclosing cheque herewith, I trust that you and May will have the joint opportunity of buying something suitable as a memento of the high regard in which we hold you and her, and your families.
Yours very sincerely,
Best Love Wishes
J B?eton
My dear Stanley,
Sorry we shall not be able to come. Uncle Joe is up to the neck with work with Sammy having been called up about a month ago, he is at Blackpool.
We do hope and trust you + May will be very happy + this dreadful war will soon be over and you + May will be able to settle down together.
Fondest love to you both. Love to all.
A Hetty + U Joe xx
All good things come to those who wait, this blog post hopefully being one of them. As I hang my head in shame at my complete and utter neglect of this blog, I can only plead for your forgiveness. To make up for such an indiscretion I have very exciting plans for this entry, so bare with me and I hope I can earn your forgiveness.
For me good ideas seem to come along like buses, positively Saharan for what seems like an eternity and then a flurry of them all at once. This was the case when I came up with my ‘Lost Voices’ project. At the same time I came up with two other ideas that I think have promise, one of which I shall tell you about now, entitled ‘Any Interesting Post?’. The idea grew out of the creation of my ‘Lost Voices’ photographic archive. Many of the images I found were photographic postcards that had a selection of fascinating messages on the back, words that were too important to ignore. The stories that unfolded on the back of these postcards were captivating and chimed with my passion for family history. I got to work straight away trying to find the authors in historical documents, creating family trees and placing what they had written in as much context as possible. Like the images of children I had been collecting, these words had been lost to history, separated from their intended and just floating around in the ether. To me this is what history is made of, the forgotten stories of the millions of ordinary people like you or me. With ‘Any Interesting Post’ I hope to change this, bringing these words back into the open again and allowed to breathe.
This project is still very much in its infancy, but has gathered some momentum over the last few days after a rather satisfying and painful browse through eBay, my purse is still recovering from all of the hits it’s taken. One purchase in particular I am more than a bit pleased with, a box of 100s of letters spanning 1940s-1960s. Having arrived this morning I am more than a bit excited about diving straight in and seeing what treasure awaits me. To share in this excitement I have decided to make a bit of a feature of this in my blog. Every month I shall be doing a sort of letter lucky dip, where I shall pluck one letter at random and share with you its contents and any other interesting information I have been able to discover about it. The first in this thrilling installment will be posted later today, I know you can barely contain your excitement!
I hope with this entry and the promise of things to come I have earnt just a smidgen of forgiveness for my tardiness.
Due to a bad case of germ addled brain I decided handling heavy machinery i.e. sewing machine, was probably not the wisest decision this week. So I decided to dust off my stranded cotton and flex my finger muscles with a touch of hand embroidery, and I must admit I have found it all rather delightful. As you can see above, my first endeavor was a bit of a promotional exercise, just to clear out the cobwebs and key into the old embroidery memory box. Through a haze of coughing and spluttering I seemed to have found a rather pleasant and productive zen state.
After my little adventure into PR stitching I decided to venture down my more usual and comfortable artistic path. After witnessing some really quite exquisite skies from my sick bed, and a plethora of birds having a rollicking good time in them, I settled on a series looking at Starlings in flight. From a very young age I have always loved birds in flight, birds perching are nice enough, but wow when they flew I found them captivating. In actual fact one of my earliest memories is riding in a car looking out of the window and wishing I was a bird flying alongside, make of that what you will. With their exquisite and mesmerizing displays Starlings were the perfect choice. So far I have created a small triptych and am currently cogitating over plans of a much grander scale.
This week may you all have as productive a time as me.....minus the germs!
Avoidance, something I have quite artfully mastered. Up until this point I have been employing these skills quite thoroughly when it comes to finally framing my work. But this week I bit the bullet and got myself in gear. I’m sure I’m not alone in this struggle, and there are many of you out there who do everything in your power to put off such an event. The presentation of work is such a complete and final commitment, when the decision has been made and acted upon there is very little chance of undoing it. This is the particularly cruel part of the process that I like to dance around, continually distracting myself with shiny objects, like metallic thread (see previous post).
In keeping with the themes and concepts that I’m working with in ‘Lost Voices’ I have known for a very long time that I want to present each piece in an antique frame. So off I went trawling the seas of ebay for only the best specimens. A task I found more difficult than I expected, too many of the lots were in far too good a condition. What I really wanted to find were frames that had lived, a little rough round the edges but still functional. After many hours and stressful bidding wars, trying to avoid that dreaded of all beasts the auction sniper, I managed to get my hands on a great selection. The many weeks I have spent avoiding have only added to their worn charm......honest!
With all the necessary tools in place and itching to be used I started to procrastinate on how best to stretch my pieces and it wasn’t until I found a very helpful guide from Textile Artist Ruth O’Leary that I managed to get my sluggish brain cells firing on all cylinders. But once I did there was no stopping me, except maybe the occasional bite to eat and drink. All went very smoothly and I now have my first framed piece, after which a celebratory dance may or may not have been attempted! The final result can be seen in my gallery of current work here.
Good luck to all of you out there who are or soon will be attempting such things!
I find myself having been rather tardy in updating my blog recently, this has mainly been due to my possession by a sewing fiend. Due to technical difficulties (printer having a temper tantrum) I haven’t been able to do much work for ‘Lost Voices’ so instead I turned to some jewellery making. I decided to play.......nay I mean work of course, with dissolvable fabric or to use it’s technical name Solvy Vanishing Film. In no time at all a series of pencil doodles became tangible physical creations.
I shall now take a moment to tell tales of my battles with metallic thread. Both my sewing machine and I are taken in by it’s shiny promise and then find ourselves cursing our decision to ever attempt using it. I find it has a tendency to lull me into a false sense of security by allowing me a couple of minutes of free sewing and then finding itself tiring of this decides to make my life all the more challenging. I have however now sought my revenge, a dastardly plan involving my machine, dissolvable fabric and no frills embroidery thread that often gets outshined by it’s trickster cousin, so sweet revenge had by all. Simple in it’s execution I trapped lengths of metallic thread between two layers of dissolvable fabric, imprisoning it with my reliable friend embroidery thread. Not only highly satisfying to make but also quite pleased with the result!
I have also been enjoying the company of fellow tweeters in the twitterverse and thought I would finish by recommending just a small selection of the fabulous and creative fellows I have come across: @knitthecity @MollieMakes (very exciting magazine on sale from 12th May) @NurseyBangBang @Craftivists @jenny_arnott @deadlyknitshade @TheSavvyCrafter @SewCraftyFox @clarehillerby @ukhandmade @TheMakingSpot @MrXStitch (Manbroiderer extraordinaire with a fantastic website), lastly and completely biasedly @OandtheFoxes (Funny, creative and just happens to be my sister, must be something in the genes!)
Farewell and have a glorious and sunny week!
Rather fortuitously this Sunday, 27th March is the official 2011 UK Census day, but lets be honest I’m sure some of you will have already filled out the form. I’ve only glanced at it so far, but it certainly looks long and detailed enough to take a good few hours, no doubt with a few head scratching moments. Despite the hassle I do feel a strange connection with the whole process, all those old census records that have played such an important part in my genealogy research and in turn my art. Part of me can’t help thinking how much more juicy those old documents would have been if our ancestors had been asked half the questions we are. Throughout this blog I shall be continually trying to encourage and cajole as many of you as possible to start your own family quest. It just so happens that Ancestry are giving free access to their UK Census returns on the 27th, I dare you to find a more perfect opportunity......hint...hint.
It isn’t only old documents that can be a great source of inspiration, photographs can and have sparked my creative exploration. After the amazing discoveries I told you about in my previous post I started experimenting with the photograph of Ellen Rose Violet Heyes and the first kernels of the visual side of ‘Lost Voices’ sprung to life. But it wasn’t until a while later that certain events propelled my project forward and it became a fully formed entity.
Often it’s those chance encounters or events that can provide you with the most clarity and make things really start to click. One such occasion was a long desired family outing to Ardingly antique fair, years in the planning and getting round to, the day became quite an occasion, even seeing Bargain Hunt (the original daytime antique experience) being filmed. My fabulous sister and I trekked off with our spending pennies to see what wonders we could throw our money at, I left all the wheeler dealing to her, a very wise decision on my part! My sister has an infectious confidence and strength that has helped me endlessly when I start to feel those dreadful artist doubts! So it’s no surprise that by just stopping at a stall she inadvertently moved my project forward, if she hadn’t who knows where I would be now.
It was at the most amazing stall, absolutely heaving with old postcards that the cliché lightbulb moment struck, I saw written on a piece of card ‘Children’ amongst a sea of tabs. Drawn to it straight away I went to investigate and found the most moving selection of photographs and postcards, all showing the most wonderful characters whose voices deserved to be heard. The idea that these children have lost their connection to their family and are just floating out their in the ether really struck a chord with me and chimed with my work. Thus the idea for my own photographic archive of lost voices was born. Growing in ever increasing size it provides me with endless inspiration and source material for my work.
