Beannacht

A couple of weekends ago I went to  Alicia Merrett’s 2 day Text on Fabric workshop in which I learned how to print on fabric using Thermofax screens and acrylic paints.  I’ve been hearing about and seeing this technique for awhile now and frankly had thought it would be a lot more technical and complex than it actually is.  A Thermofax screen is basically a stencil and quicker and cheaper to prepare than a silk screen.  It can be used with acrylic & textile paints, discharge media or adhesives to use with foiling.  I was impressed with the level of detail that can be achieved. There are a lot of ready-made screens about and Thermofax Screens based in the UK has a custom screen service.  I have a little shopping list of a few screens to buy – feathers and the Chartre labyrinth AND I am going to have a couple of screens made with an alphabet font so that I can incorporate some of my writing and poetry into my fibre art.

Alicia had brought several screens to the class for us to practice with, along with some of her beautifully vibrant art quilts. Day 1 was spent printing and on the second day, most of us started working on a project.  Alicia also showed us her fine line magic piecing technique.

The workshop took place at Cowslip Workshops near Launceston, Cornwall.  At lunch on the second day, Alicia’s husband Steve joined us and told us about a very romantic book that they have just published.  Darling Alicia chronicles their written exchange of love letters in 1966 and 1967 (between Argentina, where they met, and India) which culminated in a reunion in India and their now forty-plus years of marrriage.  We talked about really living life and taking risks.  Regrets are for those who never took the chance in the first place and a creative person can always make something new from their mistakes.

The food was excellent by the way – homemade, locally sourced and organic whenever possible.  Lunch was butternut squash or parsnip soup, fresh bread, quiche, cheeses, coleslaw, beetroot salad and a greenleaf salad.  We also had cake and/or scones and jam with afternoon tea, coffee, cappucino or hot chocolate.  You can just go for the food at their cafe and they have a few special food events.

I just finished making a piece called Beannacht from some of the fabric I screenprinted.    I used a brown and plum palette with highlights of gold in the fabric, stitch and printing.

Beannacht

Detail

and more detail

On the back, I attached a blessing written by one of my favourite writers, John O’Donohue, called Beannacht.  I painted handmade paper with a wash of gold Stuart Gill fabric paint and printed the words onto it in brown ink.   

Beannacht is a Gaelic word for blessing or benediction.  Here are the words -

Beannacht

On the day
when the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble
May the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you.

May a flock of colours
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean blackens
beneath you
May there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O’Donohue

And here is the blessing read by John shortly before his death in 2008.  Such beautiful, healing words and what a voice!

I made Beannacht for my friend and finished stitching the hanging sleeve on at work.  At lunchtime, I took it outside to the copse to photograph it.  I made a circle from some sticks and placed it in the middle.  To let the land and the autumn and the now thin golden threads of light bless the piece.

The FoQ

This weekend, Steve and I went up to Birmingham.  Our first stop was a garden party for Muchuu (aka George and Milky) a cute-as-a-button band who write and sing about dreams, things seen on adventures, imagination and escapism; appreciating the real things, the little things that make you smile!  But if you listen to Milky’s lyrics, there are shadowy thickets just beyond the sunny forest glades.

Here’s a music video of ‘Getaway Train’ made by Milky -

The party was held in the new space out back of the Spotted Dog pub, a great little venue for gigs and gatherings. We always love going to the Spotted Dog, as it’s where we met last September.

We went to the Festival of Quilts on Friday.  I handed in my last two Little Gems (one of which I finished hand stitching on the drive up!).

Suncast Shadows III was made from the photo printed onto silk chiffon and handstitched onto an A4-sized piece of some boss synthetic packing material that I keep coming across.  It feels kind of like sueded, thick cling film (Saran Wrap) and it’s wonderfully opaque.  I strategically laminated the haiku onto the boss synthetic stuff with acrylic gel medium

and then stiched the chiffon over it with rows of running stitch in monofilament nylon thread.

Suncast Shadows III

For Suncast Shadows IV, I printed the photo onto acetate, used the boss synthetic stuff for the middle layer and another piece of plain acetate for the backing.  I had laminated the typewritten haiku onto the middle layer.  I zig-zagged the edges and  ‘hand-tied’ the quilt together using grey acrylic thread and beads set in a grid pattern.

Suncast Shadows IV

We wandered around for the afternoon, looking at all of the amazing quilts and meeting people.  For me, some of the most fresh and inspiring works were new students’ work in the Graduate Showcase and European Art Quilt Foundation:  Quilts from the Low Countries.  I had a long and very informative  chat with Claire Benn from Committed to Cloth about photo emulsion and thermofax screens.  I’ve decided to have a couple of thermofax screens made from my photos to see how they can be used.  I added a couple of items to my batterie de l’artiste.  A very fine tipped soldering iron and a needle threader.  Monofilament nylon thread ain’t aka ‘invisible thread’ for nuthin’!

First thing on Saturday morning, before we drove back home, we went to the Rag Market and I got a BIG bag full of nylon organza in riverine blues, greys and greens and Chagallesque emeralds, vermillions, cobalt and amethyst, all for about a tenner.

I’ll use these to continue my exploration of transparency.  I still have Marc Chagall’s stained glass windows in Tudely glowing within.

Another great thing I saw at the NEC was a rain washed aluminum chair seat.

Southbank Shadows

Here’s another of my Southbank photos and an accompanying haiku that I’m using for a small series of Little Gems.

The suncast shadows
were longer than
the sum of their lives together.

This was taken around 3 o’ clock on a sunny, cold New Years day in London.  For me it was one of those ‘haiku moments’, a moment of clarity.  I love the movement in this photo – the long, late afternoon shadows stretching into dusk;  the tree reflection in the footstep scattered rain puddle;  the groups of people strolling along, each in their own worlds and always the River Thames flowing towards the sea.  The people especially capture my imagination – someone turns back to look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, a man sits alone on a bench, the two pairs of  lovers in the foreground are who I have written about.

But is it a beginning or an ending?  A realisation that their love is eternal, always, forevermore and they have at last found each other after centuries and aeons of searching.  Or a sad acceptance that their love has reached a limit, come to the end, grown very small.  The realisation of an ending.  Their time together is shorter than the suncast shadows.  Soon dusk will fall into another long winter’s night with no promise of spring.

I’ve printed this photo onto silk chiffon, acetate, lutrador and vilene.

I wanted to use typescript for the text, in keeping with the reportage quality of the piece.   My typewriter script is too small, so I went online to dafont.com, downloaded ‘Fucked Olympia’ and printed the haiku onto tissue paper.

For one of the pieces I zigzagged the photo onto fabric, made a pillowcase binding and collaged the text on with acrylic gel medium.  Next I’ll hand and machine quilt it.

Here I used some fabric I’d monoprinted as the base and bondawebbed the photo into place. I mixed gel medium with black paint to darken around the text and then put a layer of black tulle over the piece before machine quilting it.  I put a strip of gold mesh along the bottom to give some brightness and hope.

After the quilting, I zigzagged around the edge.

I’ll post a couple of others when I’ve done some more work on them.

Little Gems

I really did have every intention to enter a couple of quilts in the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham this year.  I went as far as registering and when my entry forms arrived, I put the unopened envelope somewhere in my studio.  By the time I remembered and found the envelope, I discovered that I had missed the deadline by about a month.

However, I did find out about Little Gems, A4 sized quilts made and donated to raise funds for the new Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles Museum and Gallery in York. There will be a tombola at the FoQ and I can hand in my entries at the show.  I just lo-o-o-o-ve extended deadlines.

I am working on a series of Little Gems using photos I took at London’s Southbank on New Year’s Day in 2006.  I’m exploring and experimenting with transparency and layers and man-made textiles.

The first one is Southbank Trees, based on a photo taken near the National Theatre.

I used a technique I learned in a Sheer Landscapes workshop with Ineke Berlyn which I took in Summer 2006.  A bottom layer of nylon organza, then cotton and silk fabrics for the trees, banners and concrete.  I used a sheet of fabric I made from Angelina for the rain puddle and then topped it all with a layer of tulle.  Using a very low tension on my Bernina, I stitched it all together.  As a guide for the stitiching, I had traced the tree branches and lines in the concrete onto water soluble fabric and pinned it on top of the ’sandwich’.

Here’s what happens when it is held up to the light!

More to follow  .  .  .  .

The Spotted Dog

I haven’t been up to very much fibre art in the past few months.  Partly due to moving and not having much studio space (all due to change shortly as I will be moving into a large top floor flat in April with a dedicated nap room/ studio), spending concentrated amounts of time with my Sweetie between here and Birmingham where he currently resides and to be honest, my most recent work-in-progress is quite emotionally difficult and challenging .  .  .  .  .  more on that another time.

I did however, this winter, make and hang a comissioned accordion book in The Spotted Dog, a Digbeth gem in Birmingham, UK.  The comission came about on 5th September, 2008 when I went to Friday night Pimms-o-Clock to meet  Nicky Getgood, Doyenne of Digbeth.  Coincidently, I also met my destiny that night.  Does one ever plan for that? .  .  .  .  more on this another time.  I had taken some of my artmoney and a few small samples of my work.  Landlord John Tighe not only let me buy a round of drinks with artmoney, but he comissioned me on the spot to capture his pub in image and stitch.  The Spotted Dog is a lovely traditional pub with strong leanings towards its Irish roots.

The Spotted Dog

Silly me, I didn’t take any photos of the book before it was framed, but here are some of the images I used  .  .  .

buddha

One of John’s antique phonographs, currently at the centre of a controversial Noise Abatement Order. . . .

Irish men watching hurling

There’s nothing like a Guinness

18th and 19th century deeds

buddha

Once the book was completed, I had it framed with a clear perspex front and back so that it can be viewed from both sides.

Front

Back

buddha

The framed piece was hung with a piano hinge on the left side so that it can be swung away from the wall and viewed from the back as well.

buddha

One of the finest compliments of all for a comission  .  .  .  .

“It looks like it’s always been there”

Festival of Quilts Vidcast

Bonnie McCaffery has just released her latest vidcast, a tour around the 2008 Festival of Quilts Exhibit in Birmingham, England.  If you weren’t lucky enough to be there, come have a look!