How many times do you need to photograph a three dimensional textile? I think you can never have too many images. [I’m getting good with the ‘smudge’ brush to get rid of unwanted marks such as some odd shapes that seem to appear in the reflective surfaces.]
Now for the fun time in labelling and packaging – an art in itself if you do not anticipate unpacking at the other end! I’ll keep you in touch with how I do this with lots of photos, so watch this space.
Hope you like the new look of my blog – new pics, new fonts and a lovely new footer - all to reflect my current work. I am in debt to my lovely friend Jana for her help and patience. I’ve learnt a lot! [Jana is also a wonderful belly dancer and teacher.]
Thank you Jana.
A few extra thoughts via the notebook toying with spiralling thoughts and ways of placing and composition.
Also remembered the corrugated spiral structures I made for Module Three.
So, the finished piece – a stack of five Shibori spirals placed on a square mirror. Maybe a long tin mirror with them placed in a row? Maybe place them upright to look downwards? Still moving things around although running out of time as it has to be packed up by the end of this week!
Now to think of a title. It is so abstracted since my first drawings of the birds swooping across the sky, that I hope I can use a few words to make a connection.
A few scribbled notes -
‘the ballet in the skies at sunset’
‘a sunset moment in the sky ballet’
‘a moment in the sky ballet at sunset’
‘sky ballet at sunset’
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Thank you for comments you leave on my blog. I always find they give me food for thought. Taking time to stop and think about each stage of this Shibori process, I concur with Anne how fascinating these forms are when taken straight off the plastic tubing. I noticed in some of the previous ‘rolls’ that the colour of the ‘string’ was visible through the folds of the silk organza and also looked good as the string fell off the roll at the ends.
So looked for some thread that was more attractive than the soft cotton that I was using and found this paper thread and wondered whether I could colour it in ‘sunset’ colours. Using inks (that I knew weren’t permanent) I coloured some paper thread and hung little red bundles around the garden to dry and confused a lot of insects and birds!
Onwards with the Shibori process, using my newly coloured paper string and – success – this makes a firm roll with some lovely colour ‘leakage’.
I am now busy making several of these and stacking them on a mirrored surface.
Scribbled notes on a train journey. I feel the need to make my stitched strips ‘move’ and swirl’ rather than just hang. Drawing 3d solutions on a 2d surface is a challenge to your thinking but helps to start those contemplation moments where ideas can rise to the surface and crystallise.
Wrapping a trial strip around a plastic tube to steam set ‘shibori-style’, transformed the band into a narrow, rippling, twisting form.
It was interesting to see the different forms that this writhing strip can make.
Pin board thinking!
Yet again, collating things on my studio wall has helped me notice a connection between a couple of drawings of my ‘umbrella’ project and my current focus on the sweeping, swooping flow of the murmuration of birds over the Somerset wetlands. These two projects might have seemed unconnected and perhaps a bit of ‘latent thinking’ has helped to form a relationship between the two stories. So new sketchbook pages can now be rotated to vertical alignment for my next stage of thinking – nearly taking off.
take a look – work by members of Stitch Textile Artists a masterclass of textile artists who meet at Ammerdown Centre three times a year and who I have the privilege of tutoring.
