I have been very lucky and feel very privileged to have attended the private view of Art Textiles at The Whitworth in Manchester tonight. An important and fantastic new exhibition that raises the relevance of textiles as an art medium.
Hats that have been created in the round
Clay covering over bowl for support, burnished at leather hard stage.
Fired within a garden incinerator packed with paper, wood shavings and salt with kindling on the top.
Skull like appearance with blown out indentations that look like treppaning. Really interesting colouration and the burnished finish polishes up well with furniture polish.
Synthetic fibres melt during the firing process and some residual fibres are left within the vessel. Also in places the synthetic fibre has produced a sheen where they have melted.
One of the pieces after firing. Very pleased with the initial outcome.
Of the 5 hats fired, 3 survived as good examples, I have ordered another batch of clay and will try another set.
Rope felt appropriate for the bodmin piece of work, but for this the material itself does not add significance to the ideas or story for me. I have considered paper again. Paper has connotations with memory and writing diaries but again something doesn’t quite fit for me, it doesn’t feel complete enough.
I have spent quite a bit of time thinking and rethinking my thoughts. I want to use something that is reminiscent of life, that has some individuality. It suddenly dawned on me that hats fulfill my sense of this project. I started to research my ideas further.
Really excited about my new discovery I immediately set about preparing for my first experiment.
I hand spun 1 sheet of handmade wrapping paper on a drop spindle…
Using the spun paper I made a couple of paper baskets…
After the success of my bodmin prison piece I am drawn to continue to explore these techniques and ideas further. I feel that the outcome really goes the furthest to summing up my ideas of loss and the remains left.
I have previously resisted further experiments because of the requirement to attend a ceramics course or somehow find a kiln I could use. However I found a book in the £3 bookshop in Oxford about smoke firing. Smoke firing is a low firing technique that can be done at home in either a barbeque or a garden incinerator. This find is really exciting, the ability to continue to work through my ideas without huge cost. I also really like the unpredictable colouration that is achieved through this process. It has a sense of time to it, adding a historic museum bone like quality.
Whilst visiting Bratislava I discovered Slovak Blueprinting. This is a process of resist printing with indigo dyeing that has a strong traditional history but is slowly dying out. whilst there I bought this fascinating book on the subject. Ľudová modrotlač v Liptove although it is written in Slovak it is beautifully illustrated and I have used a phone app to translate some sections of the text for me.
I felt that the flower was lacking a little depth and decided to experiment with adding a further layer of black fabric at the very bottom. In the second picture below the added black adds an additional layer of bleakness, the final stage of life ie death and also the generation of forgotten souls and is also reminiscent of the Victorian mourning clothing.
Flowers through history have been synonymous with remembrance and mourning. We have flowers at funerals we plant roses as memorials to people gone, flower images are carved into headstones, poppies are used for remembrance day, flowers are left at the site of an accident etc. Immortelles are particularly interesting to me. They are an attempt to halt decay, made of ceramic and placed on graves with the added protection often of glass and a wire cage to both protect from damage and the elements.
After enjoying the beautiful peonies in my garden, they started to die. This process is significant to me, growth and death, new life as well as the layers that signify generations, as well as layers of life. Peonies remind me of my past and my family and these images have a real sadness to them. The colours of the flower become rust like and the petals gnarled and twisted.
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I experimented with colour using rust from iron filings and nails as well as onion skins and dye na flow…
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Textiles 3 learning log 