Under the Sea: Coral Cave

I tell myself – enough now!

There are other projects pending.

Do I listen – of course not!

And there is still plenty of my Mum’s stash to use up.

Plus, I woke with an idea for an underwater coral cave, using a small cardboard box as the base.This is where my obsessive mind is taking me this morning

Work in progress – wouldn’t it be cool to have some twinkly lights inside the cave – I know I have some somewhere ……….

Oh Mrs Snail! You have set me off on this very engrossing tangent ….. when will you be setting up the window? That might give  me a stop time. 🙂

Under the Sea: Crocheted Coral

As many of you know, I love creative collaboration.

So when Mrs Snail posted her Scrap Happy post about their proposed shop window display, I was immediately digging out suitable scraps of yarn to make some coral.

You might be interested in this Ted Talk about a couple of women who coinordinated an enormous crocheted Coral Reef and link the forms to mathematics

https://darlombfiberart.wordpress.com/category/freeform-crochet/

It is the most wonderfully relaxing, freeing and freeflowing way to crochet – anything goes. Mrs Snail emailed her pattern to me and then I just went for it, making spontaneous changes to size and numbers of stitches to form these delicious little sculptures.

They are so tactile and wonderfully squidgy and fascinating in the way they change as you move them around.

I wanted to make big pieces and thought I would share how I made mine with you, in case you want to have a go.

I have used a 5.5mm hook with DK yarn. But you can use any size of hook with any size of yarn.

The Crochet terms I use are US terms.

Ch4 to start (or make a magic ring if you prefer

Slip stitch into the beginning chain to form a circle.

Ch3 to make the first stitch, 7dcs into the circle.

Sl st into the 3rd beginning chain.

Ch3, 2dcs or 3 dcs into each st all the way round, Hdc into the 3rd starting ch and continue round in a spiral from now on.

Increase at random whenever you like.

If you want it to be big, increase less often to grow the central area, with more increases towards the edge.

I made the edge look extra frilly by single crochet, ch2, single crochet in the next stitch all the way round.

I was able to use up some of my Mum’s stash

Popcorn stitches add texture and interest.

I love the look and feel of them and will keep some for myself, but I’m not sure what to do with them!

I used cotton for this one, but found that it does not hold the shape as well as acrylic yarn

They devour yarn, so it is an excellent Scrap Happy project.

I’m joining Kate and her other Happy Scrappers.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
 Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa,
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

 

Textile Sculpture with Sally Freshwater

Last Thursday I went to West Dean College for a course with Sally Freshwater.

The photo shows some of her demonstration pieces.

This is a close up of the little curvaceous vase, made out of black lace

held along the seam with rusting nails.

It was my 4th time at West Dean – I love it!

The view from my room

For supper I chose pulled shoulder of lamb and a dinky treacle tart for dessertthere are always lots of choices at each meal and the food is fantastic.

When we entered our workspace, we were all amused by the notes on the white board from the previous groupThe workshops are superbly equipped.I do love a good gadget, and this drying rack ….. isn’t it wonderful!

Sally showed us some slides on the first night of lots of different artists’ in textile sculpture.

This is her work which hung in Gatwick airport for a couple of decades, plane shapes flying across the ceiling
I wish I had seen it

My first project was an attempt at creating a jug out of teabags

which didn’t turn out as I had hoped but I had fun trying,

I cut it in half (back left in the next photo) and made some bowls. I will show you more in another post.

Scrap Happy Baubles

I guess most people, seeing a old bit of steel cable, rusting in a hedge, would have walked by without a second thought but ….

to me it was treasure and full of potential.

Then I saw Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas and knew what needed to happen next.

Scrunch up some newspaper into a ball and wrap wire around it. Kirstie uses florist’s wire, which I suspect is a lot thinner than my find.I cut the wire with the red handled pliers and then turned the ends into little hooks with the other pliers, hooking each new piece on and pulling the wire as tightly as I could.

Then the fun bit!Burn the newspaper. It takes longer than I thought it would to get the scrunched up paper to completely burn away. I put mine in the woodburner, but Kirstie used a barbeque.

I know these baubles would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think they are seriously cool. Especially the shadows they create.And with a few found feathersand a bit of festive blingit is edging dangerously close to looking a bit Christmassy around here.

I am joining in with Kate and her band of Happy Scrappers:

Kate, Gun, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jill, Jan, Moira, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol,
Preeti, Debbierose, Nóilin and Viv

An inspiring monthly meme which supports using up our scraps of any variety.

Silent Sunday at Sculpture by the Lakes

Sculpture by the Lakes

Jiaxi Li

I wonder  if this sculpture is a candidate for Silly Saturday.

Is it silly, clever, fun, crazy?

Knitted Sculpture by Jiaxi Li

One of the exhibits at the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show.

I love the idea and the colours and can only imagine how much experimentation went into working out how to create a self-supporting knitted sculpture of the fireplace. I hope it finds the right home.

I am certainly interested in seeing more work by this artist.

You can see more of her work here and on Instagram.

In a Vase on Monday – Vintage Plough Share

Eucalyptus clippings and self-seeded wallflowers in a glass vase and a little found shrimp paste pot; an old brick found on the beach, and put in the fire to clean off the black tar; a vintage plough share, washed and waxed with furniture wax, and some rusty old sheep wire formed into a spiral.

I was walking along a farm track with my daughter and her three children a couple of weeks ago and spied a piece of rust embedded in the chalk and rubble of the track. (Not this track but one very similar – this photo was taken on Friday)

Oooh Rust! I cried! and bent down to try to pick it up. I couldn’t get the piece out, so said I would come back another day to retrieve it and bring a tool to work it free. The children were determined to get it out for me, and with some sticks and stones they only took about 5 minutes to free it. I always have my rucksack with me, which was just as well as it was heavy to carry home.

A precious (well to me anyway) piece of farming history. My son-in-law recognised it as a single furrow plough share, from the horsedrawn era and spent a bit of time looking online to see if he could identify it more precisely. It might have come from something like this one.

Just the sort of plough that my Grandfather would have walked behind on his farm in West Dorset.

When I sent this photo to my son-in-law later, he said it looked like an alien snail

So the working title for this little sculpture is ‘Snailien’.

What does it look like to you?     What would you call it?

It’s catching – Little Miss M, 8, has now started her own rust collection!

and this is Miss E (13) having her first welding lesson from her Dad, what a cool Dad he is!

It turns out she was making a flower/plant for me! and when I got home that night she had planted it in my garden!

Oh my! Better than diamonds – this makes me so happy.

This is a great fat rainbow I saw on my walk on Friday – it looked so much closer and bigger in reality. Maybe there is a pot of rust at the end of it! 😉

Joining Cathy who is Rambling in her Garden this morning and giving us a Little Love to help us grow.

❤ 🙂 ❤

Scrap Happy: Weaving

It is the last month of The Stitchbook Collective and this month’s box of goodies is all about weaving.

Helen has sent us a kit to create a loom on cardboard but, you must know by now, it’s all about rust for me! So what better than some old rusty sheep wire to create my own little loom.

and as if by magic

it fits perfectly on the Stitchbook page.

It needs a backing to cushion the spikes of the rusty barbed wire.

As I was doing the weaving with yarn, I wondered whether it would work with just bits of metal woven through linen thread. I have to admit, I am thrilled with this one.

I am not quite sure how to mount it, but I am just enjoying it as is for now.

When Little Miss M (8) saw my weaving she asked if she could have a go, so I made two more looms for our afternoon by the lake.

We collected reeds and other bits and pieces, and she sat on her paddle board to weave

and together we made our diptych entitled ‘An afternoon by the lake’

I am planning to mount them in a box frame when they have fully dried.

Joining Kate and her merry band of scrappers for Scrap Happy Day

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan,
Moira, Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Connie, Bekki, Pauline,
Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin and Vera

 

Little Altars at Home

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will know how much I loathe housework, but these are strange times! Today found me actually wanting to give the bathroom a thorough going over!

As I was putting things back on the windowsill, I realised that every item has a special memory or significance to me.

Left to right:

There is an Umbrella plant, that I grew from a root cutting given to me by a dear friend who I see only rarely nowadays. She is currently staying somewhere in deepest India, unable to return home due to the transport system in that country being under lockdown. The glass bowl it sits in, has been with me since I got married in 1972, nothing special, not beautiful, but it has become an old familiar friend.

In a little pot next to it are some honeysuckle cuttings, waiting to see if they grow roots, so that I can give some little plants to my daughter as requested.

The fish shaped little dish holds a bumble bee that sadly died in my bathroom, I know Little Miss M (7) would love to see it, so I am keeping it for when she is able to come into my house again.

The clay dolphin was made by Miss E when she was about 8. I took her to some wonderful sculpture and stone-carving worshops when she was being homeschooled.

I bought the brass incense burner with the Ohm symbol when I was travelling in 1994 and visiting Buddhist communities all round the world – such powerful memories. It reminds me of chanting in the echoing valleys of the Himalaya Mountains.

The scallop shell was given to me by my neighbour, who is a diver, and brings me yummy scallops in the summer. The shells it holds all come from the beaches of my beloved Pembrokeshire, collected on my month in a treehouse by the sea.

Sea glass, collected on my local beaches, in times gone by.

A collection of tiny white pebbles – there is something so beautiful about them.

The twisted piece of wire with beads: this was a spiral Christmas decoration I had been making with my grandchildren

One of them sat in the bathroom, and after the twins came to stay – I found this one had been just too tempting to resist – I rather like the resulting tiny wire sculpture.

The jam jar has more honeysuckle cuttings,

and the shell on the right was given to me by my Mum when I was a teenager.

A whole lot of family, friends and memories on that tiny windowsill.

Do you have similar little collections about the house?

Dreamcatcher

Look what I found, hanging in my fig tree!

My wonderful son-in-law is a farmer and he was clearing away an old rusty fence. Knowing how much I love rust, he wrapped some into a Dreamcatcher for me and hung it in my Fig Tree.

He also left another bundle of rust for me to cut up and use.

I am so delighted with the thought and the time he put into this in his busy day.

When I thanked him for the time, the thought, the gift, he said, “I like supporting your crazy arty-crafty ways”!

How lucky am I!

Antony Gormley at the RA

Antony Gormley is one of my creative heroes. In the video at the end of this RA  link about the exhibtion and he says that ‘the viewer is the subject of the show’. Worth listening to.

When I go to see an art exhibition I usually whizz round to get a sense of the whole, then I go back and spend time with the pieces I’m drawn to, then I go round again and take photos of the pieces,

then I go round again and notice how other people are interacting with the exhibits

This is one of my favourite things to do

 

Here is an excellent review by Studio International

I hope you enjoyed people watching with me.

At a few exhibitions recently I have started to take photos of people who go with the paintings they are viewing and then I came across this amazing post about Stefan Draschan’s work, take a look – fascinating.

An Arty Week

You might know that I am drawn to all things Japanese (here are some links to my posts about my trip to Japan in 2015) and have been most of my adult life. So when I saw a course at a highly respected art school entitled Abstract Painting and Wabi Sabi I just had to book a place.

You can Google ‘Wabi Sabi’ to find a definition and will get a few different results, I fear it might lose something in translation but in the context of abstract works of art this is my own best shot: the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi, briefly/loosely translated as the celebration of materials and imperfection, leaving things unfinished for the viewer to complete it in their own experience of the piece. 

I learnt by doing, that it is also about immersing oneself in the materials, the properties of the materials and about how ones body and inner senses respond to the materials.

After booking this course, I heard about an exhibition in which a blogging friend, Alastair Duncan was exhibiting his interactive weaving, which I talked about in this post.

AND THEN!

ANTONY GORMLEY at the Royal Academy – I just had to go and see that!

To fit all this in I stayed in an Air BnB in Horsham in West Sussex, which had free parking and was just a 10 minute walk to the train station. In just over an hour I could be in Central London.

I drove the 3 hours to  Horsham last Saturday.

Visited the Espacio Gallery on Sunday – which I will tell you about in a future post.

There I met with 2 other members of the Stitchbook Collective – Oh SO lovely to make these creative connections!!

On Monday I travelled up to the Royal Academy for the Antony Gormley exhibition, which was absolutely amazing of course, but not quite so impactful as his exhibition in 2007 at the Hayward Gallery which I often think of and stays with me on some deep inner level.

And then on Tuesday I started my Wabi Sabi voyage of discovery with Helen Turner in Partridge Green, just a 20 minute drive each day from my cosy self-catering pad.

I loved every minute! I got home yesterday.

So much to tell you about. So many photos to sift through!

Silent Sunday

120, Fenchurch Street

Hellooo!

Here we are again, this time on top of 120, Fenchurch Street – wow that sun was bright!

(see previous post about the Sky Garden at 20, Fenchurch St)

That is ‘The Gherkin’ in the background.

To get up to the roof garden at 120, you just turn up and queue. As people come out, more are let in – we only had a couple of people in front of us and didn’t have to wait at all. You go through an airport-style security scanner before getting into the lift.

This garden is open to the sky with native planting and it is much quieter and calmer than in the tropical lushness of the other garden.

I loved the play of light and shadows on the floor, walls and plants.

There are no restaurants there, but it is a perfect place to take a packed lunch as most of these people seemed to have done.

They were perched on the edge of the rather awkward looking water feature, more comfortable seating would be a bonus.

From this terrace you can see ‘The Walkie-Talkie’ building and look at where we had been just a few minutes ago – in the garden on top of that building.

so much to enjoy, looking in, looking up, looking through, looking out, with a few surreal reflections where the glass wall was high

and looking down and DOWN!

On the way out you pass under a vast ceiling covered with a moving video art installation

it is called Botanic and is a picture of slowly swirling flowers as if they are floating in a dark pool. It is part of Sculpture in the City.

and as we walked back to the tube station we spotted some more, this one with a very long title that makes very little sense to me, and is something to do with lava and volcanoes

and this

Bridging Home

which could be very witty …….hmmm. Perhaps I need to find out a bit more about them to appreciate them more.

Edit: I looked for more images and information about this piece. I wanted to see the piece up closer and from the inside. I found this which says the Footbridge was closed so that the piece was not vandalised. Grrr! So eventually it will be removed. I seem to have a whole load of thoughts and emotions swirling around about that. It would have been good to have had a video to experience this replica of a displaced home. I get the reference to migrants and displacement and the fact that the ‘home’ looks as if it has been just dropped uncomfortably out of context, I just wish it’s message could have been presented in a more accessible way.

Searching for all of the 21 sculptures and getting up close to them could be a nice focus for another visit to London.

I will end with a photo my son took just before we left The City.

Look up!

and went back to his house to spend a delightful weekend with him and his three girls, whilst their Mum was on a girly birthday celebration holiday.

Silent Sunday

Dalby Forest 2: The Nissen Hut

Ever since seeing Cathy’s post about Rachel Whiteread’s, I was looking forward to seeing it. Cathy’s post sparked off a lively and forthright debate about what her readers thought of it and whether it is indeed ‘Art’, if you follow the link you can go to the comments and see what we all had to say about it.

I am a fan of Rachel Whiteread and her work, you can see other posts I’ve written about it, here, here , here and here.

It’s not easy to sum up why I relate to her work, but I think it is about the way she gives the small, seemingly trivial aspects of human activity, construction and development a monumental quality. She uses real objects that show the marks of time and use and sets them in a monotone, permanent structure that gives us a chance to explore the details in a new way, and think about the hands that created the original structure and all that it connects to.

To me this is a war memorial that does not speak of the military, hierarchy or grand gestures, this commemorates Peter Nissen, the man who designed a pracitcal solution to a required need, during the First World War. The sculpture remembers the men who constructed it and lived in it and it connects us to those who constructed other Nissen huts over decades and all the different uses they have been put to. This one also commemorates the men who worked for the forestry and planted the forest it sits within. It commemorates time passing with the flaws and evidence of decay. It is the only permanent public piece in Britain of this, our most successful living female sculptor, it relates to all her other works throughout the world.

Making art is not only about making something that looks nice. If it causes one to think about things in a different way it has done its job. Without knowing the story of this sculpture it would be difficult to appreciate what on earth it is doing in the forest.

That is the same for most art – if we don’t want to discover more about it, we can just walk on by, but taking time to discover the story is, for me, an enriching, thought provoking and sometimes emotional experience.

Here is a link to a short video about this sculpture

an article about the sculptor’s family connection,  her grandfather was a conscientious objector.

Not everyone will see it in the same way and all views are valid. Some of the locals were very much against it. I’d love to know what you think.

So that is the ‘deep and meaningful’ bit – now for a bit of silliness

In Cathy’s original post she wondered if the Nissen Hut would attract graffitti,  and Tialys’s comment prompted this quickly scrawled temporary bit of graffitti.

We was

and you can see a few more pics on this post of Cathy’s.

As we left it was getting dark and the sculpture took on a quiet ghostly glow through the trees

 

Somerset House 5: Time

I am still trying to understand why this exhibit had such a profound effect on me.

The Title is Time is Subjective and you can read more about it here.

70 hour glasses filled with sand

all gleaming in a dark space underground

there was something beautiful about the colour of the sand against the black and the sparkle of the glasses

and then they began to move

 

one row after the other

The sands of time.

I felt so deeply connected to the idea and concept of rows of hour glasses, every so often turning slowly and another cycle would start, another event causing time to pass in a different way, at a different rate, with periods of stillness in between. The soft twinkle of the sand falling through and landing on the grains beneath …  and so many all together, all connected.

I am still not sure where that gets to me or why it does, but it does.

~~~

Thank you so much to all of you who have enjoyed this brief 5 part tour of the London Design Biennale. It has truly enriched my experience of the event to have you all along with me as I remember the experience.

I love going to exhibitons on my own so that I can experience them from my own perspective in silence; and then to be able to go round the exhibits again on a virtual tour with you, my blogging friends, is something very special, seeing things again with new eyes, the eyes of a collective creative group ………… so good!

Can you imagine us all going round together singly or in pairs and then meeting up and chatting about the exhibits whilst sitting in the sunshine in the piazza with a cappucino or a green tea and cake!

And then going back for another look all together ….

If you would like to go back in and wander around some more exhibits you can see them all here

Farewell London Design Biennale ……..  looking forward to the next one!

 

Somerset House 4

Now for a quick dash through some of the exhibits as my penultimate post about this fantasmagorical exhibition! Come on – keep up!

First up, Full Spectrum:  Australia’s Celebration of gay marriage being accepted by law

I liked the way the rainbow lights shone out of the darkness in such a playful way – metaphorically beautiful.

Next a room to make you giddy with exotic scents and mesmerizing patterns

from  Hong Kong, Sensorial Estates: lift the lids and inhale deeply! Heady stuff!

And now a quick trip to Guatamala. This exhibit really deserves more time – click on the link to discover more and see much better photos. Such a great project.

Closer to home: Dundee and Shpeel

Each button on the black box, when pressed created a different light effect on the wall and different sounds. It was fun to play with these and feel like a conductor of light and sound. I played for some time here and  it got even better when I was joined by a group of students – I got a tiny teeny titchy sense of what it must be like to be Jean Michel Jarre! Ha!

 

Lastly, for this post, kaleidoscopic doodles from Saudi Arabia – blurred because they were constantly moving. Oh how I would love to be able to do this with my mandala doodles.

It makes me feel charged with electricity just thinking about it! A mandala doodle as a kaleidoscopic mirrored wall – oh my goodness wouldn’t that be trippy!

Gosh I have to stop now and go off into my mandala-doodle-filled fantasy – I might be lost all day!

Click on the links to discover more about each exhibit.

See you soon with my last post about the London Design Biennial at Somerset House.

Somerset House 2

In one corner of the courtyard there was Turkey’s contribution to the London Design Biennial exhibition, a cube made of white rods embedded with lights. You can read a description/explanation here. It is called ‘Home’, but I did not find any resonance with the title or the explanation. I did enjoy it though, it must have looked wonderful at night. The best bit was watching how others interacted with the space. There were some gorgeous romantic photographs being taken of girlfriends, couples and family groups, who all seemed to glow within this white space.

It got me thinking how wonderful it would be to have an exhibition of spaces/settings that would be perfect for photographic portraits. For instance, Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures would be perfect.

Click on any photo to see it larger

There was an exhibit ‘Kiss in Budapest’. The idea was that a person would enter from either end and kiss in the middle – outside the booth their picture would be displayed againt the backdrop of live webcam photos of places in Budapest. Fun idea.

Inside Somerset House room after room was filled with interactive exhibits.

This one from Qatar

I could only get a faint floral whiff from a couple of the domes, maybe I needed to be taller, but I did like the shape of the carpet.

On to Germany’s exhibit of recycled household items

I loved this standard lamp made of bottle tops, maybe I’ll try a table lamp one day.

Made from Beach Clean too – win-win!

Here are a couple of  links if you would like to read more about the Exhibition

Kiss in Budapest FB page.

‘Culture Trip’

Somerset House FB Page

Somerset House on Instagram

 

Somerset House 1

Last Friday I went to London to stay with Son number 2 and his family, but first a bit of art at Somerset House where they are holding the London Design Biennial

‘Emotional States’

40 countries participated

In the courtyard there were several pieces of interactive art/sculpture – my favourite type of art.

Greece provided a wobbly walkway that was entitled (click on the title to see the description)

ΑΝΥΠΑΚΟΗ

My own experience of it emphasized that every step we take has an impact.

As you entered the sides expanded and opened up, with a creaky sound, each step made the next section open up for you, each step felt a bit wobbly

so you had to think about keeping your balance. It was made of recycled plastic.

A whole body experience has an impact on all the senses – every step I take makes a difference …  to something, or somebody.

If I know it in my body, I know it forever.

There was so much to see and interact with in the whole exhibition, and as you can imagine I took hundreds of photos. It is taking me a while to process the photos and the feelings that each exhibit evoked …… more to come.