Looking and learning

Bill Jacklin: Crossing the square in the snow

In the RA Summer show there are many prints, and this year I paid more close attention to them. I have only just started my printmaking classes, and am intrigued by so many aspects of the medium and its techniques. I have long enjoyed Bill Jacklin's work, and I think that he probably had a strong influence on the work I produced for my attempt at monotype printing, as shown in this previous post. So far (and it is not very far at all) I am drawn to this technique in particular because it provides me with a means of creating an image which is different from my methods with the computer.

Paula Rego: Escape

Paula Rego has a hand coloured version of this etching in the RA exhibition. I love her work, and am always intrigued by the subject matter. I also find interesting the idea of producing a series of multiples which are then further treated individually, as in the hand colouring.

Allen Jones: Letters

I was surprised to find four of these delightful small prints by Allen Jones in the exhibition. Usually his work is very bold, defined, poster-like, sexual, ... but these are mysterious, intimate, personal, and they appealed to me. This link shows a wider range of his drawings and prints.

These are all figurative - I was looking in particular at work to which my own might vaguely relate. I did also seek out prints by Ian McKeever because I am so moved by his work. They can be seen on the bottom row at the left of the opening in the photo in this link. With a better view on the Alan Cristea Gallery website. As I stated in my previous post, I feel that McKeever's smaller work tends to be lost in the context of such a visual mix. The large paintings can command a stillness around them; but for me the effect of the prints and gouaches wither somewhat in the context.

An artist new to me, however, illustrates a printing technique which I want to explore further: chine colle. Andrzej Jackowski's Woman with trees was like a magnet to me, and unlike the McKeevers somehow created a whole tardis-like world of its own when I stood in front of it.

Taking me back

one of the pieces in the touring Fabric and Form exhibition

I was sad to read that Tadek Beutlich had died. Sad not only because such an innovative studio artist has ceased to be, but also that I had not thought about his work for such a long time.
I first really took note of his work in the late 70s in Crafts magazine which in those days was full of such exciting work. Then in 1983 I was lucky enough to be in Zimbabwe to see works in the British Council touring exhibition Fabric and Form, New Textile art from Britain, selected by Michael Brennand-Wood. I scanned the piece above from that catalogue.
There is very little online, but I have tracked down some links to images: here, here, here, here, and here. The last two, when I saw the pieces originally excited me to beginning to think about figurative textiles, just before I embarked on working in the field myself.
Through my online trawling I also found that he produced prints - which links in nicely to the exploration I am currently making of that medium. Beutlich's death has spurred me to look again at that time when I began to be aware of the world of studio crafts.

Hot day in the city

We went up to London to visit the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy today. Last year we had left out the architecture room, thinking that we would return - but didn't. So this year we decided to do it in two bites - with lunch in between - on one day, ... and a collapse with tea and cake at the end!

The beginning was very good. In the courtyard is Jeff Koons' stunning piece Coloring Book. My snaps are first looking up, second the side view, and third ...

a view apparently through the piece. It is a reflection of the building behind me that can be seen in the photo, but because it is set in a square of similar build, it looks transparent.

The rest of the exhibition is interesting, less frenetic as there are fewer pieces, but I was drawn to little on show. My absolute favourite beyond doubt is the Anselm Kiefer beautiful Aurora. Nothing quite blew me away like that did.

I was delighted by Sonia Lawson's works throughout the rooms, but especially by Edge of Spring, and Fait du beaux reve.
There were works by people whose work I like, but nothing especially different to strike me. I was slightly disappointed with the placement of Ian McKeever's prints and acrylics. To me they suffer from the proximity of the funfair of the hang.

As ever, however, I make new discoveries. Last year it was Hughie O'Donoghue. This year it was two sculptors: Ann Christopher with Marks on the edge of space, and Kenneth Draper. The work of each of them has set my brain tingling. And tea and cake in the Friends' Room was refreshing!

Bearing witness: art without artifice

Guy Tillim: Petros Village Malawi 2006 (copyright)

Santu Mofokeng 'Nousta, Rister and Noupa Mkansi at home in Dan, Tzaneen, their parents Richard and Onica are both dead' (from the series Child Headed Households) 2007 (copyright)

These are two of my favourite photographers in the current exhibition Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography on at the V&A museum in London. I am not a great fan of conceptual art in most cases, and like it least in the field of photography. There is at least one example in this exhibition, and a couple of photographers whose work did not engage me; but, most of the work is a straightforward but masterly and honest engagement with the subjects.

This might seem strange given that the figures in the top photo are running out of shot. The series showed lively 'stills' from life in the village, and felt like a true capture of a group of children. Mofokeng's picture above is a more conventional portrait shot, but for me spoke volumes without sentimentality not only about a dire situation but about the matter-of-fact dignity of just getting on with that situation.

This is the aspect of photography I enjoy the most: art without artifice. I don't mean that there is no technical tweaking (I have no idea if there was in these cases - and I don't mind if there was) - what I mean is there is no pseudo-intellectual jiggery pokery such as in conceptual art, where you have to read the label to have any idea of what is going on. I mean that there is no laboured sentimentality and attempted manipulation of emotional reaction. This is just looking your subjects in the eye and letting them look back at you and subsequent viewers.

There is also a further display of the work of one of the photographers in the exhibition: David Goldblatt: Lifetimes: Under Apartheid. It is shocking how quickly one can forget that the poor and oppressed under one regime can remain poor and oppressed even if the circumstances change. This is the other kind of photography which I really appreciate: bearing witness.

This is what art is about: providing an experience which makes one stop, think, feel, and then stays burned in the memory in some shape or form, continuing that influence.

Food for thought

my lunch on Sunday at the V&A cafe

Yesterday a wrote a post for the Ragged Cloth Cafe site, spurred on by the abrupt demise of Fiberarts magazine and the end of Telos art publishing. With regard to the former there has been a discussion on Linkdin which is linked from the Ragged Cloth Cafe, with the concern widening to encompass the digital/print debate.
I love print on paper - everything from art books to recycled paper bags. Printed materials still hold the allure of exotic fare for me - on the other hand already too much of my diminishing future is spent drinking in stuff online. But that's my beef! It's meaty content I crave in whatever form. And not just visual stimulus, although that is important.
Years ago I was a commissioning editor responsible for a children's non-fiction list. Non-fiction in many ways was the poor relative within the children's book field: picture story books and fiction having top spots. Then along came Dorling Kindersley! I still remember the awe we non DK folks experienced at the bookfair in Bologna when we saw the display of 17 different language covers of the same book spread across their stand. The design blew us away. It was so exciting: a new era in publishing! It is difficult to convey now what a leap this was, after over 30 years . I see from the DK website that in fact their covers today look so much more relatively conventional. This title on this page in Amazon was how the first Eyewitness Guides looked.
So many publishers now wanted to 'do a Dorling Kindersley', and at last I thought that I had evidence to request a larger design budget! So many people were seduced, BUT, ... what did the design support? It turned out to be glorious packaging for surfing the information. And what struck me as saddest of all was that was what most people wanted. Gloss first, content later - perhaps.
Dorling Kindersley went on to publish many other books and series which had and have tremendous amounts of content. Indeed we always turn to them when we travel to a new area, because they do provide well designed accessible worthwhile information. But the people who followed DK's example most often did not care about content, just about the fast selling packaging.

Is it universally assumed that everyone wants everything instantly now? Is it imperative to hook the viewer, the buyer, the judge instantly or fail? My mother suffers from expressive dysphasia since her stroke, and because so many (most) of the nurses etc. do not read her notes they instantly put down that she is 'confused'. Let me tell you that her mind is still razor sharp! What ever happened to time for critical judgment?

Anyway, I'm ranting too much. I should be spending the time reading well written content-rich articles and books instead.

They don't fit

Remember

As I stated not so long ago I am no good at making work to fit a theme. Also, because my work takes such a long time to finish, working to a deadline can become tricky. I do keep my eyes open for exhibitions which could possibly fit my work, however - because I would dearly love to exhibit more. So I was delighted when I came across a call for entries to an exhibition entitled Layers of Memory. Wonderful, I thought. I was at the time working on the quilt pictured above: Remember. And my quilt Surfacing is all about emotions and memories. Indeed several of my pieces are about memory in different ways.

Great. This was just the spur I needed to finish Remember, and have it photographed.

All well and good. So I returned to the particulars, and my jaw dropped. Not only would I have to fit the theme, but I also had to fit the size criteria.

And both quilts did not fit. Remember is too wide, and Surfacing is too narrow and too tall.

Surfacing

So I shall have to remember next time I am scanning the calls for entry that not only must I check out the theme and the date, but even in the wildest chance they should fit - I must make sure that I read all the criteria before I think my work might possibly be appropriate.

Rush of blood to the head

Red hen

In my main work I was happily progressing through a pile of quilt forms, and at present am in the middle of a fairly large one. Then over a week ago my mother was rushed into hospital, and in order to have something in my hand whilst visiting I had to turn to a small piece. It was lucky that I had one design - for The green chair on the computer which was planned for a small format (the image is to the right, in the Also stitching space) which I could quickly print and iron onto cotton and start stitching. Phew!

Warm in winter

But it seems to be taking an age to get my mother out of hospital, despite her recovery, and I am progressing through my small piece quickly. Desperation drove me to design something else suitable for the small format. Normally when this happens all creativity departs smartish, ... however for once luck was with me.

The crow's story

Over the last couple of days I have managed to come up with three designs - two of which (top and bottom) appeal to me enough to take further. The third needs to hang around for a bit to see if I still like it in future.

Oiseau(x) de Paris

This is a design - still in progress - which I developed after our one month stay in Paris in the Autumn of 2007. I like it so far, but don't know where to go with it, and in any case it does not feel right for a stitching project. So it remained in my limbo file until I was looking for a suitable image to use for making a solar print.
I did not think that the image as a whole was suitable; but thought I could isolate the bird at the top.

It was still probably too dark, I thought, so before I printed the image onto acetate I switched light and dark.

This done I was ready to make the solar plate. Well, I was ready, the whole class was ready, but tempremental sun was shyly hiding behind clouds! Eventually, after ages to get a test strip, I achieved a plate, and then a print.

First in black, and then in red. I was interested to see what difference simply using a colour can make, even though it is still a monotone.

Then, taking the original design once more, I traced some curves onto a separate acrylic plate, printed that in red and pink, and than printed the black solar plate on top of that. I was pleased with what resulted. (Of course realising that this is but infant steps - but I find it delightful to make even stuttering progress in a new field.)

After that we tried chine colle. The print below is the result of my taking a tissue paper with silver and gold fragments stuck to it (commercially available like that), very gently ! colouring it with Prismacolor blue pencils, and then tracing the first notes of Allouette onto it with a fine pen.

It is much paler than I expected, but I love the delicacy of it.
I am really enjoying learning the first inklings of this medium and these techniques. I have no idea how this will impact any work I do, but the research, the discovery, the delights - even in disappointments, make it all worthwhile.

After rain

After a week of heat and sunshine, at last some refreshing much needed rain fell at the weekend. Today we visited one of our favourite gardens: Hinton Ampner where the plants were still holding on to their droplets.

This peonie reminded me of the livestock which strains through a fence to reach the grass on the other side. I suppose that the bud was on the dark side of the leaves, and glimpsed light through the gaps in the hurdle, so pointed that way, ....

The planting combinations are most felicitous at Hinton Ampner. And there are so many complementary shapes and shades of green ...

as well as delightful clouds of red.

Not quite Athens, to Athens - and without me!

My quilt Ponder was accepted into Quilt National '11 which opened the other day. Deirdre Adams took some photos of the opening which I was not able to attend. The show looks fabulous. Also Karen Davis said nice things about my work. On Kathleen Loomis' Art with a needle blog there are several posts about the exhibition: here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here and here - so far.

I was really pleased to be in the show, for all the usual reasons, but also because this quilt has come on journeys with me. I was working on it for two years running on my trips to Greece with my mother. It was not in Athens, Greece, but close enough. It was great that the quilt made it to Athens, Ohio although I didn't.

Summer's day

For me a meadow is the picture conjured when thinking of a summer's day in England. I have spent most of my adult life, and all of my married life in England, but I still do not feel native. From my outsider view I find that the county of Dorset sums up as near perfection when trying to describe summer in England.
Yesterday was the first hot day which felt like summer, and we happened to be in Dorset. We decided to visit Kingston Lacy to wander round its grounds and gardens.

This peacock quite deceived me at first. It is a wire sculpture by Paula Joule Blake. There were more birds around the grounds made by this artist, but none attracted me as much as the peacock.

The grounds are extensive, and beyond this ha-ha was a field of red cattle. They were sensible, however, and were in the shade of the vast trees, and did not come out to be photographed.

My favourite area of the grounds was the fern garden which also had the advantage on such a hot sunny day of being cool. I love the sculptural qualities of ferns in their many manifestations, their diversity and their similarities, and their intriguing intricacy. In here was another of Paula Joule Blake's wire sculptures - in this case a Murder of Crows!

And for me the most successful colour other than green in the grounds was red, in its many and varied manifestations - it was quite inspirational

A favourite sculptor

There is a display of the work of Elisabeth Frink at Bournemouth University at present. Having missed one exhibition of her work last year, I was determined to see this one. This week is half term and therefore a holiday from my printing course - so wanting to make sure I had a day away from home, we decided to head south.

The work hangs and stands not in a dedicated exhibition space or gallery, but on the walls of two adjacent building, in a foyer, and as seen in the top photo in the cafe. My husband and I both enjoyed the feeling of being back in a space designed for serious thinking - we both liked the atmosphere of the buildings we encountered, and it was a pleasure to be able to spend time with the work, discussing it within the working environs of the university.

From the build-up we had expected somewhat more on her methods, thinking, and development rather than simply quotes from her on large posters. However, it was enough to get me thinking, and was a reaffirmation of what I like about her work. That bold figurative sweep of her marks, the affirmation of life, even if the humanity might be questionable. Enigma, that's what I respond to.

The catalogue accompanying the display, available for £5 is more than value for money. Here is a review in a local paper which also has a film showing the display.

Outside, the university continued to delight us with its architecture, and with the display of geological samples: a sculpture park in itself.

A fitting theme - or a theme that fits?

I find it such a lottery with exhibitions.

There are the big shows which display the work of fewer than 100 folks, but to which many hundreds submit. Then there are the themed shows - but I find that my work rarely fits the theme. And I seem to be unsuited to sitting down and producing to an ordered theme. Not to mention the time it takes to make my pieces anyway.

Then sometimes a theme comes along for which my work is appropriate. And having submitted, am accepted! My quilt forms Waiting, above, and Snagged (to the left) will be appearing in the mixed art HerStory exhibition in Winchester from 8 June to 8 July.