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I've had a couple of days of meetings, which have been really useful and stimulating. One was about the development of a new collaborative project (more on that another time) and the others were about my main project this year. As a result I have renewed hope about possible funding. I know I keep being vague in these posts about projects I'm planning and that is because I don't want to announce things until everything is in place...
hopefully that won't be long now.
We're in the middle of a cold spell here with snow coming and going. Yesterday was particularly wintery, with ice, remnants of last weekends' snow and then rain just to make things extra slippery. I drove over to Hebden Bridge to see Angie Rogers, an artist who's work I admire and who was kind enough to give me some time to talk through various aspects of her recent residency.
The drive over the water shed between the Calder and Aire valleys is one I love. You climb up from Haworth, through Oxenhope and then on the the moors that separate the two river systems. Whatever the weather is doing in the valley, suddenly on the moors it can be so different. It gets me every time! Yesterday it was shrouded in mist and rain with the residue of recent snow marking out the features in the landscape. It was bleak, cold and wild - bracing and breathtaking. The subtle colours of the grasses, rushes and exposed peat are interspersed with patches of snow, which make a clean backdrop for stark stems.
Persistent rain made getting out of the car to take photographs a fairly quick affair, but sketches in the warmth of the car were possible.
Coming down off the tops the fields were suddenly visible, but still through mist. A different layby, a different view. Snow drifted along the walls mark out a pattern, almost a negative of the land without the snow. Snow transforms the set of marks that make up the landscape; accentuates different features. It lingers in dips and hollows in fields, revealing something new about the surface of the land.
I have, sitting on my kitchen table, a lovely four shaft table loom.
I rescued it from going in a skip at my kids' school yesterday and still can't quite believe my luck!
It is in need of a little care and attention: one of the strings that lifts a shaft is frayed and almost broken. But really it is in pretty good condition and I wonder how long it has been sitting in a store room un-used and un-loved.
While I'm talking about studio equipment, let me introduce you to my new printing press: I bought this just before moving house and it has been wrapped up ever since, waiting for the studio to be sorted enough and set up to use it. I'm hoping it won't stay this shiny for long!
I can finally see from one side of my studio to the other! I've spent a good deal of time this week sorting, unpacking and tidying in the studio. I might even be able to work in there next week.
I'm becoming a dab hand with a drill, having put shelves, blinds and curtain rails up in various places around the house over the last couple of weeks. These shelves may not look much but they enabled me to unpack various boxes, which makes a big difference to the space. I'm finding all sorts of ways to make the best use of the space I have. In the midst of all the sorting I longed for a clean white-walled empty space, but I know it wouldn't last long: I'd only fill it with things.
These old school trays are just brilliant and are home to all sorts of bits and pieces.
I'm itching to get to work in there and it won't be long now before I can.
A trip to my parents last weekend allowed for some garden pottering, finding interesting shapes in the winter sunshine,
and winter sweet, which doesn't look like much (although is better seen from below like this rather than from above the drooping flowers) but smells amazing.
Since then I've spent most of the week at my desk doing paper work or jobs around the house. Meanwhile I dream of what my garden might become. I currently have a patch of scruffy lawn and a small patio. It isn't much yet, but it has lots of potential...
I spent a morning in the print room at college this week. As a recent graduate I was able to apply for access to the facilities for this year and got it, so I felt it was about time I started making use of it. As my studio is still a little way off being workable in and I needed to do something other than planning, paper work and sitting in front of this screen a session in the print room made sense.
I made two screens, one based on the silhouettes of items found beach combing a year or so ago and one using part of a poem written by a companion on the same trip. I purposefully made the text pretty small so that it wouldn't all expose clearly and so some of it would be legible and some wouldn't. I wanted to experiment with this and use the shape of the words on the page as much as the words themselves.
I layered prints over pages from my sketch book that had been dyed, stained and rust printed, playing about with the tones already on the paper and using different combinations of prints.
Some of these pages will be worked on more, stitched into and further dyed. Some are quite striking as they are. All are part of a process, growing ideas, developing thoughts...
do something pretty while you can
Belle and Sebastian
I am always open to opportunities for creating something and this is particularly important when I'm in the middle of a period that doesn't feel very productive creatively. I love long journeys, especially on a train (as long as it all goes to plan, but even if it doesn't there is something of an adventure about it when you have to be flexible suddenly as things change). I love that flashing past of landscape and tiny snapshots of detail. Sometimes I'll just let it flow past me and other times I want to record it.
I traveled to London again this weekend to be in the gallery for a day and then take down the Mall exhibition, which, by the way, was a real pleasure to have been involved in. Spending time alone is refreshing and being away from home somehow forces you to spend time thinking.
I have a little sketch book in my bag at all times. This one is a new one and has just words so far (wiggly ones as most were written on a moving train). Here are some of the words from my journey:
It has been the most sparklingly beautiful of winter days
clear blue sky all day
bright but pale sunshine and a hard frost, which has remained in place all day wherever the sun hasn't reached.
The almost-setting sun races along on my right
sometimes almost blinding
sometimes obscured from view
by a wall or partially by the filigree network of silhouetted trees.
The shapes of the trees cannot hide in this clear light
each one standing tall and naked and still
shadows cast by the low sun turn an otherwise featureless field into a striking series of ridges
A frozen pond
an abandoned playground
church steeples
church towers
an old windmill tower
all grey silhouettes
cut out shapes against an only-just blue sky
A solitary small cloud
shaped like a child's drawing of a horse
now a camel
then some kind of sea creature
is crossed by a small flock of birds.
Where do they go with such purpose on as cold a day as this?
The fiery orange ball slips into the horizon haze
swiftly changing the mood
bleached stubble in disarray over dark earth
Suddenly the clarity is gone
a mist adds to the gathering darkness.
On my return journey it was dark all the way so I couldn't see out of the window. Instead I read the whole of a book that I was given for my last birthday but hadn't opened yet (see the list of books by my bed): A Bigger Message - Conversations with David Hockney, by Martin Gayford. I love the fact that you can read a whole book on one journey. I would never sit and read a book like that at home, always too much else to do.
David Hockney is someone for whom my admiration and respect grow all the time. Before moving to Saltaire I knew very little about him and, for me, his work has taken time to 'get'. Having a major collection of his work a few minutes walk away from my home means that I've been able to get to know it slowly. He is such an exciting artist who is constantly pushing things. Inspiring stuff!
I feel like I'm stuck inside a rubix cube or one of those little games where you can only move one square at a time and you have to make 20 other moves before you can make the one you really want to.
I have managed to unpack a lot since moving house and slowly things are getting straight. The studio was, until Monday, completely jammed with boxes with just a little passage to get to the washing machine and freezer (this is my cellar and so also utility room). Then the removal people came to take away my empty boxes, which suddenly gave me the space to empty some more and so the studio looked like this:
Believe me, this was an improvement! Suddenly I could start to get a feel for the room. I then spent time over the next couple of days sorting and shifting things about. I put together the plan chest where I store my paper and previous mounted work (this involved a great deal of swearing - it isn't really a one person job). I got to the end of the day I'm afraid to say that the room didn't look much different, things had just changed places. Basically I have too much stuff.
I know that it will all come together eventually and that the sorting I'm doing isn't wasted time at all. There isn't much creativity going on though, which gets me down. So this afternoon I've been doing some research towards a project I'll be doing this year and I'm quite excited. More about that another time...
