Brrrrr! Birthday Bear

Another Birthday and another wonderful outfit for my Birthday Bear.  Just in time for the frosty weather.

Crisis of conscience

I have next Friday booked off from work.  Do I go to my Contemporary Textile Workshop, the last session of which I did not enjoy and which I have done zero work for.  Or stay home and get stuck in with my new (early-but I'm not complaining) birthday books?

Peacocks travel best in pairs

Where Flowers grow there is hope

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

This is based on one of the photos I have snapped on one of my many cycling adventures. Again this is derived from a well known phrase which is derived from the Tennyson poem In Memoriam:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

This summer had a loss and when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself I would think the situation was hopeless and that it had all been for nothing. This was not the case and I know that at least I had had a chance and that it can happen again. Referring back to the previous work Life is Risky - it is better to try than not to try at all.

Proverbially English II

Many hands make light work.


All good things come to an end.

Proverbially English I

These are like old friends to me now - I first conceived of them when participating in a postcard swap based on the colour spectrum. I added a further theme by using proverbs as my inspiration. As some of these postcards were going to far off places (one went as far as Australia) I decided that the proverbs, where possible were English. Further to that I found the proverbs I chose helped me think about my creative process. When I created the postcards I made a twin - so I had record of what I had done and a connection to the card that had sent overseas.


Mighty Oaks from little acorns grow. This proverb was chosen to remind myself that its okay to start with something small even if it is just a small seed. Presented with the horror of a blank canvas and no ideas. Just one small idea can be played with, thought about and enlarged upon. Ideas can also be like magnets attracting further ideas until you find a large project on your hands. If you're really lucky a finished piece.


A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. I think I have learnt the most when something in my work has gone wrong or hasn't turned out as expected. Even if it is to never do that again!


A Stitch in Time Saves Nine. A devotee of the leaving it to the last minute movement I still recognise the wisdom of such advice. As a school girl I did leave some key essays to the very last day before handing in but I always got away with it. Unfortunately paint has to be given time to dry, fingers can only sew so fast and take so much punishment (especially as I never bother with a thimble).

Life is Risky

The title was taken from a quote from a video that M was watching as part of his counselling skills course work.  The man who said it is Carl Rogers one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy research : "Life is risky. To take the responsibility for being the person you would like to be.....".  This year I have taken some risks they have all borne some fruit some of it welcome, some of it not so welcome.  The unexpected outcomes have not been happy times but I do think I have come out stronger and I am more aware of silver linings in situations which I may not have wished for.  You can look at things in a negative way but you can also recognise the good. 

This piece can be viewed in two different aspects - the view shown above represents the idea of growing and blossoming, the view shown below represents the idea of falling and tumbling. 

Tread Softly

 

This refers to the last line of the Yeats poem "He wishes for the cloths of heaven". I was introduced to this poem when I was at college. Studying for a computer science degree didn't mean a lot poetry study but a friend of mine gave me a copy of it when we graduated. Since then my dreams have changed considerably.

By the way

I think its about time I started the online exhibition!

I have an interest in proverbs and sayings since my earliest childhood. I remember my paternal grandmother quote the odd proverb and there were many times where my mother would quote her own grandmother. A proverb is also known as a nayword or byword and is a simple and popularly known saying expressing a known truth or basic rule. Aristotle considered proverbs a survival of an older wisdom. The word proverb comes from the Latin translation of the Greek word paroemia. Oimos was the ancient Greek word for road or way. So I chose to call this first piece "By the way".

This piece is the first I did using this technique. It is typical of my style of working colour and heavy hand stitching. The hand stitches used are running, seeding and woven circles. I have used a combination of natural and synthetic fabrics, some of the pieces used in the background are hand dyed or painted.

My First Exhibition

Last weekend started off busy as I was putting the finishing touches to this:

My first solo exhibtion! It is part of the larger county wide exhibition organised by Hampshire Libraries: New Artists in Libraries. This year the spotlight is on textiles so encouraged by Mr. Happy (now also known as my Exhibition Manager) and C, I appeared in front of a selection panel in April and was selected to show my work in Havant. The exhibition runs from now until the end of September.

I received the brochure in the post a few days ago and found that amongst some others our artist biographies have been missed out so just our pictures and no infomation is shown. So I include it here:

"Kitty Redwood

I have stitched, painted, dyed and embellished textiles since my teenage years, using the medium of textiles to express my creative side whilst studying and working in another discipline. I have taken this further by completing a City & Guilds course in Design and Embroidery at Eastleigh College.


Currently, I am finding inspiration in folklore and cultural references, in particular the work presented here explores the use of traditional contemporary proverbs and quotes to convey life experiences in a layered language. Colour plays an important part in my work, using my own hand dyed fabric and threads to achieve vibrancy and texture."

I appreciate some of my regular readers won't be able to make it over to Havant, so I have decided to have a little bit of a mini online exhibition during the month of September. Also some people may have made their way over here after seeing my work so I will talk a little bit about the background of my exhibition pieces as well as peek inside my studio.

Hinton Ampner

The August Bank Holiday in the UK always seems to me to be the last day of summer (even if we might get an Indian Summer) - the next Bank Holiday will be in December. So after a certain amount of hard work over the weekend (more about that tomorrow) we went on a little excursion out into Hampshire.

Although I have lived in the area for many years now I have never gone Hinton Ampner so suggested it as our destination. We set off late morning when it was still dull and slightly drizzly, by the time we got there there was plenty of blue in the sky and the sun was making a welcome appearance. We parked and locked our transport (which deserves a post all of its own) and headed of to snaffle sandwiches and tea.

We had a nice amble through the gardens and I pottered about taking snaps of bits of the garden - various statues and ornaments and admired the topiary.
Lots of potential for shape play!

A long summer

It has been over 2 months since my last post. A number of reasons were involved, most of them resulted in me being very tired. And then a bit emotional. I'm not going to explain or apologise (reminding me of my college friend American mother's saying - "Never complain, never explain" - or something approximating it). Instead I will concentrate on saying a big thank you to the many people who have been a shoulder to cry on, given their support or just understood.

More recently I have picked myself up and have got back into the studio and also out and about. Which means I have plenty to retrospectively blog about. A few more blog posts this month - catch up with you tomorrow.

Cup 25/06/09

Cup 25/06/09

Yesterday's cup of the day was a cardboard cup of South West Trains coffee as I had a trip to London.

Cup 23/06/09

Cup 23/06/09

not-so-conveniently left at home today.

Cup 22/06/09

Cup 22/06/09

Yellow paste paper stamped with the end of a cotton reel.

Cup 19/06/09

Cup 19/06/09

Morphing from orange to yellow with a little monoprinting on acetate.

Cup 18/06/09

Cup 17/06/09

Cup 16/06/09

Cup 15/06/09

Wedding doodles

I interrupt the colour spectrum with a few wedding doodles in celebration of my SiL's wedding tomorrow.

Cup 11/06/09

Cup 10/06/09

Cup 09/06/09

I think I am berry addicted at the moment. This strawberry cover is apt as the cup contains a strawberry and blueberry smoothie for my post-cycling breakfast.

Cup 08/06/09

This week I am moving into the red. The texture here was created using a natural sponge.

Cup 05/06/09

A not entirely successfully experiment trying to blend 2 colour pastes into each other with the comb, whilst creating paste grain papers. The pink/red is a little too puce.

Cup 04/06/09

This picture of blackcurrant fool sprinkled with contrasting green pistachios caught my eye. This seasons blackcurrants just need to ripen before I can do something similar - I don't think I've cut the recipe up....

Cup 03/06/09

This is cut from an craft paper bag. The kind you get in art and craft shops, made out of paper used for printing synthetic fabric. The offcuts could be used to print on synthetic fabric at home by iron over the bag, print side down on a piece of synthetic fabric. Results vary.

Cup 02/06/09

Unfortunately the texture cannot be clearly seen here. I used some old face scrub/buff - which has always been a better art tool than it ever was as a bathroom accessory. Although the texture isn't clear here I was trying to acheive something that reminded me of the chive flowers currently in bloom in my garden.

Cup 01/06/09

I am looking at colour and for some reason starting with purple - this is the week of predominantly purple. Continuing with the letter 'P' I am looking at some of old design techniques - so paste grain papers. I found some wallpaper paste and mixed that up with some acrylic and cast about for some pattern making tools. I found I had an old tile grout spreader to comb through the wet paste.

Cup 29/05/09

...and that should be the last of doodle-a-day-may....

Cup 28/05/09

Cup 27/05/09

Just cycling

Cup 26/05/09

Cup 21/05/09

Cup 20/05/09

Cup 19/05/09

Cup 18/05/09

Back on the bicycle today after no cycling during April (well that sounds better than a break of 7 weeks). A mixed fruit smoothie and a bran muffin is my breakfast, although I need to investigate a recipe which isn't quite so sugary. The ride in was noticeably warmer - this has been the first ride this year where I did not arrive at work with frozen toes.

Cup 15/05/09

Apologies for the lariness of this - I was doodleling and colouring it in yesterday evening whilst watching (I am ashamed to confess) the 2nd semi-final of the Eurovision song contest. Which may explain the brashness of it. There were some good entries and some not so good ones as well as some plain bizarre. If you saw it too you would understand me when I say "Green gimp". In case you feel you have missed out you will be able to see what I mean on Saturday night as despite the bizarreness (to these Western European eyes anyway) the song was okay and qualified for the final. I may or may not catch it, apparently the German entry has Dita Von Teese performing along side (and we have the Andrew Lloyd Webber, hmmmmm) and France has gone for class this year in the form of the sublime Patricia Kass. I am a big fan of France ever since the genius of last years entry (now sadly better known as the song playing during the Renault Megane ad) - Sebastian woz robbed. (So were Turkey)

Cup 14/05/09