Spring clean for inspiration

I am extremely fortunate to have my own room in which I can keep all of my fabrics, paints, sewing machine and creative paraphernalia in. It was a dining room at first which housed a huge dresser, a huge table and an assortment of chairs, a hostess trolley(!) and a filing cabinet. I somehow crammed all of my creative bits and pieces in here, housing my fabrics in the dresser and my paints and tools in the, er, hostess trolley! My wool sat in a wine box on one of the many chairs and the whole room was dominated by the huge table which was wedged across the room so I could look out of the window while I worked.

I kidded myself that this chaos was part of the creative process and for a while it worked. Sort of, I was also terrified of appearing ungrateful for the space however crowded it now was, not that my husband is an ogre, but I do spend a lot of time knitting, sewing, puppet making and he is spending increasing amounts of time cooking and unloading the dishwasher!! So I just piled it up and beavered away until finally it spilled out into the kitchen. And that is when it had to change!

I was working in the kitchen, Matt was trying to cook toast and avoid getting pastel dust in the butter, he casually asked why I was in the kitchen and I stated my problem. We swiftly devised a scheme to sell the dresser, move out the hostess trolley and put up shelves. I imagined this would all start in a few weeks time. But it started within the hour! These pictures show the transformation that took place & even though the shelves need painting white ( hopefully a job for this weekend.) And the second set of shelves need finishing as we ran out of wood. But I have sorted out all my fabrics and needles and threads. Everything is in carefully labelled boxes and my creative juices are flowing much more freely!!


This picture was taken after we had decided to sell the dresser so it was being emptied of fabric.


This was the wool store and ironing table!





I am adoring and relishing being this sorted out and organised. It is such a joy to go into my room now and to appreciate the calm of the space. I feel like I can work seriously in there and apply myself to the course in hand. So, whilst I did little actual college work last weekend I was thinking constantly about the tasks ahead and I could feel the inspiration coming together the more I got rubbish out and created the space I craved. In fact on Monday the Andy Goldsworthy essay came together and flowed well whereas last week I had been grumbling to myself about having to write anything down at all!!







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I will add more photos when the shelves are finished and the pictures are on the wall. But for now it is much improved and I have worked in there all day today and been highly productive. Hurrah!!

Assignment 3. Module 1. ANDY GOLDSWORTHY

It seems mad to me now that I had not heard of Andy Goldsworthy before I began this course. I have been interested in making sculptures in nature all my life - as a child I had a wild imagination and used to love building sandcastles on the beach and creations in the woods. I would spend ages making piles of teetering rocks and leaf pictures never realising that an expansion on this would be considered art! With my own children I have continued this theme and have always encouraged them on the beach, in the woods, on a country walk to " think outside the box" and to add to and enhance the landscape using the materials to hand. Imagine my delight when I found Andy Goldsworthy!

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire in 1956. He studied fine art at Bradford College of Art ( 1974-75) and at Preston Polytechnic which is now known as the University of Central Lancashire. It was here that he gained his BA degree. He gradually moved further north to Scotland due to economics and a desire to work among the landscapes of these areas.

These leaves are effectively laid to give the impression that there has been a tin of green paint neatly tipped over a random collection in the woods. The bright green leaves have been selected as they have the exact same tone, shade and colour of green, which in itself is an achievement when working with nature - they have then been laid in a circle and the brown leaves laid around in such a clever way that the artist has created a fluid line crossing the perimeter of the circle so that the leaves appear to change colour. He has selected leaves whose shape and size will continue the shape and size of the leaves in the circle and initially your eye doesn't notice this detail. Once you look closer you can see that the green circle appears to be a trick of light or a work of paint and unless you know the precise and extremely clever use of nature that is Andy Goldsworthys work you might even leave it at that! It is amazing to find out that there are these varying colours of leaves in one place, around one tree. If you saw the leaves from a distance it wouldn't look strange as the colours would be randomly spread however like this the leaves and the colours are extremely dramatic.

Andy Goldsworthy uses nature as his tools and creates often large but always striking, " situations" or " sculptures. He uses only what is readily available to him in the surrounding area right down to using thorns to stitch leaves together and spit, saliva, sap or rabbit for glue. He works with whatever weather occurs and allows the sculptures to develop, sometimes even disintergrate according to the change in climate. His work is often affected by rain, snow and wind!






The picture above shows a river with a naturally occurring rock in the middle. Andy Goldsworthy has added leaves of a bright gold colour tightly packed to the rock. From a distance the rock would look very striking as a mound of gold among a fairly brown and " natural" background. Up close the rock would be found to be tightly packed with naturally gold coloured leaves and the effect is still striking but the work can be appreciated too. Andy Goldsworthys online Digital library contains a detailed account of each sculpture and a detailed description of the materials used and the circumstances of the weather, temperatures, time taken and how many attempts were made to achieve the final successful resultk/"> This link is to the digital library for 1976 -1986.






This rock in the picture above has once again been coloured in with leaves. Leaves and flowers are the materials he seems to use as "paint" in nature and I find this concept very inspirational. Taking colour where you find it and using it to fill in the parts you wish to illustrate.

Much of Andy Goldsworthys work is situated in Scotland in the highlands and having recently visited there during autumn I can say that the landscape and naturally occurring colours does make his job easier! No less impressive, but certainly the depth and variation of colour and the avaliability of impressive rocks and stones are extremely moving and inspirational without being recreated into art forms. He also works in America and






















This picture shows a bridge of rocks placed side by side. These arches are a common theme in his creations, in the book 'Wood" there are three balanced on a branch of a tree. The effect, as here is very striking but as he states in his description in his book,"Wood" it was raining heavily, very muddy and there was one collapse. Andy Goldsworthy photographs his work after he finishes it and it is often these pictures, which form beautiful books, which are the only remaining evidence of the existence of his work. The pieces are often photographed during various stages of collapse and decay and he has even been known to photograph the flotsam and jetsam which is all that remains after a piece has melted. His photographs of his works are beautiful and it is interesting to see how different times of the day and the light and temperature affect the pictures. Andy Goldsworthy states that he uses a basic camera and no added lighting techniques, preferring instead to let the structures speak for themselves using natural light and surroundings.










I find Andy Goldsworthys work very inspiring and I adore the way he uses natural materials in their normal location but moves them or collects them in an unnatural way which appears natural!! In his book Wood, he arranges snow along the branch of a tree in a zig zag pattern which looks very striking, it is just slightly off of the natural line that the snow would fall and snow does not fall in zig zags but it looks that just this once it may have done! I admire the fantastical way he rearranges nature in a kind of Alice in Wonderland style and then leaves it to decay a cording to the natural elements. The following five pictures are taken from the book Wood and are examples of how he has slightly altered natures path. The beautiful red leaves that " fall" down the centre "V" of the tree, the bright yellow leaves that he has stitched with thorns which are appearing to fall in a path around the rivers bank joining up two branches several feet apart.















All of his work is very imaginative and makes me want to think of unusual ways to use materials and to make use of what is under your nose - make do and mend rather than constantly buying new things. I like the way Andy Goldsworthy uses the spaces around the materials and so the surroundings become integral to the final piece. Art is not all about filling up space it is sometimes about allowing a natural pause or appreciating the space around part of a piece of work. He uses a lot of holes which act in two ways. The first is to give a shadow to pieces and make them more defined, the second way is to give the pieces actual depth which makes you look beyond the leaves, snow or whatever is immediately in front of you.

Andy Goldsworthys work often appears fairly simple and this is something else that I really like about his work. I prefer things to be unfussy and fairly plain and I find these shapes created often give a more striking image and have a more emotive feeling. Sometimes when there is a lot going on you are trying so hard to take it all in and appreciate the workmanship and wonder what the artist was trying to convey that you end up feeling a bit numb. My husband and I recently visited the National Gallery and saw lots of works paired

Glass fusing

Yesterday I went on a glass fusing course run by Helen Smith of Helen Rose glass. The course was held in Helens home which she has set up as a work studio. There were three of us on the course which would probably be the maximum as there was just about enough room around the table!

We began by learning about the different strengths of glass and about the cutting tools and techniques. We then practiced cutting glass which was very thin like a window pane. This was fairly easy and we then learnt the techniques for cutting circles and wavy lines.

The first project we embarked on was a coaster. This involved cutting two squares of glass of equal size. Putting them together and then decorating the top. The decoration I decided to use was a teacup.



The following project was a sun catcher. I decided to make one for my sister and her families new house incorporating all of the initials of their family and a house


This used stringer glass and granules as well as sanding and cutting. The third project was a bowl and by then I was so engrossed in cutting circles I managed to cut myself and forget to photograph the work in progress so will have to wait for the finished article to arrive. The bowl is clear glass with pink on top. Next is a ring of yellow and then a red heart in the centre.

Finally we made jewellery. Helen showed us some glass with interesting effects which is what she uses for her jewellery. This glass is much more expensive than the opaque and transparent glass we had previously used and had many different textures and colours. I liked some of the jewellery that Helen showed us but I was not really that keen in this style of glass as I found it a bit fussy. I like the opaque glass by far the best as I like things to be plain and simple. I decided to make two large necklaces which could be worn on a piece of leather. I used a special paper on the back to make a hole to put the leather through. I then designed a flower pendant and a bumble bee. The flower was made cutting techniques and the bee was made using the stringers and granules and glass with cutting techniques.




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My pendants can be seen here together with the pieces of jewellery made by Margaret and Stuart.









The whole day was great fun and I really want to do more glass fusing and learn more techniques as well as improving the skills I have learnt. I am waiting excitedly for the news that the pieces we made have been fired. I cant wait to see them!

The shoe is finished - but where is the old woman!?

The shoe is finished! I had a massive festive surge last night and was up until 1.30 am paper mâching and working out how to fix the tea bags on to the shoe. Not to mention the oranges!!

I then began in earnest this morning putting it all together. I had decided to try and make little trees out of the tea bags and the paper mâché but couldn't work out how to fix them, or quite what the point was!!


I used my concoction of the flour, water & tea from the bags(!) to stick and mould the tea bags to the shoe. I attatched the tea- trees to add some height and added lots more tea bags all around the shoe. The tea bags have added some interesting texture to the shoe and I really like the variations in the colours it brings. I also decided to fill in the top of the shoe and covered the shoelace in paper mâché.

I like the purple stitching on the teabags. They look like the tea bags could possibly be stitched to the shoe.















I then applied the oranges, attaching them with the speckled tea glue. They were easy to apply which surprised me. this was dramatically changing the appearance of the shoe and it was quite unrecognisable. The size hadn't changed a lot and nor had the sole so you can still tell it once was a shoe. I would like to do this exercise again with the other shoe to contrast what different things you can do with exactly the same shoe. I wanted to keep the dimensions roughly the same as I thought with the materials I was using it would be very easy to completely change the shape and really you could have had any object underneath all that - I wanted there to still be some link to the fact it was shoe shaped!













The shoe was beginning to take shape and I feel it has a kind of tropical garden feel to it. I initially thought the oranges would look like scales but they look almost flower like to me now. The lace was paper mached and then I used my final tool which was some left over nail varnish from last summer. I had a rather citrus yellow, a lime green and a deep red. These I used liberally on the scrunched up paper which transformed it into looking like roses. I did not have the space available to do the Andy Goldsworthy effect of closely placed paper of the same colour so I am going to try that in assignment 4. I decided not to varnish the curls of newspaper at the front of the shoe as I like the different colours that are apparent from the waybthe paper is folded. I put stripes of yellow and green on the shoe lace and looped it around the shoe like a snake or a hose!



















I finally put some whole slices of orange in the foot part offend shoe that looked like they were growing out of the shoe. I varnished the peel on these in green and red to make them look more interesting and to blend in and to tie the colours together. I was beginning to feel that the process was nearly over. I had finally decided not to sketch my ideas out before hand and to let the creation evolve as I felt this was more in keeping with the brief. However I really enjoyed sketching the finished project and have several ideas for sketches that I wish to explore further. These include drawing the original shoe during the stages of the development, making a collage of the finished shoe using the same materials as on the 3d model. Making a stitched picture of the finished model using different textured materials.

Finally today I drew the finished shoe. The following pictures are of the original shoe and the finished shoe as well as both sketches. Hopefully I will add more sketches if I have the opportunity to do them. I have really enjoyed this project and feel it has answered the brief. The " new shoe" is radically different to the original shoe in colour and texture and use and yet you can still just about see what it once was. I have really enjoyed working with the materials I used and will use the grainy Mâché glue again as I think it looks interesting. I also very much like the effect of the tea bags and think their colours and texture is something I will revisit. The same for the oranges and it has definitely made me curious to work with more with fruit. I am looking forward to my research topic and to the following assignments looking in detail at the make up of fabrics.













I will add the sketches of the original shoe when I can upload them. They are in my sketch book.