playtime!

brusho is quite intoxicating to work with, the simplicity of dropping pigment onto wet papers and watching it craze/marble/ fox/spatter…mmmm….

i have been trying a new-to-me technique of collaging images and then scumbling over with gold or glitter paint, playing with felt tips to enhance the resolution of the page. i still have to take a deep breath before i “deface” a beautiful photograph, particularly as my photos are rarely as good as the ones i’m working over, wry smile… but this is part of making found object assemblage, upcycling a garment into a bag or pages doesn’t bother me, but book bothering! oh my!

luckily, i’m getting pleasing results, so i’m gaining confidence and feel on a roll. i’ve  assembled pages much more quickly this way, and had fun while stretching myself. lots more where these came from, then. it was lovely to spend most of the weekend working on layers of collage, paper or fabric, and though i ache horribly today, seeing my sections awaiting their final embellishment before becoming an album helps.

this album is for dr todd niehaus, the lovely chiropractor – he popped my clavicle back in on tuesday again and though i felt like i’d been beaten up the next day, i was so grateful. some pigs, some proverbs, some stitching…

bluebells and a new album

more views of my new home, this time the bluebells (now faded) next to the drive gate. amazingly, this is a one minute walk from the city end of mansfield rd, with a constant hum of traffic…but it looks like a country lane!

this bare patch has been back-breakingly cleared by the guys in the flats, who also felled a dead cherry tree. there’s a victorian rockery with laurels and rhododendrons to the right of this area and i’m allowed to put sculpture/fibre assemblages there and round the edges. two of the trees by the gate have preservation orders on them and there are lots of ivy, holly and evergreen volunteers to make things round, so this is a ‘before’ shot 😉

it was interesting making an album for someone i don’t know, some of the embellishing went much faster i noticed, as though i’ve been cross checking what i was doing against what i know of each friend i was making it for…i was very grateful for the barter involved on this one, i have been so broke while moving and this really helped…i used a leftover piece of city and guilds work for the front cover and a left over winter solstice piece for the back, so it came together quite quickly. i had been very careful to pack  the album materials in a way i could access them without too much stooping and delving and over the last week i have enjoyed working on the pages. the landlord was here fixing the shower when i started branding lots of pages, he’s a very placid man, the scorching smell didn’t seem to bother him at all! i put a sachet of cassia and cloves in the front pocket, which smells very rich and some bells so it is a feast for all the senses. i hope it speaks to the woman it’s for 🙂

all change!

these might give a clue to the reasons i like my new home – it makes me smile! the doors are laid out the craziest way, the first shot is looking from the corner next to the bed/sitting room towards the studio, the open door is the toilet and the wall on the right hides the front door. now looking from the studio, yes, that is an internal window, and the front door is at that crazy angle between the studio door and the stairs to the shower room, bed/sit and kitchen…the first window is the one in the kitchen and nonie-puss’s access to the garden, going up and down the evergreen…the last shot is the FOURTH window in the studio and faces the drive, overlooking a container garden and shed minded by a downstairs neighbour.

the studio is, i think the victorian bathroom, it has windows on each wall, a toilet next to it and a hanging light switch. it must be very hard to block all that light out to use it as a bedroom, but the minute i saw it i wanted it for my studio 🙂

thanks to sterling help from a friend this evening, i now have shelves and my big wooden table up. this required moving every box in the first four stacks! two small stacks to go at the end, but i now have access to table, sewing machines, power points, good light from windows and a sewing lamp (with a magnifier).

lest you think i have been idle, a glimpse of components for gaia’s guardians  and as shown at wovenfest,  :

lessons to learn: showing next to a window wall makes it almost impossible to take good photos! i had to hang very quickly and from one hook, so from across the room it wasn’t striking, but closer to, people could get a feel of it – literally, i had wipes available, so people could touch. keri really liked the piece and kindly let me take her pic so you can get an idea of the scale of the pompoms… the one in the second shot took over five hours, and that was using 20 strand crocheted chains and fabrics to bulk it out…i also taught crochet to this lovely lad, josh, who really took to fingerknitting and made a  funky pompom, spiky sea urchin style, in about an hour. i was really impressed at how hard he worked, learning 3 new skills and making me laugh!

boy power!