Brandon Ferry Tales Screen Print

The thing about making artwork for an event is that you  don't really want to publicise the finished product before the big day. 

So you've seen the studio pictures and now that the Ferry Tales Day has been and gone...

These were all made by Brandon Arts Society in a series of workshops and displayed fluttering along the High St on the day.  

See Market Place  for more about the event

Felt - Catherine O Leary Workshop

It seems like I'm always teaching - and I really do love teaching, so that's good. I think that teaching art and textiles is all about facilitating people's own creativity and I love the excitement and enjoyment that people have when they make something new.

Every once in a while I like to be a student myself and have my own creativity facilitated! And so this summer, I had big treat:  I went to the Atelier Fibre Fusing in the Netherlands to do a 3 day workshop with the wonderful Catherine O Leary.   This class was all about surface design using nuno prefelts and the finished product was a body wrap using these techniques.  

So, first of all a word about Atelier Fibre Fusing 
It's a good studio space - well equipped, full of light, big tables, spacious, in a village on the Amstel, just south of Amsterdam.   We were greeted by the very hospitable Dorie on the first day with coffee and home made apple pie and the food just got better and better as the weekend went on. 
 
What made this workshop so good is that after her introductory talk, Catherine constantly moved around the room giving each person one to one tuition and encouraged us to develop our own designs. So we all made very different things.  You see that here- Workshop photos

I deliberately took colours that I don't usually work with and somehow my piece turned out as something that probably wouldn't look amiss in the Lion King! Definitely looking for someone tall and flamboyant to wear this one and those of you who know me, know that neither of those qualities pertain to me. But I LOVED the process of making it.  The surface design aspect is exactly what I enjoy most about making textiles and I'd forgotten how very nice it is to be completely absorbed by intuitive working.

And of course one of the best part of going on a workshop is meeting a fabulous bunch of new people who are equally obsessed with felt and fibre!

This is my wrap, made from 2 pieces which can be worn in different ways

I screen printed some fabrics before went to Holland to use as part of the Nuno

So as you can see - I loved this workshop and if you ever get the opportunity to do a class with Catherine o Leary, grab the chance! I can't recommend her highly enough.

Brandon Ferry Tales

I've been working with the very talented and extremely hard working members of the Brandon Arts Society to do some screen printing.  These fabulous festoons will be displayed down the High Street on Sunday 18 September as part of a really special event:   

Ferry Tales.

If you are in the area,  come along - this will be an amazing day with theatre, art, story telling, poetry, dance and, of course, an opportunity to screen print your very own Ferry Tales shopping  bag.

 Thanks to Terry Kimpton who took these action shots of the screen printing workshops.

First day, learning to print.

By the second day everyone was printing for themselves.

The Methodist Hall transformed into Print Studio.

Everyone lends a hand!

And of course there was tea and cake! Although we didn't have much time to drink it!

 

 

 

Never too old to screen print

T-shirts printed by residents of Cottenham Court Care Home  to sell at their Open Day marking their 20th anniversary.

Next time I go there, I hope to see everyone wearing these!

Print Projects, Pilgrim Pru

Just before we broke up for vacation last year I spent a week working with a really interesting school - Pilgrim Pru

The Pilgrim PRU is a medical needs Pupil Referral Unit containing four distinct centres. Each centre designed and printed a hanging for their own space. The banners/ strings of bunting represent the group made up of many individuals.

The Phoenix is a school attached to a NHS inpatient eating disorders unit for young people.  They decided to make these lovely lengths of bunting.

The Darwin is based in an acute psychiatric adolescent unit. They made this banner reflecting the various interests of each young person and includes the 'hospital dog

And The Croft is a specialist child and Family unit for children under 13.



Here's a closer view of a very complicated rocket/ robot?... Whatever it is, I like it a lot!






On the final day we did screen printing with Addenbrookes Hospital School. This time the children printed black onto a predyed fabric because the classroom space was very limitted and this is always a good way to get great effects using a minimum of equipment.





We printed these on individual squares so that they could fit on a wheelchair tray if necessary and I sewed them up afterwards. I had to do a lot of unpicking to get them all the right way up!





The Pilgrim Pru has an Artsmark award and you can see more of their amazing artwork on their website at http://www.thepilgrimpru.co.uk/


Well done to all the young people who contributed to these banners and buntings. I really enjoyed working with you all.

Summer School for Teenagers

We had a funderful (ie fun and wonderful) day printing multicoloured T-shirts at Melbourn Village College Summer School with young people transitioning from primary to secondary school.

T-shirt Print Workshop

Did a workshop with Soham Well Being Group, printing T-shirts on a very hot summer's evening.  What was really nice about the group was the friendliness across the age range - from 16 to 40 (you can probably see that in the variety of designs).  It was a small group so we had lots of time to really play with the repeats and make these unique and personal T-shirts.  I hope you're all wearing them!

Quiltlet

I keep returning to these images of my beloved grandparents for my artwork.  This little quiltlet is printed on scraps of cloth which I dyed using various natural dyes and stitched onto a blanket.  You can probably tell from the close-up that I'm more of an embroiderer than a quiltmaker.  I like the tatty, worn look of the textiles although, thinking about it, my grandmother would probably have hated that. She liked things to be neat as a pin! (to use a textile metaphor).

 

Arbury carnival costumes, puppets

More from Arbury Carnival:

Fishy hats - (this one's Nemo) and Alfred Wallace style placard paintings

This year's giant!  It's an octopus!

Dawn, Cary and Hugh with lots of help made this seagull - currently having an emergency repair just before the parade!

Watch out for those chips!

Thanks to Karen from Kettles Yard for raising funds and being such a great hands on organiser.  And to my 2 co-artists - Sandra and Cary.  And to all the kids and parents who took part in the making and wearing and general blowing of bubbles!

Arbury Carnival 2016

YES, it was Arbury Carnival on Saturday.  And NO, for once, it did not rain on our parade!

Arbury Carnival Workshops

It's the carnival season again!  We're all getting pretty excited as 11 June and Arbury Carnival draw nearer.

This year's theme is "Beach Party". Thanks to Kettle's Yard, who are sponsoring our work with community groups in the Arbury, we had a great day with year 2 children from the Grove Primary school making crazy sunglasses.

See  Cambridge Evening News
for some more pictures by Richard Patterson of the 'spec-tacular' work. 

 The next open session for making costumes at Nunn's Way Pavilion is on half Term Friday 3 May '16 at 3.30pm and we have a banner making afternoon with giant octopus on Saturday 4 May '16 from 1.00- 3.30pm. Everyone welcome - come along, it's fun!

My Dear Life

Secret Life of Ely Cathedral:  our exhibition is entering it's final week.  Come along and have a look if you are in the area.  It's been really popular- we've had some great feedback.  This is not specifically a textiles show - it's a mix of paintings, sculpture, book arts, installation, photography and of course some textiles.

Here is one of my other printed pieces in the show.  It's based on a  love letter that was found in the ceiling of the Almonary from a young clockmaker's apprentice to a Miss Peacock of Ely. A handpainted playing card with 2 hearts was found with the letter. It is beautifully written, both in it's language and in the handwriting. It begins: 

" My Dear Life,.........."

Secret Life of Ely Cathedral

I think I have hinted that I've been making some work for an exhibition  but I didn't want to give anything away until the work went up.  Well it's finally happened- I'm exhibiting as part of "The Secret Life of Ely Cathedral"  

There are 19 artists from Ouse Life  and the show has now been up for a week.  If you are anywhere in or near Ely, come and see it- it's really worth while.  There are sculptures, paintings, prints, hand made books and of course textiles exhibited throughout the Cathedral. My fellow artists have done some amazing work and we've had some great comments.

For me, one of the the most exciting 'secrets' of the cathedral is the archive which is held by Cambridge University. When I first started to look at the documents I was attracted by the beauty and patterning of the scripts themselves and I started to use these in the textiles. But as I progressed to looking at more recent documents I found the content really fascinating.  When I say 'recent', I am talking about documents from about 1630 onwards.  About that time, everyday texts begin to be written in English rather than Latin and the writing becomes more legible to the modern eye. 

The audit books and accounts were really fascinating - bills paid to workmen, grocery shopping, taxes and charity payments were all itemised and receipts signed on scraps of paper. 

I chose St Catherine's chapel for the siting of the work - a beautiful peaceful place which is accessible to anyone  for silent prayer and meditation at any time.

And I printed 18 banners - one for each of the archways which curve round the chapel. I wanted the banners to read as a single artwork.

Each banner is different. The designs are a combination of sketches I did of architectural elements and the archive texts. 

It felt like I was 'dressing' the chapel

So here's a detail across 3 of the banners showing texts from an audit book - payments for  labour and workmanship. The music is written instructions for the choir.

The altar cloth started as a print of the choir music texts.  But I wanted to add more to this central fabric. So I decided to overprint using texts that related to the giving of charity.  I thought this might be pertinent to the altar being a place of high holiness and an example of  charity to strangers that is still relevant today. "For a poor soldier come from the sea"  "Given to Widow (name not legible) for Michaelmas to Midsummer" and "Given to Christian poor travaillors (ie workers not travelers) on making  their vows at Michaelmas".  The symbol used for the Christian Poor is a central motif and some of the texts caused me to wonder  how much charity was conditional on being a Christian and making your vows in1640.