Its been a long time

It has been a long time since I sat down to write a post. Of course I have thought about doing it and have on many occasions  made attempts to write something but I never managed it until now.

So much has happened since last June, It has been a very busy ten months. There are two main opportunities which have arisen since my last blog, these have kept me away from blogging so that I could focus totally on my work. I know that many people are able to do both really well but I have not yet reached that status. I will continue trying.

In August last year I was invited to take part in an International Human Rights exhibition which is going to tour museums in the USA called Visioning Human Rights in the New Millennium. I spent the latter months of the year (2015) working on a quilt which I have now sent off for the exhibition. Each artist taking part was to select one of the articles of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and create a quilt 50 x 50 inch inspired by it. I chose the Human Rights law which states that no one should be a slave, below I have shown a detailed section of the quilt which I will reveal completely once the exhibition begins touring. My idea looked at underage marriage and how it equates to slavery. I will dedicate a blog to the quilt explaining my thoughts and symbolism.

I have also been working towards an exhibition at the Alison Richard Building, part of the University of Cambridge which will take place from 11 April to 1 July 2016. I have completed all preparation of my work for this and it will be displayed next week. This exhibition is an important one for  me as I have been to many exhibitions at the ARB over the years and have always enjoyed the space, the building and the atmosphere. I feel really privileged to be a part of this and have always wanted to have my work shown there. 

I will continue trying to perfect my craft, sharing my knowledge with others and being true to myself.

Always About My Mother

I know that my grieving process has been helped by my ability to create art, Quilts in particular.My quilts based on my mothers Alzheimer's have helped me to deal with my feelings about it, how it affected my mother, my family and myself. I have recently finished yet another quilt from the very last photograph I took of her. Please have a look at the stages of this quilt's development below.
First, I cropped the photograph to give the effect of her peering around the door. She always did this in a playful manner when she was in prime health, it gives a glimpse of her sense of humour, she would often sneak up and stand peering from the corner of a doorway, sometimes causing a loud squeal (from me) when I realised she had been watching me for ages. I now do this to my children and sometimes get similar reactions (squeals and laughter).
Although her image is not a laughing happy one with no smile or twinkle in her eye, in essence it is still her. I am instead showing an image of someone (my mother) peering out, trapped trying to escape, a total contrast to how this scene would have played out when she was well, (before Alzheimer's took her). The forever lost expression of Alzheimer is evident in this.

To begin with I cropped the photo, enlarged it and pinned it onto the wall of my studio (Photo 1). I sometimes prefer to paint this way. I am trying to document and share my creative  process by showing the development of my work so expect to see more of this in my blogs.
 For this piece I began on printed yellow fabric instead of my own hand dyed fabric as an experiment, to see if this manufactured fabric would affect the end result.

                                                           Photo 1
                                                             

The Photograph in the middle shows the cropped photo of my mother which I used, to the left is the enlarged  drawing / outline on paper  and on the right, the initial painted areas on the yellow printed fabric.

                                                           Photo 2

In this one (Photo 2) the image is beginning to show some development with dark areas and middle tones added.

                      

 I am feeling the form of the face taking shape not totally happy with her eye.

                    It is progressing well, work is needed on the hair, that eye is still a problem for me.

                                 I think this is a good representation which will be enhanced with stitch. It is time to prepare for quilting.

The selection of brown Gutermann  and Madiera threads .

Finished quilting, and kept stitching of the area around the eye to a minimum. This emphasized it.

detail of quilting.

Portraits on fabric

With the Summer holidays coming to an end, I thought that I should try to get back to working in the studio on a regular basis. This has been easier said than done as Selena has taken over where Melissa left off and she now spends quite a bit of her time there. So far this summer she has created many exciting things including a Duvet cover set. I bought her a plain white one and  she enlarged an image from A4 size paper to fit it. She pinned it to a wall in my studio and with great accuracy and ease drew it onto the Duvet cover and pillow.

 Selena's Duvet

 She is very creative and I can't wait to see how her work develops as she begins to prepare for her GCSE's.
Earlier this month I created a design from a photograph of Mel taken about a year ago, I played around with the image on photo shop and ended up with a posturized image (figure1) which I then translated onto fabric and  have shown below (figure 2 ).

(figure 1)

For this quilt I have used tie dyed fabric for the background (Mel dyed this) in combination with commercial fabrics to complete the rest of the design. This has been a technique which I have wanted to try for ages and as with any new process I have encountered a few challenges but I learn as I make mistakes. I intend to add quite a bit of free machine stitching next to add texture and some tonal interest and finally I will quilt the piece. In my next  post I will include more images showing the development of this.
I will also continue my development of the ideas mentioned in the last post and show how I get along with these as well.

 (figure 2)

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