Ann Johnston: The Contact

August 9, 2014

At this year's Festival of Quilts in Birmingham is an exhibition of work by American quilt artist, Ann Johnston. Until now, I've known her work only through her books. Her two books on dyeing are some of the best on the subject as far as I'm concerned. They manage to be comprehensive (in terms of the range of dye techniques they cover), totally sound on the technical aspects and yet easy to use. I've had my copies for years and still refer back to them.

The exhibition presents 16 quilts. As the accompanying book explains, "The word "contact" refers to a place where geologic units touch each other." Many of the quilts represent geological features - veins, intrusions, geological processes - close up or impressionistic images of the rocks themselves or abstract interpretations of the processes that lead to their formation.

Other quilts present images of the mountains of the Sierra Nevada themselves. Because "..."contact" also conjures up a human influence on the landscape. The forests, the rivers, and even the mountains themselves have been shaped forever by people seeking their fortunes." For this was gold mining country and many of the quilts refer to this.

One of the impressive things about this body of work is the stylistic variety between the different pieces, while they remain totally cohesive as a group. Bold pieces built of simple forms in strong, plain colours hang alongside more complex, designs built up of highly detailed visual textures. Abstract images alongside highly realistic pieces. It worked because there were clear relationships between the pieces.

All the quilts are made from cloth that Ann Johnston has dyed, painted or printed using a wide range of surface design techniques. Inevitably, I was drawn to studying the detail of these. I was particularly fascinated with her use of monoprinting and resists - and Ann was very generous in explaining how she had achieved some effects. I also noted how she worked back into the painted cloth, using appliqué and stitch to alter and augment the dyed marks. But over and above these technical aspects, I really admired the mastery with which Ann had orchestrated the different patterns and textures in her fabrics to produce the effects she wanted.

Above (clockwise from top left): details from "Cracked and Cooked"; "Black and White"; "Vigil" and "After the Ice". All work by Ann Johnston.

I was also able to hear Ann's lecture "The Stitches Matter" in which she talked about the way she uses stitch to add layers of marks, line and detail to her dyed cloth. I had already noted that her approach to stitching each piece was quite varied from one to the next but always well considered in terms of the effect she wanted to achieve.

For more information, go to Ann Johnston's web site, where you can order copies of the exhibition catalogue along with her other books. Ann has also produced a DVD, Color by Accident, which expands upon her book of that name and is well worth having.

Summer school

August 3, 2014

I spent last week in London doing a Summer School course with June Fish at Central St Martins. Aside from the fun of getting to work in CSM's fully equipped dye and print studio for a week, this was an opportunity to explore different types of dye and application techniques. We covered lots of ground. Not everything will make its way into my practice but there were two techniques that really appealed to me and have potential for development.

The first was painting directly onto the silkscreen with thin dyes - a technique I knew about but hadn't tried before. It's a form of monoprinting I suppose. Now I have done this with thickened dyes ("breakdown printing") but those need much longer to dry and the effect is quite different. I really liked this and could see this being a way to interpret some of my ink drawings.

The second technique involved wax. June demonstrated basic wax resist using batik wax, which I found frustrating to iron out of my samples. However I knew I had some soy wax and began to wonder about combining this with clamp resist (itajime) or pole wrap (arashi) techniques. I know other people have had success with this.

Now, because soy wax has such a low melting point I had to iron out the wax before the dye could be steam-fixed. When I removed the clamps and pulled the cloth out flat, the effect of the wax against the (damp) dyed cloth was just stunning:

After processing (removing the wax, steam-fixing, washing out) the effect is more subdued - the inevitable difference between damp versus dry cloth - but still interesting. Clamp resist is ideal for workshop conditions because it can be done quickly - but I'm not sure how I feel about the geometric patterns.

So much to explore, so little time. The whole point of doing workshops like this is to expand the range of techniques and knowledge I can draw upon but I also need to keep focused on the things that will really help my work and not get too distracted. When I consider all the different things I want to explore, I am quite daunted, given the time I have available. However making time for this developmental work alongside simply making more work is important - otherwise I'll end up just making "more of the same". So I need to select the most promising ideas and set aside some time to experiment intensively with them.

Ways of looking

July 14, 2014

I've had a wonderful weekend in Nottinghamshire taking a workshop with Hilary Bower. Hilary is warm and funny and there was lots of laughter and shared inspiration with others in the group. A great atmosphere in which to work. The theme was "Magnify" and, in essence, the three days involved exploring different ways of looking - that is really looking - at primary source material to extract information and ideas. I had taken a mixture of found objects from my studio - stones, dried up plant stems - as this seemed the ideal opportunity to develop ways of working with them

I ended up concentrating on these plant stems. I love the way, different aspects of the plant structure are revealed as they wither. I started tentatively, feeling my way through the different drawing exercises. As I relaxed, I became more comfortable but then found it hard to move away from close, observational drawing - clinging to my safety zone. But then, by day three I couldn't work fast enough - I was just trying to get each idea down before it slipped away. I left the source material behind as I tried different approaches to capture the elements that interested me.

Now I'm home, I've pinned my work to the studio wall to look at and reflect. It's interesting to see the progression from the initial, slightly uncertain experiments to the faster, more confident work. I can see the links to the original objects but the drawings themselves are suggesting areas to explore and develop further. I'm not worrying about developing this into cloth - indeed I like some of these as they are. Although, there are some specific elements that I'm excited about and want to try. I've cleared a corner of my studio and am going to carry on with this for a while.

Five hundred colours on my studio wall

July 6, 2014

I finally completed this colour study this week. I had planned five variations (out of a possible eight) and ended up doing six. That's eighteen rounds of dyeing with twelve dye baths to set up and rinse out each time. Even by my standards that is a mammoth commitment. I definitely need a break and to do something else for a while now.

What I learned

This was all about dye colour theory. The point of the exercise was to explore what neutrals and semi-neutrals could be achieved by over-dyeing each colour with its complementary. I also tried this with the two split complementaries.

I learned that:

The three warm primaries (scarlet, golden yellow, royal blue) are the most likely to generate neutrals (top row, middle card in the image above). You also get some lovely earthy greens.
The three cold primaries (magenta, lemon yellow, turquoise - bottom row, middle card) are the least likely to neutralise - hardly any in fact. But replacing the turquoise with royal blue (bottom, left) resulted in some interesting blue-greys.
Green over-dyed with red or red violet was more likely to result in a neutral than other combinations.
If you only over-dye once, using the complementary is the most effective way to neutralise a colour. If you over-dye twice, the results achieved using the split complementaries are richer, more interesting and you generally get more neutrals.

Testing the effect of changing the dye strength

Following my last post, where I noted there seemed to be a bias towards green, I also tested the effect of changing the strengths of each dye concentrate. This confirmed that changing the strength of each dye in relation to the others would alter the colour. I know that sounds obvious but it was fascinating to see the effect of actually doing this. Basically, if I had mixed the yellow dye stronger and kept the red and blue equal, I would probably have had less greens and more browns. And if I had mixed the blue stronger instead, I might have seen more greys and blues.

The disadvantage of this exercise was that it was not logistically possible to try out different values of these colours at the same time. So I am planning a phase two, which will involve selecting some of the colours from these results and using them as the basis for dyeing a "family" of lights and darks. Not yet though ... I need to do something different for a while!

So, why?

Effectively I have dedicated three weeks of precious studio time to this exercise. I had plenty of opportunity while dyeing, rinsing, cutting and mounting swatches ... to contemplate why on earth I was doing this. Was it the best use of my time? I could have been drawing, making new work, preparing cloth for shibori, mark-making with thickened dye, experimenting with wax resist ... all on my studio to do list.

Part of it is just that obsessive wanting to know "what will happen if ...?" - that itch to resolve the tension between knowing the theory and not knowing what will happen in practice. The reward is all those surprise results - seeing two colours mixed together result in some gorgeous, unexpected new shade. That's the playful, self-indulgent motivation behind this exercise.

But I came to the conclusion that there is a more serious purpose. I realised last year, when I did a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell, that colour is as important to my work as mark-making. And the kind of colours I want to achieve are the subtle, hard to define ones. Which means I do need to thoroughly understand how my dyes behave and how to mix those difficult colours. So the real reward for all that labour and studio time is the learning and the mountain of information I now have that I can draw upon in all my future dyeing. It's part of the underpinning research that will help me make better work.

I'm also starting to think about developing a workshop based on this. Or maybe an ebook. I'm thinking not so much of an introduction to dyeing, but more of a colour theory for dyers course. Is there a demand for this? Would people prefer a course or some kind of online option? Leave a comment or email me via the contact form - I'd love to know what others think.

Colour study progress

June 22, 2014

A short hiatus. I went on holiday - and flooded Instagram with photos of Norfolk skies and tide lines and sunsets - and then lost three days of studio time, waiting for dye supplies to arrive. I wish I could say I made good use of the lost time but it seems I don't respond well to my plans being thwarted!

However, I've been making maximum use of studio time since to progress this colour study. At any one time, there has been one batch of cloth in rinse buckets and another batch sitting in dye, while I'm trimming and sticking swatches into my dye books. I'm now about half way through and am starting to see results.

The aim of the exercise is to explore over dyeing of complementary colours - which should yield some neutrals. There are some good, rich browns but overall I seem to be getting a bias towards green. I think this is because I have increased the strength of the yellow and blue dyes to stand up better to the red. I've decided to stick with this for the remainder of the exercise to maintain consistency of the results. Of course it helps that I like green - if I was getting loads of purple, I would probably be changing the recipe. I think it is interesting in itself to see how I can influence the colour by doing this.

My dye book is starting to look exciting. It's worth remembering that the product of this exercise will be the sample swatches in this book. All the dyed cloth is simply a by-product. Albeit one that will leave me with a glorious range of colours to use as needed. Although people who love bright colours would probably weep to see me turn them into sludgy browns and greens ...

Beginning a new colour study

June 8, 2014

I have just started a new colour study exercise. It's going to be a long, drawn out one and this is just the beginning. It always starts with lots of planning - working out ratios, fractions (never my strong point), quantity surveying (do I have enough cloth, soda ash, dye ...), etc, etc. I envy those who can just dive in and start but I always feel I have to figure everything out first. That's just how my brain works.

The Plan is to use a system based on a method for dyeing a colour wheel, with lots of over-dyeing based on complementaries, to generate neutrals and semi-neutrals. And this time I am vat-dyeing - which will avoid the problems I've had trying to translate colour studies done using thickened dye into the bucket. So it's going to be worth it ... but there is a daunting amount of work to do to get there. I've just finished the first round ... of fifteen. Possibly this is slightly insane ... Oh, and this is stage one! Stage two will require a different system to widen the value range. Yeah, definitely insane ...

Torn edges - pile of cloth torn to size, waiting its turn

New work on show

June 3, 2014

I delivered six pieces of new work to Bircham Gallery on Saturday for their Early Summer Show. This is on for the whole of June and, looking at the list of artists, I'm delighted to be showing in such great company. However, if you can't get to North Norfolk, you can also view - and buy - some of my work on Bircham Gallery's web site.

The new work includes some of the pieces I've been writing about on here recently. There are some new themes developing - more about this soon - and I've also been playing with the format. A lot of my work has used a long, horizontal format, which appeals to me because of the sense of movement from one side to the other. To me this gives a sense of change or progression.

However, it's good to shake things up occasionally and so recently I've been trying out different formats, a vertical one in particular. I've used both for the two "mountain" themed pieces that are now at Bircham Gallery. To me, the vertical layout has quite a different feel. If a horizontal format is about movement, a vertical format is about pausing and taking the time to look at or contemplate something. There is a sense of stillness - a single moment captured.

I've also been influenced by Chinese or Japanese painting: i.e. the hand scroll versus the hanging scroll format. The hand scroll (which developed alongside the use of written scrolls) was intended to be viewed flat on a table and unrolled gradually to look at one section at a time - as if travelling through a landscape. Painters exploited the format to experiment with subjects that embodied temporal and spatial progression to give the viewer an experience that was like travelling through a landscape or reading a story.

Hand scrolls could be nine to twelve metres long and only the unrolled section could be viewed at any one time. The viewer controlled the pace at which they viewed the scenes. I'm fascinated with the idea of part of the image being hidden - you know that there is more to see but it isn't possible to see the whole thing at once.

In contrast, hanging scrolls were for formal display and the image would be seen all at once. Scrolls were fragile and so each would be displayed for only a short period and then changed for another. This format lends itself to contemplation or display of particular styles of painting or subject matter. These might still include landscapes, which would use complex systems of perspective to convey depth and distance.

More about this here.

The amazing view across the rain-soaked Ozleworth Valley from Newark Park

Stroud 2014

May 26, 2014

I drove 150 miles to Gloucestershire in the rain on Friday to see what I could of the SITSelect exhibitions. My sat nav guided me up the steepest, narrowest lane with heart-stoppingly beautiful views (when I dared to look) to Newark Park. I read the advice to not use your sat nav only after that little adventure, once I was safely in the car park, checking the visitor information.

Newark Park showed work by 30 artists that was distributed throughout the house. It was lovely to see work displayed in a domestic rather than a gallery setting. Seven of the artists had created work that responded specifically to the house or its surroundings. Others had been selected by SIT patrons; others were artists involved in the Select Trail. Sometimes the juxtaposition of such different styles of work made for an uneasy combination and it wasn't always obvious when you were looking at site-responsive versus selected pieces. And sometimes you weren't sure whether work was part of the exhibition or part of the house... although this rather added to the enjoyment of exploring the house.

Three artists particularly caught my attention: Caroline Bartlett, Jane Ponsford and Jo Lovelock. Caroline Bartlett's piece "A stitch in the fragment of time" played with ideas about the fabric of the building. Porcelain discs that had been impressed with cloth and lace textures were inset into thick felt and displayed in a long glass case. Fragments of lace, stitches, fur and feathers were trapped in many of the discs. I liked the sense of something fragile being preserved - and the tension of fragments that appear to have a story behind them but, being removed from their original context, you can only guess at what that might be.

Jane Ponsford's "A landscape in ten parts" was a grouping of ten bell jars containing hand made paper forms that reminded me of nests, trees, reeds and other landscape elements. The paper was stained and marked with clay and other traces from the landscape. I liked the simplicity of the individual pieces but the way these worked as a group, overlapping and responding to each other, was really engaging. Jane Ponsford's website has more details about the thinking and process behind this piece.

Jo Lovelock's "Amiticia" was inspired by the previous owner's enormous collection of damaged china swans and used copies of letters and papers to produce a paper swan and accompanying quilt-like piece. The use of letters gave a sense of the people connected with the house and the network of friendships. I liked the visual impact of the variety of handwritten marks and the shadows made by the folds. See more about this on Jo Lovelock's blog.

The next morning (Saturday), I went to see Alice Fox's solo exhibition at Lansdown Hall. I was grateful that Alice took pity on me and let me in early out of the pouring rain. I've seen Alice's work before but this was a much broader cross-section of her work.

Alice's use of found objects to make marks on cloth or paper creates a direct relationship between the marks and the place these objects come from (usually, but not always, the coast). The palette is restricted - natural cloth, rust, tea, and printing ink, which keeps the focus on the marks. She adds collagraph, other printmaking and hand stitch in response to the organic marks generated by the objects. Sometimes this turns the marks into something that reminds me of a map, or the marks in the sand left by the tide. I particularly love Alice's concertina books and the way their long, thin format somehow captures the sense of a journey or a walk. In this exhibition, there were also some larger format works on paper, which were incredibly subtle and reminded me of the marks the water makes in wet sand on the beach. There is a review of this exhibition (different venue) here.

My final visit was to the exhibition Shadow and Line at the Museum in Stroud. This brought together nine artists working in textiles, turned wood, enamel, porcelain and mixed media. This was a strong exhibition and it was wonderful how work by the different artists worked so well together, echoing themes and aesthetic qualities.

Shadow and Line - Caroline Bartlett on the left wall; Elizabeth Turrell and Linda Brassington on the right.

There was more work by Caroline Bartlett - "Backwards, Forwards" - in which she has gone back to her older work, which used pleating and folding, and through scanning and redrawing has used this to create new pieces, like stitched drawings of the originals. The results look like geological or archaeological diagrams. I was absorbed for ages in studying the range of different hand stitched marks.

Of the remaining artists, three interested me in particular: Hilary Bower, Jilly Morris and Linda Brassington. I was particularly intrigued by the way they all manipulated, marked and altered the surfaces of the materials they used. Hilary Bower used humble materials (sandpaper, masking tape, greaseproof paper ...) into which she rubbed graphite, pastels and paint to create dark, shadowy, cloth-like surfaces. Behind glass, they were a real challenge to photograph.

There were two wonderful pieces by Jilly Morris where she had hand-drilled thousands of holes into inked and waxed paper to change the surface. But I was fascinated by another piece where she had explored the range of marks she could make with a printing roller. Close up, individual marks looked like extracts from a landscape drawing, but twenty strips of these linear marks combined into one piece had a huge impact.

Finally I admired the way Linda Brassington combined resist dye, discharge with powdered pigments and wax to create surfaces with such depth of colour and texture. There was a real sense of light being drawn into and absorbed by these dark surfaces. Some of the pieces are shown on Linda's Axisweb page.

Photos (in order): Caroline Bartlett, Hilary Bower, Jilly Morris, Linda Brassington.

I drove home again in dreadful weather and took most of Sunday off to recoup energy. I've seen so much and am still absorbing impressions and ideas, although thoughts about different surfaces, textures and mark-making (as ever) are uppermost.

For information about this and future events, see the SIT web site. You can also view this year's brochure online.

Edges, threads and traces

May 18, 2014

I have been in stitch mode for a while. I have finished several new pieces of work for Bircham Gallery and have more work ready to stitch in the studio. Work is flowing well at the moment so I'm making the most of this. Never know how long it will last ...

I think I have a new favourite piece. Over these blue mountains was all about edges. Lots of minute stitching. I felt as though I was conjuring the forms of the mountains out of the marks left by the dye on the cloth. Two posts back I reflected on how the marks on my flints have their own cause, but when I look at them I interpret them in certain ways according to my own memory and experience of similar marks. And now I found myself following the same process with the marks on the cloth - their true origin relates to dye chemistry and application but through selecting and emphasising specific edges and marks over others I was drawing out their resemblance to something else.

In the top and bottom sections, stitching became a game of defining and dissolving edges. In some places lines of stitch hold down actual cloth edges; in others they merely create the illusion of an edge. I was making decisions every time I selected a thread colour, placed a stitch or ended a line as to where the "edges" were and whether they were strong or faint. Sometimes I was following marks in the cloth so indistinct that even I was not sure whether they were really there.

It dawned on me that I was playing directly with Tim Ingold's distinction between traces and threads. Ingold argues that most lines can be classified as one or the other. "A thread is a filament ... that can be entangled with other threads or suspended between points in three-dimensional space. ... threads have surfaces, however they are not drawn on surfaces." In contrast "the trace is any enduring mark left in or on a solid surface by a continuous movement."

I was using the traces left by dye on the cloth as a guide to where to place lines that I was making with a continuous thread. And while I was focusing on what was happening on the front - the way the stitches were interacting with the dye marks - something else was happening on the back. My thread was marking its pathway across the cloth with another pattern of stitches, livelier and more random than the carefully considered choices I was making on the front. Conscious, deliberate decisions on one side; unconscious, accidental effects underneath - but each a direct consequence of the other. It's a pathway - in the sense that it traces a route - but it's different from the line we would mark with our feet or draw on a map because it's marking the spaces / movement between each stitch / step rather than the steps themselves.

I like the freedom and liveliness of these accidental stitches and I'm pondering ways of recreating the effect. If I simply turn the cloth over, I will lose a lot of control over how each stitch relates to the marks on the cloth. If I copy the pattern of the stitches on the back, they will lose some of their spontaneity. This is interesting in itself! Need to experiment with this.

If this seems a particularly introspective post, this is how it is with me when I am stitching. While I am very focused on what I am doing, my mind is free to reflect. I think this is why I prefer hand stitch. It is a physical process that keeps the mind engaged in a way that's different to when I sew with a machine. Each stitch is an individual decision but there is time for the mind to explore different trains of thought. It is when I am stitching that I spend the longest period with each individual piece (and this is usually when I work out what to call it). I notice things I didn't see when I constructed the piece, new ideas emerge, new links and associations are made and I come up with new things I want to try.

More on Tim Ingold's thinking on lines here.

Three exhibitions in one day

May 9, 2014

My visits to London are infrequent so I like to make the most of them. Hence I've had a long day criss-crossing the city from East to West and back again to catch three exhibitions. I'm tired, my feet ache and my head is buzzing but I want to take the time to collect my thoughts.

First, I went to Clerkenwell to see Gizella K Warburton's solo exhibition (finishes on Sunday). Visit her web site to see very good images and more information about her work. I last saw Gizella's work at Alexandra Palace in 2010 so was intrigued to see how it has developed. I noticed more three dimensional work and integration of wood and slate alongside the cloth and thread. The common ground is that we are both interested in marks - as she puts it, "the innate human urge to make marks ... to decipher the meaning of our physical and emotional landscapes, and the transient nature of the warp and weft of our lives."

One of the striking features of Gizella's work is the way she never disguises the true nature of her materials. Everything, cloth, thread, wood, remains exactly what it is even as she combines and juxtaposes colours and textures. The colours are monochromatic - mostly the natural colours of her materials. Texture is emphasised - creased cloth, scorched wood, frayed edges. Even where she coats the cloth with paint or medium, whether printed or painted, the original texture tends to be emphasised rather than covered.

What fascinated me most though was the breadth of stitch vocabulary she achieves within only one or two stitch types. Her stitched marks are as important as the cloth. They are nearly all variations on knots or straight stitches, plus couching of thread directly onto the surface. But she finds so many variations within this repertoire. Thread ends are often exposed - adding to the texture. I admire the way she varies the rhythm, density and placing of the stitches with such good judgement as to what each piece needs. Perhaps I was particularly tuned into noticing this since I am in stitch mode in the studio at present.

Next I squeezed in a visit to Erskine, Hall & Coe to see their exhibition of ceramics by Ewen Henderson. I always find ceramics very inspiring - I think it is something about surfaces, texture and marks that appeals to my own instincts. Also, when I look at other textile artists, I know too much about how it is done. Whereas when I look at ceramics I think more freely about how I would achieve similar effects in cloth. I liked the textures and marks of Henderson's pieces. I particularly liked one piece where fragments of dark blue glaze seemed to emerge out of the coarse texture of the clay - I watched effect of the changing light on this for some time. I also liked the forms of his large pieces. Complex, organic forms - some of them look like a collapsed piece of archaeology. He said this about his work that:

“It explores the significance of what is broken, torn or cut, the ability of single or multiple forms to speak of either compression or expansion, flatness or fullness. It is a kind of drawing in three dimensions. I start with fragments - familiar, found, improvised - and then build up to complex structures that invite the observer to complete the circuit, so to speak, by considering such matters as memory, invention and metaphor.”

— Ewen Henderson (via Erskine, Hall & Coe)

My third visit was to Collect. From two small-scale exhibitions, each presenting a focus on a single artist's work, to a huge international fair presenting hundreds of craft objects by hundreds of different artists. I always find it overwhelming. I always forget many of the amazing pieces I see, however hard I try to take notes. So, recovering with a cup of tea, afterwards I concentrated instead on identifying any common elements that had caught my attention in what I had seen. There was something about layers and repetition. I had picked up on this in several pieces in different media - wood, ceramic, paper, metal. I was attracted to the rhythm of repeated units and the way it emphasised the edges when these were layered. The stand out piece for me under this theme was one by Wycliffe Stutchbury. For similar reasons I was interested in the texture of these pieces from the Sarah Myerscough Gallery (which I was allowed to photograph):

Malcolm Martin & Gaynor Dowling (detail)

I was also attracted to a number of pieces that took curving and overlapping forms. These were often in ceramic, glass or metal and the curves resembled the soft folds of cloth - and yet, if you did this in cloth, it would be hard to pull off the same effect without stiffening or supporting it in some way (unless the cloth is naturally quite stiff). Still, something else to reflect on.

Stone books

May 2, 2014

“Rocks are the record of events that took place at the time they formed. They are books. They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them.”

— John McPhee "In Suspect Terrain" (1983)

We think of stones as the epitome of permanence. We use expressions such as "set in stone", "heart of stone", "solid as rock" when we want to convey that something is fixed, unyielding, impervious to influence. But this is not the reality. It simply reflects the difference between our human perception of time and the unimaginable amount of time involved in geological processes.

I've been reading about the work of Ilana Halperin, specifically her exhibition "The Library" for National Museums Scotland last year. Ilana trained as a stone-carver but became interested in this relationship between geological phenomena and human life-spans. "The Library" included agates that were formed during a volcanic eruption in the year the artist was born; minerals that record the impact of a meteorite on the Earth's crust millions of years ago; etchings on "books" of mica that are millions of years old and sculptures made by the artist using geological processes in caves and geothermal springs. What is so inspiring about this is the way these works overturn our perception of the relationship between geology, biology and time.

I went back to Robert Macfarlane's "Mountains of the Mind" and re-read one of my favourite chapters - "The Great Stone Book", and particularly this passage:

“The imaginative experience of what the writer John McPhee memorably called “deep time” - the sense of time whose units are not days, hours, minutes or seconds but millions of years or tens of millions of years - crushes the human instant; flattens it to a wafer. Contemplating the immensities of deep time, you face, in a way that is both exquisite and horrifying, the total collapse of your present, compacted to nothingness by the pressures of pasts and futures too extensive to envisage. And it is a physical as well as a cerebral horror, for to acknowledge that the hard rock of a mountain is vulnerable to the attrition of time is of necessity to reflect on the appalling transience of the human body.

Yet there is also something exhilarating about the contemplation of deep time. True, you learn yourself to be a blip in the larger physical projects of the universe. But you are also rewarded with the realisation that you do exist - as unlikely as it may seem, you do exist.””

— Robert Macfarlane " Mountains of the Mind" (2003)

But the other aspect of Ilana Halperin's work that intrigued me was the specific history of the minerals she used. And I began to think about my own collection of stones. These are predominantly flint, picked up over the course of several years of walking along North Norfolk beaches. Each one was originally selected primarily for its marks, colour or other physical features but now I was curious what those marks might signify in geological terms.

The "outside" of the same piece - the "cortex", stained with iron perhaps.

I have learned that flint is a form of quartz (silicon dioxide) that occurs as nodules in sedimentary rocks such as chalk. It is derived from material in the bodies of marine organisms, the skeletons of which mix with chalk and organic matter in sediment on the ocean floor. It is thought that chemical changes within the sediment, perhaps related to the decay of organic matter, cause the silica to accumulate and form concretions within the chalk. In some of my flints there are mysterious veins or fragments which thus may be residual traces of minerals or organisms trapped inside the stone during this process of formation.

Inside the nodule, the stone is usually dark grey and glass-like, while the outside is often covered by a coarse, white layer, called a cortex. The cortex looks a little like chalk but is actually quartz. So, many of the patterns in my flints have been formed where the cortex has been worn away by the sea. Lots of them have a pale bluish tinge - maybe where the cortex has worn down to the thinnest "veil" over the darker interior of the stone? Many also contain other colours - black, yellow, rust - which are apparently traces of iron and other metal oxides, sulphides, hydroxides or organic material.

Knowing all this, the stone I picked up on the beach becomes a document. It holds the memory of organisms and processes stretching back millions of years and is itself part of the ongoing geological history of the Norfolk coast. The marks and traces - which remind me of maps, drawings or other symbols within my personal experience - have their own significance. And, from the point I picked it up, I arrested its ongoing transformation - if I had left it on the beach, the sea would have continued to wear it down. Now it sits on my desk in stillness, removed from its geological context, as an object of study.

I'm thinking about doing more with these - studying and drawing the marks more closely with a view to generating more ideas for imagery and marks on cloth. At the moment, though my studio is given over to making new work. I have had a fantastically productive week and my studio wall looked like this (when the sun was out earlier this week). It feels good.

When things don't go to plan ...

April 25, 2014

There was no question about it when I looked in the dye vats after the first round. I had pink. Not bright Barbie-doll-pink (thankfully). A sort of greyish-plaster-pink in the pale vat ... maybe more like dull purple in the other two. Unfortunately pink happens to be one of my least favourite colours. I had about six metres of cloth divided between three vats and it had taken two or three days to stitch and bind all the resists ... definitely time for a major rethink.

First step - figure out how a dye mix that was meant to result in a greenish brown had ended up pink. If anything the mix had looked too green when I made up the vats. The two purplish vats probably reflected how I'd adjusted the mix accordingly. My guess was that the lemon yellow dye had been shamefully bullied by the (tiny amount of) magenta and wimped out on me. Which reminds me (too late) why I usually prefer golden yellow.

Yes, dyes have their own personalities. Red (especially magenta) is a bully, reacts quickly and easily overwhelms the others. Blue is slow to react, needing twice as long to reach a full depth of colour, but quite resilient once it's got there (try removing an unwanted turquoise stain). Yellow (especially lemon) reacts quite quickly but is a wimp and is easily overwhelmed by the others.

It's relatively easy to compensate for all this when you dye with pure colours, but there are good reasons for using a mixed colour in shibori. I've worked out most of my mixes using thickened dyes (more convenient) but I'm finding that a mix that works fine that way can behave differently in the vat. I think this is because of differences in the way the dye reacts with the cloth in each case. The daunting implication is that I am going to have to figure out a system to re-test a lot of my mixes in the vat.

Meanwhile, I needed to figure out how to deal with all this pink. My original plan had been three blue-black vats, which should have given me a range of dark blues, browns and greenish neutrals. But to cancel out the pink tone, I needed some green. I decided to substitute turquoise for the royal blue I had planned to use ... and crossed my fingers.

On the whole it worked. I didn't of course get the colours I'd planned ... I ended up with a lot more blues ... and I still have more pinkish tones than I want so may be over-dyeing some of these. Overall not the most successful results - although, as ever, there are some stand-out pieces.

I was also using this dye session to experiment with clamped resists, in particular, partially clamping the pleated and stitched pieces. The results were interesting but on the whole the edge between the clamped and the unclamped section is a little obvious so this needs more thought. It didn't quite work for what I have in mind. The other experiment was to try out ways of restricting the pleated shibori to just one section of cloth - without resorting to wax or similar.

The colours were really not good, so I've greyed them out to focus on the marks. The one on the right is quite exciting with lots of potential for development. Guess what, this was the only sample in the whole batch with lemon yellow on it ... in all the wrong places!

The importance of losing pieces

April 17, 2014

“It’s important that we lose pieces. You get there faster, I think, by losing pieces, because you’re pushing yourself and you know how far to come back.”

— Dale Chihuly

I have that quote pinned to my studio wall to remind me not to be afraid of mistakes and to counter my inner control freak. Although it is possible to exercise a lot of control over the dye process, that's not the kind of dyeing I'm interested in. What I like about dye are the surprises - when you finish the drudgery of rinsing and remove the resists to see what you have. Sometimes it's not what you expected (although I can usually figure out why "that" happened these days); sometimes it's a disappointment; but sometimes it's more than you were hoping for - and that's the dance around the studio moment.

There were several things that didn't work for me in the last batch of dyeing. I felt the dye was too strong and too red. I don't think I used enough soda. And, for the effect I was after, the resists needed to be tighter. I still ended up with some lovely pieces but for the second batch, I adjusted what I was doing accordingly.

I'm very happy with these. I used the same pleat and stitch technique as before but added clamps and / or binding to preserve more white. This means you can see the under-painting, which was lost on some of the previous samples. Some of the clamps were shorter than the cloth, so I experimented with only partially clamping some samples (not shown). The results were interesting so I'm going to play with this further. The dye colours were exactly the same as the first batch, but I halved the strength and altered the brown I mixed by skimping the red and being very generous with the yellow and blue - this seemed to work and gave me an almost perfect neutral.

The disappointments in this batch were some of the over-dyed samples. This time the dye was too weak to have enough impact on some of these. Lesson learned - strong dye works better here. The "failures" are going back into the over-dye pile - if all else fails, I'll scrape a dark, thickened dye over them to get some interesting darks.

These were some of the more interesting of the rest. Some of these were over-dyed. The resists were a mixture of clamp (itajime), sticks and pole wrap.

I'm now preparing more cloth for the next batch. I have some new ideas I want to try and I'm thinking about altering the colours to get some grey-greens. I'm preparing lots of pieces because then I won't worry if some don't work out and I can be braver with the ideas I want to try - you have to be prepared to lose some.

Soft greys

April 13, 2014

Cley Beach

A short visit to Norfolk yesterday. A bright day but a band of cloud hung over the coast, filtering the light. All the colours were muted to these soft greys. We walked around Cley Marsh. The reeds, bleached by sun, wind and sea. Marsh harriers in the sky, lapwings on the field, avocets on the scrapes. The North Sea at low tide, quiet and subdued.

Arnold's Marsh

Cley Marsh

barred

reed lines

reed lines

mud lines

sand lines

and I know these colours ...

Slowing things down

April 9, 2014

The studio is in dye mode. I'm a little behind with where I had wanted to be but I've also made a decision to take my time with this. Usually when I'm dyeing, the next batch of cloth will be in the dye before I've finished processing the first. This satisfies my drive to get things done but it reduces the opportunity to respond to what's actually happening. So, this time I'm not setting up new dye baths until I've reviewed the previous results. I'm already glad of this as there are some nice surprises in the first batch … but also some things I want to change.

Things to change:

Dye too strong, especially in the Dark buckets.
A little too much red in the "brown" I mixed - and at first glance this seems to have affected the linen more than the cotton.
Need more compression on some of the pleated resists - add clamps or bind around a core

Meanwhile, these are some of the highlights:

Boro

April 5, 2014

Yesterday I went to see an exhibition of Boro textiles at Somerset House in London. Before I even got there, I was aware that there was a debate about the way the textiles were displayed. The exhibitor has made a deliberate decision to display the textiles stretched over boards and hung on the wall. Some feel that this is totally inappropriate. These were domestic textiles - clothing, futon covers, wrapping cloths - that are the product of a tradition of continuously patching and repairing cloth for utilitarian and economic purposes. Boro means something like "ragged" in Japanese. Displaying them in this way removes them from that context. It also imposes limitations - you can't view both sides, you lose the edges and the clues as to their original use. From being domestic artefacts with a life and a history, they become two dimensional art objects, to be appreciated for their visual qualities.

However, the visual impact of the textiles on the bright, white walls of the gallery was stunning. Misgivings evaporated as I walked into the first room. These are fascinating textiles and seeing them this way allows you to fully appreciate colour and composition. If it had been a museum show, you would expect more emphasis on the cultural context in which the cloths were made. But this is a selling exhibition and the exhibitor is consciously positioning them as fine art objects, priced accordingly.

It's an interesting tension. The catalogue poses the question "Can art transcend function?" I don't believe that the people who originally made these cloths did so with a deliberate aesthetic intention. They were made to be used. Pieces of cloth were joined together to make a larger cloth. Holes and tears were covered with patches. The stitching is functional - just enough to hold the pieces together. But at the same time, the culture within which these cloths were made featured a strong craft tradition and a very considered approach to the most everyday activities and this comes through even in these so-called "rags". On a striped patch, the stitcher has followed the lines in the cloth. On another, it does look as though the maker made deliberate decisions about the colours and positioning of the patches. It does appear that some makers were paying attention to the visual effect of what they did. But it is unlikely they were ever made to be viewed as "art".

I think it says as much about us and our own cultural context that we do. We look at Boro textiles, with eyes that have become accustomed to modern, abstract art. We recognise some of the same qualities and accept their presence in a gallery setting. At the moment though this is apparently a predominantly Western thing. While I was there I overheard part of a conversation between one of the attendants and a Japanese visitor who was bemused to find these textiles presented like this, in a gallery. In Japan, Boro textiles are not valued in the way they are by Western collectors.

Leaving aside this debate, I spent nearly three hours looking closely at the textiles themselves. I couldn't face carrying my camera around London yesterday so these images are the best I could manage with my iPhone. What caught my attention was the layering of the patches - the way holes overlapped and revealed layers beneath - and the stitching. Most of the stitching was quite rough - some neater than others but it was the kind of stitching you make when you tack things together. There were traces of the individual makers in the size and rhythm of the stitches. I noticed the stitching usually followed a "route" - e.g. the maker would usually stitch around the sides of the patch and then into the centre in a continuous line. This meant the stitch line became a kind of path. Secondly, the stitching of the patches on one side of the cloth showed through on the other - so while the function of the stitching on the side you were looking at was obvious, there was this additional layer of stitching that hinted at what was happening on the other side. Often, bits of the stitching were missing so you had to interpret what was going on with incomplete information. I find this quite exciting. Also, the layering and stitching of some pieces made me think of a map - but a map that was showing multiple layers at the same time. Lots to think about here.

The exhibition is on until 26 April and there is a well illustrated catalogue to go with it. Details here.

Also, see this article for a very different approach to exhibiting Boro textiles.

Remedies for over thinking

March 28, 2014

When I start to feel as though my mind is going round in circles, I know it's time to get out of my head and do something. Anything. I'm reading a lot at the moment. This is generating masses of ideas but they are confused and abstract. I need to connect my thinking back to my work.

A flying visit to Norfolk last weekend helped. It was a stormy day and the light was changing constantly - dark, icy cold hailstorms followed by brilliant spring sunshine. Walking along Holkham beach I picked up shells, pieces of sea-blackened wood and bones - tiny rabbit bones amongst the dunes. I found a rabbit skull that was almost totally buried by the soft grey lichen that had grown up around it and held it so tight it wasn't possible to pick it up without breaking it. I wish I had photographed it because it has stayed in my memory. I was fascinated by the patterns on the shells I found - miniature shibori patterns to my eye. We saw spoonbills and watched a red kite soar over the grazing marshes, scattering smaller birds. Later, when we sat down for dinner, my notebook came out and I scribbled furiously, trying to get down the ideas that were flooding my mind before I lost them.

Another remedy - get back into the studio and start working. So I have been preparing cloth for shibori. I like to do this in batches and so I am piling up various stitched and bound pieces ready for dyeing. Some use traditional shibori methods, some are very unorthodox and traditionalists would surely frown at them. However I'm only interested in what kind of marks they generate. Most are techniques I have tried and tested before but I am also experimenting with some new ideas. One was such a pain to do that I rather hope I don't like the results so I don't have to do it again!

I am still thinking. And my thoughts are guiding my choices about how I manipulate the cloth. But I am out of my head and thinking with my hands. As I handle the cloth, I am making connections with my conceptual ideas, but my hands and my eyes are now contributing to the thinking process.

And a third remedy. Get out of the house. Talk to people. Look at or do something different. Today I went to see this exhibition by Karen Christensen - whose work could not be more different from mine, and yet I still found connections to things that matter to me. I had a nice lunch, spoke to a friend, wandered around Leigh in the sunshine and came back to my studio refreshed and ready to work.

Looking back and thinking ahead

March 19, 2014

Several pieces of my work can currently be seen in a mixed exhibition at Bircham Gallery in North Norfolk until 2 April.

Then I realise (detail) - currently at Bircham Gallery

Below is the artist's statement I wrote for them:

“Helen Terry creates abstract textile works using dye, mark-making and hand-stitch.

She grew up on farms in Hertfordshire and has spent most of her life in East Anglia, dividing her time between the Essex estuaries and Norfolk coast and marshland.

Helen works with cloth because of the way it can be manipulated and changed and hold the traces of what is done to it. Generally beginning with white cloth, she scrapes and paints layers of dye onto it and experiments with shibori processes to add layers of colours and marks. Helen then tears, folds, layers and stitches pieces of dyed cloth into a larger whole that conveys a sense of a story or journey.

Helen is inspired by found marks - whether natural or man-made - particularly the kind that reflect the wear and tear inflicted by time and the environment and suggest something about the history of the object. A recurring theme in her work is the way we interpret fragments and traces to create our own stories and meaning. ”

Trying to sum up what I do in those two paragraphs forced me to think hard about my work, my process and my intentions. And now with the finished work hanging in the gallery, I'm pausing to reflect before moving on. Although, having said that, the next pieces are already in progress; the ideas for the pieces after that are already developing. This isn't a neat, finish-one-thing-then-start-the-next kind of process - the work overlaps and grows out of what went before. But it's important to me not to automatically do more of the same and to have a sense of where I'm going with this.

I'm wrestling with ideas at the moment. I'm not sure whether I have something I want to take further - or how I might translate my thoughts about it into cloth, dye, stitch.

I'm conscious of the risk of making work that is dominated by the process - the pure, undeniable fun of just playing and experimenting with cloth and dye. And there is a place for that. But the risk is of ending up with work that lacks depth. Personally, I need to have some sense of what I want the work to be about, what I'm trying to convey, so that I can make the right choices and decisions and refine those accidental, organic effects into a strong piece of work.

But at the other extreme, I know there is a risk of labouring the underlying idea at the expense of the work itself - which ends up seeming stilted or unconvincing because it comes second to the idea. There needs to be a balance. I think the most successful work makes expressive use of materials and process but conveys something more. And that "something more" is drawn from an underlying body of ideas, concerns or interest.

So alongside all the practical studio work, I'm constantly looking, reading and thinking. I'm interested in many things - natural patterns and processes; ideas about connectedness; the way the mind works; communication. I don't always know how all this will translate into my work but I do it anyway. I know that it all influences my choices and the decisions I make, even when I'm not consciously thinking about this when I'm absorbed in the process.

Clearing out my studio, I came across a file of preparatory work for a piece I made nearly ten years ago. It was salutary to recognise some of the same interests but think how differently I would approach the same source now. But there's a lot I still like about the piece that came out of it.

Rebecca Crowell has interesting things to say about this and other aspects of the creative process.

all work shown in this post is by Debbie Lyddon

Debbie Lyddon: Caught by the tide

March 9, 2014

This weekend I went to see Debbie Lyddon's exhibition, "Caught by the Tide". I've followed Debbie's work for some time. There's a particular interest because she draws inspiration from the same stretch of North Norfolk coastline that I do. It is always fascinating to see how others respond to the same place and reflect upon the differences and similarities.

The similarities: we are both interested in the things that the tide washes up onto the beach and the effect of the sea and the weather on these and materials in general. However, where I tend to focus on the marks, Debbie's focus is more on how the material itself is changed - "the processes of change that occur when cloth is exposed to the elements or left to be washed around in the sea for years."

Debbie's work is very tactile. Cloth is exposed to sea water, rain, coated with wax, varnish or salt. You reach out to touch something that is obviously cloth … and unexpectedly it is hard, stiff. Salt crystals glitter and form encrustations where cloth has been soaked in salt water which is then left to evaporate. Rust stains form where wire has been stitched into the eyelets. Colour is minimal. The focus is on the cloth and the way it is changed by these processes.

Debbie is a classically trained musician and has a particular interest in how you can make the sounds of the coast visible. Drawings capture impressions of the sounds heard in the landscape. Eyelets and tubes project from her wall pieces and are like the finger holes of wind instruments. In fact there is a strong three dimensional element in her work - waxed pots and cylinders hold beach finds or encrusted salt - and a clear relationship between the wall pieces and her free-standing work.

Reflecting on my own work, there were two things I took away in particular. First, something about texture. Dye doesn't change the handle of the cloth - that's part of the point of using it. But it could be interesting to experiment with changing the texture in some areas … and see how this might alter, resist or soak up the dye.

Second, something about working in three dimensions. I've already experimented with incorporating 3D elements into my wall pieces but what would it look like if I took ideas from these into free-standing pieces?

More about Debbie Lyddon:

Web site

Blog

Article about the exhibition on Textileartist.org

Visual Thinking

February 23, 2014

Taking photographs is instinctive for me, drawing doesn't come so naturally. But I find photographs can be too passive - it's easy to end up with masses of images and ideas about them that are too vague or simplistic. I wanted to work with that last set of photographs and push my ideas further.

In one of my books, the jeweller, Kayo Saito, describes her drawings as "image training". I like that idea of drawing as a thinking process. I'm not interested in copying my photos or producing an accurate landscape drawing. What I want is to bring out the elements that interest me, play around with them and see what I can do with them.

And so for the last week or so the studio has been turned over to drawing and collage. I printed out my photos and cut them up. Slicing them up, taking them out of context, the linear elements that had caught my eye when I took the photographs in the first place became even more shibori-like. Arranging them into new compositions is similar to the way I would work with cloth, with lots of freedom to experiment with ways of juxtaposing the different lines and tones.

For the drawing, I'm using mainly ink. Ordinary fountain pen ink - although I'm using inks from Diamine who produce writing ink in 101 colours! I love the way the ink flows and bleeds on the page in unpredictable ways. Plus I can dilute it to make the palest washes or bleach it. In other words it behaves a lot like dye.

Hmmm. There's something here about my taste for media that I can't fully control. I think I rather like how they undermine my inner control freak and force me to let go of the outcome. And I love the random, organic effects that ink or dye can produce.

I'm not worrying about where all this is leading at the moment. There's no plan. But I'm enjoying this kind of thinking. It's generating ideas about composition, marks, colour that are moving me beyond my initial response to the photographs - which is exactly what I want.

clicking on the thumbnails will bring up a larger image