Creative Process = Time

After a long time off and illness , I feel like I am seeing colour again. It made me ponder on the where's and how's of the creative process.
I remember my days singing, recording and composing. The creative process for my music was time. I could not keep working on one song and expect it to be "finished" after a couple of hours work. So Art I find is similar and , the break, although still out drawing and recording new experiences , has helped me refocus on the Stripes and Checks Project.
I would like to make my initial drawings stand up and protrude out.
What started off as buckl;es has now become country hedgerow gates.
I am weaving from sticks and stones found on the heath. with fine brown thread to resemble the ink marks I have made.
I am also knitting  tubes to be stuffed with natural yellow yarn and then cutting into them... Stuffing with wire to stand up and be modelled...

Stripes and Checks

New day back at Nuca. Second Term. New Project- Stripes and Checks. We will be having an induction in weaving. I am still having doubts as to whether Textile is the right avenue for me and spoke to Grainne my lecturer. She said that she will support me in whatever medium I choose to weave in and show me that it is not only Yarns that one can use. Doubts to one side .We have a drawing task of an hour x 3 using drawing, collage and combining the two.
I think I want to work with vintage objects and mainly clasps, so I went to a charity shop to source vintage looking buttons and clasps.
This leads me to thinking about Hands, clasping hands, holding  and keeping people together. Skin and the connection of skin on skin , like premature babies.
Contextual studies was a discussion on stripes and checks. Colour and object association.

More drawing tonight and a read of my new Orla Kiely book.

18 Dec- new music

heard a beautiful song on the radio by a young artist  http://www.myspace.com/jamesblakeproduction. haunting piano echoes and smooth vocals, "there's a limit to your love". connections to maternal love from my  memories of the day before. is there a limit to motherly love. A book I read many years ago called "we need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver tells the tale of a mother whose love knows no bounds for her killer son.
Fragile love and also strong as a light house in a storm....

Birthdays -17 Dec

wonderful day of learning the art of receiving, among the beautiful jewelery and perfumes I was bestowed, a origami home made card and a stiched bag , being the prized possesions. Isat for a moment the night before looking at all the things I had collected for my children since they were babies and statreted to think about their relevance. Why did I keep those things, were they dear to me? it made me think of all babies and motherhood. Mimentos and what we define as our most prized possession. Mine are the 2 baby grows that my children were laid in after their birth.
they still hold a smell and an everlasting image in my mind, bringing back that strong feeling of maternal  love, at one glance. The memory is 3 dimensional..

Post Term and Renewal

I have been licking my wounds and cursing my Arrogance at thinking that I would pass the first unit of 1ST year with flying colours. Valuable lesson for me. I still feel that I do not really know where I went wrong and hope that I am able to ask and also to realise myself where I need to improve.

But on to the next project. Now that my studio is clean and my inspiration board is begging for more ideas. I read the course handbook on the requirements for next term's unit. Still not any closer to understanding.
What I am to understand is that we will be looking at lines, shiny things and antiques for our intro to weaving. I have thought about time lines, history lines and lines on our face.Train lines...journeys!

So I am in the library at uni looking at the WGSN website. Researching trends for the next year. I hit on Macrame, something I did at school and loved.It will be what we are all wearing this summer and I can see it is making tentative moves already in this season's knitware.

Timelines - journeys, stories and lines on old faces.... where have they been , what have their hands touched, much loved items and the stories of those items.. all come together and make our stories today to be passed on to our children. Recycle and re use. We have the time now. The recession has made us slow down and what an exciting time and opportunity for Design.

I am looking forward to going to London this weekend to visit some Museums and drink in some culture.
Plan is to look up some designers with regards to Weaving... Paul Smith( for the lines!!) and Missoni ... watch this space.

christmas and lesson learnt

 So the first term is over and all my work handed in.What have I learnt? I know that there must be shortcuts and I need to learn and discover them. As I was doing my preparations for my hand in I realised that ,as I do my sketches, I need to be collating ideas and samples ready to go . Not put them to the side, for later assembly.
I now have the confidence to put them all together and know that that is my representation.

I have changed immeasurably and I am proud of my journey so far. I never thought I could be so focused. There have been sacrifices and my kids have sacrifised alot for me to be here , so in honour of this I work to my full capabilities.

Snow, ice and Christmas is upon us and a new year.

The pupil

So many wonderful things have happened to me in the last couple of weeks. Our "Materials -Industrialisation" project got under way and I was very excited about my idea of knitting some copper wire and then pinning it to a bit of fabric . Two hand embroidery work shops helped me change my mind.

The first one was with Alison Willoughby ,an extremely wonderful and whole textile designer who came to teach us how to hand embroider and interpret lines from our drawings. She loved my photos of Brooklands Hotel and gave me some good advice on keeping all my sewing lines clean and strong.
She was a wonderful and open person and I do hope that I am able to work with her one day.

So after this workshop the knitted copper became bashed copper with copper pins and some crushed silk.My knowledge of this is growing as is my confidence. The second workshop was with my course tutor Grainne who showed us the use of colour with a colour wheel. We used Gouche which I have not used for a
while since my jours francaises. It helped me break out of this black process I have with seeing things , I am quite pleased to say.

A wonderful Lecture by Ray         on Bel Geddes, was relevant to my research on my project. His vision of the future and how he was always organised and meticulous was inspiring.
As was a trip to the Fitzswilliam museum in Cambridge. I waqs taken aback by the exactitude of the architecture among the weavving bicycles.
The grandiose columns of the museum welcome you and for reason, some of the greats are housed there. I could not choose which room to paint in but decided to FOCUS and settled for the pre raphaelites which we studied in Contextual studies this term.

I am now hurtling towards my deadline and as I assemble my work I am aware of how far I have come and how much I know I can change next term. The sacrifices I have made to do this degree.