Mark Making. Playing With Inks, Bleach, Water, Scratching, Layers…..

Hello everyone!

A cheery little face appeared in my experimental mark making today. planning the next stage now to explore composition and get my machine cranked up.

#creativeisolation #isolationartschool #markmaking #toast #patternity

Thanks 

Ideas are also being developed for possible poster designs. Using the cut out hands as a motif to link with theatre, shadow puppets and the theme of LOVE for Romeo & Juliet perhaps, in simplistic formats, that hope to communicate this to younger audiences or a visual references to entice people to the theatre. 

Creative workspaces are important places of solace and wellbeing. It’s good to make a mess and see where it leads you, lose yourself in your imagination, creative play and material exploration is so freeing and so welcome on these sombre grey days in lockdown.

Get your ‘messy mojo’ on and see what happens and don’t tidy up for tea!

Accuracy and advaced pattern drafting at Strode with the Textiles team. Expert FAD student work plotting and creating new tailored pattern blocks to be translated into cloth.

Moving forward to cropping and playing around with compositional decision making next. I am drawn to a square format and trying to maintain the expressive, gestural marks when deciding what works as a balanced piece.

 I may add further detail, maybe stitch or I might paint out detail and simplify the image. This is the fun part but something I am challenged by as really my default setting is the playful, experimental stage where I can be free and can work loosely enjoying the edges of one colour next to another and delight in the subtlety of a mark or appreciate the layering of a broad brush stroke next to a lightweight spontaneous drip or dribble. Endless possibilities that I do not want to end.

Fantastic plastic! Curse or wonder material? 

Repurposing carrier bags and household plastics into colourful artwork.

Russian Constructivism as a design influence is a wealth of pattern inspiration.

These are designs for possible products for a gallery shop as part of a graphics project. They started by playing with limited colours of paper and card to create repeat patterns to use as design ideas to apply to products.

Just re-found these toys that my daughter and I made when she was small. We started with her childhood drawings of animals and imagined creatures, then I made simple templates from them to cut out heads and bodies etc from old clothing. Then we stitched them up and stuffed them. Each one had a narrative, they had names and quirky habits, likes and dislikes- kind of profiles. Some more recognisable than others. Penguin, frog, dog, rabbit but what about the pink one! The frog was only ever a head.

They remind me of happy times on rainy days indoors getting creative and having a laugh together.

MAKE MORE NOISE

Processions June 2018

We have had the most amazing time working on this beauty!

Dorcas Casey, (who is an ex-Strode, Art team member of staff and also an ex-student) but now creates the most incredible sculpture and works from her studio in Bristol, amongst lots of other exciting ‘side-hustle’ projects such as this one. @beastsoftheuncanny

In collaboration with Somerset Art Works (SAW) partners and funded by the Arts Council, the banner project is a nationally co-ordinated, mass community artwork, initially designed by Artichoke as part of the centenary celebrations, promoting the importance of the female vote in 1918. 100 banners were created up and down the country.

Our banner was lovingly made by students, staff and also members of the community. We took our banner to London as part of the Processions celebrations in June and marched around the city, in the heat with thousands of other women. It was exhilarating and so great to be part of something so important to our heritage as women and also to celebrate what the Suffragettes and other women’s groups fought for so we could begin to build amore equal society.

Our banner received lots of praise, we were singled out across the press and made several headlines in the daily papers and on social media. Radio 6 Music singled us out and Dorcas was interviewed by Lauren Laverne, live on BBC radio, broadcast to millions.

A day to remember for ever and so great to be such a key part of this event. Our banner will also be on tour and exhibited around the UK with the 100 banners, it will be part of a publication and also included in a planned International Textiles Biennale in Lancashire in 2020.

Fabrication brief.

Student were asked to donate 5 items of old clothing to explore this communal response to the fashion industry and sustainability. This activity asked them to wrap and layer their garments as a parcel to collate as a collaborative wall installation. The first image shows a focused drawing of one talented students response to this task. A beautifully observed watercolour study.