inspiration

Houses, Houses. Hooked house runner–the process, the questions

September 12, 2018 by Birdbrain 4 Comments

The first side of the hooked house runner is all but complete. You can see how much I drew on each side, hoping as I hooked that I’d find inspiration for sky and border. At one point I thought half circles would work for the border, but I didn’t like them at all. I’ve decided to do rectangles of teal, turquoise and related colours on the two longs sides and something different for the shorter sides. Possibly circles. And the sky? Still waiting…

I do love hooking houses. If you follow the blog you know I’ve been working up to this, doing smaller studies. I use mostly remnant strips and small pieces. I pin together 2″ strips of related colours to keep a little order in the chaos and that forms much of my supply basket. I love what happens when the supplies are scarce–just a line of red, or a final strip of a favourite wool, placed just so. Somehow it makes things more thoughtful. And it’s a crazy thing, but I’m emotionally attached to my wool–it often has a history with me–someone significant dyed it or it came from another project that I laboured over–or the colours combined perfectly in the dye pot. By using it again here, I capture a little of the magic.

It’s always interesting to follow the development of an idea. Here are two small studies from December 2016, the start of my hooked house mat obsession. I’m at the gallery tomorrow, so I’ll take my stand and a pile of strips from the turquoise/teal bin and see how much progress I make on the border. And who knows, maybe amid the paintings on the walls, I’ll get inspiration for the rest of this piece.

update: latest hooked piece and two books that arrived this week

August 31, 2018 by Birdbrain 4 Comments

It clearly has not been a summer for posting on the blog. I have been posting the occasional photo on Instagram but that’s it. We have been at the cottage a lot during this very hot summer–a beautiful spot with some connectivity, but not to do more than send a text or make a call. Definitely enough, and I like it that way, but the blog which takes a solid connection for a length of time, has been neglected.

Is it time to give up the blog? I don’t think I am ready to do that. I like the record it provides for one thing. The first post was over 7 years ago! And I like the space to expand on ideas and show my work. Even if my readership has diminished. Even if I am not regular about it. Even if it’s just a place to record my thoughts. This is the latest village finished. I have put it in a woollen frame and plan to make it into a pillow.

A closeup showing the frame…

And two books which arrived in the mail this week. The small one is Canadian quilter Judith Martin’s poem/photos of her stitched piece called Not to Know But To Go On. The second is an artist new to me, Jean Claude Roy, whose dramatic paintings of Newfoundland are deeply moving and inspirational.The title of the book, Fluctuat Nec Mergitur, which means She Is Tossed By the Waves but Doesn’t Sink, is a gorgeous phrase, one that would also suit Judith Martin’s lovely work. I encourage you to seek out both books.

july 2018

August 8, 2018 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

Since I got home from France on July 2, I have been at our cottage. I still have much more to post about my almost two weeks in France and I will do that. But right now I want to talk about July and the lake. The cottage, a 1950’s former hunting cabin, is on a small island in Canadian shield country. When the whole family is there it is crowded, chaotic, laughter-filled. But most of the time it’s quiet with room for thinking, rug hooking and painting.

I have had my kayak for 35 years and it was not new when I took it over. It’s faded red and white with a maple leaf insignia. It feels like an extension of me. I aim to take it out every day, on the big part of the lake when I want a challenge, but mostly in the back bays and inlets. A time of contemplation. Some of these trees have worked their way into my hooked pieces.

A glimpse of a perfect summer afternoon with cousins…

And while there I’ve been working on a study loosely based on the village in Provence where I was in June. What I like best about hooking at the cottage is that my materials are scarce. I have only my bag of ends and some additional 2″ pieces. I need to make ‘do’ with what I have and I love the problems that creates and the solutions that emerge. This is almost finished and the larger piece will begin. I’m taking a landscape course at the end of the summer so I need to be ready with the bigger work for that.

Two great fibre exhibits on my holiday

July 25, 2018 by Birdbrain 4 Comments

I was in London when the Fashion Textile Museum had its exhibit of the work of Orla Kiely. I’ve long been a fan of her work and it was so interesting to see her process up close–pages from her sketchbook and samples of her clothing and bags.

Here is my sketchbook page from the day.

Then, totally unexpectedly, I stumbled into an amazing textile sculpture show in Isle de la Sorge in Provence. Next to our sketching site was La Fondation Villa Datris and inside and outside were amazing fibre sculptures. From Sonia Delaunay and Sheila Hicks to others I had not been introduced to, this was a thrilling exhibit. The museum staff were incredibly welcoming and I wandered happily taking photos both in the gallery and in the amazing garden.

I was particularly interested in the work of El Anatsui who “has managed to turn salvaged materials into a mainspring of the creative process. His work questions global commercial exchanges, the destruction and the transformation of materials, symbols of events that spread across the African continent.” (quotation from museum notes)

And in the garden the sculptures of Odile de Frayssinet who winds polypropylene rope on wire frames and then uses fire to give her pieces “skin with a half-animal, half-plant appearance.” (museum notes)

yellow sky

April 2, 2018 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I’ve been working on this test/sample piece for the last week or so, trying out some new ideas. I’m planning to make a longer and slightly wider piece with a village at each end and connecting sections and images between the two. I am working out shape and colour in these small pieces as well as the concept of border. I still have more thinking to do before I begin the larger piece. I decided to do circles in the sky as it seemed to lighten the small space–and the warmth of the yellow seemed much better than the blue I began with . You can see the full evolution of the piece on my instagram feed (connection in the menu bar above).

I am inspired by Jane Kidd’s exciting exhibition at the Textile Museum, Curious. It is intriguing to see how she overlays design features, incorporates grids and divides the canvas turning a landscape into a complex layering of ideas, many of which feel like warnings. An exceptional textile artist!

painting and stamping pouches

February 4, 2018 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

One of the projects we worked on in a recent fibre retreat was designing pouches. Everyone got a blank pouch made of unbleached canvas and lined with unbleached cotton. The pouches had zippers inserted but were not sew up as you can see in the photos below. Stamps, fabric paint, stencils, markers, watercolour pencils, appliqé fabric and more were available. Here you can see us working away and then below some of the finished pouches. And at bottom is my first attempt at embroidery since I embroidered my name on my gym shorts in Grade 9. It’s something I hope to do more of. I found the book on my shelves to give me a hand.

Fronts…

and backs…

gift of a textile designed by Vanessa Bell

April 23, 2017 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

My sister brought me back a wonderful gift from her trip to England: a pattern on linen designed by Vanessa Bell for Omega Workshops in 1913. The label tells the design was originally watercolour, gouache and graphite on paper. If you look closely at the photo below you can see the graphite grid and the watercolour layers. What a gift! It combines my love of textiles and my love of watercolour. Not to mention my longtime interest in the Bloomsbury group.

So I started searching out more information about Bell the artist and textile designer. I had read this article about the show at the Dulwich Gallery in London curated by Canadian, Sarah Milroy. Her characterization of Bell is appealing: I like her commitment to freedom of expression and pleasure…and there is such joy in the way she embraces colour and sensation in the world. … The word that keeps coming to my mind is ferocious: There is something ferocious about the vitality of this woman.”

The Artsy editorial by Demie Kim gives more details about Bell the designer: Blurring fine art and applied arts, Bell was also an innovator in the realm of design. With Fry and Grant (her longtime partner and the father of her daughter, Angelica), she co-directed Omega Workshops. Their modernist products ranged from furniture to stained glass and mosaics, as well as textiles, which Bell patterned in vibrant hues that revealed her distaste for restrained Victorian designs. In 1915, she began to incorporate these fabrics into popular dress designs.

Vanessa Bell also designed many of the covers for her sister, Virginia Woolf’s books. And to complete the circle for me perfectly, Random House has recently issued a modern interpretation of Vanessa Bell’s covers of her sister’s books in collaboration with Marimekko. How perfect! And I must thank my own sister whose gift set me on such an interesting line of discovery.

Left: Vanessa Bell self-portrait. Right: Vanessa Bell portrait of her sister, Virginia Woolf

update after a few days away

April 2, 2017 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I was in Toronto last week and was fortunate enough to get to the Textile Museum fabric sale. I had never been before and was delighted to find all kinds of fabric — and even a bolt of leather — for bargain prices. Here are some of my fabric pieces, great selections to line my totes and some others for spring and summer tunics. Those pieces in the middle are beautiful slub linen.

I was also in Kingston on Saturday to see the fibre show at the Tett Centre. It is an excellent show, well worth a visit and lunch at the delightful Juniper Cafe is a must. Afterwards, I dropped into my favourite vintage store and found these–cherry red leather bellbottoms! What a great find. You will be seeing these transformed into pouches in the fall.

And finally, in the little time I have had at home, I have begun another village. This is to be a row of houses on a dock with water at the bottom. As you can see, my first idea for the dock did not work out. But that hasn’t taken away from the fun of designing these little studies. I’m learning a lot about colour and composition as I hook entirely from my leftover strips. Once I have the dock and water figured out and hooked, I’ll post again. In the meantime, I am heading to Montreal for a week of sketching. I hope the forecast improves and that I have lots of opportunity to sketch that wonderful city. I hope to post from there so I don’t leave such long gaps without writing. Thanks for sticking with me.

a day of inspiration in the city

October 6, 2014 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

I have owned a print of this painting for many years. I feel like I have always known it, so deeply is it imbedded, but actually saw the real thing for the first time at the National Gallery about 15 years ago. (As with other famous paintings which loom large in our imaginations, this painting is surprisingly small.) And I saw it again on Saturday at the Art Gallery of Ontario; it was part of an exhaustive retrospective of the work of Alexander Colville, the Canadian painter who died last year. Like much of his work, To Prince Edward Island, portrays a relationship and hints at the tension and isolation barely below the surface. The woman gazes off and the man is vulnerable and obscured behind. Other paintings are even more unflinching and bring a deep sense of foreboding and even terror, in spite of their somewhat ordinary subjects. Sarah Milroy’s 2013 article gives a good overview of Colville’s work and life and has a link to four of his most famous paintings, including Pacific, for me his most haunting.

The exhibit explored Colville’s process and had many of his sketches. Of course I loved this one.

And there was much to learn from his early watercolours. Look at the skies.

In the afternoon I went to an open house of my favourite Canadian clothing designer. I’ve said here before how I limit my buying as much as possible to second-hand and hand made. And Jana’s work is some of the most inventive and easy to wear that I have found. Her fabrics are wonderful and her designs timeless. It was so good to see her again and be among others who were also interested in and support local design.

When I climbed on the train at the end of the day, I was full of ideas–and full of gratitude that this world of inspiration is so close.

the weekend and more on text

August 25, 2014 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

My son was up early this past Sunday morning and captured these images of the lake awakening. This is what a summer morning on the lake is all about. Meditatively silent and beautiful.

And then, on another note entirely, I had an interesting email response to my last blog post on text in art. The writer wondered if I was familiar with the work of Jenny Holzer, an American artist, whose marble benches are inscribed with thought-provoking text. I am familiar with Holzer’s work because someone I know very well has a Holzer bench in her front hall. It is inscribed with words we could all live by:

TURN SOFT AND LOVELY ANY TIME YOU HAVE A CHANCE