I am coming to the end of my second week here at Eutopia and the work has been going incredibly well. My sketchbook has been filling up with notes, colour samples, poor sketches and a few museum tickets and ephemera. It will be not only a nice reflection of my time here but important documentation of my ideas, comments and questions.
I continued creating three more vessels with my focus theme, each one was an experiment in shape (what might work in real life), colour, pattern and stitch. And keeping in mind that I need to travel with them afterwards, I think they will disassemble fairly well.
The first one below is an elongated triangle (with wire mesh inside) and it’s either titled Becoming or Evolving (not totally sure). It was another case of being in the messy middle and wanting to quit as the detailed stitching was so…boring! In retrospect, I could have made it more interesting but I did enjoy putting on the couched threads and with the wire mesh inside, it curls up well.
The second one is titled The Bearer and was my approach to working dimensionally - it doesn’t lay flat! But I was inspired by some of the vessels at the Archaeological Museum here and wanted to mimic the colours and imagery I saw there. Initially the exterior was planned at the inside but once it was done I wanted to show case it. Stitching the units together was a challenge but I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked. The two photos show a before/after whisker trim!
Luckily, there’s a small plinth in the studio, so I can put items on display for photographing. It works well. The final textile vessel was quite an experiment, I wanted to see how a flat pice could be partially curved in a cylinder and have a bit of a “collar” effect at the top. The interior is Khadi paper that I marked with ink and then wrote as many creative roles of women as a could think of….artist, creator, weaver, sewer, etc. In order to get the curl/collar at the top, I put more of the wire mesh inside and manipulated it. It still seemed a bit plain so I added a “handle” from a branch I found….which you will see, has impacted later pieces.
I also took a break for the vessels to explore some markmaking and collage with rice paper and inks. These shapes were copied from pots I found at the museum. I stacked the paper in layers (after painting and adding inks) and cut out the shapes, then collaged them onto the Khadi paper and added more details with a Pigma pen. They were a blast to make and I want to go back and try more….
Having worked with the Khadi paper must have got me excited to see how I could use it for dimensional work….so I tried making some little paper vessels - and OMG, they turned out so well! I am totally in love with them….BUT I think they work well because I also placed them in situ with the handles/branches and displayed them on the plinth. Even so, they are a stepping stone to future work, so fluff or not, they serve an important role here! And it goes to show what can be done with paper and paint plus a stick!
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