Artist Residency at Dove Studios

I recently had the honour of being accepted on to a group artist residency at The Dove Studios, Somerset UK. In celebration of the amazing space The Dove is, Amazing Space III will be the exhibition of work running throughout the Thursday – Sundays of Somerset Art Weeks 2019 (21st September – 6th October.) We are creating site-responsive work together to be included in this beginning with the words “START BY NOT KNOWING”

I am currently three days into the five-day residency and as we all take a breather for the day to rest and digest, here are some process images from my time spent. Chalk, charcoal, rope, queerness, boundaries, edges, blurring, conservatism, the unknown and mapping are percolating in my down day off-site.

Colour From Tea

In May I attended a workshop with Cat from Colourfield. The day after I spent time experimenting with teabags I found in my kitchen to make the colours below: your standard black teabag and a Pukka turmeric green tea bag. The depth of the yellow and the warmth of the brown tannin surprised me. I am particularly enamoured with the way it coloured the raw wool samples. This is for a longer project I have bubbling away.

On cotton rag paper.

Black tea on cotton: dipped and bundle dye. Raw wool and cotton thread (for bundle dye).

Turmeric green tea on cotton: dipped and bundle dye. Raw wool and cotton thread (for bundle dye).

 

 

 

First Botanical Prints

Small leaves

Pansy

Primrose and purple creeper

The colour in the garden is surging and this palette catches my eye. I have come across the Hapazome printing technique through Babs Behan and am eager to try it. This happens one evening after a busy day, and as I have picked the flowers I decide to haphazardly hapazome through the weariness i.e. I know i’m not doing it quite right, but this has been my approach to this alchemy botanical alchemy making so far so I decide that any attempt is better than no attempt.

The delicacy of these images is striking. Noting bold and brash. Colour strong, and it won’t last. This week I have decided to step further into sharing my experiments on my social media pages, and am already enjoying the interaction it is creating. These words I wrote in light of these above experiments:

First haphazard attempt at botanical printing. 🌱 
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These colours won’t last on paper, but that is the pure beauty of it. The landscape outside is different to how it was last month, last week. We are different too, the fleshy bag of nature we call home.
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We are all becoming painfully aware of the delicacy of our ecosystem on this earth, and how much the human race has destroyed over the last few decades. Decades! A blip in time, but a mammoth impact on how our whole system functions.
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Engaging with the delicacy, beauty, pain and transience of life is something I hold closely within my creative practice. I have a longer piece of writing about this bubbling within me which I will share soon over on my Root + Write blog space.
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Over this last year I have been deeply reflecting on what it is I am doing (with this one wild and precious life) and how I am doing it. It’s the nature of being a highly sensitive introvert, for sure. Always with the big thinks and feels. One small, but profound shift has been recognising that as much as there are maHOOsive reasons to despair about where our world is veering off to, there are also so many moments and encounters that bring joy and connection. Often this is sitting with discomfort and pain. Feeling the truth that. Hope. Not for an idealised future where there is only laughter and fairy dust, but a hope that individually we are incredible and together – and I count the vastly wordless natural world in this – we are sublime.
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Our reconnection to the natural world – and recognising it as not something outside of ourselves – is vital. This isn’t a process of discovery, but excavation and recovery.
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It is right there. Underneath the layers of social conditioning and distraction. That wildly uncivilised part.
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Sketchbook Drawing: Movement Map

Mixed Media Map: Oak Gall Ink, Pine Charcoal Ink + Graphite.

I have recently been experimenting with drawing in layers. Leaving time between one visitation and the next. I am drawing from memory. Drawing out what lies under the surface. Curious about mark making and seeing where different marks wish to travel.

Akin to the process of organic ink making, time is of the essence. Percolation and saturation. A different time of day. A different plant source. A different amount of time on the heat, or in the cool. Gentle but profound factors.

This does not come easily. The socialised PUSH for an outcome. The SEEK for the known. The DISCOMFORT of an unguaranteed success. All of these parts of the making process come along for the ride. The don’t sit outside of the car, they are the less visible materials.

Even in these times of great truth-telling about the state of our planet, terrorised eco-systems and imminent extinction, somehow these small acts of art making, moments of staying in the unknown and seeing what action brings, helps to assist some kind of strength building.

Sketchbook Drawing: Mapping

A page from my sketchbook. Map making. A path that emerges on the page. 

Mixed media: Feral Inks – Oak Gall + Pine Charcoal, chinograph pencil + graphite. 

Feral Ink. – Beetroot

Painting Beetroot with Beetroot, and the leaves with Red Onion Skins. 

Writing with a previous Beetroot batch.