sewing machine fun

So today is the four day count down until i have to put up my pending exhibition, and the presence of my first sewing machine coundn't have come at a better time. Instead of having to hand sew individually each of the six segments of each apple, i can get the complete in under half the time and with fewer injuries - which i think is always a positive.

What i have found the most presurising this weekend, was the final stages in planning of the exhibition. Because the site is split between two premisis i cannot finalise the details of the asthetic of my exhibition and therefore am completing my planning with manoverability. Since my last blog which mentioned and thanked the ladies from the Liverbirds, i have been focused on experimenting with the particular textile out of which i construct my apple, and the combination of dyes that i will put inside them.

Liverbirds are lively indeed

i had some trouble yesterday updating my blog, so this blog should actually come afte the next one but never mind. I just wanted to share with everyone my experience of yesterday - i had my first quilters club meeting! It was really interesting and all the ladies were really lovely and keen to help and find out about what i do and like. I couldnt of hoped for a better group of girls. The two hour meeting consisted of getting to know the ladies and what they like to do within quilting or craft, i got my own personal show and tell of the ladies past works including collaberative projects between the group that look stunning. One lady who i feel i should mention even thought all of the ladies were very welcoming was judith. On entering she came straight over to greet me and was just very positive and open and made me feel more than welcome, always offering any help or information if i needed it. Thank you Judith and all the other ladies.

I got some of the basic traditional techniques explained to me and after seeing the show and tell i realised that it was the traditional that i wanted to pursue, so at our next meeting i hope to have completed a few blocks towards my family patchwork quilt.

what to do, what to do?

So, its monday and my fingers have been killing me since about 3pm as i battle with two ideas for a quickly approaching exhibition which i am contructing for. Im finding it hard with which way i want this particular exhibition to go, and which project to display? Do i cut my elaborate apple project short in its development and create a sub-finished project? Or do i display my latest experimentation works which look at the exploration of colour and the narrative it tells as it bleeds from one layer, through to an external. This project is something i will explain in another blog. With the latter, one of the aims i have been trying to complete is instead of freezing one block of food colourant to thaw out within my textile, i want to have two or three colours thaw out, but to appear on my external textile in the order that i want. In this experiments i have stuck with the apples form so therefore i thought it could be interesting to make the colours that appear, mimic nature and colours associated with ripening. I am just going to continue with my colour experimentation this evening. Until next time ...

Contribute to World Aids day in Manchester

There is a patchwork quilt project at the beginning of December that i will certainly be taking a part in, and wanted to extend the invitation to all of you, so just follow this link if your interested.
http://janesinteractivearts.wordpress.com

changing predetermined narratives through textile manipulation

Its been exactly a month since my last blog, but i wanted to start this new one to signify the transition from the summer and constructing dissertations, and instead use this new blog to collect and focus my current practical work, even showcasing it.

My new thread of thought and experimentation still follows a theme i have focused on for the last year - Narrative through textile, and it was during a small lecture with Michael Howard i came up with my current project. Michael Howard was talking briefly about religion, focusing on Christianity in particular, and this connected with me. I wanted to use my textiles to question the ideas of predetermined narratives and whether it is possible to change these predetermined narratives? I focused particularly on the moral tale of Adam and Eve, as this is a narrative which is widely known and understood and therefore easily applicable to almost everyone as some sort of contextual understanding is always known. Through my textiles i wanted the viewer to put themselves in the place of Adam and Eve, debating on whether to choose greed as Adam and Eve did and take the apple (made from textile by myself) therefore casting man out from the Garden of Eden to a world we know today, or whether knowing what happens in the narrative, if they would leave the textile apple and therefore change the predetermined narrative? This way the art focuses on more than one point. It explores the ideas of narratives as well as issues within humanity reguarding human nature and greed, as well as other aspects of humanity such as charity and reasoning and rationality. It highlights the unique human ability to grow and learn from previous occurances for a better outcome.

The first step on my experimentation for this was the creation of these textile apples. I wanted to create a diverse array of apples which change with reguards to the degree of embelishment they contain, mirroring the degrees of temptation for humanity and therefore linking directly to the story of adam and eve.

The above image is an experiment which used a mixture of crochet and sequin to embelish, using a fallen leaf to finish. Others include embelishment with small green butterflies;

And crocheting with varying shades of green, embelishing with glittering butterflies.
Although this idea and these experiments are in the early stages of development, they are something which i can constantly be developing along side other works which i will discuss in a later blog. The only issue i am having at the moment with these works are that i am being pushed to develop the apples in various other ways, which are not sustainable in the way that viewers can not take them home and keep them as gifts from the exhibition, i am being pushed to create the apples out of materials which deminish easily and so i am struggling to combine ideas. Il let you know how it all works out.