Fruition

I have had to learn the art of trust.

I put it onto the hands of Glasgow School of Art digital fabric printing team.
They took my jpegs and turned them into substance, into something tangible.

It was a good decision as I am seriously loving how its come out. Really.
I am so excited!
It has been transforming to see my ideas go from my sketchbook to digital to fabric. And hopefully when I've worked it out, to a skirt.

I'm keeping it moving forward.

End in Sight

I am just coming up to the last stretch.
Its been emotional.

I'm going to be really busy soon: making, stitching, cutting, stretching, delivering.
I feel settled when I'm working and it been an unsettling time of late. I am in unknown territory getting ready for a gallery show - I have simply no idea how its going to be.

I like surprises...

THE WANDERER RETURNS

I’ve actually been right here all along.
I’ve been caught up elsewhere, but I guess that what Summer is all about.

I have made a list of some of the really great things that have kept me elsewhere for 127 days

Putting up 41 Art School shows
Seeing Jamie win an award
Meeting and working with one of my all time creative heroes
Spending the day in the sunshine at Walberswick with Joab, Verity & Albie
Looking after Elizabeth & Joe while my poor tired sister slept
Celebrating Ben & Vickys wedding – they arrived by boat!
Camping out by the sea in our new VW Camper
Watching the cats play fighting in the sunshine
Dinner & drinks with in London with Nick
Pleased as punch at the rather unexpected early arrival of Miss Holly Iona Hodgson
Seeing Wendy & Tim so happy
Printing 5 metres of fabric in my own design by hand installing it in the van
Dancing to the Disco Shed at Latitude festival
Watching Emma walk up the aisle with bare feet and flowers in her hair
Getting good news
Helping Liz with her HUGE boat installation and celebrating her private view
Realising I could live pretty well without sugar
Knowing I can rely on Noelle in times of great upset
Being so proud of Jim, playing in front of 30,000 people at The Big Chill
Drinking Champagne with Mel as she dressed for her marriage to Kali
Watched the amazing Carnival Collective at Festinho
Reaching the deadline

I have lot to be grateful for.

INTRODUCING...

I have been working some new ideas through...

It seems that I work back to front, preparing artwork on the computer only to then transform it to a hand made piece.

I am thrilled with these images - they are the beginnings to my new fabric collection to be exhibited at The Reunion Gallery, Felixstowe in October.

MAD SEASON

Its been a while.

There has been so much to do - and so much I planned to do, but then I got sick. Six whole days in bed.
After a couple of days I wondered if I got sick because I was sick of having my time filled up with stuff I didn't want to do...its been great just to lie with the window open and think...

Went to a great show last week at The Big Chill House at Kings Cross. Fabulous work by the talented Mr Wild, I was proud to be there and support my friend. Check out www.simonwild.com for a visual feast.

Last week was a great week, good news from all sides which is heartwarming and also with an eye to the future. My Wednesday studio day was perfect. I'd been holed up listening to my head carefully and working through ideas, making work and generally feeling inspired and excited about the exhibition. You know, once the ball starts moving, the momentum and capacity for so much more begins. Theres nothing like new aspirations, new ideas and the thought of new destinations to make me get up and get on with it.

The day job however is not quite as inviting as it once seemed....come in lecturing post...maybe your time is up.

MINE FIELD


I've never been one for ideas.

I love researching, processing, methods of working, experimenting and making. I like to have a starting point and an end point. Apparently I am a "structured' personality. Or maybe a less sensitive term would be..uptight.

Through my own education, the processes I was taught were based on me becoming a commercial illustrator, someone who would be given the idea and then whose job it would be to provide a stunning/thoughtful/provocative/interesting visual insight.

Nowadays, its different. I need to figure out how to come up with ideas that are mine. Ideas that can be identified as mine and that can help to move my practical work forward.

But where do I start?

REWIND



I try to live consciously: I recycle, eat and grow organic produce, shop in the co-op and farm shops, struggle in yoga and walk to work (it is only 3 minutes, but it still counts huh?)). I have no doubt this all makes a big difference to how I feel and maybe in some small way in caring for our surroundings.

Even so, I have shyed away from anything more than this because in my work, I just LOVE anything chemical and everything very bad for both me and the environment.

Computers
Screen printing
Highly pigmented dyes
Spray mount
Magic markers
Oil based inks

I don't know how I can finish this twenty year love affair.

But I have had a breakthrough: I have bought tester pots of new 'eco paints' in a range of beautiful colours. I wasn't sure what to expect, but they are seriously good and smell great.
www.ecopaints.co.uk

Polar opposites can work I guess. A bit like going swimming with chips on the way home...

REUSE & RECYCLE

Somewhere in between being on the phone to New York, packing for Russia, cancelling New Delhi and digging the vegetable patch in Ipswich, Jim made us some new furniture. Took him about an hour.

We have been collecting old/unused drawers ready to be incorporated into our Eames inspired shelving unit. (We totally copied this idea from a recycle design book..details to follow). Our drawers were from a variety of sources - this is the part I love the most:

2 drawers from an old roll top bureau given to me by a student who found it on an East Anglian beach
2 drawers and legs from Jims Nan and Grandad's veneered bookcase from the fifties.
1 drawer from an antique stand given by our favourite Australian relatives.
3 drawers from Ikea

It really is beautiful, I love the look of it, sure, but the history, the stories, the family connections andf teh contemporary use of it in our first home together.

Something very special indeed.

SILENT WONDER

I have small pockets of time to think about my work: the ride to work, waiting for the lift, in line for a cake, staff meetings, and in the bath.

These moments are precious even though they go hand in hand with the incidental trivia of daily life.

To make work takes longer - I need a few hours of quiet, with my resources ready to go, cats fed, washing on and phone on silent. I've managed to find it on a Wednesday. I am poorer in monetry terms for now, but richer in spirit.

Working within these confines means I have to visualise constantly the actual work I want to produce. I don't have the luxury of time to experiment and wait for happy accidents. This happens in my head, working it out, seeing if it's going to work, giving me the simplest way to produce my idea to its best.

This process worked beautifully today. I wanted to produce a collection of fashion led illustrations showing my pattern work in context. I wanted them to be beautiful and hand made, yet able to work digitally when sent for publishing. The times waiting for cakes had worked and I was happy.

LOVE ONE


I've spent too long trying to control the uncontrollable.
It doesnt work of course.

I have been working on several things so far this year and I've managed to finish a couple. At the moment I'm focussing on the 'doing' of these jobs rather than the outcome. Finishing the task and then letting it go.

Who knows where it goes next? I guess thats the fun bit.

( Picture shows some new work ready to go on display in a shop window www.loveone.co.uk)

SUNDAYS

I love Sundays. Who doesnt?

Every week I’m off on my bike, off road, in all weathers.

I am lucky enough to live next door to the Bicycle Doctor, who, when he fixes my bike, he leaves it for me like a birthday present in the back garden. He also delivers fresh eggs for our Sunday breakfasts. A true hero.

Noelle and I ride about twelve miles, watching the landscape change every week. This activity started off as exercise, to counteract our love of good food and wine, but has slowly become more. An adventure, a time to share stories from the week, to laugh, to feel brave and to remember we are alive.

Our husbands can’t quite believe that we do it every week without fail or that we really do love it. We were out today in gale force winds today, the last time we went out, Noelle fell off into a tree and cracked a rib. Now thats what I call an bike ride.

LUBNA CHOWDHARY


These have made my week. Incredible. www.lubnachowdhary.co.uk

CREATIVE SILENCE



I am keeping things to myself.
No to hide or be wierd, but to hopefully gain momentum in all I do.
In my world It's tough to be quiet. I talk. Alot.

But recently things are changing. I find my ideas becoming clearer as there is no more stabbing in the dark when I find some time, but clearer and more clarified thought processes. And things are moving.

At work and at home, there is so much to distract, discuss and deliver. It is relentless, but slowly I'm working it all out.

My sketchbooks are growing, my projects realised, proposals actually being written and people getting in touch.

And I'm suddenly realising that this could be how it all works.

CONSERVATION
(A state of relaxation. Preservation and protection of resources).

I had a perfect day on Friday.

We visited Cambridge and went to the Kettles Yard Gallery and House. The gallery was exhibiting selected drawing sequences by William Kentridge and others. Having been blown away by a retrospective of Kentridges incredible work in Stockholm last Easter, it was a real treat.

The Kettles Yard House where Jim Eade lived was a home like no other. A beautiful collection of furniture, books, natural objects, plants, interior pieces, paintings, sculptures, instruments, textiles – a museum? Maybe to some, but essentially to me, a home.

Looking around I could really feel a sense of intimacy, and also afeeling of great joy for all that was there. Despite its great beauty and very precise artistic consideration, it felt comfortable and peaceful.

For us, it was a place to reflect and a place to grow.

FAREWELL
www.lucycullingford.com

Since I got married and changed my name, I thought I'd better build myself a new website.
I'm sad at saying goodbye to the old one, but it served me well.

65, 041 visitors in 18 months.
Cool.

FInd new work at www.luluhorsfield.com

WHATS WITH ORANGE TODAY?

I am exited about the development of my work today. I am getting a large-scale illustration digitally printed on to fabric, ready to be box framed. It’s going to look amazing.

And it’s orange.

BRACKENBURY CLIFFS

Beautiful Suffolk skies took us to Felixstowe again. It’s the third time in two weeks I have ventured there. Somethings definitley calling me.

Today saw us filming on Brackenbury Cliffs. My family used to have an orange beach hut there and memories of Summer in the Seventies came flooding back. Nothing quite like it and it's also not that different from St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia. Seriously.

We were filming orange balloons in the sky, but not for long, as my knot wasn’t tight enough and they got away.

LONGEVITY

The consideration of what Home means to me continues. It’s in everything I do and all that surrounds me because I live in the small town where I grew up.

I went away for ten years and returned. I was happy to, because it wasn’t going to be forever

Seven years on and I still live here. Several of my closest friends who were with me on my 18^th birthday, organised my 30^th and celebrated my wedding. My wedding was at the church where I was christened, confirmed, saw my sister married and my father buried.

With such a strong sense of presonal history right here, I find reassurance, comfort and peace even in solitude.

SURRENDER

I have spent almost all my time since returning from Australia thinking about ideas. Ideas, starting points, questions, passions, social comments, obsessions, thrills, experiments, routines, objects, histories. And more.

Until now, my work has always been about the impossible and out of reach: Surf styled illustrations by a girl living in inner city Birmingham; High Fashion ideals when living in an old servants cottage in Norfolk, even global ambitions from someone who walks the same route to work as she did fifteen years ago for school.

Right now I wanted to be inspired by an idea a little closer to home, something with the strongest foundation and duration of them all. So I thought very hard about what was the most important thing to me in the whole world. And there it was, right here…

Home.

WWW.LOOKATBOOK.COM

It isn't often that one of my students surprises me with something that I just adore, that I hadn't found before. This may seem a rather conceited comment, but it is kinda my job to know more that the students. Or at the very least just make out that I do. . .

Because of Alex I am absolutley loving this website.

These four artist guys sent the book back and forwards from Ireland to Brooklyn NY and each took some time to respond to the previous pages created. It took six moths and the outcome was, obviously, the book. And an exhoibition and a website. An incredible project.

Being obsessed with sketchbooks, journals and all types of visual diaries, this was truly a sight for sore eyes. I am now spending today dreaming of who would be my perfect sketchbook partner. Considering this is the year of doing work I want to do, maybe tthis dream might come true?

Thankyou Alex.

10,000 MILES


Its the last day of January 2008. Time is contracting, hopefully one day soon to expand. New Years Day saw us driving down the Great Ocean Road in Australia, wowing at the Twelve Apostles. A truly great way to begin this year.

I carried my sketchbook throughout my adventure across Australia, looking back through it has warmed me now I'm back in arctic gales on the East Coast, 10,000 miles away. My sketchbooks have kept me going the past year, unable to find much time to progress creatively, I have put everything I could into these journals of visual thoughts and notes and now feel glad that they will be archived and kept forever.

I heard fireworks tonite, a secret to most of why, on the last night in January, but not to me. Tonight I have felt glad to celebrate all that life gives to us: of what has been before and what is still yet to come.

BIG WEDNESDAY



Wednesday is the new 'work' day. At last I have got myself organised with studio, materials, ideas and energy, all ready to go. Its a relief.

I have finally turned my back on commercial illustration, in the sense that I am now no longer interested in creating work for other people. Wednesdays are about the ideas I want to run with and the direction I want to take them.

I'm a better talker than a blogger, and a better designer than I am a speller. But I am motivated to write the Lulu Horsfield Blog to chart my ongoing progress, obsessions and ambitions. Its all in there, also ready to go.

Working in secret is not about hiding, its about hibernation and conservation. Its about going back to where it all started,forging new routes and finding a different place from which to emerge from.

It's exciting and I'm kinda thinking it will probably change everything.