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.