Creepy Christmas

Over the last 2 weeks, I've been working mentally hard to get loads of stuff made for Pexmas festive market, which happens just outside our studio. I actually do the branding for the Pexmas Ltd company since it started 3 years ago, but never thought of having  stall before. Anyway - so all of a sudden I had to brainstorm how to make commercially viable products while running with the current ideas for my art stuff.

I made clothes and cards mainly. Clothes are all designed and handmade by me, using reclaimed fabrics and dyed with vegetable dyes from kitchen by-products (so NO food wastage in the process) - i used onion skins, avocado skins and stones, and the water from soaking black beans.

The cards are all printed (lino, woodcut, mono and screenprint) with toxin-free inks onto a special card (v.expensive!) that is made from an algae which grows in the Venice Lagoon - it has to be removed otherwise it pollutes and poisons the local ecosystem. Cool huh!? And i ordered 100% recycled envelopes. Unfortunately cellophane wrapping seems to be a harmful product, no matter how you look at it, so i didn't buy any. But i think for professional reasons - i ought to, otherwise people might not buy the cards. I'm gonna keep researching to see if i can find recycled cellophane wrapping pockets.

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Below are some studio shots from the mad making process... I did the stall with my friend Rachael who I share a studio with also, and i think we didn't sleep properly, or eat a proper meal for a week. Consequentially, I am now ill!

Black bean dyebath

This is a bedspread i'm making from reclaimed fabrics - linens and cottons. Some are naturally dyed, the others (the grey and brown) are already like that.

I'v realised I need to make an online shop and website for the clothes I make - I have at least 15 different garments i've designed and handmade and dyed with veg dyes.

Postcard Perfect

My dad (known as Papa to his daughters) was in North Carolina the other week for work (he works for a company that have the majority share of the world tailors dummy market!) He sent me this amazing postcard! Best colours and outfits - and these ladies are so accomplished! So I made a top to match them, it sort of happened coincedentally, but then on purpose. I dyed the fabric with onion skins, and printed it with paprika and blue acrylic paint. 

 

I took photos on photobooth and made my own 'postcards'. I'd never thought of it before, but photo-booth and postcards are a perfect medium for vicarious living and imagined memories. You can hear stories of others' adventures, and imagine them, and mentally and spiritually (or visually if you use photobooth) insert yourself into that location or situation.
-Visiting a place-choosing a postcard-writing your adventures-passing them on to someone who will look at and read them-to reappropriate the words and image into their own subconscious mix-form a perceived image-
This process is a step-by-step dislocation from the reality - it's an imagining of memory.
This idea appeals to the concept of my 'outback cinema' that i imagine is run by a lone cowgirl dreamer. As a reminder - this concept of the cinema in the outback, is that there is a site, or location for half-imagined/half-true/vicarious cerebral activity - for adopting far-away lives and inhabiting far-away places. This is an activity that film itself provides, but with my cinema scene I am actively manifesting this process.
And now with my photobooth 'postcards' too.

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And below - Sunday studio work & monoprinted greetings cards

And on Saturday night we unexpectedly ended up in the biggest geezer pub in Waterloo, that was very sparsely populated by old men drinking pints alone, an extremely enthusiastic karaoke contestant called Jamie (followed by some other contestants who were less enthusiastic and more drunk), and two old geezer-women who began the night  arm-in-arm swaying to the beat, and ended it with a huge screaming fight that went on alongside the karaoke for nearly an hour.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

I have become greatly attached to the thought of being a monkey, and living in the rainforest canopy and bathing in thermal pools and cool rivers at my own behest. And here are some monkeys, which I intend to make into fabric designs of sorts... either for the 'tent dress' i've made, or also for general furnishings, perhaps as big hanging room dividers.

I saw Interstellar last night, and it made me think of the harmless little monkeys we used to be! I think these modern monkeys are probably looking out from their treehouses, oat the oncoming destruction of the world by mankind, and feelin' pretty angry. They are the eco monkey brigade.

Glitter and donkeys

So i keep ordering glitter off ebay. Every time i sell something on ebay, I spend the money on glitter!

Now i'm just trying to think why i love it so much! 

It's partly also to do with VISIBILTY: the raw essence of visual arts, that I think most of us who have had academic education in the arts, or even the slightest bit of experience of contemporary art, forgot about! And visibility can occur through anything - colour, form, luminescence, texture, setting)

This is part of sketch for a fountain (of glitter!) i'm designing

And below are some painted sketches. They initially started from something the architect Aldo Van Eyck said about 'variety within a system - a pattern with an interruption that sets off on a new line of movement'. This was a rhythm he admired in visual art, and employed it in his architectural designs to influence perspectives of the inhabitants.

I want to use this idea in the formal design of my Swagstation (which i've been collection some great wood for, from local skips). So I decided to take his words literally in my sketches. But straight away they turned into another idea, one that I had: that in all the community engagement projects that surround us, many of them don't accommodate our insatiable need for privacy. So these images sort of show private shelters/hidey holes, in the open mass.

And here are the donkeys of St Ouen's, Jersey. Just near Dom's house.

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OH, and my scans of some of my new reclaimed fabrics!

Ideas incorporated: une robe environ un film que sera jamais realisé

I made this dress today from some grey cotton jersey i got second hand - it's been heat pressed on one side with some sort of flimsy imitation leather, so it sort of feels like a tent. I might dye it with onion skins or black beans - it can't get hot that's the only thing, otherwise the leathery stuff will melt off. But either way - i'm going to treat it like a shelter/a tent/a retreat: like a portable and wearable Swagstation - the dress will be printed/adorned with imagery and colour and texture that will convey a few of the scenes I keep picking up on when i'm daydreaming about fantasy lands and adventures:

1. Outdoors outback cinema - a screen in the desert, run by a cowgirl. (this is about ideologies we see in films, and in the experience of watching a film - and indeed of creating one - but this is kind of about a film that's never been made.... which links into the idea of idealising something from afar: being a fan) Also sort of relates to Robyn Davidson trekking across the outback with her four camels.

2. a Kangaroo on the run to see the Springsteen show with his ghetto blaster playing Lana del Rey (again - the reassuring eternal excitement of admiring something from afar. And of course all those virtues and mental habits that Springsteen's music teaches, and that del Rey's music questions)

3. Monkeys bathing in a whirlpool/on rocks in shallow water -this is just a funny image i got in my head when in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris!?!? not sure why, perhaps something to do with the claustrophobia I feel in cities in the summer, but also because monkeys would put a smile on even the most dastardly robber's face. I'm going down a Laure Provost route here - just magnetising towards a few scenarios that appeal simply because they are mad and escapist and succulent and sensual, and offer respite from the effort/hard work this whole practice is asking for. the made up moments kind of keep your head in the game for working hard.

The way Native North Americans decorated their tipis to enhance and entice spirits/events/luck is part of this whole idea. It'll be a sort of dress of ideas. And i'll probably make a tent afterwards. Also - now i've learned to weld, my major project is to weld a huge metal kangaroo shaped frame, that i can sit inside, and then i'll cover it with amazing hand-dyed and printed textiles that i've made - it'll be a Fan Club Hut for everything i love, like where i'll listen to my music uninterrupted, and write, and make things, and have friends over. And ask The Gaslight Anthem, Springsteen and Jimmy Eat World if they'll come and play me a gig in there.

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Below are some scans from playing around with colours/textures/imagery with which to adorn the dress: which is called: une robe environ un film que sera jamais realisé

It's in french, because a spent my early years on a mountainside in rural southern France, and I also find it very calming to think in French. It's sort of a grab for part of my idealised world that was once a reality.

Amazing photo I found in the Metro

Three of the dresses i've made, in my window. And Grandma's blue silk scarf.

And a black bean-dyed top I made. It's covered in blemishes from the dye bath and originally i thought it was a total mess, but now i love it.

And yesterday evening Dom and I had a super fun night in, and then we decided it's such a shame that nights out aren't as good as they should be now, because the music is crap and it's all indoors. So this is what we would've wanted to do!