My dress and Hannah

So my Ma works in an indie bookshop, and last week one of my favourite contemporary authors, Hannah Kent, went in to do a reading and signing for the paperback launch of her book Burial Rites. That's her on the left. And the two on the right work in Mama's shop. The dress is the one I made and is far too big for the lady who is wearing it, but never mind! But how exciting!

And the next day I met Hannah at a book club in Dalston and we talked about Adelaide in Australia - where she is from and where I lived in 2009. Yay!

Hannah's website

Colour

Below are some details from a dress i've just finished: a thick silk blend dyed with black beans and onion skins. I love how you get irregularities and textured colour when you use food to dye with.

And since i found this folder full of Gaugin prints at Deptford market, and going to a show of Peter Doig's super colourful paintings on Tuesday, i've realised i definitely need to learn to use colour. So here goes...

I also have a very colourful bedroom - so my work should be too!

Now these are mine... just trying stuff out with some cheap old watercolours, oil pastels and wax crayons. I quite liked some of them.

The one below was kind of inspired by a mix of The Gaslight Anthem, Bruce Springsteen (as always), Into the Wild which i've just read, and also one of my fave books Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

Ghosts along the blacktop

Happy Mother's Day 

Bored at work - trying to sum up my project on the back of some receipt paper

I already live with too many ghosts

some token mono prints - Bruce :)

      

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And some photos...

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And Future Islands :)

Aujhord'hui chez moi ( et dans le studio)

Some brilliant chance clashing of my favourite colour combination,

And a dress i've nearly finished; me trying to see how it's going without a mirror.

Testing hessian with lighter fabrics. doesn't hang well - so i'll change this later

I went to the Richard Hamilton exhibition at the Tate Modern last Friday, and a lot of it didn't convince me, but I loved his paintings of interiors; their spatial complexity and varying perspectives helped me understand some of what I was already thinking about in regards to lines, boundaries and planes in our living environments that then inspire social constructs and habits. 

Looking at these paintings took some consideration about where the painter stood and what continued outside the frame, and what space linked to another space. It was an exercise in understanding cooperation of a space; and how it's inhabitants may be inspired to cooperate. It's challenge to the viewer was a creative experience; these are the notes I made.

And these are two postcards I bought of a couple of my fave Hamilton paintings.

This is a dress/pinafore I made a few weeks ago, dyed with black beans very lightly. It needs re-hemming, darts, and pockets, but I took the opportunity to photograph the fancy mannequin my dad's tailor's dummy company bought which I picked up.

Lines

I'm continuing to think about and explore the constructed and perceived planes and boundaries in our living spaces; the way the wall meets the floor with a flush join, and the way the table top is perfectly positioned above the chair seats, and the floor is flat and fills out all the room and even goes beyond the door to begin another room.

I've been thinking about these all being made up of lines, and how if we were to deconstruct (on slightly) all these planes and boundaries we would just have an ambiguous collection of hovering lines. Then we would have to re-perceive the shapes and channels that are formed; maybe they are longer boundaries at all. With our new perception, we could make new behaviour: in this way as i've already said, lines guide behaviour.

Changing the vertical into horizontal (and vice versa) could incite a very thoughtful new perception about our movements within a community and a place.

Here are some sketches based on those ideas, mixed in with how to build a table and how important every single component coming from every angle is to the overall structure.

This text got me really into Donald Judd and i think he was quite important in giving me these ideas

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And this is just a page which i am a bit obsessed with from After the fire, a still small voice by Evie Wyld - ???

Back to tables...

Tables are encouraging of cooperative behaviour in many ways > so here are a few more thoughts on tables. I am going to take a roll of film of special and notable tables. Yesterday I went to the Timber Yard cafe in Covent Garden with my aunt and cousin as the people who set it up work with my aunt and uncle. It has loads of beautiful custom made tables from salvaged wood, painted different shades.

A bit about what tables can do, the type of characteristics they incite

steps - came from playing with the boundaries and planes that exist in the conventional home; what they mean and the behaviour and habits they encourage; sometimes they just provide dead ends.

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And some random thoughts about killing animals

And then I bought a kilo of sardines, filleted them and now they're curing in lemon juice in my fridge. yum, fresh raw fish for me!

I also need to write my project up so far (actually i just have today) but need to put it in a designed format for easy reading, and also gotta remember to write about 'romanticism in hindsight'