I spent yesterday morning screenprinting my large piece of dyed fabric - which may be a tablecloth, or it may be a sample cloth. 

I have been experimenting with photographic images and my current screens include half tones 'line' portraits. 

I'm also experimenting with controlling the depth of colour by not applying too much pressure when screenprinting. 





This puts me in mind of Cabbages and Roses printed materials which they use for vintage effect.


Cabbages & Roses, Paris Rose, blue

I have been especially pleased with my screen of circular dots which I have used to overprint images.

 

My large scale piece of work is to celebrate a 65th birthday for Liverpudlian twins.  They have asked for a Dansette record player to be included. I have drawn one but I can't

make it fit in with the current piece of work - perhaps a piece for the repeat print.  I think I have been looking at too much Lichtenstein. 

I want to include some 1960s news in my piece of work and have beeen trawling the Internet for ideas.  Have settled on the Profumo Affair, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing and - perhaps - the Great Train Robbery. 

I also want to use quotes from Larkin's Poem 'Annus Mirabilis' and Martin Luther Kings 'The Dream' .  Now I am researching how to apply it to the cloth  most effectively.

 

 

 

 

 

this week

Richard Serra verb list

 I'm pasting this list into my blog so that I can always
 locate it!

refreshing

research

Kyu Jin Lee, Hanger, 2005

I am inspired by a book - Digital Visions for Fashion + Textiles: Made in Code by Sarah E Braddock Clarke and Jane Harris -  which looks at the effects of technology on fashion and textiles. 

Kyu Jin Lee uses 'discarded, mundane  objects' alongside drawings and computer compositions to create one-off narrative textile designs.    I am intrigued by the way she has used repeat images and naive line drawings - it seems incongruous.  The authors say that when the'unlikely' designs are used in fashion the  'form of the body alters the context'.



 

 

Donya Coward

My natural inclination is to opt for low tech processes, but this unit is about experimentation and innovation and I want to use technology in my work.

However, Internet research has revealed a textile artist who uses applique to create one-off designs which I fine very appealing.


Donya uses vintage upcylced materials, cords, ribbons, buttons etc in her images and text.  I know I would love making this sort of stuff.

So back to my project.  In response to comments from tutor/ fellow students I have dyed some fabric.  I am not brave with colour - prefering shadey and moody brown/grey/white images.  Consulting the Colour Design Workbook by Adams Morioka and Terry Stone,  I have opted for a  bluey green hue and have identified contrasting complementary colours.
 

and again

so i've done it again.  New project, panic, start doing before thinking it through. 

My lovely MA class on Thursday have put me back on the right track.  I showed them my work and i need to begin at the beginning - drawing, colour palette, planning, sampling





Schwitters in Britain exhibition at Tate Britain

Untitled (With an Early Portrait of Kurt Schwitters), 1937-8

Yesterday I visited Tate Britain to see the Schwitters Exhibition.  I first became interested in Schwitters' typography, but then was intrigued to discover that he was credited as being a pioneer of the Pop Art movement.

EN MORN 1947

It is easy to see Schwitters' influences on the works of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi.



 

Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So                      Bunk 1972

Appealing? Richard Hamilton   1956                                                   Eduardo Paolozzi

The exhibition was organised in chronological order - born in Hanover but forced to flee to Norway when Nazis condemned his work as degenerative, then escaping to England where he was interned on the Isle of Man as an 'enemy alien', a short spell in London and finally to Ambleside in the Lake district.  His work includes figurative and representational work, recitals, reliefs, assemblages and, most famously and most prolific, collages.  He uses a made-up word - Merz - it describes his view that everything - textile, sweet wrappers, wood, paint, junk - has equal value in art.  Schwitters constructed large scale installations in Hanover (destroyed by bombing), in Norway (also destroyed)and in Ambleside (unfinished).  Richard Hamilton 'rescued' his Ambleside Merz Barn and installed it in the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle.   I adored the small collages and the extraordinary tonal quality of his 'poem' Ursonate made it quite compelling.  He said 'create connections if possible between everything in the world'  Fascinating.