Following on from the last few months of colour charts that I have created documenting colours growing in the garden I have made a July 13 one too. The weather has been hot and dry but somehow the slugs have enjoyed the marigolds so there is a lack of orange in this colour palette this year. The Foxgloves are pretty much over but the Hollyhocks and Dahlias are stunning in their part of the garden relay race through the summer schedule.
Having worked at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, BCU at the Gosta Green site for the last few years we are moving to a brand new campus next week. There has been plenty to do packing up the workshops and studios, and during this process the course team have reflected on and recorded the space that has been home to this textile design degree for many years.
There are so many signs of demonstrations given, lectures delivered, course-work carried out and with the heavy use of the workshops comes a fabulous visual archive of the textile careers that we have helped to initiate and support along the way. We are nostalgic in many ways, but excited by the new and very clean slate that we are about to start writing history on at the Parkside building.
We had a beautiful day yesterday involving a quick trip to Ledbury, and specifically Tinsmiths to sort out post-show details. Our visit to this lovely market town coincided with the poetry festival so we also picked up some verse, locally-made pork pies, beer and ice-cream!
It was so hot in the afternoon sun but we did manage to enjoy the scenery around the Malvern Hills to-ing and fro-ing between trees for shade. It’s a stunning landscape, and one that feels so English. I first encountered the area when I cycled Lands End to John O’ Groats back in 1994 and it left its impression on me even then.
The views from the ridge make you feel as if you are a giant overseeing a toy model landscape but it is with this viewpoint I can capture my key interest in the landscape. If I was to draw the view I would have started with lines that recorded the field boundaries defined hundreds of years ago, the footpaths etched in to the land by endless walkers and roads enabling others to pass through. The lines become shapes and a record of that moment of my experience, but what is also captured is hundreds of experiences, of us, living in this English landscape.
In terms of colours, I was struck by the stark contrast of the dry grass tones compared to the striking pink of the foxgloves and the very green bracken.
I’m also a collector of photos of grasses and such-like against blue skies, and so I happily added further image
s to that collection.
All in all, a very lovely English day.
It is a very exciting time for me. It has been about two years in the planning and preparation stages and now we are a week in to my show at Tinsmiths. For those of you unfamiliar with Tinsmiths, it is a beautiful textile and lighting shop in the lovely Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. It is a beautifully considered shop, owned by Phoebe Clive, selling a wide range of fabrics as well as home wares, crafted pieces and artists prints.
I have worked closely with Phoebe to translate my lino printed designs inspired by allotments, to become a collection of heavy weight linen, hand screen printed textiles available to buy as cushions. We have also created larger showroom pieces as curtains and upholstered chairs in preparation for selling some of the designs by the metre later in the year.
Phoebe and the team have styled my products throughout the top floor of the premises in such a way as to create a clean and fresh interior space, working with the other products and furniture pieces in the shop. My prints and drawings are set amongst other exciting colour statements in the form of ceramics & lighting with an understated aesthetic. With plenty of positive feedback at the PV as well as sales throughout the first week it’s a really exciting reward for the long journey to this point.
My creative practice has been inspired by National Trust gardens for the last few years and as a result I’ve had a number of people suggest I visit Hanbury Hall – finally I got round to it at the weekend. Despite the poor weather it was a delight to discover all the pockets of gardens, each carefully considered, and demonstrating the wide variety of formal and informal planting the National Trust excels at.
Armed with my sketchbook and camera I gathered plenty of inspiration for new prints and will definitely be back later in the season.
Its also a fantastic building inside and out. I dashed around the inside and a particular wallpaper caught my attention.
All in all, I left feeling excited about making new work again having spent so long preparing for my solo show at Tinsmiths, opening later this month… now where did I put that lino?
Having noticed this week that the garden has suddenly started to change colour, I set about documenting all the yellow in the garden. Its not surprising at all that the photographs of the same flowers taken at different times of the day varied hugely, but I also recorded the range of yellows in the flowers of this very YELLOW season.
At the start of the harvest time last year I shared with you our first crops of the season. Today I cleared the brassicas that have been under attack from pigeons all winter – much to my distress, and planted in their place the potatoes for the coming year. It was a sign of handing over the baton to another year of potential, involving the weather, our effort, opportunities for head-space and the reward in what we get to eat.
Each year we start with a revised planting plan, more back ache, a new set of gloves and opportunities for me to draw and record the plants to provide further inspiration for my art and design work. As I have also spent the last few days designing, cutting and printing new lino blocks, the creative process of doing so reminds me very much of being a gardener; working with the elements and using knowledge, intuition, skill, time and desire to create something from small beginnings.
I remain positive about the growing season ahead, surely there cant be as many slugs and pigeons this year… can there? And as for cutting lino, I’m in it for the long haul.
Today was my first plot visit of the year and I set about digging over the strawberry patch – an important job given the lousy harvest of last year. I also took time to survey the rather heartless cabbages we have managed to grow and this inspired me to record the beautiful colours of the season from all round the plot. This reminded me of my Autumn survey some months ago, recorded on this blog. No doubt these colours will inspire my drawings and prints of the year to come. Sadly I didn’t get a picture of the robin who hopped about glad of the worms I uncovered but he made me smile all the same.
Happy New year to you!
Seeing as I work in the professional world of textiles I’m not surprised that I spend more time than most considering our relationship with textiles. To simplify things – I question what relationship we have with fabric, and the inspiration behind our choices of garments and the materials, colours and patterns that we fill our wardrobes with – when we’ve picked the clothes up from the floor!
To celebrate the new year we went to Alvechurch to see the Alvechurch Morris dancers who put on a show each New Year in the pub car park of the Crown Inn at Withybed. As well as their dances they also perform their entertaining politically cheeky response to the past year’s news in the shape of a traditional George and the Dragon style Mummer’s play. They were also joined by several other dance groups from the region, all proudly dressed in variations of what you would expect Morris dancers to be wearing. There were plenty of pairs of beige jumbo corduroy trousers, and of course the bells round the lower leg, but the use of the strips of fabrics on the backs of the jackets and the feathers in hats really made it a spectacle of eccentric British-ness some would be surprised to see still in existence.
Having lectured on the subject of textiles for a number of years and having tried to make the education experience not British-centric the experience of seeing the Morris dancers in Alvechurch are a reminder of our own tribal dress; just as interesting, ceremonial, entertaining and socially telling as some tribal dress from far flung corners of the world a long way from here.
Some outfits appear rather more planned than others and its tricky to see if some are trying to look ‘thrown together’ but are to the contrary. Some groups (is there a collective noun for Morris dancers?) stick to set colours and one group of women were a sort of goth vamp group at Halloween with a dash of silver – I mean that in the nicest way! Personally I prefer the more traditional looking ones with a collection of faded what looks like Laura Ashley prints alongside stripes and spots. They look more like a mood board than a dance outfit.
Of course the sound and movement is lacking in the photographs but I hope they go someway to celebrate the dress code found in one small pub car park in the Midlands today and every New Years Day.
A stunning Autumn day today, warm out of the wind & bright enough for sunglasses, it gave us the excuse to escape to the countryside south of Birmingham to play in the fields. Having taken photographs of the outing and having been thinking about my explanation of visual rhythms to some textile design students last week I thought I’d create a piece with that in mind.
Kate Farley - drawn to design 