a textile archive of a different kind

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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.

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The English countryside

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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.

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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.

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I’m also a collector of photos of grasses and such-like against blue skies, and so I happily added further imagesummer1s to that collection.

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All in all, a very lovely English day.

scale and context

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During a beautiful adventure in the Lickey Hills, south of Birmingham at the weekend I took these photos that showed how similar the environment close to the ground was to the canopy of the much taller pine trees. It highlighted to me the experience of scale and how important the context is. I tend to record this sort of detail in my garden sketches too and so it struck a chord.

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Garden flower colour calendar 2013

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I posted a ‘yellow’ set of photographs of flowers from our garden for the month of April a few weeks ago and have since noticed quite a change of colour in the garden over the weeks. I have created a May (pinks and purples) and June (reds, orange and magenta) record of flowers too. With such gloomy weather recently its worth noting that some refer to June as ‘flaming June’ – not my thoughts in this particular June 2013!

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Kate Farley – Plotting Prints at Tinsmiths

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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.

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Hanbury Hall delights

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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.

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Armed with my sketchbook and camera I gathered plenty of inspiration for new prints and will definitely be back later in the season.

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Its also a fantastic building inside and out. I dashed around the inside and a particular wallpaper caught my attention.

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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?

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YELLOW April

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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.

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working with nature and nature working with us

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One of the things that has inspired and influenced my creative practice is how we work with the land; to farm, build roads, wear the paths where we shouldn’t walk as well as create boundaries. These are signs of man asserting influence over nature, and the natural landscape. Of course the way things were thousands of years ago will never return but modern-day farm machinery and larger field sizes are two things that have shaped our contemporary countryside.

I have never quite understood topiary but am intrigued when I see orchards with heavily structured boughs, turning a natural system in to a geometric diagram. We ask nature to do what it does not naturally want to do. We expect plants to grow in the wrong soils, because we like the look of them despite our climate, and we can be unforgiving if a ‘weed’ dares to grow where we don’t want it to.

With this in mind I do like to see subversive and anarchic challenges from nature, and nature trying to make its mark where it shouldn’t. Like graffiti on the wrong walls; art in a gallery, vandalism on the streets, plants do sometimes have their own agenda. I found this beautiful plant surviving, flourishing even, in the mortar of a very old wall in Ledbury. It made me laugh. It wasn’t the usual ivy or buddleia, but a beautiful primula, proud as punch of its achievements. Okay, so the leaves are rather small relative to the flower heads but I couldnt help feeling rather pleased for it too.

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the end of one season and the start of the new.

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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.

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holding on to the details…

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This photo was taken at Birmingham’s old science museum in its last days before demolition as I was carrying out research for subsequent commissions inspired by the site. It goes some way to sum up how things are in the studio at the moment with many lists and scraps of precious information as I am very busy with making new prints & promoting my upcoming show at Tinsmiths, Ledbury next month as well as coordinating suppliers and working on exciting new design work. All this in the break between Spring and Summer terms of my lecturing job…

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