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.
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.
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…
There are particular visual rhythms I seem to collect as photographs when out and about and so I thought it worth while putting them together as collections of patterns. I’ll leave you guessing what might also feature over the coming months but here’s the first: plaids.
Some are more obvious than others, and while you are looking, keep an eye out for the friendly robin. There’s a list of locations below for those who might be interested.
1a Botanical Gardens, Birmingham
1b Plot 8, our allotment, Birmingham
1c University of Warwick car park
2a Aeneas Wilder, Mead Gallery, University of Warwick
2b Heeley Rd. Birmingham
2c Olympia, London
3a Newtonmore, Scotland
3b Hastings
3c Dudley Zoo
4a Hockey arena, London 2012
4b Dudley Zoo
4c Llanthony Priory, Wales
I took these photographs on my way home from Birmingham yesterday and like the way they show the different interpretations of lines and stripes in the snow I recorded. My last blog post was about colour, and so I like the fact that it is almost absent this time around. I’m sure there can be some design inspiration from these.
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.
My ‘Plot to Plate’ show is up at Birmingham’s Mailbox as part of Idea Birmingham’s Design Expo running from 15th – 22nd June 2012. It has been a really good experience in light of new and exciting ventures happening in the next few months. The exhibition features wallpaper and hand-printed textile lampshades in order to compliment the textile and paper products in the collection.
Kate Farley - drawn to design 