design

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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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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Design inspirations 1: horizon lines

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For a while now I’ve been thinking about what has shaped my visual language and informed my art and design tastes. As a result I have planned a few blog entries in which I will evidence some of my thoughts in terms of influence and my art / design practice.

In some recent press interviews I’ve been asked about my inspiration and I tend to consider the formative years as pretty vital in this regard. It makes sense that we develop strong feelings and bonds to what we experience as children, either to reject them or embrace them – either way I believe those early years help to form our adult judgements.

Looking beyond the windows of the house in rural Norfolk where I was brought up is what I consider one of the greatest inspirations to my work. The open fields, the clear horizon lines and sparse distractions across the farmland of Norfolk have stayed with me in relation to my way of seeing, composition and economy of information in much of my work. Why draw ten lines when I can say it with one? I had a particularly horrid visiting tutor in the beginning of my training who felt that I was lazy in my designing, when actually it was he who struggled with some of the simplicity I was aiming for.

Looking back over some of the works I have made in the last fifteen years there are a few key pieces that explain that relationship with the horizon.

‘Nine Perspectives’, a linocut is made up of diagrams where I explore the land, sea and sky in a variety of ways. I consider the horizon in two-dimensional form, in plan view, elevations and diagrammatic perspectives in order to gain a sense of order.

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‘Meadows (France)’ is a drawing of a beautifully simple valley near Gourdon. It gave me a perfect view to explore further skewed interpretations of perspectives seen in the landscape. I worked with a sense of the view working round a set square, with two horizons, as I looked in front and to the side of me.

stgermain_webThe final image is from a screen printed artist’s book I made several years ago exploring the idea of ‘half full’ as a state of mind, but also from each side of the horizon line. I have used the blue areas as either half full of water (the Norfolk Broads specifically) or half full of sky above the chickens. The folded structure implies a view through the use of perspective, looking in to the distance or reflecting on oneself.

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These three works are very old as far as I’m concerned. I have new creative concerns now but they have helped me to test and explore principles in the way that I see and draw that have been important along the way.

lines in the snow

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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.

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a colour survey of the plot

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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.

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drawing anywhere and everywhere

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The last few weeks have been rather busy so I close the year with a brief blog entry which will lead on to a new post in the new year about how we draw what we see… I’m still working it out in my mind but watch this space!

In the meantime I will share with you a drawing made by my daughter this summer, then four years old, of a lady. She made this while on the beach at Cromer, Norfolk. I love the way she started to build up a patterned dress using pebbles and placing sea weed for hair. I hope she never loses her love of drawing – she is a great source of inspiration to my design work and also in my teaching of design.

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form and function of forks

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It has transpired that I have accidentally started to collect forks of the dining variety. Having grown up with the beautiful three-pronged Focus flatware designed by Folke Arstrom for Gense, Sweden, and considering that as perfectly normal I have, as far as I remember been interested in cutlery. I am the proud owner of Arne Jacobsen cutlery and our everyday utensils are ‘cafe’ by David Mellor.

Café Stainless Steel

Arne Jacobsen image from: royaldesign.co.uk  David Mellor image from: davidmellordesign.com

Why are some so awkward to use, and why are others a complete joy? I have been discussing this with my textile design students in relation to the principles of Form and Function in design. Before I know it I have rounded up many forks to illustrate my point and I feel rather proud. This collection is underway and its got me keeping my eyes open for new pieces to find. I am particularly keen on the ‘disposable’ not-for-ever kind, and here’s some examples to show you how exciting things are getting!

Autumn rhythms

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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.

Art for all – good design for all

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My design ethos is one of quality and appropriateness for the place. Good design should be all around us, big and small, the dot on the i, the cushion on the sofa, the roof on the building – no excuses. Why settle for second best, why copy others if you can be original? It is so sad to read of big companies risking reputations, not buying the best but producing poor quality copies – stealing designs. My students tolerate my monologues on the subject!

This blog entry celebrates some examples of quality design – because that’s what we should all aim for when making but also when buying. I have come across a great book called ‘Art for All’, telling the story of London Transport Posters. The book has black and white reproductions as well as colour, but the real charm is in the illustrations from original engravings of birds by Clare Leighton, printed in a salmon pink, as well as illustrations by Eric Ravilious (see below).

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(Art for All – London Transport Posters 1908 – 1949, Art and Technics Ltd. London, 1949)

The quality of design in these images is inspiring, with a great sense of detail without being fussy, and such skill in creating these images in only one colour while containing so much information of texture and pattern. I admire these artists but also the people who commissioned the pieces and enabled these images to be ‘Art for All’. As an aside, Both Leighton and Ravilious produced stunning designs for Wedgwood too.

It makes me think of my own practice and how I generate imagery using drawing and printmaking to create the visual language. Yes, the computer plays a large part in ‘tweaking’ for final output / reproduction these days but it’s the marks and textures, the print quality, a smudge of graphite, that cannot be created by computer. It might be quicker creating the whole image on the computer but it wont be as good as I want it to be. Having said that, it is also the creative process of working out, testing and feeling the work resolve on paper that I most enjoy. Was the design process meant to be easy? Its the struggle and questioning that keeps me doing what I do – I’m enjoying the journey. When so much time as part of having a design practice can be spent on the computer it is important to remember to turn it off and walk away to DO the creative things…and to get better at it…