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.
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
We had a fantastic time at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park en route north to friends this weekend catching the penultimate day of Mark Hearld’s show there. Its such a great venue and there’s always something to discover. We managed to walk some of the grounds and the weather was stunning for the time of year. One problem was the saturated ground, particularly on the slopes which had become rather slippery as a result of snow and rain over the last few weeks. (Three out of the four of us fell to the muddy ground – okay for toddlers, rather less stylish for fully-grown adults!)
While exploring the sculptures I noticed the cross being drawn in the sky, then looked down to the ground by my feet to notice the second made in the grass. With X, V & O letters featuring heavily in my current design collection it shouted out to me. X marked a really beautiful spot up there in Yorkshire.
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.
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 