Run Back Chain Brick Rope

Sally is making good progress, stitching the Flotta Chair. This time, before each element, we are looking at new kinds of what essentially are the fundamental running–, chain–, rope– and back–stitches. Also, for the fills, weaving and couching in a number of ways.



So here, two mixes of a sage green and dusty, dijon yellow. Whipped and threaded backstitches for the radiuses; couched lines for the angulars. At the drawing stage, I pay a lot of attention now (in translating the original hand drawings to more 'stable' — for the overstitching) screen drawings) to a muscle memory of each form. This then is a guiding logic to the character of each stitched line and helps us navigate the array of unfamiliar options.



It also gives me a clearer idea of where to stop, in making the artwork.





So, to an extent, each chair is a sampler. On this note, we are preparing a sampler for The Idler Academy. Sally will be running an embroidery workshop; I'm making drawings, to adapt as artwork screened onto linen, for each participant. Returning again to notions of 'kit', Froebel's Gifts and Occupations, Bauhaus preliminary exercises. I like the idea of an underprinted structure that allows for some improvisation, even by the novice. Not sure yet whether this is sufficiently simple and practicable but will try.

Monozukuri, Chaumont Festival

Two modular woodblock prints measuring 400mm x 600mm, to be exhibited along with the plates, in Monozukuri: formes d'impression, part of the 22nd International poster and graphic design festival of Chaumont, France. Opening 21 May.



The exhibition, curated by Sacha Léopold and Charles Beauté, shows examples of the interdeterminate relationship between mechanical process and print.



So these prints are building on the first experiment at this scale last year. This time monochrome, to foreground the structural and patchy surface; therefore the object quality of the plate. I do want to try some flat underprinting with an acidic or dark tone from non-grained plates, then overprinting with opaque, milky colours using the plywood. This will involve plenty of drying time and heavy inking of the second colour.



Not sure it will offer something better than this. The blue here is getting close to something I like about Barron & Larcher's indigo discharge and resist designs.

Luke Best, Krets gallery

The unrivalled Mr. Best has an exhibition, opening this weekend at Krets gallery, Malmö. More here.



He's showing new, large drawings, alongwith hand–appliquéd cushions. Very exciting. Luke is so good with commercial work but the moments too — when he goes after drawing process, concocted out of a circling set of personal marks, forms and props — are so interesting.

Morocco: Found, Made

Final post on Morocco and a notemaking process to take back into the things being made back home. Ceramics has knocked me healthily sideways, regarding the behaviour of glazes, shrinkage and knowing when to let it be. Don't want to lose a natural tendency to worry something into shape but it can be offset.



Some of the colours here resonate with stoneware glaze tests; violets and purples especially which have surprised me. Also, not so clear on this image, manufactured surface repeats subjected to erosion.





And knotting. Was playing a while ago with remembered lashings and unfamiliar ones, such as the Monkey's Paw.







This last image is an improvised brush used by a boy we met, who made and painted something to give to my boy. He did it just because he wanted to. Best moment.

Morocco: Washed Forms

Back now in London, always somewhat disorientating after neighbouring the Atlantic for two weeks. Time there does give vent to overview of one's work and one's conduct as a maker, a teacher; moreover as a father, a partner. That sounds pompous but it happens.

In terms of making, there needs to be more of it bearing relation to the speed I think. Not that all the ideas are so good that they beg to be realised; just so that the intent is clear throughout the rendering. And so that I stop having people hang on too long for the result. There is such a discrepancy between design, art and craft lead times; it's tricky to know when one is slow or not but at the moment I want to quicken.

Reading was judged right this time. Often take away the wrong book but gained a good deal from Hyphen Press' God's amateur: the writing of E. C. Large, which I'd taken away from the live reading by Stuart Bailey at Somerset House a few years back. Bailey's essay, on re-reading, resonated here this time; particularly his notions of low modernism and of a nowaday supplanting of experience by convenience.

Also a collection of Graham Greene's short stories. Coming to him late on, like ignoring the obvious or resisting the forcibly recommended. And in terms of process logic, James Langdon's concise iteration of Ulises Carrión's texts on the book; as he says, "potentially a manual for making and using books".

Morocco: Seen Surface

Morocco: Found Colour Notes

Coming to the end of another stay in Aglou, near Tiznit, in the Souss-Massa-Draâ region of Morocco. On the doorstep of the Atlantic, an empty beach with tidelines of salt- and sun-bleached organic and synthetic matter.

Combing and collecting colour has become something to look forward to each time. It's had a significant effect on my attitude to and use of colour; something I've considered to be a struggle. Local colour; colour arrived at through the action of one agent upon another; elemental wearing of processed forms — variegations therein make so much more sense than the burnt umbers and cadmium reds of My First Acrylics Set.

Same applies to the varieties of battering to a recurrent form.

A Rack for the Box

A rack, which sits a layer of found forms on top of the stacks and bookwork, is just about there. Each layer changes the character of the whole; certainly how it might be read as a functional, learning or play thing.



It also signals for me that I need to start to author more truly spatial and dimensionally weighted works. Not at the expense of imagemaking but as a logical next step for the language. Ceramics has only added to the feeling.



I'm so used to making marks on things; it's a slow uptake to understand that the things are the marks.

Last Layer

Drawing the last layer of racks for the sourced stumps, needles, sticks, rubbers and egg–timer glass to go in the boxes. Each spurt of forms gains its own character, partly because of the time taken over this project, spliced in between other works. These are a little bit hammer anvil stirrup, a little bit universal bicycle wrench.

Book, Pad, Pick, Needle, Stump, Chalk, Pot, Dish, Tin

Further Consideration