Out of the Dark

emerging from the cave and seeing the sky.......

more from the Iron + Ink collection

Sunny October Sunday

Last weekend was sunny enough to get some photographs taken outside of some tables (kitchen/dining not coffee tables - they were BIG) made by my dad. I took the opportunity to get a few shots of some bangles against the wonderful markings in the wood. 

I will do a dedicated post on the tables soon.

As I said, they were all of a good size, this one was fairly enormous, about 10 or 12ft. I took this shot standing on some stepladders! 

There were six tables photographed that day, (glad I wasn't involved in the lifting and carrying of them!) Out into the open from the workshop, to get the most of the autumn sun before it sank too low. 

Graphic-y stacks

Horizontal twiggy ladders.

Unfortunately cant remember source of image to credit it.

Straw plaits

Brushes and Pencils

belonging to artist Tenka Gammelgaard

Cider barrels, 

 trip down to Hereford, 2010 

Twigman

Raggety!

Above image from the Rupert the Bear 1970's series - as scary a childhood tv memory as one could wish for. Apparently, in this scene he has trashed Rupert's living room in a fit of temper. 

And yet in adulthood (hah!) I find I am quite fond of him; hooray for irritated, grumpy, unlikeable children's story characters.

Twig talk

I took these photos earlier this year, wandering back from a walk in Victoria Park one February weekend in London. 

I noticed underfoot these lovely twig markings. The oblique sunlight had picked them out. 

I wondered exactly how they were made, as if they had been trodden into the now dry earth whilst it was soft mud, where were the shoe prints? 

If you cant choose...

Wear them ALL

Stone stacks

Here's what happened to some of those crushed shells.

This collection is going off to Chorlton based jewellery gallery,  Franny and Filer.

Blue is beautiful, blue is best...

just ask Buxton

Coming soon, Lapiz-like cobble bangles.

Shell-Shock

I've had these shells for a few years; think they might be from a beach on Anglesey.

They all have intriguing holes in them, I wondered if they were caused by a bird's beak? (Memo to self - do some Nature research.)

I am using some in one of my resin mixtures....

Ah, the satisfying crunch-crush of delicate pinky shells! 

Now a tonal palette of tiny shards. Reminds me of the colours you would find in a still life painting by Morandi. Look closely - I especially like the pieces with serrated edges, they look like micro-combs.

The Green Man 2012

Here he is, the Man himself. Presiding over the highly enjoyable (if waterlogged) Green Man festival 

A chai brandy or three to keep the damp at bay

 a charming visitor to our tent

a wonderful variety of live music, small serving suggestion;

Laura J martin

Kwes

Greta Isaac

The Bees

Metronomy

etc

makes the mud memories slip away.....

Silver Charm(ing)

This is the making in progress of the charm seen in previous post 

Unfinished sterling silver charms showing three different "finishes".
The dark one at the back is two halves which have just been soldered together and the discolouration is the metal reacting to the heat, (oxidisation.)
The matt white one on the left has been cleaned in safety pickle, leaving the pure white colour of silver.
The final, er, silvery looking one has been rubbed or polished which brings us the more familiar surface of silver.
I love how it has a different personality depending on what happens to the surface. An enchanting material to work with.

Close up of hallmark and my makers mark

Thumbprint of the Past

This stone was given to me, a gift brought from the beach at Abergele.

(I believe excellent chips were purchased and eaten nearby)

I highlighted the fossilised imprint from a shell with golden wax. 

It's very like a thumbprint.

 I'm using it as a jewellery container. Here it's holding my silver pobble pendant.

Serpentine Pavilion

On a recent trip to London we made time to get over to the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion.  

This year it was a creation by architects Herzog and de Meuron collaborating with artist Ai Weiwei. (this video link has Jaques Herzog talking about the collaboration) 

I was especially pleased to get to visit it as this year it is a buried structure; laid out using the imagined excavations of the previous years pavilions. I thought the idea of modern archeology was a really thought-provoking approach to this annual building.

As you walk through Kensington gardens it is hard to spot the building as it is so low-lying. I had the sensation of approaching a tribal structure, something protective and discreet, a meeting hall for a secretive forest dwelling people?  Being circular at was also very democratic and social. 

Once inside that feeling of being under ground increases due to the all the surfaces being lined in cork. This not only has the effect of deadening a lot of the outdoor city sounds, and of being a protective, gentle surface, it also has an earth-like quality.  Something evocative of an animal's den or sett.

close up of cork surface.

The other effect I liked was the looking up and out, with the cork-clad steps taking the eye to the surrounding trees (which acted like an encampment outer wall - definitely getting the archaeological feeling with that!), the bark of the trees a reminder of the source material.

 There was something about the roof that also made me feel the structure was created by an ancient  people who didn't want to be discovered by the modern world. The clever use of a water-topped roof made good use of mirroring the sky and trees. A deliberate camouflaging technique?

Pebble

Apologies for the quality of the image. It was taken about 5 years ago, before I got my trusty little Canon ixus 70, and I wasn't taking lots of images of my work. the previous post prompted me to look for any record of the "pebbles" that was part of the ongoing mould making, multiples and repeats theme.
I made a couple of moulds to make batches of resin stones that were all treated differently and had slices and laminations to show the "made" aspect. I also worked backwards. so to speak, in terms of making by slicing and laminating blocks of wood before hand shaping/sarving/slicing them into the pebble shape. I used various interesting woods (able to get off-cuts easily as dad is a cabinet-maker). Again, the idea was all about creating many of these similar shapes but in contrasting finishes, all made and treated as "jewels" but to make a whole load of them to pile up in quantity.
I must route out what I have left from that time, I know I kept a collection of them. I ended up giving quite a few away as gifts. If I find them I will post some superior images!
 

Beach

So, Tuesday was (mostly) sunny. Having a free day, we chose to do our annual visit to  Llandudno.
A Victorian sea-side town worthy of multiple posts.
Here I will focus on one jewel in her crown Oriel Mostyn Gallery;

Behind an impressive 1901 terra cota façade in the strikingly beautiful seaside town of Llandudno is Wales’ leading gallery of contemporary art – MOSTYN. Topped with a landmark gold spire, in 2010 it completed an expansion in which old and new buidlings are integrated in a stunning design by architect Dominic Williams.


 I have never been let down by any spontaneous visit to this gallery. There has always been some sort of lingering thoughts provoked by work seen there, discussions had on the train journey back home.
This time, we wandered into one of it's large rooms to see a load of rocks piled up at one end. If a visitor hadn't had their curiosity piqued, hadn't wandered over for a closer look, they would have failed to be surprised when it dawned on them that they weren't "real"! *

The work was "Raised Beach" by Alex Duncan.

It seems his work plays with fascinating ideas regarding what is "real", "natural", "made". It's worth clicking on the artist link above for a better summary than I can give here.

It was a good to go to the gallery en route to a care-free afternoon spent between Llandudno's North and West shores.  See if you can distinguish between gallery and beach shots in the photos above.


*overheard by retreating gallery visitor, who we surmised had merely glimpsed at the room without investigating further,
"And they call that art".

Connections

I think it's good when you step back from your work for a while. I've been looking back over images of work from the last couple of years (or more). This photograph is from a time when I was (obsessively?) making and re-making from moulds made from a cockle shell (from Llandudno beach I think). You can see the links with the earliest human adornment, of course  But the ideas of the time were more to do with repeats and use of moulds - using them in a "natural" way, and by this I mean not in the industrial way whereby the idea is to get identical repeats (sterile?) but in the way I understand nature which is all about repeat patterns which connect but with the capacity to be slightly changed in some way. Without change there would be no life on earth.

Well, if that's getting a bit too thoughtful, I will just say - I saw this image and it reminded me of a previous post! Pennies from Heaven