Gimme Shelter

A wee small shelter, fit for one.

One and a half man shelter

A workshop and symposium with Deveron Arts. 

This workshop really interested me as it had such strong echoes of my own Shelter degree show piece. It was really interesting to listen to another shelter builder talking about his whys and wherefores.

We fitted six in here!

Shelter: Nearly there....

Just needs the floor...

Stitching together the pre-felted floor sections

Building Shelter

 Degree show set up with my wonderful mum as a second pair of hands

Fleece Heaven!

Second trip to get fleece from the Aladdin's Cave of the Wool Grower's depot. See what I mean about the wonderful huge bins full of fibre?

So much wool, so many shades and tones of colour = so hard to choose! I wanted to take it ALL home but returned with a sensible number for the huge project ahead. I limited myself to fourteen Moorit fleeces, mostly from Shetland sheep though some may be other breeds.

I also treated myself to one lovely soft brown Blue-faced Leicester fleece for spinning because it was just irresistible!

Boro Jeans

It's just over two years since I began mending my one pair of jeans. The first two patches were over the kneecaps: on the left knee is a piece of my godson's traditional Norwegian naming day shirt and on the right a bit of tweed from his sisters' coat. I am very hard on the knees of all my clothes; I always have been as I love getting close to the tiniest details of nature and, for me, that has always meant getting down on my knees.

Third layer going in on the left knee, but the of-cut from my godson's shirt is still strong.

Inside my jeans is a crazy jigsaw of overlapping patches, made from another pair of old worn out jeans that didn't fit me any more. In a few places the old seams still show up with their yellow stitches.

 

Not much of the original fabric is visible from the inside any more.

 I love the visual texture of the boro stitching, particularly on the inside. As an experiment I decided to put one patch on the outside and do the darning from the inside so that the wonderful texture shows. Not a great choice of placement though - right in the middle of my backside!

Back pockets - nearly gone.

 I have a habit of ramming my hands into my back pockets when I'm thinking. If I want to continue having that comforting thinking aid I will need to do some creative mending here... But visually I'm enjoying the disintegration of the fabric unimpeded by mending.

Interesting contrast between new patch and disintegrating original fabric.

The rhythm of stitch blends well with the rhythm of thought: I sit in my studio and muse on next steps for the evolution of my practice and catch both thought and patch into place with neat tight stitches.

Ouch!

Just have to remember not to stitch while thinking or talking about things that make me angry: Blood is always the result! My own I hasten to add...

Spin, Spun, Span

Spun Silk warp

 I am planning on projecting woven film onto this spun silk warp screen... The process onto the produced.

The balls of silk have such a lovely handle although every slight rough patch of skin catches on them. The visual texture of the silk is wonderful: wound into a ball, drizzled on the floor and hung shimmering from the Hazel wood rod.

I am interested in the visual play between the photo of spun roots on the wall, the shimmering spun silk and the wound ball of spun silk.

Spun Silk

Felting Landscapes

I find myself really excited by the prospect of a trip to Orkney this coming weekend! The last summer I went on a road trip to the Isle of Lewis it resulted in this felt  piece, depicting Callanish III.

I love old places where the length of time that humanity has been here in Scotland sings out in spite of the best efforts of wind and weather, time and neglect.

This time I hope to get to Skara Brae and some of the Orkney stone circles, such as The Ring of Brodgar, as well as visiting as many artists studios as possible!

Lewisian Gneiss

Callanish III through the rushes

Callanish III on Lewis

I have hundreds of photos from my trip to Lewis last summer, a goldmine of inspiration for years to come... I hope to have a repeat of this for my Orkney trip!

Callanish I

Summer in March?

Some days you just have to head outside, and what better way to spend an evening than by cooking your dinner on a small fire as the birds sing the sun down and the flames get brighter as the new moon and the first star appear. It was so warm tonight; perhaps this is the only "summer" we will have this year, you just never know in Scotland!

I find sitting by a fire with the fragrance of wood-smoke and the quiet crackle and hiss of the flames very very peaceful. It educes deep sighs of contentment and a peaceful dreaminess.

I plan on building a clay pizza oven here, and all the old bricks are collected up for it's floor.... But this being Scotland, I have to build a shelter for my oven first, as the clay won't be fired enough to withstand the quantity of rain we get. I have a beautiful design in mind, the dry-stone plinth is built already, along with a work bench to one side, an open fire pit on the other then stone benches to make the remaining sides of my semi-hexagonal out-door cooking and eating place. Next step is a roof on round wood pilers... I'm not quite so hot on the wood-work front! Love clay, love dry-stoning, but joinery? Um, any volunteers?

Nights like this one make me realise just how much I want my oven finished. Perhaps this year?

February

Sunlight on Water

There have been some beautiful bright days recently. I sat by the Findhorn River and watched the light dance on the water and listened to the birds singing as the sun warmed my knees. It was a brief but much needed respite from the chaos reigning in our studio at the moment. We are having a huge change around and there are builders at work removing one wall and making another. We have had to pack EVERYTHING from one room into the other so that dust and grit doesn't get into all our baskets of fibre...

Last week I had a lovely sunny day for my day off so I went for a beautiful ramble through the woods out the back of the house and gathered rushes to make something special...
At the beginning  of February is St Bride's Day, traditionally celebrated on the 1st of Feb. It's an old Highland and Irish festival with strong Celtic Christian/Pagan roots. I have only been aware of it since I moved to this area as it is celebrated in the Findhorn Foundation.

 It was like coming home to someone I knew to find the Goddess/Saint Bride or Bridget, and her celebration has been an important part of my year ever since. On the Western Isles one of the old, old traditions was to make a Brideag (Little Bridget), a doll-like figure of straw.

Bride's Niche

Over on the East and in the present day I was introduced to the Brideag (sounds like Bree-og) as a guardian figure made of green rushes and wrapped in a cloth. Blue is sacred to Bride and I use a blue silk scarf that belonged to my beloved Granny.







Anyhow, what has all this got to do with creativity? Other than the obvious fact that I spend a blissful hour or two gathering and plating rushes in a very creative style!  I find that time spent doing a gentle yearly ritual, like this re-creation of the Little Bride, is exceedingly nurturing. It anchors me to the year in a very natural way and I find such obscure festivals easier to relate to than more commercialised ones like Christmas or Valentine's day. This year I missed the story telling and candle-lit festivities in the Universal Hall at Findhorn , I even missed the day itself as I was so busy with changing the studio round that I FORGOT that it was St Bride's Day! For me this is almost like forgetting that it's Christmas! When I remembered, a few days later, I also remembered that all the old Celtic festivals were originally anchored not to a specific date but rather to the tides of the natural world. The Snowdrops were only just coming out in my garden, so hay! it's the right time to celebrate!

I leave you with a snippet of sound and sight from my interlude by the Findhorn river.

The Key to the Kingdom and the hunt for inspiration.....

Trying out ideas

 Once upon a time I saw the title to a poem in the front of a book: "This is the Key to the Kingdom, Of the Kingdom this is the Key". It made my heart leap in anticipation and hope, and I raced to the right page to learn, well, SOMETHING magic..... Alas, it wasn't what the title promised, rather, it was more like "This Is The House That Jack Built". What a let down. I closed the book in a huff. For years that first line/title has haunted me with it's promise and has hovered round me tauntingly. If only someone had written the REAL poem that belongs to that phrase. Then one day, with those lines floating and flaunting themselves round my head, I curled up in bed with my favourite pen and writing-in book and I pinned them to the page and followed them to the end of the poem that should have been. This is what emerged:

This is the Key to the Kingdom, of the Kingdom this is the key
This is the Door that the Key unlocks in a high stone wall that none can scale
This is the Garden behind that Door, all tangled and wild with vine and briar
This is the Well at the heart of the Garden, deep and cool and clear
Neath the lip of the Well all hidden in ferns, lies a Box of gold all covered with jewels
Within that box there is a key that unlocks the way to worlds untold
This is the Key to the Kingdom, of the Kingdom this is the Key

I was extremely chuffed with myself over this wee poem at the time, then one day with the lines dancing  round my head as I worked on a stubborn commission I had a realisation. This poem tells of the impossible situation of an artist trying to grasp the inspiration (symbolised by the key) that is locked away behind that stubborn door - all you can get by peering through the key-hole is the barest glimpse of the wonders beyond, and to open the door to that magic realm, you need that blasted key that is INSIDE!!!!!!! So this is the posture of the artist - on bended knee with eye glued to the key-hole of the magic realm begging the key to open the door wide. And some times, some wonderful, magical, mind-blowing times, the door opens a crack and you get this wondrous gust of inspiration washing over you... The only thing to do then is RUN! as fast as you can, to the drawing board, the paint brush, the fleece and hold on with all your might to that fading dream and do your very best to pour it out onto the work table so that you can share it with others. And then, if you are lucky, it all flows - magic happens. It's worth all the hard work, the times that are like kneeling before the key-hole trying to make out a glimpse of something worth showing to the world.

Playing with different ways of using a motif

I have been on my knees an awful lot recently as I struggle with finding inspiration from a source that doesn't inspire me. But it has worked I think, that door opened the tiniest crack and something beautiful slipped out and into my mind. And I caught it too! On the 5th of Feb I have to show my client the possibilities that I have come up with and let her chose what direction she would like me to take the commission. Scary. But at least I now feel I have something worth showing her!

Creative meanderings and Happy New Year!

Winter Hearth

My creativity seems to be hibernating, perhaps it's the cold and darkness; I always find my self wanting to curl into a dark warm nest at this time of year. I should love to write a long and entertaining post about the importance of giving yourself creative time off, but I'm  too busy curling up by the fire and reading  'Wintersmith' by Terry Pratchett! This is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors, and like all books I love, I can read it again and again and find more and more depth and meaning each time I read it.

Yes, time to sit and dream, poke the slumbering fire and read good books is vital to replenishing creativity. I have always found fire to be restorative and nurturing, and never more so than in the deep dark of winter. Here in the North of Scotland there seems to be an awful lot of dark - the sun doesn't manage to climb above the southern hills till after 8:00 in the morning and it's away back down again by 3:30

It's New Year's Eve and the sun has gone down and the wind is blowing colder now, my little white Christmas lights are reflecting in the windows as the last of the light drains out of the day. I like to spend some time on New Year's Eve musing about the past year and weighing up my progress against what I hoped it would be. The tally isn't too bad this year, I have been pushing myself to grow and learn, trying to leave behind the patterns I have grown out of (or should have grown out of but haven't!) and learning new tricks as I'm definitely not an old dog yet! As an artist one of the big challenges is organisation and orderliness, and although chaos runs rampant around me on my desk, I do at least know where most things actually are! I am gradually training myself into putting things back where they belong once I have finished with them - it makes life SO MUCH EASIER if tools and materials have a place to belong and are to be found in that place! I think that is my biggest New Year's Resolution - try and be tidy, put things away! If there is too much chaos in my life I find it clogs my creativity, my joy and my motivation. It takes less time than one would think to put shoes away as you take them off, or put the pens back in their pot once you have finished drawing.... Yes I may wear them or use them tomorrow - or I may not! Either way it's better now if they are where they belong.

My favourite walk is just two minutes' stride from my studio

Another resolution - I am going to spend some time outside EVERY DAY. Even if it's only 10 minutes, I need daylight and fresh air as much as I need to breathe. Some times I get so involved with creativity that I forget to stop and go for a little walk, rest my eyes on the green distances and MOVE! BREATHE! I need to look after my physical self - as I ask such a lot of my body it's only fair to be a good owner. And after all, you only get one, it's a precious resource. I have had a habit of ignoring it as much as possible and far more than is sensible - injuring my hands by continuing a job until it's finished even though I have wrenched something badly; crouching over my work table with my nose 6 inches from what I am doing for so long that I can barely stand up once I have finished 3 or 4 hours later; forgetting to drink any water for a day or two then wondering why I have a head ache... Yes this year I need to learn to take care of my body or it will clap out on my well before I have finished with it! There are just so many interesting things to do that I want to keep my body in as good a working order as I can for as long as I can. I am aware that I want to learn and do more things than I can possibly fit into one life time as it is! This is such a wonderful world and there are so many exciting things to learn!

Now I am going to go and stoke the fire, mull some home made elderberry wine and fish out some bees wax to do an intriguing old bit of fortune telling with! At Midnight we will open all the doors to let the Old Year out and the New Year in - and so we will welcome 2012. I wish you a beautiful New Year yourself, and may it be a blessed and wondrous year for the whole world.

This is Craig Valley - Home - and I hope to re-visit this, my favourite place in the whole world in 2012

Music for Monday

Inspired by one of my favourite blog writers, over at  The Drawing Board , I would like to start sharing some of the music that lifts my heart and makes me feel creative. So here is the first band that always comes to my mind when asked what music I love: Ossian. They are a Celtic band from my childhood. My family used to go and listen to various folk bands playing live in our tiny west coast village halls. It was always wonderful and sometimes we would travel for over an hour up or down the coast to some other village where The Boys of the Loch, Ally Bain, Capercaillie or some other band were playing.


This grey Monday morning I am trying a bit of a strange operation - dip-dying a hat to change the colour of the crown as the lady who is buying it from me wants a black crown to her red brimmed hat rather than blue...

I have to do it at home as I haven't the facilities at  my studio for dying in a pot. I usually use a steamer and do space-dying. The strange set up with the woven willow ring that the hat brim is stitched to is to make sure that the brim stays out of the dye bath. I have my fingers in knots they are crossed so far! I have never tried to dye only one part of something before. It is bubbling away as I write...