Degree Show

The last week has been amazing and went in a flash!  Thank you to everyone who came  – I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we students (ex-students now!)  did.  Thank you for all your support – there was  great atmosphere and so many positive comments and feedback.  It is the first time I have exhibited any work and it was  an inspiring experience.  

Opening Night!

It’s July 3rd and,  after three fabulous years, the day we have been anticipating and working towards  for so long has arrived!  Today is the opening of our Degree Show and we look forward  to welcoming  you there either tonight  6pm – 8.30pm,  Friday 10 am – 5 pm, or Saturday  10am- 1 pm.   Eastleigh College, Desborough Road , SO50 5NH

Setting up for the Degree Show

After two days getting ready for our show we are almost there!  Richard, the college technician has had a huge task to get ten of us sorted with plinths, shelves, hangings, computers, sound and photography.   Everyone has pulled together, it’s looking great

Setting up

and we are looking forward to the opening night – hope to see you there!

Details of the Degree Show. Hope to see you there!

 

June 10th

Three weeks to go now until we put on our Degree Show! I have been working on how to portray barbed wire as an iconic image of the First World War. I am going to suspend short lengths of rusty barbed wire and catch shreds of material and charred photographs and letters on it.

 

May 20th

I recently visited the National Trust property Uppark House near Petersfield where there is an exhibition entitled Unravelling Uppark. Eleven artists have made work in response to the house and its history. All the pieces are really interesting – Alice Kettle is one of the artists featuring. I just loved the reconstructed vessels made by Zoe Hillyard. She has taken pieces of ceramic shards, covered them with colourful fabrics and hand stitch and pieced vessels from them. They are simply eye catching. She is responding to past textile renovation work done at Uppark, archaeological renovation and Japanese traditions of ceramic mending. The exhibition runs until November 2nd.

May 17th

I have been smashing pots and using Lazertran transfer paper to transfer images onto the resulting shards. The image tends to look as if it is sitting on the surface of the shard (which it is) rather than be ingrained in it , which is the result I am trying to achieve, so more experimentation will be needed. I have wrapped the shards in thread – I was going to use red thread, but red does not sit well with the rest of my cloth , so I will keep to greys and whites.

May 7th again

This is the image I meant to accompany the previous blog….

May 7th

The countdown to our Degree Show in July has begun – sometimes I feel as if there is plenty of time but then I have another thought, set off on another tack and start to feel a bit queasy about the time left to get the work done!  There is still plenty of research and sketchbook work to complete and time for some hiccups along the way. However, my wall hanging is coming together, the vessel shapes are paper laminated  onto the silk organza and the images of faces and pieces of sheer fabric are tacked in place behind it, and a few are stitched. My next priority is to experiment with Lazertran decal waterslide paper to transfer images onto the shards of broken vessels.  The shards are going to lie on the floor at the base of my hanging cloth.

April 26th Continuing my Great War theme

I’ve paper laminated my vessels onto a large sheet of silk organza at last.  It took a long time to work out where to place them and measure up and generally get on with it. I have also spent ages trying to resize and recolour old family photographs of my great aunts so they ‘fit’ in the vessels, and copy some of their letters and diary entries from the First World War. Next I had to copy the photos and letters onto tissue paper – this involved many paper jams in my printer and much frustration…It has taken several attempts to position the photographs in each vessel and cut the coloured sheers to fit around them. At the moment they are still only pinned while I consider if I dare tack them in (again)! I hope the fabric will hang straight once on an acrylic baton…!