Studio Work ABOUT my art & others

 A day of sorting through cloths in progress and working out the hanging situation of others.  Lovely winter nights to be stitching, inside where its warm and starting early as it gets dark earlier (for the time being).  and some turn out to be 'samplers' unless (or until?) i can imagine them into something else.  all images here are detail of larger pieces. picked this one up last night ... on the home stretch to finishing it !  looking at how it might hang - will post more on this one as soon as it is ready to go .... soooon

so many projects on the go (always) - a few here, some still in progress, others merely an idle thought.  my work is research and process based so there is much experimentation and intuitive 'doing'.  images here of asemic writings, paintings in progress, books completed and in progress, slow stitching and chemigrams. find our youtube channel with various playlists including art and artist books  let me know what you think.

a couple of 'what if' trials & experimentation in slow stitching - with a little help from my friend. I am enjoying what is coming from this sesssion. There is a video on our youtube channel speaking about these cloths - you can view it here.

  I started this piece a year ago, picking it up now and again.  The small squares were created first  The small squares are of eco dyed silk, indigo on cotton, indigo on blockout curtain materials and a very old hardanger which was an embroidery I began in my teens.  That is a long time to hold onto cloth. My mother and father used to visit their friends and play cards while my sister and i would read or listen to the radio.  More often than not I would take some embroidery to do. Now it is  woven into a whole of newer memories. It sat like this, in this format a very long time because, as happens more often than not, I didnt know what to do next. On one of the many creek walks i take from the studio to the bridge in our front yard the idea came to me as i was musing on the sun reflecting on the water.  And so the stitching began - my way of working is mostly intuitive and in this case, apart from drawing the circle on the back,  The stitches are...

Millie is unimpressed by our recent late autumn harvest. The tomatoes are on their last now - i am thinking of picking the green ones and making fried green tomatoes which were yum, last year. Blog update - i began the 'looking back on 7 days' however i realised it could get annoying to receive weekly updates - if, like me, you are subscribed to a few websites they come in thick and fast which makes is impossible to keep up. The one thing i can say is the emails you get from me are not sales orientated which is what seems to be very fashionable at present. It is always nice to sell of course, but that happens organically for me - little boosts along the way. Meanwhile I continue to work daily and push those abstracts around whilst exploring monoprints, chemigrams, a couple of projects and books on the go and some stitching as usual. Random images below.

 Our first workshop in my new studio. ~ create your needlebooks in a small group, around a table with a cup of tea, chatting in a large, warm space. ~ inspired by bookbinding techniques I have created many quick, easy patterns to work from so you can create, needlebooks, using 100% wool blanket. ~ nothing difficult to aim for in this one-day workshop . ~suitable for anyone who is a stitcher or is learning ~ for the adventurous stitcher, you can create the basic pattern as fancy as you like and embellish it. ~ All raw materials provided ~ ~the studio is located in beautiful grounds lined with forests of gum trees and wattles giving opportunity for a walk along a creek & you may even see our resident platypus or the pair of scarlet robins recently arrived for their season. For all details and to register your interest email: blackfisharts see this blog post here on the environment and the studio also 2 of the needlebooks are talked about here  

There is something about slow stitching - ie by hand and not sewing machine - that i love. it can be done anywhere, any time, while chatting with others, alone in silence at dawn or outside in the sunshine, in front of diversions like the TV etc. It can be meditative and as it grows slowly it can become satisfying. Musings on Found Poetry took me to thinking about collage and the slow stitching i do each evening - the pieces become a collage of cloth over time. Cloth is 'found', picked at random and added to with stitch and /or other cloth or even same cloth torn up and added to itself creating texture and a collage of elements. Examples here show what can be done with a minimal range of stitches that i use - that being straight stitch or a derivative of it such as couching, cross stitch, seed, backstitch, wrapped stitch and sometimes knot stitch. Often texture is created with stitch but also with layering of cloth, such as in these examples that include weaving strips into a...

Slow stitching for me is mostly wall hangings, fabric style collage and richly layered with stitches using mainly running stitch, back stitch and couching. I find an enormous amount of diversity in limiting the stitching and utilising different weights, colours and types of thread and materials. I rarely stitch anything 'practical' but found i needed something to keep my needles under control. So i created these two variations of a needle book - they came about from playing around with ideas from bookbinding (a scroll and Japanese style binding). a short video below on the needle books I made using bits of woollen blanket from my collection. (above) video on needle books with boo boo !

  Is your passion a problem ? I am talking about your life's passion. It was a problem for me, for decades, while i worked in a career that paid the bills - but i always sought out 'that other thing' I felt I wanted to do. In my spare time and holidays I photographed, played with digital enhancements, did collage, calligraphy and wrote poetry. Sometimes with some success that was measured in being published and works purchased by private collectors. These days I am following my passion. I spend all day (and evenings) doing stuff - stuff i love - painting, collage, assemblage, photography, book making, slow stitching and writing. I am never bored, I quite like my boss, I enjoy going to work and I don't want to take days off or go out to gatherings, get togethers and coffee mornings. I feel so fortunate. What is your passion ? Do you do the things you love or are you in the process of re-discovering your passions. Perhaps we need to go back to our childhood to re-di...

i had completely forgotten but was woken with a kiss and a 'happy Valentine's Day love' ... so nice. And then i was into my day ! - dental appointment, picked up some veggies to plant, a load of washing, and 3 hours in the studio painting. and it seems i have to get ready for dinner too .... how nice, feeling that fortunate feeling i get every day. dinner where? its a surprise ! ... we shall see so ... for Valentine's Day i remembered all the hearts i was stitching over time (and a little mosaic) ... here they are ... HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY TO ALL - i hope you too enjoy the fortunate in your day, time, space. 

  back to these again .... well, unpacking a bag ful and these two are both 'finished' ... as i have been musing over the past two years of journals and painting and art making i am back to considering mark making ... very obvious in the stitch, i think. Again, intuitive, no thinking apart from maybe shapes and colour but otherwise exploring 'my' stitch and some technique. the spiral is a 'rope' made from a hanky torn into strips ... the square it is on is a rusted bit of cloth, against a bit of light muslin all on wool blanket piece.

New place, new space, settling into ways of working and after many months concentrating on setting up the house, gardens and studio spaces I have finally got back to slow stitching at night. Picked this one up again and started that crazy fill-in stitch i do. I plan to blog a lot about sections of art i do, including stitching. lots to do, lots to talk about and lots to discover and explore.

one of my favourite activities is contour drawing. I have taken these two self portraits and translated it using backstitch on prepared cloth. The top one (not quite finished) is a shibori style scrunch cotton hanky dipped in tea and the bottom one is commercially dyed shibori style cotton.