by katie | Jul 4, 2011 | Blog
After going to the Warp and Weft exhibition in Bury St Edmunds I felt inspired to experiment with three-dimensional weaving. Lucy McMullen weaves up to six cloths. On my 8-shaft loom I can weave up to four cloths, I had a go at the multiple cloth weaving to try to get a grip on how she does it. In my attempt I decided to make it easy for myself and used one colour per cloth, this meant I could keep track of where each cloth was goes and when it was being woven. I found it hard to weave them to the same standard because I could see only one cloth at a time, I also need more practice with getting my edges straight. The first two pictures show the cloths being woven independently, and the last I joined on side of the cloths together to create pockets. I am pleased with my first attempt and now have more understanding of how to use multiple cloths.
………
…………
by katie | Jun 30, 2011 | Blog
I spent the day in London at New Designers, a place for newly graduated student to show off the best of their work in hope they may get spotted for a job opportunity. The standard for work was incredible. I am interested in my work next year becoming more neutral, not because its an easy option! I genuinely love neutrals, it seem to be what I am always drawn to, but texture plays a big part in what I like too. I looked at how other people did neutrals as New Designers as it can be hard to get right. The successful pieces had small amounts of neutral colours such as purple or green, or even just undyed yarn. It goes wrong when the natural colour of the yarn is yellowy, it is worth dying the natural yarn a natural colour to ensure this yellowness doesn’t come through. I also saw a lot of texture and structure in terms of weaving. Looking at the way things were hung was also interesting, very important as the hanging can make or break a piece; a lot of monofilament was just so the hanging did not show, also pins held up fabrics by the corners, shelves or rails were used to display smaller pieces. I loved one where they had gotten hold of a professional hanging panel glide system, it was used to hang wallpaper as it would be seen in a shop. It was a very inspiring place to be, not only for weaving and textiles but the ceramics and jewellery was also fantastic.
by katie | Jun 29, 2011 | Blog
I have just completed a work experience at Clement Joscelyne, Norwich. They are a group of five shops in East Anglia who sell home furnishings from accessories to furniture, as well as providing an interior design service. This is the team I worked with, in the shop they show customers fabrics and wall papers, putting together mood boards if required. I spent a lot of time looking through their vast collection of fabrics they sell; all very high end, luxurious fabrics. I found the ones I was most interested in were the more neutral fabrics with texture and unusual yarns, such as Ulf Moritz, Sahco and, Zimmer and Rohde, these also were mostly sheer fabrics. This is something I want to think about doing in my final year of uni, concentrating on my materials experimentation. I helped choose the furniture to be displayed in store, as the room setting are all going to be changed. On my final day I put together a mood board:
This mood board is a plan/design for a contemporary living space, it includes everything from the wall paper, accessories, architecture, furniture, fabrics etc. I learnt a lot about how to put together an interior design mood board, how to do a floor plan, the things I need to include such as drawing, and how to mound fabrics. These are produced at Clement Joscelyne so that customers can see what their space will look like, a mood board really helps to sell them the design as it can be hard to visualise what it will look like.
by katie | Jun 20, 2011 | Blog
The textiles show at the Norwich University College of the Arts was split in to two halves. On the ground floor there was work displayed for sale, they had created products such as lanterns, scarves, wooden letters, clothes etc. In a space above this shop there was more background work, large pieces of fabrics, experimental work, samples etc. This enabled students to show of their abilities for creative textiles as well as finished pieces. I was impressed with the variety of work produced, it shows that textiles is a very broad subject. For me it is all about creativity and the sense of touch, this is what drew me into textiles, textural sufaces (I have to touch everything I see). Bearing this in mind I may need to come up with some sort of product to produce within my textiles work, up until now I have just been experimenting with weaving and making samples.
by katie | Jun 16, 2011 | Blog
The Winchester School of Art put on a great degree show this year. The work was done to a high standard and there was a lot of inspiration there. The work was mainly based on creating large pieces of fabrics, although there were also boots, art textiles and photographic work on display within the textiles show.
by katie | May 19, 2011 | Blog
Composition is a very important part of photography. Placing things in the centre isn’t always very interesting, the rule of thirds can work well:
by katie | May 13, 2011 | Blog
Over the summer I have decided to work on my photography skills. I would like to have more understanding to help me take good photographs. I am using a manual camera so that I can learn how to adjust the settings myself, my wonderful boyfriend has taken on the task of teaching me.
This was my first photo, learning to focus and adjust the light with aperture and shutter speed. A wider aperture lets more might in to the camera as does a slower shutter speed.
Close up of a wall, seeing how close I can get to it staying in focus.
It is difficult to get the light right when taking a photo of something against a bright sky with out losing the detail. Here I wanted to capture the leave so set the light right for the leaves meaning the sky is too bright.
Here I wanted the detail of the sky. When I got the light right for the sky the leaves were too dark. It is important to know what you are taking a photo of to get the detail you want to achieve.
In the woods it is dark, adjustments need to be made for this. I need much more light coming in the camera.
In the lens I was using it had a metre to tell me when I have the right amount of light for the photo I am taking. In this one the metre was not correct, when I got the light right for the metre the photo was to dark so I had to adjust the settings and decide for myself how much light I wanted. This was particularly difficult because of the bright sky behind the trees.
To focus in on something and have the background blurry I needed a narrower aperture and to use spot metering. This means I can focus on a particular area.
The light was adjusted in the dark wood to capture the bright green of the leaves above.
Again here the camera was wrong about the amount of light needed. When I set it to the camera suggestions it came out black. I set the aperture first because I wanted the focus on the post, I set as as big a hole as I could then adjusted the shutter as needed.
When taking a photo it is important to decide how much you want in focus. Here I wanted as much in focus as possible so I used the widest aperture I could. I had the post in focus and as much as the background in focus as I could get.
by katie | Apr 28, 2011 | Blog
Barnett Newman was an american colour field artist and abstract expressionist. I saw the top two at the Tate, the paintings are much more vibrant in real life, the intense coral colour inspired my current work greatly. At the Tate they were displayed next to each other where they work as a set, the colours in the left one are present in the right. I am not sure why I like these paintings, after all they are just a few stripes. I think this is their beauty. The colour drew me to the top two and the minimal texture is intriguing in the bottom. I am also interested in these painting because of their weave qualities. My uni work is centred around weave which, I see in these paintings. Weave is rooted in verticals and horizontals.
…....
……....
…..
..……..…
by katie | Apr 26, 2011 | Blog
Ptolemy Mann is a contemporary woven textile artist. She specialises in using ikat dying techniques to achieve the blending of colours. This has been a huge inspiration for me in my current uni project, exploring use of colour. The woven pieces are stretched over canvases and are transformed into art work.
by katie | Apr 26, 2011 | Blog
Today I went to the Warp and Weft exhibition at the Smith’s Row gallery, Bury St Edmunds. It was a very inspiring exhibition, I loved the contemporary and 3d approaches to weaving. Studying weave, I know that generally there is not much known about weaving and it was great to see and exhibition dedicated to this. It is this 3d approach to weaving that was most interesting for me, I have only briefly experimented with collapse weave and a double cloth, and something I would like to develop within my own work. I also want to do very textured weaves, it is the textures that draw have me into textiles.
