Art journal session with Zoom

March 16th

Intro

Monika and I did our first art journaling session via Zoom tonight. I am awake on the 17th at 4am. The meanings and ideas that we’re thrown up for me going round and round my head. I got up to write them down.

Monika and I decided that we would to art journal too this evening because there were only a few participants. And it would feel weird just watching the whole time via a screen.

Making process

As I flipped through the magazine looking for images and text about how I felt – living during the time of Corona. I was amazed at how many words caught my attention (in retrospect this doesn’t really surprise me because everything I am doing in my art practice at the moments is working with text). I have been using these particular magazines for my personal work over the last month and I thought I knew them very well. Shifting my focus to how I was feeling opened up the text and images for me again.

I have been particularly loving a double page spread about trees, waiting to use it in a collage. I have also read all the quotes. (normally I wouldn’t encourage people to stop and read in their flip through the pages).

The text I collected was: ‘mother love’, ‘the end of the world’, ‘farewell my friend’, ‘the gift of time’, ‘I feel trapped’, ‘home’, ‘life is for living’, ‘all change’, ‘ I’ve connected with my self on a deeper level.’

This quote by Jeanette Winterson

‘ Earth is ancient now, but all knowledge is stored up in her. She keeps a record of everything. Of time before time, she says little. Of time to come, she says much ,but who listens’.

As I cut out the words that had jumped out to me and looked at the images in more detail. I realised that if I turned the tree spread upside down it looked like lungs. I stuck the whole page onto a patterned piece of paper.

I had a scary conversation with my daughter about her night asthma (that’s where ‘mother love fitted in) and my chest has felt tighter than usual since a bug I caught last month. The tree branches went off the page and looked like they were held or truncated by the rectangle.I felt trapped just looking at them. It feels like being contained in a bad way just writing about it. Echoing my feelings and worries about the respiratory effects of the virus.

I also found an image of a women emerging from a bird cage. The lid was open and she was rising up on a chair. At that moment this was too much like an escape, so I drew a bubble around her. She became shielded and isolated from the tree. These were the only two images that I wanted to use.

I added my text and then started writing into the collage, changing the meanings slightly in black biro.

The end of the world as we know it

The gift of time socially isolated and shielded

Mother love, not being able to hug or cuddle my children or friends.

Farewell, my friend – who will I loose?

Life is for living, who chooses who lives and who dies?

I placed ‘ I feel trapped’ above the cage and cut up ‘ in my’ from other text I had discarded, and finished the statement with ‘ home’.

I had chosen ‘home’ initially because of what was happening between my husband and I. We are separating and he has moved out of our flat. He complained today that his new space is ‘ not home’ ( it’s rented accommodation, next door, so that we can still socially isolate, but have more space for our selves).

I found my self circling the printed text with a black biro which has the effect of making the black on white backgrounds seem to hover or float, accentuating the the words and the woman caged.They hover in bubbles in front of the tree. It is as if I photographed it capturing a moment in time. In our debrief, Monika picked up that ‘time’ was a theme coming up for me.

I worked very fast so, I free wrote around the edges of the tree page. I realise now that this also accentuates the containing of the ‘lungs’

‘ the tree represented life and lungs, breathing, ventilators, my Covid19 collage, who chooses who lives and who dies, it all seems so random, men, BAME,people old, a 107 year old lady was released the other day. Who has underlying conditions?’

We had planned to do another collage session after our group check in. I had used up all my collage collection but still had another page from my tree. With the first collage, I had waited to stick down all my pieces until I had cut out everything. This time I was more intuitive. The text on the second tree page would be upside down if I turned the tree into lungs again. I hadn’t wanted this one to be the correct way up either, but I knew I wanted it to be less constricting. I carefully cut the text and replaced it the right way up.

‘Trees exhale for us so we can inhale them to stay alive… let us love trees with every breath we take.’ Munia Kahn

My new selection of text was: viewpoint, uplifting, inspiring, engaging, ‘the earth is like a child that knows poems’ Rainer Maria Rilke, holding boundaries, new beginnings, facing the reality of change, you can’t numb difficult feelings, with out numbing other emotions, such as joy, happiness and gratitude.

I also made a found poem : feeling lonely, regrettable life, pent up misery, liberated, healthier decisions.

I couldn’t believe it when I was leafing through the pages I found three more images of people sitting talking to each other in bubbles. ( the magazine was therapy today…..) I stuck everything down and as I was tidying up I saw the mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland, and he represented time again for me and the feeling of having fallen down a rabbit hole.

Reflecting on the session Monika I talked about how well the Zoom technology managed to hold the group. I had been worried that we all would feel isolated. In other Zoom sessions over the last month this has been the case. However,the session was inclusive. The themes we explored were echoed in each other’s work and it felt possible to recreate the relational through and in spite of the technology.

This art journalling technique was inspired by Shelley Klammer

New teabag quilt

I decided to try a new method of sewing with teabags. I used running stitch to attach 56 teabags to a pillow case protector that I picked up second hand. It is a nice weight of fabric with a bit of padding.

My adopted Granny was from County Durham. When I was younger I remember we had a quilt that she made- that looked a bit like this

I don’t remember Grannies being as complicated as those above but I remember loving it- how it felt and the patterns. I wanted it to be mine. ( picture from Pinterest )

I am quite pleased with how my design is developing- I wanted to stick with working in circles – following on from my mandalas ( the next one will have a more Durham themed pattern)

The fabric and padding that I am using isn’t quite thick enough to get the Durham effect. Though I like the feel of my piece, and the contrast of the white thread on the tea colour.

I decided to add some straight lines to join the pattern together – it feels more coherent. I need to photograph it in daylight

The spaces between my lines need to be more consistent- though I like the fact that it still looks like teabags. Some of my other work lost the individual bag feel.

When I was working I tried 3 ways of sewing the bags edges- I pinned the teabags next to each other- but they moved sometimes during the process. Depending how quickly they dried out – made some of the edges crisp and fragile

Crispy joints

Hidden joints

Darned

I think I like them left as they are – with the white fabric showing as contrast. I am going to finish the back stitching- edge the piece and may be back it. I will add a finished pictures

I backed my quilt with a favourite old pillow case and edged it with colour run absorbent sheets that go in the washing machine.

Image blender

I haven’t been making digital images as much recently. I woke up this morning with a series of images in my head that illustrated a poem I have written about playing my viola as a child.

I had a image of playing in an orchestra practice in a school gym

Wind and rain through a window

Violin playing

Very annoyingly I forgot to keep track of what I searched for to find image references – if you know please tag me

http://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/201512/17240/

And an orchestra of children

I layered these in the Images in the blender App trying to evoke the feeling of my poem:

‘Sitting in a sun lit gym playing harmonies

Whilst violins trill and float above me

My sister sight reads with a fluency

The wind catches leaves, the rain batters the window

Andstill she plays

Strings wound tightly

My beat a necessary layer, holding the ground

So her fingers can dance

Stretched thin by emotion

In time, out of time, in a minor key’

In the Blender App you choose 2 images and then filter them choosing a filter and the % of images on a sliding scale. When you Save you can choose to flatten the image and then layer this image with another – building up translucent overlays.

First go- with an orchestra added

Violin added

I messed about with the colour balance and filters and added the hand with vibrato

Final image cropped to add a more abstract feel

The Pathos of distance -Sarah Pierce

The Irish National Gallery -Print Room 

The exhibition is about the migration of people from Ireland – the art works range from 1813- 1912 – the exhibition also includes quotes and descriptions printed on fabric panels . The images were prints presented in the original dimensions arranged on furniture 

From 20th and 21st century mainly teak from the 1960’s and 1970’s 

 

When I visited the exhibition , I was the only one in there at 10.07 am on a Friday in April . It was haunting and moving seeing all the furniture from my childhood and teenage years – I felt stuck in a time warp as I read about diaspora 
 The images and the concepts of the exhibition were secondary to the furniture ‘culled’ ( Pierce 2016) from Dublin second hand shops. I Was blown away by the number and layers of memories that flooded me . I was expecting to spend hours looking around the whole art gallery – I went to chill and digest what I was experiencing in the nearly empty cafe  

I have been travelling regularly since making a new home in Edinburgh . I am English 54 white middle class. I lived in Oxfordshire for 25 yrs. I didn’t travel out side Europe before I was 40. Living in Scotland sometimes feels like I have migrated to a different country. 
My parents divorced when I was 5 yrs old 

My Dad married an southern Irish woman when I was 7 and she had a daughter . I had the feeling of being surrounded by ‘their ‘ accents , since arriving in Ireland the evening before. 

After he met my step mother my Dad seemed almost itinerant – He was a civil engineer and travelled with work to Holland, Jakarta , Tehran , Egypt . They lived in a succession of houses – Oxford , Reading , Croydon, The Hague, a little village in the Dutch countryside, Dublin, Oxford city, Stadhampton, Watlington, in the middle of a field ,Southampton, Wimbourne Minster, and Dungarven Ireland. 

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During the Pathos of Distance , I am struck by the furniture and how my Dad and my step mum seemed to take their stuff with them – a white shag pile carpet, white units that could be used as tables or storage for book and artefacts all very different from the teak in the exhibition –

There seem to be so many layers here . I have visited Ireland a few times – the last time 11 years ago when my father had a stroke and subsequently passed away. 
A visit at Christmas when I was 19 seems at the forefront – A family party where everybody had to sing ,a pink fluffy jumper , burnt curry and a pretty flat. 
A pantomime where one of the chorus girls had darned hole in her fishnet tights 
Not being able to find a pay phone that worked to phone Hone and say happy Christmas 

if you talked about teak furniture to my immediate family they would be reminded of my Stepdad – he brought some with him from his first marriage – a dark teak table , chairs and a side board – 

 

In the literature about the exhibition Pierce says that the furniture is innocuous to me it is any thing but – the art in the form of prints displayed in their original formats – is small and made insignificant by the placing on the furniture which is used in a sculptural way 
There is an almost alien disruption in the positioning – which may be supported by the whole concept of diaspora? 
In one section the furniture is grouped with the images like a stage set – smaller black and white prints on tables and chairs in front of a large coloured print . This created a depth and interaction that I didn’t feel any where else in the room
The furniture also reminds me of visiting friends houses and digs that I stayed in during the 1980’s.