Spoon

After a week lost to sinusitis I'm just starting to weave the spoon tapestry. Choosing colours is much easier now that Mme Fournac has given me a spare copy of the DMC colour chart.

See tapestries by Valerie Kirk and Sara Lindsay here

spoon collage

I found Cal Lane's plasma cut metal via ceramicist Bibbi Forsman. See Bibbi's website here and her blog here.

A list

Market Day

Just back from Villefranche market where you can buy, amongst other things, bread, cheese, veg, wine (in bottles, boxes or dispensed by pump) plants, meat, live fish, hens, rabbits, kittens (not for culinary use - I hope!), clothing new and second hand, house plans and while your're at it have your knives sharpened and your sewing machine repaired!

collect

Gosh, craft must be an even dirtier word than I thought. Collect at the V&A is so keen to distance itself from it that it styles itself 'The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects'. Given that it's organised by the Crafts Council, does that mean that we're going to wake up one day to the Contemporary Objects Council?
West Dean Tapestry Studio is exhibiting on stand 16.

I'm approaching this new work somewhat differently. For now I'm doing no drawing. Rather I'm making lots of patterned collages and will use these to 'draw' or make or cut images out of later on.

I've been dipping into the books on that shelf on the right as I work. One is the Batsford book of tapestry weaving by Alec Pearson. It's a very good technical manual if you should want to learn to weave. There is also a useful section on designing for tapestry. Although I think it's out of print Amazon has second hand copies (which vary wildly in price). I can't find any images about Alec Pearson on the web, anything at all in fact which is a shame. He was a painter turned weaver and made tapestries based on the Cumbrian landscape. He drew and designed very well for the medium. I wrote to him when I was 17 asking for advice and he sent me the kindest letter which I had for years. I used to keep it in his book but I've lent it many times and somewhere along the way the letter dissappeared. I still remember quite a bit of what it said.

My old friend, sculptor Ludovik Boden has a new website - see it here.

I've just come across the V&A's current artist in residence Sian Bowen's blog.

close up

Else, here's a close up of Max's tapestry (with a ghostly me!). It's not very good but the frame is sealed with gumstrip so I can't take the piece out.