Etching 1870 & 1970

Collage photo of my great grandmother and my portrait from which I am doing an etching - more to follow!

Print

Laura Ashley  1970's design screen print on heavy canvas material with reverse repeats

Screen print on paper napkin of Laura Ashley 1970's designs

Just to give you an idea of some of the designs I am playing around with at the moment.

Spring is Sprung!!

.......busy, busy, busy....with ideas floating and colliding in my brain! So much so that it might explode...I need to harness my ideas and follow through on one or two main ideas! We are about a third of the way through our final major project and already the end of May seems impossibly close.

But first to backtrack just a little....if you remember I made my backpack as part of my textiles Negotiated Project.  I also had some fun experimenting with weaving with a variety of found and recycled materials - strips of cotton, raffia, supermarket shopping bags cut into strips as well as those mesh veg bags that you sometimes get.  Although it may not be immediately obvious, these are loosely based on sushi - fish, seaweed etc.

 The ones above are representative of green sushi, the blue/silver colour of fish skin and other fish .

 The ones above were the first experiments. The left strip is a mix of raffia(black), silver and blue and red(wrapping tape); the middle section is strip of cotton in cream and beige; the right hand section is mostly mesh veg bags and also some supermarket bags cut into strips(the yellow colour).

 This is my attempt to add a design into the middle of a piece of weaving. The green and white is a large onion bag which I got from the college cafe, while the yellow diamond shape is from strips of a supermarket bag.  It is surprisingly soft to the touch and works well. Let me know what you think of it.

...and just to finish The Wave section, how about this as a fun hairstyle....what you might say is 'a bit over the top'...tee hee!

So the the Final Major Project.

I have a wonderful selection of family photos, from my Dad's side, dating back to the 1870's. Bearing in mind that photography was only invented in the 1840's or thereabouts, it seems unusual to have such a good collection. I can only put it down to the fact that the family was up with the latest trends of the day ,and also very involved in the acting world and so would have had access to photographic studios etc.

As I tried to decide how to make use of this material, I realised that I too had been involved with the latest trends in the 1970's and thought this might make a good starting point and provide the linking.

Delving deeper into the history of the 1870's and my reminiscing of the 1970's, there are a lot of comparisons and differences, not least the role of women. Both eras were full of innovations, protests, new art...Impressionism in 1870's, Post Modernism in 1970's....fashion....the list is endless. Did you realise that Levi Strauss produced their first jeans in the 1870's and I thought I was trend setting in the 1970's with mine!!

In 1870's, it was all the rage to sit for photographic portraits; in the 1970's I had my portrait painted.

Mr Tate bought the patent for the sugar cube in 1874 or thereabouts, made loadsa money(with a bit of help from the slave trade), and then donated his art to the nation with the proviso 'they' build a gallery to house the works...hey presto I give you The Tate Gallery.   Now the Tate Modern is building an extension, which I think looks a bit like a load of sugar cubes piled on top of each other!

My portrait painted in 1974 based on the Laughing Cavalier.

Weaving with strips from a photo of the bridesmaids at my cousin's wedding and strips from the back of one of the 1870's photos.

Small paper sculptures made from the leftover strips after weaving.

Screen printing on one of 4 Ralph Lauren napkins bought in a charity shop for under £3! The designs are taken from the beautiful  illustrations on the back of one of the old photo cards. Top right and bottom left will have embroidery in a spiral to link the printed elements.  Once these are done, I will post more pictures.

Negotiated project printmaking update

So continuing the theme of Hokusai's Wave print, I did some screen prints of the wave in a freehand design. When I came to choose the print colours, I referred to a kimono that we bought when we lived in Japan many years ago.  The Japanese put colours together that the Western eye would probably say 'clashed'. I also did an etching of a carp from a stencil in a Japanese Country textiles book I had.

 

 After this I then added a purple colour

Wave with 2 colours

We scanned this print into photoshop and then played around with repeat prints in negative colour on an print background I had created

The purple circles are based on the wheels of Japanese carriages and there is a windsurfers stencil shape in the background to reflect modern fun with waves!

2012 Negotiated Project

At the beginning of 2012 we agreed a negotiated project for our workshops. Mine had a theme of Mapping and Journeys....I did some background research into all sorts of different types of journeys and mapping including geology, archaeologists, the Dewy library system, mapping of the body(eg MRI scans), nature, sat nav, sea charts, underground maps, musical notation.....I could go on....but you get the idea!
Also went to the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum which proved inspirational. Grayson Perry thinks that maps are a trustworthy diagram of reality but can contain human bias.
After much thought I decided to use Hokusai's Wave print as my starting point for both my textiles and printmaking workshops.
When going on a journey most people now take a backpack with them...so I thought I would make a backpack based on Hokusai's Wave which would also reflect the journey that Japanese goods have made throughout the world over the past decades.

This I made from mostly found materials; part of a blackout curtain provided the main fabric. I embellished this with pieces of leftover blue silk in wave shapes. I found a wonderful scarf in a charity shop which provided the frothy waves and fringing and embroidered on sequins to provide the top of Mount Fuji. I made an error with the bondaweb but salvaged the situation by using the mistake to form the kanji signs for Minakami on the back of the backpack!! Nothing if not ingenious.

Next was the handle- some weeks ago my mini umbrella became very disjointed in high winds and I salvaged the material from this. With this, a belt and some white strong plastic string I plaited a long handle which I attached with D rings.

The finished backpack

View of button closing and frothy waves made from scarf

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Quite pleased with how it has turned out although I think it is more of a fashion accessory rather than a serious backpack!!

I also experimented with making sushi type pieces out of woven plastic bags, pieces of cotton rags, raffia and other similar materials.

On the left is black raffia and red and silver wrapping tape; in the middle long cotton rag strips and on the right yellow plastic bags with green wool and strips of green and white onion bag.

More to follow on the printmaking workshop soon.