What I've been up to

I know it's been ages since I last properly posted stuff. I suddenly don't seem to have any time again. I'm finishing another baby blanket that a friend asked me to make, working and catching up with friends. I have been good at posting on my photo blog and have been really enjoying the challenge of finding things to photograph. Of course I've had college work as well which has been very interesting of late. Having made some progress, I thought it was high time I showed you what I've been doing.

This photo is part of the initial series that started it all off. I've gone back to leaves but concentrating on the lines more. Where the edges are.

Having worked out what bit of the leaves I was interested in, I was browsing in my local fabric shop and found these gorgeous, gauzy ribbons. They had the width and definite edge of the leaves but they also had a transparency that I'd noticed the leaves possessed when I photographed them. So I took these ribbons, cut them into lengths and placed them on plain cotton fabric. Because the ribbons had been wound up, they had kinks and coils to them that I wanted to try and preserve in the stitching so rather than flattening them to the cotton, I used a few tiny stitches to anchor them to the fabric, allowing them to still twist and thereby creating a slightly 3D piece of material. I then marked sections and photographed and drew them to see where my interest lay.

During tutorial, B and I talked about what I'd done. It was really helpful to talk it all through as it helped clarify what I was interested in. It turned out it was the lines, edges and curves/twists. So from there, B suggested that I made more twists out of random material. She found some acetate for me, cut it into strips and I was away. At first I made a couple and photographed them individually.

Then I wanted to see what happened when I stacked them. At this point I got very excited. All those beautiful, sexy curves. Yummy. It reminded me of Henry Moore and Richard Deacon.

I made similar twists with other pieces of material, cardboard, package strapping, clay, paper etc, but it's the acetate that I really love.

I was talking about it with someone yesterday and again, talking it through helped me clarify what it is I like about the acetates over the others. The edges are very clear and defined but the body of the strips don't overpower. With the other pieces, the actual width of the strip seems to engulf the edge and diminish its impact. OK that may sound arty, pretentious, nuts, but it's how I see it. If you compare the edges of the with ribbons with the acetates and then the ribbons and the package strapping, hopefully you'll see what I mean.

Anyway that's where I'm up to. I'm not sure how this will relate to fabric. Maybe I'll play with acetate and ribbons. Maybe I'll try something else. I have no idea. Still it's very exciting.

x