into the New Year

a belated Happy New Year to everyone. I can't believe that we are already three weeks into January and I am only now getting down to adding to my blog. I put it down to the nasty virus I picked up in between Christmas and New Year which I have only felt rid of this week. What have you all been doing?

Back again

hi everyone. It's been so long since I added to this blog that I have almost forgotten what to do. However I am going to make an effort to get back into this because I did enjoy it at the time. So much has happened since my last post, not all of it of interest to anyone other than me, but I will start by adding some images of work I have done for this year's book swap. Then maybe about some work I have been working on over the last year and had in an exhibition in Edinburgh recently. So to my friends I hope you are all well and I'll make a start.

khussa shoes

This is the last page I have to do for our groups' book exchange, one of four pages I have done for this book. The subject of the book was shoes and I decided to base my contribution on the khussa shoes which are worn by Indian and Pakistani women. When we were in Amritsar in the north of India, home of the Sikh faith, I saw many shops selling these colourful, embroidered and jewelled shoes in every colour. In an area that has seen so much turmoil and suffered a lot at the time of Partition, it was amazing to see these shoes. The colours of India are amongst my abiding memories of our holiday - every colour under the sun and in every combination - and the shoes encapsulate that aspect of the country.

I started by painting strong blocks of colour on to calico, printing with various grids to create a printed texture then 'drew' the shoes with a machine stitch. After that I hand stitched some details with Indian rayon thread which has a wonderful silky lustre and bound the 'page' with plain and hand dyed calico. I'll be handing the book to its owner, Mona, this week at the end of what has been an interesting year's project. I'd definitely do it again and thinking about it I think I have gained in other ways too. Doing the books has helped establish more of a rhythm to doing art work. Apart from my teaching I sometimes have found that I work in spurts, usually to satisfy an exhibition deadline rather than on a daily basis. I am trying to establish that habit without beating myself up if there are patches when I don't meet that aim. My work in these books has not just been stitch, in fact they have rarely been stitch. I have more commonly used mixed media techniques which I really enjoy. So at times it has been more painterly than I normally work.

So, finally, I would recommend the idea to a group of people who want to work together. It has been great fun and I will tell you about our final meeting after the end of the month.

This week I have been working on the last pages I will contribute to the book swap and as the subject of the book is shoes I have been playing about with oil pastels and Koh-i-noor dyes and trying to get the lovely bright colours and jewels of khussa shoes into the work. I always find that it takes a few months after a big trip before I start to see the influences of the place beginning to show. If you have been to India you will know how over-powering the colours are. Every shade under the sun and all in the most amazing combinations that we would shy clear of but because of the blue sky and the sun it is wonderful. I loved India for the attack on my senses - the colours, the scents of sandalwood and rose, and the sounds of - well everything really. While we were there we spent an amazing day at a small town near Jaipur where the main/only industry is block printing and paper making. It was fascinating to watch and see the vast areas of cloth laid out on the sand drying and fixing in the baking sun.

book exchange ATCs

These are my ATCs for a year long project that I have been involved with this year. The idea was Sheila Paterson's of Edinburgh and twelve of us have been involved. We each had to chose a theme/subject for a book, make the covers and select paper for the pages and decorate 2 or 3 pages. Then we passed them on and did 2 or 3 pages of someone else's book, always taking up their chosen theme but interpreting the pages however we wanted. So each month we had a different book, different format, different theme and it has been really good fun. Over the year we have met up two or three times and will be getting together at the end of Oct for the final time with this project. My own book was arches and I got my book back this week. It is amazing to see the variety of ideas and I'm hoping to post some of the pages soon.
The subject of the book these ATCs are for is tiles & tesselations and I have chosen the idea, fanciful no doubt, of the cards that Mumtaz Mahal would have carried around. So the designs are based on a theme that I have been thinking about since our holiday to India this year, but the tile reference is in the repeated shape. I intend putting them into my Flickr album so have a look.

Calico cat

This is Cali and she is one of the two cats who live with us. We have had her for nearly 18 months and she is about 5 years old. She looks very serene in this photo and most of the time that is how she is but since Millie came to stay - Millie being Jill's cat - she has shown strong territorial instincts unseen until now. I live in the hope that the two of them will learn to tolerate each other and not have the occasional hissing spats that we are seeing just now.

hand in day

This is the second piece of work that is going into the Dundee Collective exhibition in Dundee's Queens Gallery. It is entitled Sense of Place 2. I took both my pieces down to the gallery this afternoon after work. There were pieces all over the place - paintings, drawings, sculptures - and my two little textile bits. Exhibition opens on Saturday 29 September and is on for a couple of weeks.