MAPPING SERIES
In a pile ~ loose leaves : A collection of studies featuring the natural world in the Dernol valley.
details: Plates I ~ XI watercolour, pencil, tracing paper, gold silver & coloured thread. 13 x 9.5 cm
INSTALLATION
‘half empty or half full of painful points’
These are my concealed thoughts and drawings done as a coping mechanism during one of the COVID -19 lockdowns. Some in particular were created in a fearful time of a VII day countdown not knowing if I had caught the virus that gave me a heightened sense of awareness of affecting others and facing mortality! A bit dramatic… I had not got it and I now see the cup half empty, but I am generally a half full person. This is a cliche but I think every cliche has its place.
BOOKART
Water watching: PLATES I ~ VII Pencil, tracing paper, beads, silver & gold thread. SIZE: 10 X 15 cm
This little book of river scenes took me a long time to complete even though it is small. I started doing individual drawings outdoors observing how at different times the river looked, soaking up the atmosphere and I sat in the landscape around the river bank just a few metres from my home during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020. I added the stitching afterwards indoors, encouraged not to hurry when I joined the “slow stitch” group on Facebook. At first it was a collection of drawings with no end in mind, it was good to let this develop as I went along, rather than my usual way of working by planning everything out before starting ~ this gave me some sort of freedom to produce something unknown during the loss of freedom from going out of the valley by the pandemic.
Bookmarks & gilt edged pages: PLATES I ~ VII Sir Walter Scott Poems ~ Illustrated. SIZE: 21 x 11 x 5 cm
SECTION I :
SECTION II :
STANDING SERIES
Number Two: .~. PIPES .~. PENCILS .~. PANES .~. Height: 21cm x 29.5cm variable – Pencil on card with text.
WORDS BELOW: are linked to artwork above inspired by the Old Hall School, Llanidloes with the Arwystli Artists group.
WINDOWS GALORE .~. TRIPLE ARCHES, VIEWS BEYOND … PANES – FINE THIN GLASS, VIEWS BEYOND 24 PANES WALLS .~. PIPES, PLASTER, PEELING, CURLING PAINT .,.,.,.,. DOORHANDLES used by many – going from one place to another DOORWAYS Light shining through, glimpses of countryside beyond. Three archways, balanced STRONG CENTRAL PANEL & COMPANIONS EITHER SIDE. Stone, strong a home for lichens. Sculpted by man/woman, geometric but with soft edges Archways reaching for the sky, STEADFAST, STRONG. Panes of glass, thin brittle, reflective.
Number One:
FREEDOM OF SPEECH – 21ST CENTURY: I wrote this on my New Year’s day valley walk when I came across a vehicle distastefully advertising in green how they were born to hunt followed by an image of a fox! It later became my subject with marks added to this paper construction for submission to the current Oriel Davies Gallery open writing competition theme ‘Crossed Paths’. FORTHCOMING COMING EVENT at the gallery: READINGS AND PRIZE GIVING on SATURDAY 9TH FEBRUARY 2.30 – 4 pm http://www.orieldavies.org/en/talks
FOLDED FORMS SERIES
BOX SET – “Crystal forms from the 7 crystal systems”
Media: paper, metallic card, card box, printed graph paper with cut-outs. Each box: 17 x 22 cm
SPAR BOX!
I was inspired to create this box set in a cabinet through a visit to the Lapworth Museum, University Birmingham where they had recreated a spar box and annotated it as follows:
“What is a spar box? In Victorian times, miners in northern England collected beautiful minerals in spar boxes like the one we made. Some had street scenes or included stuffed animals – others were simpler. Mirrors made the insides of the boxes look bigger. Nobody knows how many original spar boxes remain”.
My starting point was the list in the museum that stated the crystal forms of the seven crystal systems: cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic, monoclinic, triclinic, hexagonal and trigonal each were investigated and then inspired by the following crystals related to each form: GALENA, APATITE, BARITE, CORUNDUM, ZIRCON & CHALCANTHITE along with each of their crystal formula – basic chemistry for some…..