Recently in the studio, I’ve been playing with ways to apply and develop cyanotype fluid using expressive drawing and ink. The compositions are a bit busy at the moment, but interesting combinations. Looking forward to refining and experimenting some more on a bigger scale.
I’ve avoided having an easel in my studio so far. It depends what kind of work you are doing, but when I first got the space, I wanted to be free to experiment, to make a mess, to be unrestricted. I like to be able to crouch beside the work, to move around it, to pin stuff up and take it down. Having floor space means space to work bigger and freer, to try out a combination of mediums.
I saw this same joy in the children this week when, by chance, the tables had been removed from the room we use for art and storytelling. This meant space to work bigger and bolder, to try out new ideas. It was entirely natural for them to spread out, alone or in small groups and begin creating with very little prompting from me. I am there to suggest, to oversee, to offer encouragement. To provide safe boundaries and make sure they have the materials. I try to say YES to their ideas, or if something isn’t possible, to find an alternative. We have our central story and characters to fall back on for ideas, but this has expanded into the children’s own stories in mini books they are illustrating.
One boy likes to stand on a chair and tell us an installment of his own story each week. Before the end of the session, everyone gets a chance to share with the group what they have been working on. Most of the group have come back term after term, and there is a comradeship, a familiarity they can fall into. Each term someone may leave, and someone new comes bringing fresh ideas and inspiration.
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This week, one boy squeezed out paint combinations, and made these ‘portals’ by rotating a plate on top of the paint.
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Been trying out my old Polaroid 600 using black and yellow duochrome instant film from Impossible-project.com.
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The premise was: work that explores dark desires, fears & ‘the
forbidden’. Work that investigates or references taboo subjects such as death,
phobias and socially excluded or marginalised groups and individuals is
particularly sought.
I find that using exhibition call-outs and deadlines is a good way to get work made and often leads to unexpected results in response to the subject matter. When I started with this topic, I had a very different idea to what emerged. Sometimes, the work decides to go its own way.
As it happens, I didn’t enter this one, as I wasn’t quite happy enough with my final piece. There wasn’t enough time to develop it. But that’s ok. I’m really happy that I tried. Because nothing created is ever wasted. It always leads me somewhere. Even if that is in a whole new direction.
At first I tried to adapt work I was already making. But that didn’t quite work. Then I thought about doing a piece of writing, and that somehow led me to looking at medieval woodcuts of witches dancing with the devil, and how that whole hysteria about people (mainly women) as witches when all they were doing is healing and using their intuition, came from fear.
The monotype I made is based on one of those woodcuts, but I have updated it. I’ve been thinking recently about how choosing to follow the creative calling takes a lot of courage and willingness to take risks. Without that, art has no edge and says nothing new. So my piece perhaps represents choosing to dance with the muse; embracing the wild animus within. I’ve called it The Dance. I think some influences were Angela Carter’s tales and Paula Rego’s prints, and the red dress is also something that stood out for me in Helen Sear’s video piece ‘Company of Trees’.
‘In my studio I work surrounded by things: wire which reminds me of hair, real hair and synthetic; horse- hair, sheep’s wool. Muslin, felt, rope paper: all sorts really. These are works in their early stages, works halfway made, works abandoned and left for a while. Very occasionally, in a cleaned-up space there is a final, finished work attached to a wall, or attached to the floor, or attached to the ceiling.’ – Lois Williams
Exhibition at BayArt by Lois William and Mary Husted. Both artists share an interest in the land and landscape, and a feeling for fragility, tonal range and layering as process and meaning. Mary Husted’s work is strongly located within drawing, while Lois Williams’ incorporates installation, sculpture, as well as drawing.
I particularly liked Lois’ wall of objects of a wabi sabi nature, seemingly rooted in the Welsh landscape. Some of the objects the artist has shaped into hive or nest-like structures, some being of a found quality. They are intriguing and totemic, each with a story, often with echoes of myth, yet also seeming to ‘speak’ to each other across the installation.
Lois William’s wall of objects of various media: From Afar
I was also drawn to Mary Husted’s boxes containing sometimes a single item such as a feather or collage, and mirrors that refracted them into different forms. The experience of having to peer into the enclosed space evoked a sense of the curiosity of childhood, contemplation of the nature of perception and reality/illusion in interior landscapes.
Below: Mary Husted’s triptych ‘But for a day’, with interior views.
Mary Husted’s Off the Page: Askance
Mary Husted’s Off the Page mixed media collection, and below: Winter book (Chinese folding book).
“My work on the Open Books project has brought me in touch with artists from very different traditions. From the Chinese I have learned a new understanding of positive and negative space and a reverence for the accidental mark. This has fed into my own work and helped me to develop what I call the calligraphy of the ‘found’ or ‘given’ mark. Many of these marks are rubbings from the natural environment. Fragments of these together with drawn ‘made’ marks are combined to roam across pages to hint at rather than to depict the world around me.” – Mary Husted
Lois William’s enigmatic collection of water colours on paper ‘The Dog, the rat’, brought to mind the chance markings of Rebecca Horn in her book ‘Tailleur du Coeur’, a body of etchings sometimes rendered in coffee and wine accompanied by sixteen short texts that seem to describe some sensual encounter between objects and/or body parts and the world beyond.
Found – Tesco aisle, Cardiff. 27/02/18
Found – Gutter of Corporation road, Cardiff. 18/02/2018
Found – Bute park, Cardiff. 06/08/17
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Found – Glastonbury, 08/17
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January; short, dark days dragging on. Hard to go out – outwards – when the instinct is to curl up like an ammonite and wait for the light. One smoky morning in the park, it’s as if the sky has descended. Black-headed gulls, disturbed by dogs, rise from the grass and drift away, spectres of the mist.
There is a Welsh folktale called The Daughters of the Sea set in Cardigan Bay in which Dylan, the sea god calls up a fierce storm to steal three sisters away to his kingdom under the sea. When he comes to regret his action, he is unable to return the sisters as they were. So he turns them into seagulls, able to move between land and sea. When their old father walks along the beach and calls their names, three white gulls fly to him from over the waves.
