Summery Summaries: Part One

Tatting, Tullie Textiles
May 2018

It's happened again; despite my best intentions I've ended up being really busy and have not kept my blog up to date, oh well. I keep this blog for a number of reasons, the primary reason being that I find it a really good way to review and reflect on what I've been doing. It's also a good way of sharing what I'm doing and on a practical note of keeping an easily accessible record. I enjoy writing posts on here, regardless of whether or not anyone reads them but I do find that when I'm busy it tends to be one of the first things that falls off the to do list. I can then sometimes find myself in a situation where I want to write about something but feel that I must write up what I've missed writing up before. To get around this I've decided to do a couple of summary posts; that way I'll have a record of what I've done but won't feel like I must write up everything I've done since the last post in great detail and I'll be able to get back to blogging about what I want to when I want to. That's the theory...

Suffolk Puffs, Stapleton WI
July 2018

As always I've been busy with my regular groups at The Heathlands Project and Prism Arts but also with lots of other projects. These include my Tullie Textiles group, workshops and other bits and pieces. I've done a couple of sessions for different Women's Institute groups this summer; a talk for Carlisle's WizCraft group and a Suffolk Puff demonstration and mini workshop for Stapleton WI group.

Suffolk Puffs, Stapleton WI
July 2018

Suffolk Puffs, Stapleton WI
July 2018

I'm always a bit nervous about working with WI groups as there are women there who have far more experience and skill stitching than I do. However, so far it's always been a lot of fun and everyone has been very receptive to my ideas and we've had some really interesting conversations. It was interesting doing my talk for the Carlisle group as it was a good opportunity to review where I'm up to with my work and have a think about what's next.

Crazy Creatures from KS1 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

Crazy Creatures from KS1 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

Crazy Creatures from KS1 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

Earlier in the year I was invited back to Wiggonby School to run a couple of creative workshops for the children. This is my third year running sessions for them and I always enjoy it, it's a very friendly school and I'm always very impressed with what the children create with me. This year I worked with Key Stage One in the morning making crazy animals from recycled materials and then in the afternoon I worked with Key Stage Two making wildlife portraits with fabric pastels and stitch. They all created some fantastic work and I think it's really good for the children to have the opportunity to try something different.

Wildlife Portraits from KS2 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

Wildlife Portraits from KS2 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

Wildlife Portraits from KS2 at Wiggonby School
April 2018

I run a monthly group at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery called Tullie Textiles. We meet on the second Sunday of each month and each session I choose an object from the museums collections to look at and I demonstrate a textile skill or technique. It's a lovely group, really friendly and I always look forward to the sessions. Some of the group have been coming for a few years now but we also get new people coming in which is great, I love it when I'm demonstrating something and then some of the more established members help newer members. I also really like that one thing tends to lead to another and it gives me a great opportunity to try new things and then share them with my group!

Standing Wool samples, Tullie Textiles
September 2018

Fabric Tassels, Tullie Textiles
August 2018

I think that's enough catching up for now. Hopefully I'll do another couple of catch up posts soon and then something resembling normal service can resume. Or not!

Fabric Painting at Wiggonby School

Painting Flowers

This is another of my 'catching up' posts! Last year I spent a lovely day at Wiggonby School doing felt-making with Key Stage 1. They must have enjoyed it too as I was very pleased to be asked back again, this time to work with the whole school. They chose to do some fabric painting and as it was close to Mothers Day they wanted something the children could take home. I decided that teaching them some different techniques that they could combine to make flower pictures would be a good option.

I chose to share two different methods of fabric painting, one to create a background and one to create flowers, that could be combined effectively to make a piece of floral textile art for the children to take home. As often happens, the best laid plans don't always work out so although I had time to do both types of fabric painting with both KS2 (in the morning) and KS1 (in the afternoon) we didn't have time to put the pieces together. I tend to avoid painting in most of my workshops for the simple reason of drying time. Although we had a great time and I think most the students enjoyed it and learnt something it is frustrating not being able to finish something because it's not dry (that and finding space to dry 60+ pieces of fabric!)

The first technique I showed the students was using watered down paint on wet fabric to create abstract, watercolour like backgrounds. We talked a bit about colour theory and I encouraged them to choose one primary colour and one of the complementary colours including that primary (e.g. blue and green or blue and purple) and to see how many variations they could get using just those two colours. Choosing colours this way also helps prevent all the colours being mixed together into a brown sludgy mess! We added a bit of detail to our watery backgrounds by flicking thicker paint on top, always a fun method of painting and good to help loosen up those students who can get a bit stuck with fear of getting it wrong.

The second technique I showed the students was using the fabric paint more thickly and blending the colours on the fabric (again choosing two colours that would not create brown) to create flowers. We did this on a separate piece of fabric so that when the paint was dry the flowers could be cut out and stuck onto the watercolour backgrounds to create a unique piece of art. This was the bit that I didn't get to do with the children as the fabric wasn't dry in time!

One of the things I find really interesting as I'm working with different groups and in different places is people's different perceptions of what is 'good' art and in schools in particular this often means neat and realistic. One of the things I try and encourage in all my students is a willingness to try things and take risks. Creativity is not always about getting it right, it's about trying things and finding solutions to challenges.

I often find that the students who I'm told are 'really good at art' are not the most creative, they are often technically skilled but are also often quite set in their ways and unwilling to try new things as they've found a way that works and is perceived as good so why would they do something different. This was particularly noticeable amongst the older students, when we moved onto the second technique and I asked them to sketch out some flower shapes I was met with the familiar line of 'but I can't draw.'

There are lots of arguments about drawing and the 'I can't draw' scenario and the blame is often laid at teachers doors for not being supportive or encouraging enough, however, I've never found evidence of this in a primary school. I'm inclined to agree with Joanna O'Neil (whose drawing workshop 'Sonnets and Shopping Lists' I attended at Cumberland Embroiderers Guild last year) who believes it's down to personal perception; at a certain point children realise that their drawing does not match the object they are drawing. Their perception and understanding exceeds their technical ability, for some people this is an almost insurmountable block to carrying on with drawing.

Overall it was a very enjoyable day, we had a lot of fun painting and some of the students who thought they weren't so creative found out they were and we produced some beautiful effects.

Felting Fun at Wiggonby

Fabulous Felt Pieces

Recently I headed out to Wiggonby CofE School to run a felt making session for the Key Stage 1 pupils. I like running these one off workshops as it's a chance to see different schools and how they operate and they're always a lot of fun. Felt making is such a tactile and satisfying process that it's difficult not to enjoy it! I also like that even with no experience it is possible to produce really interesting pieces of felt.

Laying out the fibres

Laying out the fibres

Laying out the fibres

One of the challenges with this session was that I essentially had three classes (reception, year 1 and year 2) all together which is quite an age range. Interestingly, it was actually the older children who struggled a little more as I think they were thinking it through more whereas the younger children just got stuck in. It got quite loud at one point but they all seemed to be having a good time and everyone produced a piece of felt. I think they're planning to use the felt to decorate their new classroom, which I think is a good use for it!

Building up designs

Building up designs

Building up designs

It was lovely (if a little surprising for me) when I got to meet the class as they all knew who I was and knew that I used birds and feather a lot in my work as they had been looking at my website. This gave me a good 'way in' as I was able to talk about how I used felt in my work and about how I found the natural world very inspiring. As a class they were very keen on nature and enjoyed telling me about the wildlife around them. One of the boys brought in a picture of some feather drawings he'd done at home after looking at my work in school. It was great that he felt he could bring that in to show me. I was very impressed as he'd very carefully observed and drawn the texture of the feather. With all the negative stories about education in the press at the moment it was quite uplifting to go into a class and see children not just full of enthusiasm and interest about the natural world and art but able to explore that interest in school.

Starting to felt

Starting to felt

It's interesting working in very rural schools like this one compared to those in town, the children all had a very clear understanding of where the fibres we were working with came from which you often don't get in (not surprisingly) in more urban schools.

Rolling the felt

Seeing how it was going

At the end of the session I had one of those great 'this is why I do this moments.' One of the pupils came up to me with a feather she had found (she's been collecting them) and said she wanted me to have it as a thank you for helping them to make felt. It was such a lovely gesture and a really nice way to finish my week.

Finished felts

Finished felts

Fabulous Frottage and Beautiful Birds

This post was written late last year, I was hoping to get some pictures of the finished display but haven't been able to yet and I want to move this out of my 'drafts' list!

Beautiful collaged birds

It's always nice to be asked back to places and so I was very pleased when Stoneraise School contacted me to ask if I would come and work with them again. Last year I did a felt making session with some of Key Stage 1 which was a lot of fun. This year I was asked if I could work with all the KS1 children to create a display in the school. I worked with Years 1 and 2 in the morning and Reception in the afternoon. The difference between the two groups was very noticeable, although both groups produced some fabulous work the level of concentration and dexterity was quite marked.

Experimenting with frottage

Experimenting with frottage

Experimenting with frottage

After some thinking and plotting I decided that a display of birds would be good, probably largely influenced by my own obsession! I wanted to give the children the chance to experiment with media and techniques in ways they maybe wouldn't usually and I wanted to produce a project that all the students could participate in and create something they would be proud of. This lead me to create quite a simple frottage and collage project that would allow the children to explore colour and texture using familiar materials in a different way. Using basic materials (sugar paper, card and wax crayons) the aim was to create an exciting display the children would enjoy making.

Creating feathers from our frottage

Creating feathers from our frottage

Creating feathers from our frottage

In an ideal world where budgets are not so tight I would have liked to work with the children to create their own drawings of birds to collage but as time and resources were limited I decided to create a couple of bird templates for the children to use. The first step was to look at texture, I introduced the students to the idea of creating texture on paper using frottage and set them off to explore their classroom and find different surfaces to take rubbings from. I asked the children to create at least two sugar paper sheets full of rubbings and to think about what colour crayon to use on their chosen colour of paper. After some initial hesitation the class was soon full of children taking rubbings from every available surface and proudly sharing their findings.

Collaging the feathers on

Collaging the feathers on

Collaging the feathers on

The next part of the project involved making a bit of a mess and so was one of my favourite bits! I asked the students to rip their pieces of frottaged paper into small pieces to make feathers for their birds. For some of the children this was really difficult. They didn't, understandably, want to destroy what they'd spent time and energy making. With a bit of reassurance and encouragement, however, all the children created a pile of 'feathers' ready for the next stage.

Collaging the feathers on

Collaging the feathers on

Having created the 'feathers' for their birds I next asked them to choose a template, I'd prepared a sitting bird and a flying bird expecting that  most of them would go for the flying bird. I was surprised how many went for the sitting bird but pleased as I thought it would help balance the finished display. I then demonstrated how we could use our bits of paper to build up layers of feathers, just like on a real bird, and set them to work covering their templates.

My samples

Sitting bird sample

For almost all my workshops I make and show samples and usually demonstrate as I go along, I've found it to be really helpful as often it is a lot easier to understand something if you can see it and hopefully participants find it quite inspiring.  Some practitioners prefer not to prepare examples as they do not want to overly influence the work of their participants and in certain settings I think this is a wise approach. However, I find in most cases participants respond better if they have something tangible as an example of what they might be aiming for and I find that with the right support and encouragement 'copying' is fairly limited.

Finished birds from the morning

Finished birds from the morning

Finished birds from the morning

Finished birds from the morning

Having covered their birds with their paper feathers I then unleashed the wiggly eyes and dyed feathers for the children to finish off their birds with. I was so impressed with some of the finished birds and the concentration and effort some of the children put in was great to see. I always think it's a good sign when they all ask if they can take their work them home with them!

Finished birds from the afternoon

Finished birds from the afternoon

Another aspect of working in schools that I'm starting to develop more and more is giving the students the chance to see how being an artist works 'in real life.' I explained a little bit about my work both in terms of running workshops and the work I produce and it was a nice ego boost that when I went back into Years 1 and 2 to say goodbye at the end of the day they were looking at my website and talking about my work. There was also a very funny discussion with reception about whether I was a dead artist, like Van Gogh who they'd been studying, or an alive artist. Thank fully they did eventually decide I was alive! I really enjoyed this project, the staff were all very supportive and the children very enthusiastic so the day flew by (pun fully intended) and I think the finished work is a great reflection of the hard work that the students put in.