reading and research, and a tiny bit of studio work!

....It's hard to concentrate on one thing when there's soooooo much going on at the moment!
But the good news that the book I ordered from the USA has finally arrived and it was well worth the wait!
"Whole cloth" by Mildred Constantine and Laurel Reuter. I  opened it to see this quote on the first page...

"whole cloth, wrote John Ruskin, is " wool of sheep, thread of flax, bark of tree - there exists no matrix. It can be shaped beyond the boundaries of origin. It shifts from the potential to an actuality that has a myriad of shapes and a myriad of ways of moving, responding to the action of the individual who manipulates it. It possesses the mysterious sense of unaccountable  life in things themselves" 
oh you just don't know how happy I am to read on further...this book is exactly what I am looking for! from a brief history of cloth in general to how artists have used it and why. Picasso and Braque's cloth collages up to 1990's. It covers areas including  sculpted form, space, clothing the body and the spirit and the camera view  plus much, much more. 

bottle-of-vieux-marc-glass-guitar-and-newspaper-
1913-by-pablo-picasso

I have 233 pages to digest and then research even further....I'm only on chapter "Metaphor and Symbol pg 43.......aaarrrggghhh, but thankfully it seems to be exactly what I need to form my dissertation...I just need to figure out how exactly and what to call it!!!

And......I'm off to The Frieze Art Fair in London next week.http://www.friezeartfair.com I'm really glad to finally get to go...in the past it has always been impossible....working in a school doesn't give kindly to time off mid term! so I'm off Hubby's looking after the rest of the family and armed with a limited budget, my ever faithful ginger camera and a couple of fellow third years we are going to soak up the artistic air of Regents park and if we can, meet up with one of our old Lecturers.

the pebble!

My Studio work has been somewhat lacking, but we all seem to be concentrating on our dissertation and I am just experimenting with ideas and materials at the moment....

machine embroidery using
Avalon, water soluble material

No matter what I do, my work it seems flat and lifeless, not what I am looking for at all! I seem to flit from one medium to another....trying to find one that Seems
both interesting and fulfilling. As yet I haven't had that.....feeling that excites me and make me want to develop further...so I'm still on the look out!

interior port hole casing - pebble shape!

 I have about 12 of these port-holes of varying size and although I have to add some hand sewing and details to the stitching, I might try one using rusty hues next!, I really love their colour, I can imagine them hanging together suspended by my favourite rough string, when they touch the sound is really beautiful....echos of the sea?

anyway....happy reading, bye