22 January 2014

A morning in the studio

They started as a coincidence - with the Ludicrously Small Art Gallery (and its possible sculpture garden) in mind, and thinking about obelisks -- and a rearrangment of the studio, or rather a corner of it, in progress -- I found some fused plastic made in a workshop with Jo Budd years ago and set out to make a model in paper. Which turned out to have three sides, and harked back to Barbara Lee Smith's "pilings" seen years ago at an embroidery exhibition at the Curve (Barbican) -
The first was plain, the second hairier, and the third is read to cut out (sellotaped to the plastic) and put under the machine -
All three, the tallest about 7" -
 Strange how they have "body language" ... attitude ... interaction ...

Next day update --
A good reason for putting things away at the end of a working session is ... next day, you won't get tempted to use ever-smaller bits of leftovers!
In addition to making the two small "volcanoes" out of fused-plastic scraps, I took apart the plain tower and added more threads to it - thick threads in the bobbin.

My critical evaluation is that the patterning in the plastic isn't carried through, or even complemented, by the threads - the two elements seem to be rather competing with each other.

On a practical note, they were more stable when some screwed-up tissue paper was added into the bottoms of the towers.

This post is linked to Off the Wall Fridays.

5 comments:

Cate Rose said...

I love those things! Now I want to make some...probably won't though.

patty a. said...

These are so fun! I like the threads coming out of the tops.

irene macwilliam said...

Really good. They look so well as a set.

Amy Art Quilter & Fyber Cafe said...

They looked tipsy at first, did you straighten them? I liked them leaning, lots of attitude and interaction, the colors are vibrant! Wonderful!

MulticoloredPieces said...

These are sooo cool. I've been thinking about 3 dimensional stitching for awhile, but haven't figured out what type of form that would take. This is an interesting solution.
best, nadia