rockpool candy

Nest Freaks! and OAK

So lots has happened over the last few months, mainly anticipation at the prospect of becoming a proud aunt, but workwise, a HUGE amount of travelling and exhibiting.  'Awakening Curiosity' at The Ark.

Runs unitl the 6th August. So this is your last chance to catch my 'Nest Freaks'

a collection of crazy bird's nests,

built from found materials and hanging around the Children's Cultural Centre.

The toys and pieces I used provide each porcelain bird with perfect camouflage.

Spot them if you can!

And for weeks it meant my kitchen was filled with piles of intoxicatingly-clashing colours and tempting squeaky toys for these installations dangling for up to four floors in length.

No robots were harmed in the making of these nests.

 

My pink and white reefs are there, too, 

along with my Monkey Spawn installation on the floor.

There's still time to see the show. It runs until the 6th August and it's free entry. So if you fancy seeing my work along with shoals of tin can fish, or lightup snail trails, the ARK is the place to head to.

 

 There was also the OAK show in Cashel, Tipperary . It was such an amazing experience.

Artists from all over Ireland and the UK were invited to show in the grounds of Killenure Castle on the outskirts of Cashel.

This little guy nested in an ancient muskett shooting hole.

 These two lived, teetering on the edge of a stone staircase up to a turret.

Surviving outside through lashing summer weather for 2 months.

The installations were challenging, as the ruins couldn't be altered in any way.

So everything had to fit in tiny nooks and crannies in the walls.

Others sheltered in stables that the owners had converted into a gallery.

 And now we are winding down. Getting ready for our next trip to the good ole US of A in September, where we will be spending 3 whole months on a Clay Safari (that's what we are calling it, anyway.) Three months of pure practice with some of the US's greatest contemporary ceramacists and Flux and Red Dirt.

But watch out - some of my artwork will be at the Olympics, too.... I'll tell you on the 26th July!

 

Crafted Creatures, The Ark, Dublin

 

opened last Monday.

For which, I'm lucky enough to have been invited to install my giant jellyfish smack over a cathedral-like drop of four floors.

Climb the spiral staircase past my fan corals.

Run your fingers through the tentacles of my pulsating Queen jellyfish

Stare down into wall anemones 

and shell forms,

clinging above plastic sea creatures nestled into the 1st and 3rd floor window spaces.

Dare you put your arm into the Wall Cave's ever-decreasing space?

Run up the stairs and peer through from the tiny hole at the back of the cave to see what's living down there....

Or lift the flap on one of the top-floor cabinets to see collected treasures from my studio.

Or down in the basement, you can torture yourself with a video loop of me talking about my inspiration.

But you know me. It's the quirky detail I love. So here are my fave bits...

the ghostly pillar jellyfish,

the basement jellyfish

and their fourth-floor friend. All of whom only come out at night.......

 

 

Monkey Spawn Installed

It's taken a year to create all the elements of this monstorous piece;

delicate little screen-printed footprints on stones that change in the rain,

individually printed and sewn monkey embryos,

bleached animal bones meticulously wrapped in fine embroidery cottons and stacked into a nest,

plants from my garden pounded to a pulp through muslin and made into paper sculptures,

fabrics and hides surface printed with lino cuts and crocheted forms,

paper and silk mushrooms crafted and decorated,

mounds and mounds of grass sewn by hand,

organisms imagined, dyed, spun, woven, crocheted and wired,

all brought together into one great knoll.

 It is akin to a consumption that has held me in its grip. And finally let me go.

So here it is. My malady in 3D. I am released.

 

'Monkey Spawn'

It is by just a tweak of nature or environment that we are here in our current form. Evolution has many branches. Had the World been a wetter place, would we, or indeed would monkeys, have evolved to spawn like frogs instead of give birth to live young?

At first engagement, I want the onlooker to feel safe, familiar even, with my installation. It looks like a quiet glade. But as you inspect, you begin to feel a disquiet. A nest made of wrapped bones. Strange footprints that appear to be made by a one-footed animal. And above you, a huge ball of monkey spawn, suspended in spit. What creatures made these marks? How large is the mother of this nest? Is she nearby? Is she watching you? Are you indeed safe? The onlooker becomes an intruder. How long dare you stay?

 

'Monkey Spawn' will show at the FE McWilliam sculpture gallery in Banbridge, Northern Ireland as part of 'Another Dimension. Print in 3D' until 15th May 2011.

V&A cabinets

The University of Ulster, Belfast, were gifted some BEAUTIFUL old display cabinets from the V&A.

You know the sort  - the ones that make you want to climb inside and install mad taxidermy scenes.

Unfortunately, I haven't got any mad taxidermy (yet) but I did get to climb in them. (They have false bottoms - ooer!)

I decided to do fill one cabinet with colour and plastic;

the other in (more or less) monochrome foam.

There were a few hiccups - nothing would stay stuck to the glass, so the arrangement is a little 'flat' for my liking, but you can only swear at double-sided tape so many times before accepting its limitations.

The cabinet displays will stay until the 8th December, so if you get a chance, head up and take a look. They're right outside the Dean's office.

USA tour - month two

So I've been slacking in my posting. You know what? There are several reasons why.

Here's one. Life's just peachy.

We've been hanging out with my friend, Debi, and friends, on her 'dirt farm' as she calls it. 'Damn near perfect' I call it. This was taken about 2 hours' from her, just at sundown on a western Floridian beach.

There have been parties with fire dancing - you know the way it is....

And then there's checking that the pool water is the right temperature.....

But more importantly, there's been fibre fiddling. Meet Marvin Morgenstern. What he doesn't know about Overshot weaving, ain't worth knowing. The man is a genius. 

And luckily for the weaving world, he's documented every overshot pattern that he's ever woven. The library is extensive. I just hope that someone out there with the necessary archiving skills approaches Marvin and gets this stuff down officially. If there was a website with this stuff on, it would go into meltdown.

For our own projects, we've started sculpting loom weights from clay. Fir cones took our fancy. We've got 40 ready to fire. We'll build a neolithic-style loom to hang in the cathedral of trees on Debi's farm.

And then we've been acquiring new skills, like warp thread painting.

And there are three looms to explore no less.

And then there's the dyeing, the spinning, the rug hooking.

And I want to share it with you all, but, you know, it's hard to sit in front of a laptop when the sun is shining, the Thanksgiving cassoulet is bubbling on the firepit, and there are balls to throw for Lil' Bit.

 

And right now, we're busy in Washington D.C.

We're visiting artists at Pyramid Atlantic paper and print making studios.

Creative Director, and buddy, Gretchen Schermerhorn, gave us a crash course in papermaking.

 

Including bashing the heck out of gompi bark that we boiled. It makes THE MOST beautiful paper.

And we went to town on the process, adding in my wool, pieces of embroidery, peacock feathers from Debi's farm and anything else that didn't move quick enough to escape our clutches.

But you know me, I wanted to go 3D.

And to the onlook and thumbs-up of workmen working in the street outside, I created a few coral forms.

 

And then a few more....

It was SO exciting to watch as the paper dried in the hot box.

And the result of my labours?

I'm pleased to announce that I have fallen in love with papermaking.

It is a fibre after all.

 

And a HUGE installation is now in the pipeline. I'll need a space to exhibit, but I'm hoping that opportunity will present itself...

here's hoping.

100th post!

Well, I'm not the greatest at keeping up my blog, but I've reached my 100th post so I must have had at least 100 things to say about my fibery adventures.

To celebrate I thought I'd show you The International Fiber Collaborative's latest triumph. Jennifer informs me that my coral panel (from her Wrap a Gas Station Project this time last year) has been deconstructed and reinvented as tree lichens. Waste not, want not!

The tree is on its way to a children's museum where the 'lichens' will be made into a surround at the base of the trunk for kids to snuggle into.

I'm also very honoured to announce that I am one of the four fibre artists sitting on the IFC's judging panel to award a $500 grant. Ohhhhh get me!

Prudence Mapstone Workshop

I'll let you into a secret. I know nuffin' about crochet really. And even less about knitting. 'Tis all bluff.

I just make it all up as I go along. It's never stood in my way. But now I'm on a mission to learn the technicalities from the gods and goddesses of my art. Hence a workshop with Prudence Mapstone.

Like excited children, we gathered in the Swan Hotel in Hay-on-Wye. Prudence brought some of her delicious creations and then (very, very patiently in my case) walked us through creating our own scrumbles inspired by many of her own.

I wish I could say that this is mine, but in truth, it's one of Prudence's. Mine was SO hideous, that it put the F in FUGLY.
At the end of the workshop, the group pieced all our scrumbles together. Some of them were really quite inspired.

Which was good, because it dragged your eye off mine...I'm telling you... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUGLY!

AND I got a knitting headache learning to garterslipstitch... someone fetch me a dunce hat!

So how was Wonderwool?

Well, I lusted after their fleece...not only for spinning, ..but it was COLD inside, out of the sun.

But wrapped up warm in my scarf it was OK. I crocheted it from all the odds and ends of batts that I was selling at the festival, spun up of course.

And I was honoured to share a space with Prudence Mapstone.

That's Prudence's amazing cape on the far left, Ildi's crocheted plastic bag outfit centre, and my reef surrounded by Prudence's scrumbles on the wall. Oh, and all my spinning tat on the floor!
I am in awe of Prudence's cape. It is STUNNING. My crappy photography doesn't do it justice.

I bought warm clouds of guanaco from a lovely couple who own 300 of them......

I ate hog roast, jogged around the Welsh Show Ground in the rain before anyone stirred on Saturday morning, and generally relaxed into an atmosphere of fibre-based joviality.

Oh, and took part in a fashion show with my reef.... hmm...wonder if it's the first time a reef has ever walked down a catwalk?
Can't wait for next year.

Wonder Woman / Wonder Wool

I'm squeezing into my stretchy hot pants, twirling my golden lasso and twizzling all the way to WonderWool.

My pink reef will be exhibiting with Prudence Mapstone.

And my batts will be stocking a corner of the Artisan Yarn stand. Colourways include 'ketchup and mayo', 'lilac and peach sugared easter eggs', 'blue pebbles'

'violet beauregard', 'easter chick', 'snowdrops', 'verdigris','cowgirls love the blues', 'yellow sugared easter eggs', 'woodnymph dreaming' and many, many more.

So if you want something a little different to spin, say a blend of soya, milk protein, silk and many wools, then get on over to Artisan Yarns' stand.

I'll be out and about, wearing a big ravelry badge, so feel free to rockpool candy spot and say hi. I love meeting my blog readers, preferably over coffee, cake and a gossip.

See y'all there!

What measure success?

So, it's almost a year since I set up the Coral Collective, providing crochet project bags for a hospital waiting room. Each pack has everything a patient needs to crochet a small coral.
Now the idea was to get the patients to send me their corals, I would then sew them into reefs and use them to decorate the walls of the clinic, at the same time documenting the patients' stories and how the crochet had helped them.

In the last year, I've received one, yes, just ONE coral back (the rather lovely one pictured above) and even this was sent back anonymously.

So, initially, I felt I'd failed, after all, one coral does not a reef make.

But then I stopped and thought about it. I may have only received one coral, but I have put over 300 project bags into the clinic and they have all gone and continue to do so.
When speaking to those that work in the clinic, their reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

The clinic is shared between gynae and psychiatric outpatients. Apparently the women visiting, especially those in the older age group, love picking up the crochet hook again.

So maybe it isn't a failure. These women must enjoy being given a gift that brings back memories, brightens their days with the colours of the yarn and keeps them occupied during their time in the clinic (and hopefully at home, too). Otherwise, none of the bags would go.

And what do I get out of it? Well, I realised that I need to take my ego out of the equation. This is not about me, or recognition, or thanks. This is a totally altruistic project. Kindly people donate yarn,

scissors, funding and crochet hooks to me through various avenues. I am just the facilitator, bagging these donations up and putting them into a place where they help.

It's all just paying it forward in a way.

And that is how I realise that I must measure success in this instance.

Lesson learned.

So why am I blogging about it if I don't want recognition? Purely to encourage you to do something similar.

Get fibre active.

It feels good.