Blog 63

These last ten weeks Shawn and I have been on a epic tour of Europe snaking our way from Portugal through Spain, France, England, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, France, Spain then back into Portugal. We are very nearly home. It is but a brief visit, a driving tour through each place, a taster, and there are some countries we definitely would like to return to.

I have been reading a book called 'Untitled for Ladies An Anthology of Women Travellers' by Jane Robinson. It is a collection of tales from women who have written about their experiences of travelling from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. From the desire for adventure and the unknown to the call of duty or to escape, the stories tell it all. For some it is a pilgrimage. I have read of giving birth, being ill or injured, to the death of loved ones en route. Stories of local customs, weird and wonderful food, dress code and the weather, the epic and the mundane. I am enjoying the book the more I read of it.

As we headed north, I wanted to start knitting again. Having learned about the benefits of knitting for health and well being in my last Blog 62, I knew I had a stressful bit of our trip coming up and hoped this activity would give me some focus and be relaxing as well. Seeing what stash of thread I had in our van I decided to start knitting with fishing wire again, this time larger scale.

At about the same time a brief came through for a show with the artists group Plastic Propaganda and I felt my knitting fitted this brief and applied for the show. I am very pleased to say that my fishing wire artwork has been selected and will be presented as part of this exhibition. It will be from the 4th  - 18th December at St Katherine Docks in London. Do go along and see the work of this dynamic group if you are able to.

Here are some photos of my work in progress:

And here are the details of the show:

                                                     

The exhibition is a collection of artists responses to the River Thames in London. Here is my statement and what I have to say:

Emma Moody-Smith's practice explores the process of making. Taking some fishing wire from her stash of unused materials she decides to knit with it. The wire is troublesome, twisting and twirling in all directions, yet it creates beautiful swirls like ripples in a river. Moody-Smith is not concerned with her stitching mishaps, choosing to let the flow of the thread and rhythm of her knitting find its own course. In a state of continuing flux, the work gradually winds itself from one end to the other.

I started knitting and crocheting with fishing wire back when we were living on the Isle of Mull. I cannot believe it was the summer of 2013. I wrote a blog about it in June 2013. Here is the link: Blog 39

Back to our travels, and when we were in England I had the pleasure of attending a workshop on English Paper Piecing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. English Paper Piecing is a method of hand sewing shapes of fabric together using thin card as a support for the fabric, from which you stitch each patchwork shape together to form a cloth. It is a process of making which I have been keen to explore since I made the patchwork quilt for our settee in 2015. I have been gradually building my knowledge of patchwork and quilting ever since then.

I want to blend my life and the work I do as an artist closer together. Knitting and being part of the exhibition in London and achieving this whilst travelling is a perfect example of how I would like my life and art practice to develop. I want to make artwork that uses less the formality of studio table / art space and more something that I can pick up, literally, as and when I want and need to. I am a maker, I like working with my hands, and more and more it seems I lean towards textiles.

I have started hand piecing squares of patterned fabric together. At the moment I am looking at this process from an experiential point of view. I would like to see how different geometric shapes fit together and how visually our eyes register and explore pattern. Will the joins of the fabric or different lay of the weave of the fabric mess with our eyes when we look at pattern?

Whilst we were in England I visited the 'Abstract Expressionism' show in London at the Royal Academy gallery and I particularly liked the work by Ad Reinhardt. One of his paintings looked like a single black rectangle, yet on closer inspection, you could see it was made up of a number of black rectangles, very very subtle. I watched people's responses in the gallery space. Some viewers gasped when they realised the plural of the black rectangle whilst others walked straight passed. Some viewers were intrigued, others disappointed. Could I achieve something like this through the method of hand sewn patchwork fabric?

Back in May 2016 (Blog 59) I wrote about Sergej Jensen who's work I had seen in April at the White Cube Gallery in London. His 'Moneybags' series is made up of recycled cloth bank bags sewn together like patchwork to form a canvas, some of which he painted onto, others he didn't. That's when I had had an "oh yes" moment.

In my last Blog 62 I wrote about the five fleeces that we had sheared on the small holding where we have been staying in Portugal this year. Shawn and I took the fleeces back to England with us and arranged for a spinner in Lincolnshire to spin them into yarn. We spent some time with her and she generously showed us how to clean, card and spin wool. We became hooked on the process and after a lot of discussion decided to buy a spinning wheel of our own. It is an early Christmas present.

Shawn and I want to explore the possibilities of what wool can do for us. I want to see what can the spinning wheel do for us as a piece of kit. I am also keen to discover the holistic side of spinning, its meditative and rhythmic process. It is said to be a whole body experience using hand, eye, feet and brain coordination. Our spinner in Lincolnshire said that in her first year of spinning, she nearly threw the spinning wheel out of the window in disgust. Let's see how we get on! This is a joint project with Shawn my partner, our first collaboration together creatively, for each of us to find our part with it.

Well a lot has happened these last ten weeks and a lot has happened creatively, much more than I expected. I am very pleased. I recently was sent a tweet by artist Simon Fell linking me to an article he had written on the a-n The Artists Information Company website. Titled 'The Creative Cycle'  Simon endeavours to define the creative process and his own experience of it. It is very good, I can relate to a lot of what he is saying. Here is the link: 'The Creative Cycle' by Simon Fell

Shawn and I are very nearly back to where we started our journey in central Portugal. We will be stopping here for a while. We are both tired having travelled nearly four and a half thousand miles through ten different countries in a short space of time and I am looking forward to cracking on with making.