Exploring Colour by Julia Caprara

Yahoo! My copy of Julia's new book has arrived and it is as inspirational as everyone says it is. It is really a workbook to keep you learning about colour for years to come. I have already got the sketchbook to begin the first Colour School project. I am going to do a study of my favourite colour - a warm blue.
The saddest part of the book is the last sentence Julia wrote,
'I hope that you will have found these chapters useful in mapping your own route for your personal colour journey and will join me again in the future to explore the next stage along the Path of Colour.'
I guess we will all have to continue on our paths on our own. But if we take this book along I am sure it will continue to be an inspiration.

Julia Caprara's Funeral

It was Julia's funeral yesterday. On and off, all day, I was thinking of her, her family and all of their friends and how sad they must be feeling. It has been a help to me to get stuck into some stitching, particularly when this new work is in Julia's buttonhole textile technique.

I have worked the first layer of torn fabric strips and lightly felted wool by weaving into a burlap backing. The late afternoon sun has made it look a bit yellower than it is in reality.

I have assembled the palette for the next layer which will be thick yarns threaded through loops of the first layer. The photograph is my inspiration - a fossil in a chunk of Tyndall stone.

Julia Caprara's Buttonhole Textile

I found some more images of the work I posted yesterday. This close up shows the work with the 3rd layer - the buttonhole stitch starting to be built up.

The buttonhole stitch works to blend and highlight specific areas of the textile.

This is another work using Julia's technique. It is a Rockies scene where fireweed is colonising an alluvial deposit. I still need to work in more of the buttonhole stitched flowers before it is finished.

Julia Caprara's Stitching Techniques

Back in 2005 Quilting Arts Magazine featured a series of articles written by Julia Caprara. In the Winter issue, Julia wrote about the importance of all textile students building their own personal "touch palette". Since reading the article, I have followed Julia's advice and used the technique she described as "painting with fabric, thread, and stitches".

This work, called The Day the Queen Came to Tea, has the 2 outer panels worked in Julia's technique to give the feel of what Baffin Island valleys, in Northern Canada, look like in the fall. One early explorer recorded the valleys had the richness of a Persian carpet.

Torn strips of fabric were woven into an open-weave burlap to make the first layer of the textile.

Next, thicker yarns, cords and ribbons are threaded through the woven fabric to make the next 1 or 2 layers.

Then finer threads are worked in buttonhole stitch to make another layer. As the final layer I attached shisha mirrors to this work. [Mirrors to represent the tarns (glacial lakes) and the mirrors the Elizabethans traded with the Inuit that remained after the visitors left.]
In her article, Julia explains how a stitcher can change all of the variables to get many different effects. It is an exciting technique to play around with.

Maggie's Interview with Julia Caprara

I have just reread the interview Maggi Grey did with Julia Caprara in her Workshop on the Web e-zine, May 2007. It is such a good interview. You can hear Julia's enthusiasm and zest for life as she talks.

It hints at all of the things Julia was involved in. The background of her and her husband, Alex's setting up of the Opus School of Textile Arts is most interesting. With Julia's typically gentle spirit what doesn't come across is the influence she and Alex have had on the lives of literally hundreds and hundreds of textile students over the years.

A valuable section of the interview is where Maggie asks Julia to explain how she goes about curating and hanging the huge annual Prism exhibition in the Mall Galleries in London. Maggie is right, Julia's answer was inspirational to anyone involved in displaying art work.
Thanks Maggie for this lovely memory of Julia.

These images for Julia are from a trip I made to India, earlier this year. If you would like to see more, click on Lesley's Galleries at the top right to get into my public web albums.

More Colour for Julia Caprara

...from India

Last week I ordered Julia's new 'Exploring Colour' book from D4daisy,http://www.d4daisy.com/. I have read so many positive reviews of it. Each time the doorbell goes I think it must be the postman with my book . I must be patient.
But, when it arrives I am going to stop everything, make a cup of tea and sit down for a long read.

Julia Caprara & Symbols

Julia was interested in symbols left behind by ancient peoples. So here are some Canadian petroglyphs and pictographs for Julia.


Canadian Rockies, Alberta

Saint Victor, Saskatchewan

Nanaimo, Vancouver Island

Julia Caprara: Julia By the Sea

Julia's idea of the perfect place to be while working in her sketchbooks was to be warm while sitting beside water. So here are some perfect spots for Julia.

Cuba

Torbay, New Zealand

Vancouver Island, Canada

Just before Julia got sick, she and Alex planned to travel across Canada giving workshops then finshing with a few days beside the sea on Vancouver Island. Julia was working on her colour book and was looking forward to exploring the colours of the Pacific Coast.
If you have ever seen Julia's sketchbooks you would have seen evidence of her special ablity to capture the feeling of a place with colour. She then translated this feeling to her embroideries.

Julia Caprara

I am filling my blog space with colour today to remember Julia Caprara who passed away on Friday. Julia was one of the doyennes of the art world. People all around the planet will be feeling a sense of loss. Many will be wondering how they will cope without her. But no one more than Alex, her husband who has been beside her through her long illness.

Performance Art

During one of my earlier Opus BA modules I was exploring wrapping the environment. I wrapped a fabric covered cotton cord around a tree stump and left it. Periodically, I have been photographing it to see how it has changed while out in the elements.
Yesterday I looked out of the window and saw the cord being used in a performance.

An ecstatic/frantic squirrel was pulling the cord up to his nest. When the cord suddenly tightened the squirrel was jerked to a stop with a back flip.

He dropped the end and had to retrieve it from the ground. Then he started pulling the end apart -and filling his cheeks with cotton before returning to his nest.

That is how my environmental art turned into performance art. I am waiting to catch the encore.

Try again

Opps, I think I uploaded just one still. Hopefully this second attempt is the whole video.

Nope, it doesn't work. I'll have to play around some more.

In the meantime, I must get back to my Opus work. I am reading about whether there is a way of seeing the world that is inherently male or female. A big question. I know there are differences so I am looking into recent scientific research on the topic of differences between the male and the female brain. If I can't find anything convincing then maybe the differences are cultural.

African art and Picasso

Kwele initiation mask, Congo

With my Opus BA studies I have been looking at how African art...

...inspired Picasso. This is a detail from Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), a painting so daring it even shocked the other avant-garde artists hanging out in Paris at the time.

Gunther von Hagen's Bodyworlds Exibition, Edmonton, Alberta

We drove up to Edmonton for Thanksgiving with family. While there we took in Gunther von Hagen's Bodyworlds exhibition, http://www.bodyworlds.com/ . Over the last weekend the Science Centre was open 24/7 to cope with the crowd of people wanting to see it. Along with the many other procrastinators we lined up and filed in at 10:45 p.m and emerged nearly 3 hours later in a state of awe.

The atmosphere created by the gentle, murmuring, moving, packed in spectators was an experience in itself. The only other time I have experienced such a hushed reverence combined with a vibrating static in the air was when I filed past Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party.Having spent the summer wrestling with drawing the human body, I was totally absorbed and fascinated by what I saw. I came away with an even greater admiration for artists who can capture the complexity of the human form in a drawing.
The above image is of a rabbit but only its blood vessels. Red plastic was pumped through its entire blood system. Once this plastic hardened, all its organs, tissues, bones etc were removed, leaving the blood system in tact.
If I am ever again anywhere near a Bodyworlds exhibition I will certainly visit it again.

Middle Class Regency Women

Today I got together a power point presentation in preparation for a talk I am giving to the Calgary Guild of Needle and Fibre Arts, my local embroidery guild. I am going to share with them the research I did for an Opus module where I looked into the interests and activities of middle class women during the English Regency period (1800-1830).

I found it to be a fascinating time for women. For example, it was one of the few times in history women wore clothing that didn't distort or contort their bodies into unnatural shapes. They had a freedom of movement which allowed them to lead active lives and to follow their interests.

Earth From Above

In a past life I studied landforms, Geomorphology, then taught Geography. Even though I have done many more things since those days the shapes of the earth still fascinate me. I love to travel so I can observe humans interacting with their environments. When I can't travel I go to movies to look at the scenery, I go to photographic exhibitions and I examine glossy photographs in coffee-table books. One of my favourite photographers, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is bringing his large scale work to North America. Take a peek at this website to see some samples of his work.


Earth From Above comes to NYC - The Big Picture - Boston.com

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