Exploring Hands

The Mark Making With Thread class at Victoria College of Art had a busy day painting background fabrics
Here are their hands at work exploring paint on cloth

More Colour Studies

Garland's work

Kati's work

Esther's work

Sonia's work

I always look forward to seeing how each student interprets an exercise. Each time I see their work I can see their personality being expressed. I feel as though I get to know them better with each exercise.

Mark Making with Thread

Su Mei
The 2nd Mark Making With Thread course at the Victoria College of Art is underway.
The students produced most expressive stitched colour studies as they refined their personnel colour palettes.

James

Sarah

Dana

Gardening vs Nurturing

Gardening vs Nurturing

As a part of the work i did for one of my degree modules, I set up a series of dialogues with the environment outside my house. This one i called 'Gardening vs Nurturing'.

I made a checkerboard of black, weed-suppression garden cloth and crochet doilies.

20 months later, this is what the site looked like

As i anticipated, nothing had grown through the garden cloth, while the doilies nurtured lush growth.

Fundy Study

I have started working on a new body of work

It began with an Articulation study week, where we explored the Bay of Fundy.
Here we are stopped for a roadside lunch

I have decided to explore all things red because it struck me as the dominant colour whereever we went around the coastline.
Fields of red-leafed low-bush blueberries.

The earth is red

The sea is red

I have started collecting red threads
It is a start....

Progress

With this work i am exploring the relationship between hemoglobin and chlorophyll.
 Their molecules are the same except for the presence of iron or magnesium in their centres.

I decided to show these centres with red and green buttons.

My years of collecting buttons has paid off because I found enough buttons of the right colour and shape to do the job.

The 1st buttons are sewn on.

I decide the buttons are successfully conveying the idea of the different colours produced by the different elements in the centre of each molecule.....

...so i continue sewing...

Moving A Work Along

Remember this work made from a collection of domestic linens dyed red and green...

...strip-pieced and cut a number of times...

...and how the colours where the same as what popped up in garden in spring?

After an incubation period, this is what has happened to it.
I have shaped it to refer to the human form, a tree and an animal hide put on the wall.
Now what?

Victoria College of Art Library

Over the summer I spent more time organising the college's library.

All of the books on individual artists are grouped and labelled with a bold sticker matching the first letter of the name of the artist.

The rest of the books and magazines are group by the courses taught in the college.

Each course has its own coloured sticker.
The system is proving to be most successful.
The books are being used and they are finding their way home.

Himalayan Blackberry

Thought you needed to see close-ups of the blackberry we have been battling to remove. 

The canes reached high into the trees, growing on these thick stems.

The roots are huge and take a lot of energy to dig out.

I have read deer like to eat blackberry but we have a lot of deer and I don't see any sign of them snacking on them.
Goats like blackberry. We are looking into the 'Rent A Goat' program.