Ink and Steel - Exhibition at Wolverhampton Central Library

My exhibition is finally up.

I put my work in the 2 display cases on the first floor of Wolverhampton Central library this morning, and it looks something like this..



The left hand case is my most current work (apart from the small drawing bottom left, which I had to put in here due to there not being enough space in case 2).



The pieces in the right hand case are older work (mainly - again I had to re-jig due to my having miscalculated how many pieces would fit into case 1!).


The very last piece - Frou Frou, is my newest. At this end of the case is also a small display about the Pen Room - the museum of the pen industry. Birmingham was once famous for producing the steel dip pen nibs that I use for my drawings.

Still Water - Near enough finished

I think I've nearly finished Still Wtaer. I was panicking last week, as I'd worked on it for a couple of evenings when I was far too tired. Consequently I doodled. Thats all. Doodled.

Hopefully I've rescued it now, though it's still far from perfect.

A few things I've learned from this I think though, subtle lessons.

I've an urge now to work on a few small intimate still lives, all moody darkness of worn out subjects. I need to motivate myself and find the time.

Despite this I've been working on a drawing I started earlier in the year (small) and embarked on a large pen and ink drawing of a subject I photographed earlier in the year (large).

Will I ever learn?

Art Materials Live

I went to the NEC on Thursday to visit Arts Live (also Hobbycrafts and Christmas shows). It was RAMMED, and there seemed to be less room than last year, I don't know if they'd squashed more into less room, but I ended up lunching on a latte and a squishy chocolate muffin on a piece of floor about the size of a hanky, along with about three hundred other hungry and tired people. I've always liked the atmosphere of the NEC shows, but there comes a point when too many people forcing themselves down too narrow an avenue spells total deadlock. Standing still amid hundreds of strangers; on foot, in wheelchairs, elderly ladies pushing shopping trolleys full of crafting buys - jades the enthusiasm somewhat. I wish I had more stamina, but I was shattered by 1 o clock and left not long after.

I managed to buy a new portable daylight lamp though, which was one of the things I went looking for. Plus I got lots of ideas, and saw a few new products which inspired me. The wishlist grows ever longer.

Here's a little more progress on Still Water.

INK AND STEEL

I have a revised date for my exhibition, which is now due to be held at Wolverhampton Central Library from Tuesday 22nd November until Saturday 10th December 2011.

The library has been undergoing extensive refurbishment over the past year, and will have to close on Monday 21 November for electrical tests. Unfortunately for me this is the first day of my exhibition. Hopefully all should be well and I should be putting my exhibition up early on Tuesday morning.

Fingers crossed!

Rolling the ball...

Kate Bush sang about rolling the ball, and now I'm thinking that creativity is a lot like this, keeping a ball rolling. The longer you stand around pondering the ball the less likely you are to get anywhere because a ball that isn't rolling isn't fullfilling its purpose. It may as well be a cube.

I've found another old(ish) piece out tonight and between trying to calm myself down after a nasty Tax revelation (hopefully putting that right tommorow) and watching the new detective drama on BBC1 Death in Paradise (a bit like Jonathan Creek set in the Carribean) I've worked on it adding new splashes and layers of colour in watercolour, coloured pencil, gold acrylic ink and oil pastel.


I just hope all that lot stays on the Ingres paper and doesn't fall off!

A few new bright leaves

I've taken a break from preparing for my exhibition and from my current work in progress (picture soon) to experiment with colouring an old drawing in Photoshop.

Where does the time go to? And where does life? It really makes me realise what a tremendous energy and creative force anyone who achieves anything in the arts possesses.

My pen and ink drawings take so long to produce, that's the problem, and hung on a wall amongst other artworks in an open exhibition they fade away. A couple of days ago I took one of my drawings to a framers to be scanned, and although the man there had no intention of offending me, he called my piece a sketch. I know he was just searching for some shorthand, some way of cataloguing it on his database, but that word stung me to the quick. I had poured hours and hours of effort into this drawing and it's dismissed in a moment as a sketch. A transient thing. A throwaway.

Anyway, later that night I received an e-mail inviting me to submit work to a local art sale, and I'd love to do this, but most of my work is mounted for my exhibition. I've found one small piece that didn't fit into the exhibition, but I'd like to enter another. So, I thought, why not try something I have wanted to do for years now - digitise one of my artworks, add something in Photoshop perhaps?

Some thing?

Anyway, here's my first rudimentary effort. It's a bit rough and ready, but at least I managed to kick-start myself into breaking out of routine.

From 2005 'A few leaves left'.


From 2011 - experiment number one.


To take this further? I need:-

A new scanner - preferably A3
A new printer - preferably A3

Add a little extra time, light the blue touch paper and wait.

Roots

I've been steadily assembling the elements of my exhibition, which will be held at Wolverhampton Central Library in November.

It's amazing how time consuming all this has been so far and how frustrating it is when silly little things go wrong. I mounted the work quite quickly, then withdrew a piece because I had promised a drawing to a neighbour in payment for a favour they did myself and my mother this summer, so I had to find a replacement piece.

I have finally got to the point where I've mounted most of my work, printed out the accompanying images (I decided on tiles, rather than the cumbersome things on sticks I initially came up with). The tiles are basically split into 2 sections, to reflect the split of content over the 2 cases. The first case will contain tiles of an autumnal theme, with fragments of poetry from the notebook I have used over the past 3 years or so. The imagry will be photographs I took of the autumn windfalls I collected last year and have stored in a Roses chocolate tin, plus a few photographs of work in progress. The tiles in the second case consist of more close ups of work in progress and descriptive snippets regarding the very basics of pen and ink artwork, interspersed with these will be photographs I have taken of the tools of my trade - the actual pen nibs, aranged artfully alongside more autumnal windfalls and photographed in a hopefully dramatic way.


The nibs themselves take me onto the material which will take up the final corner of the second case. The history of the pen trade is rooted in Birmingham, I only discovered this fairly recently, and I was pleased because although my inspiration and heart lies in rural, organic settings far removed from the place I was born and have lived all my life in, the tools I use to make my art, the bridge between my reality and my dream, have their history here, in the West Midlands.

I visited the Pen Room a couple of weeks ago, to learn more about the history of the Birmingham pen trade. I'll blog more about this later.