For those of you who live near Gloucestershire the sculpture show Fresh Air is on from the 14 June until the 5 of July, it is a superb show set in beautiful gardens at Quenington and well worth a visit. www.freshair20098.com ., I have made the cushion below from indigo dyed fabric from C&G days it is for the local horticulture show for the patchwork entry.May`s Calender girls card was from Neki it was sent to Oz by mistake so it is well travelled, it is a take on the water lilies by Monet it is very textural and a beautiful warm golden colour.

Junes card was from a painting by Ton Shulten, I find the ones that I really like more difficult to do than the ones I am not so fond of.

The following are from a visit to Stroud College an open Art week, some of it was weird and wonderful but I liked the techniques used in the picture below,

and these two paintings ,quite large where stunning, a very talented lady.

Some sculpture, and this one to bring a smile this little old lady on her zimmer has written round her hat...."Do not go gently into the good night" one side and " old age should burn and rave at the close of day", my sentiments exactly.Anyone know where this quote comes from?

Dawn Dupree`s workshop.

It is so great after all those hours of digging, manuring,planting watering ,throwing down slug pellets, to start reaping the benefits. Over the Bank holiday I did a 3 day work shop with Dawn Dupree, of the supermarket trolley fame, her work is not quite what I would want to put on my walls but she gets fantastic depth to her screen prints, and she is a very good tutor. Two of her pieces are shown below, she is into vacuum cleaners ironing boards and of course trolleys.

The first day we had to decide on the design that we wanted on our silk screens, I spend a lot of time at workshops thinking why didn't I do that or bring that I did not know that you could bring a image and have it photocopied ready to go on the screen so I had to draw mine, well you live and learn. We dyed fabrics with dye pastes , steamed then we discharged the fabrics and steamed again,the next day we procion dyed and discharged again,followed by pigment printing and flocking and foiling. It was fantastic but very tiring and I was almost glad to go back to work for a rest.

Dawn on the left putting the fabric into the steaming machine.

Some of my work in progress.

The washing line ,luckily it was quite sunny so fabrics dried well.

This is the machine used for flocking and foiling.

This lady was doing pictures of her children.

This is a photocopied image of a bewigged gentleman. Drawings of boots and jars.

The two lasses over from Ireland were well prepared, they had brought images to photocopy and then image onto the screen.The writing is from a letter of her Mother in laws who had died last year.

The red flocked image is a cow.

They were both very industrious and really pushed the boundaries, it must have been expensive to come over from Cork and stay for 3 nights but they said they do not get this level of tutoring in Ireland ,we are so lucky here.

The two below are from one of my screen prints I had to drawn the out by hand as I did not bring any images to photocopy, the others had the sense to bring ready made images.

This piece was printed at the workshop and flocked,the maroon circles at the bottom and the squares in the centre are flocked, I like this piece and will put it up on the wall when I can work out how to display it. The pieces below I have done at home using a screen and Gocco printed screens,I pinched the idea of carrots from one of the Irish girls I love them so quirky.

This is my favourite the colours in real life are darker and more vibrant this one is going up on the wall we are supposed to be down sizing but i need all the wallspace I can get!

The trouble with size 8 feet is they are so large they always get in the photo.

Hilary Bower Lecture

I went to a talk by Hilary Bower as part of the Stroud Textile Week,she talked about her recent work and that it is inspired by other craftsmen work how they make it and what is left over at the end.She is now using metal in her work and some pieces are nearly all aluminium.Her pieces represent item in everyday use objects not considered works of art,so the fact that I thought one of her pieces looked like Hoover bags wasn't so far off the mark.She said that the piece below was very difficult to stitch it is aluminum on organdie.

She even brought her sketchbooks for us to see she does a lot of writing and always makes a lot of maquettes. She came across as a very warm person and I would love to have a tutorial with her.

At Ruskin Mill at Nailsworth their was a felting exhibition Margaret Docherty and Sarah Brooker, who was there she had made a pink bag for Gregson Perry ,and had a great photo of him in a frilly dress with the bag.Her work was superb and she is doing a workshop at Urchfont , which I hope to go to.The piece below is by Margaret who is resident at Ruskin Mill.

The felt shown below is by Sarah from an exhibition called Tutti Fruiti.

You have to park at Horsley and walk back along by the trout streams, what a joy,ducks and wild flowers every where and the gardens all planted with every type of vegetable.

A seat carved in memory of one of the students the mill is used by people with learning difficulties

Beautiful isn't it.

Angie Hughes sent us some homework about our work and designing and where we see ourselves going a la Claire Benn.I find this type of thing very difficult as I do not have a logical bone in my body and find doing critiques quite toe curling.I did have a go at it and what came out was my embroidery/stitching skills are OK but I fall down in the design compartment.I must admit I usually think up the design as I go along and do the back up work when I have finished a piece.So I have been busy trying out design ideas,using Beverly Ash Gilberts ideas on colour which are on her blog of the same name, and a lot from "finding your own visual language"by Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan a book I have had for a little while looked at but not bothered to put into action, the pictures below are made by cutting shapes out of papers and swapping it all around, I can see that this could work especially for quilts.

I liked the ones below they have an art nouveau feel to them.

Because I am still on the fossil topic I had a session of cutting out ammonites shapes and then splitting them.

I also wrote out how I feel when I go fossilising at Hock cliffs, it is very peaceful the occasional cry of a bird,wide open skies and grey mud and clay and the magic of looking down and finding an ammonite thousand of years old at your feet. This is the first time I have used writing to help design a piece and it was useful.So I painted paper with fabric dyes so that I could get the same effect on fabric and the result is below.If you go to www.artclothstudios.com/Essays Claire and Leslie have several good essays on designing

I saw a great quote in Angie`s studio by Leonid Cohen " There are cracks in everything, that`s how the light gets in" it really appealed to me.