Hello Everyone!

Moving forward to cropping and playing around with compositional decision making next. I am drawn to a square format and trying to maintain the expressive, gestural marks when deciding what works as a balanced piece.

 I may add further detail, maybe stitch or I might paint out detail and simplify the image. This is the fun part but something I am challenged by as really my default setting is the playful, experimental stage where I can be free and can work loosely enjoying the edges of one colour next to another and delight in the subtlety of a mark or appreciate the layering of a broad brush stroke next to a lightweight spontaneous drip or dribble. Endless possibilities that I do not want to end.

New favourite beach. Wonderful rock formations and so many beautiful pebbles, each one so unique and inspiring. Jurassic and Triassic. Very photogenic and lots of ideas forming. Making drawing tools and using them to capture the scale and drama of the place.

This Textiles superstar, completed A level and Art FAD with us at Strode College and is about to graduate from Bath Spa Textiles design. All the best for a creative future to all our alumni. Keep in touch!

Textiles students in full flow creating free-machine stitched creatures in dissolvable fabric for wearable art neckpieces based around sea-life and observations at the aquarium. 

Ideas are also being developed for possible poster designs. Using the cut out hands as a motif to link with theatre, shadow puppets and the theme of LOVE for Romeo & Juliet perhaps, in simplistic formats, that hope to communicate this to younger audiences or a visual references to entice people to the theatre. 

Fabrication brief.

Student were asked to donate 5 items of old clothing to explore this communal response to the fashion industry and sustainability. This activity asked them to wrap and layer their garments as a parcel to collate as a collaborative wall installation. The first image shows a focused drawing of one talented students response to this task. A beautifully observed watercolour study.

Exploring composition in this textiles piece created from hand dyed indigo vintage linens and painted papers and cloth. The palette and angular composition respond to studies of a bright yellow skip, tarnished and ravaged by the weather and covered in marks created by nature. Wiggly, insect tracks, rusting and graffiti inspired colour, texture and piecing the final outcome.

Getting my colour mixing mojo on. Painting outdoors in the Spring sunshine feeling inspired by the fresh colours around me in the garden and from walks in the surrounding fields, lanes and woodland.I had forgotten how much I love this!

In the late 1980′s and early 1990′s after graduating, I worked freelance as a textiles designer and also travelled to South America after winning a travel bursary award in a design competition. I was inspired by the pre-Hispanic, ancient textiles of Peru, where the Incas and other ancient civilisations used natural dyes to create their woven cloth. I travelled through Peru, Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and down to the very south of Chile and had the best time. I researched natural dyes, spending time of the beaten track, living with indigenous people and learning from them. We picked roots by moonlight and gathered plants on specific dates linked to the Inca calendar, there was lots of superstition surrounding the dyeing process but also much wisdom and understanding of the life cycle of each plant and when it would give the best sources of colour.

On my return, I spent most of my time mixing colours from gouache and saving the match pots in 35mm film canisters as sample colours. This was pre-digital when everything was hand painted and drawn out in detail for selling to design companies. I had forgotten my love of colour matching and mixing and remembered my workshop space had literally hundreds of these hand mixed colour swatches lining the shelves for reference when recreating new colour palettes.

Thes images show my process of stretching fabric, priming, layering colours over a series of days with time between to ponder what colours to mix and add for balance, harmony and also composition. Enjoying myself!

Congratulations Jessie Goad!

Jessie’s fashion collection explored the theme of ‘journeys’ and focused on favourite places, memories attached and evoked by walking in the locality. Maps were of particular interest and her digital prints were applied to garment construction to great effect.

We were fortunate to invite fashion graduate, Clancy Dawson, into college to run masterclasses with the Textiles students with a particular emphasis on quality finish when making garments. Clancy studied at Glasgow School of Art and has worked on Saville Row as a trouser tailor so her skills were invaluable. Jessie worked closely with Clancy and repurposed an original 1980′s trouser pattern and made it her own, cut from her bespoke fabric these were really successful and unique.

Jessie plans to continue developing her own brand and selling her fashion online. We wish her all the very best with her business plan.

Out and about gathering visual research for future projects. Grids and nets to start the journey. Once you start looking you can’t stop seeing!