Nearly there! Following last week’s fretting about ‘what’s the Arts Council going to think’, ‘will it make a good exhibition’, etc, etc…. I received a wonderful, enthusiastic and supportive message from a fellow artist and fan of my 52′s – her Marmite analogy placed everything in to perspective. There’s five weeks left, I’m nearly there, it’s too late to fret now anyway so I’ll just enjoy making.
It’s true I do have a tendancy to constantly evaluate what I’m doing something I believe was born out of doing an art degree and having to evaluate ‘all the time’ – however, to be honest, I’m uptight at times and need to just let go, be creative and hang the consequences or what everybody thinks… easier said than done I’m thinking.
So with all the sleepless nights of fretting last week, a two and a half day Make and the volunteering with the Durlston Castle Opening, this week’s Make, I decided to keep simple. Don’t get me wrong Julie Arkell’s work is absolutely fantastic, I can’t get enough of it, and in an ideal world where I wasn’t working and preparing new stock for 4 Christmas Craft Shows I would have relished the chance to indulge and immerse myself in the world of her fabulous creatures, with knitting and lots of found objects. However this week, I needed a break… not bad, it is week 47 after all.
So here’s what I did…
The one thing that really strikes me with Julie Arkell’s work is the way, through her subtle painting and additions you can see a hint of the text in the papier mache, maybe this resonates with me because I love adding and printing text in to my flower designs on aluminium – I just love the inclusion of words hidden and peaking out from layers of colour and pattern.
One particular printed document I’ve wanted to use for ages and had a stack of them hidden away for just such an occasion is the Beano. I remember my mums Cousin Anne, who worked for the government used to come and visit in her posh cars and bring me a giant bar of chocolate and a copy of Beano and Dandy to read – I never read it any other time, but for some reason the images, fonts and limited palette of colours has always been routed in the back of my creative conscious, inspiration, patiently waiting for suitable times to come and play.
This week seemed the perfect excuse to get the scissors to the first issue in a stack of 45 bought on ebay for a bargain price. My thoughts were of Beano jewellery, I couldn’t get the idea out my head until I’d created something and so eagerly I began early on the Sunday night prior to my 47th week. I decided to again explore the pasting technique I’d learned from Jenny Adams, and see if it could be applied to metal and paper.
The result seemed to work quite well, I love the earrings, I wonder if they would be popular commercially, hmmmm, I’ll think on that. Finishing the earrings off on Monday morning before heading to work, left me free for the rest of the week to crack on with new products – I’m still in overdrive and at present I’m particular geared towards creating small, more commercial affordable items for craft shows – fingers crossed they sell well.
So I feel Julie Arkell week, although a little short and sweet and hardly doing her work justice, was a success for me and I thank her for the inspiration.
Next week I’m attending one of our final MasterCraft Sessions at Walford Mill – the two hour taster classes have had their day and we feel it’s time to move on and develop new ideas for our education programme. So for Week 48, I’ll be inspired by my colleague, friend and onsite jeweller at Walford Mill, Kathryn Arbon. During her MasterCraft class I will be creating new pieces of jewellery, from old, broken bits and bobs from the bottom of my jewellery box – I’m really looking forward to this class and can’t wait to see what I and the others taking part come up with.
