Conversations in Colour - Session 6

One of the writing groups began by showing the performance pieces they had developed in the previous session.  The combined work had a lovely streamlined wholeness to it.  As one group member said, ‘They are such bizarre stories and the movement brings it to life’.  Here is an example of Karrie’s part of the story.

PAUL

Paul threw back the orange to the crowd. There were resounding boos from the audience. The group began to perform a song – Love Me Do. As the song progressed the booing got louder until the band stopped mid song. They walked off the stage defiantly.

There was no second act. The crowd fell silent. Murmurs and conversations then ensued. From a small faction of the crowd erupted a chant. “We want Paul”.... This gradually spread across the arena....

The first group then began the group poetry exercise that the other group had undertaken the previous week.  All the drafts had something original and interesting to offer and most were even fairly polished by the time we reached the editing stage!  However, the piece they chose to develop was on a theme all of us living in the modern age know well – tiredness.  Compared to the slow stirring of porridge and other striking images that I won’t spoil by giving away, I think the finished piece will be a novel take on the subject.  Here are some of the first drafts.

The second group experienced their first foray, of the project, into performance and voice work. We all giggled as we breathed out strange sounds and then began to think about how the two pieces might be performed.  They thought in depth about their work, one member even ‘coming out of her shell’, as she put it, and reading out for the first time.   I told them that there would be an opportunity to read at the Open Door Exhibition in July and shared with them my own first experiences of reading publicly – how nervous I had been, how much I had loved it, the positive feedback I had received.  I explained that I wouldn’t make them perform but that I hoped they would want to join in the process of developing their writing into performance within the sessions.  They smiled broadly and agreed.

Becky Cherriman

Before we started tie dying our cotton bags, I showed the group the ironed-up sample pieces we made last time. They were surprised how beautiful they all looked. Everybody was very enthusiastic, and some people brought their own cotton hats and T-shirts. Soon the room was full of strange looking alien creatures. 

Because it takes much longer to tie dye big pieces, nobody saw the results of their labour, so on Thursday there will be a lot of beautiful surprises waiting to be unwrapped.  Some people were worried about the mess in the studio, so I’ve brought a couple of photographs of famous artist studios, just to show them what a professional mess looks like!!! We’ve got a long way to go yet, but at least we won’t be worrying about the mess!

                                                                                  Milena Dragic 

                                                                                                                                        

OPEN DOOR – Textile Tales - Final Week 12

Today was the last day of this wonderful 12-week project. I always find the last day of a project charged with mixed emotions; a sense of achievement, the celebration in creating work and making new relationships, reflecting on discoveries and surprises and yet mixed in with a smidge of sadness about something great coming to an end.

The ladies have been absolutely brilliant, they have been so focussed and come each week with a keenness to learn something new as well as listen and learn from each other. They have been very supportive and encouraging of each other, on occasions when some of us felt vulnerable or unsure.

With it being the final session, there were many tasks we needed to get through; evaluating and reflecting, capturing voice recordings, finishing our final pieces, gathering ideas for future projects and (the best bit) a celebration with homemade food each of us prepared.

The ladies had thought carefully about what sound they wanted to go inside their story boxes. We practised fitting our singing, reciting or speaking into just 10 seconds – a challenge (it took a few attempts, but we got there) ! With the sound device, we recorded individual voices and then slipped the sound into our story boxes, ready for somebody else to put up to their ears and listen.  

I love how the decorated boxes (which we created on the very first session) and the sound (which we recorded on our last session) has been united together fnally. Each box represents the participant and offers a small insight into their personality. They are all so unique and I think the women were very brave to share a little bit of them.

Sharon spoke the first line of a sikh mool mantar prayer, which she dedicated to her granddaughter, because it carries an important life message for her to learn. Sharon repeats this mantra each morning when she wakes up.

Yvonne sang a captivating part of a gospel song she wrote herself. The song was inspired by a faith discussion she had had with her family one day. The words were very powerful and we all found ourselves humming along to the tune.

Wendy recited part of a poem she had remembered during the course of the project, triggered by the making of her story box when she drew a lovely illustration of a magpie on the top of the box. The poem was written by John Donn, an Elizabethan poet. “Such a surprising heavenly jest, a wagtail in a magpie nest”.  Her box is a nest of leaves when you open it up.

Balwinder sang a gentle sounding sikh hymn. The words translating to “Whatever you will ask from God, He will give you” Her mother taught her the hymn when she was a young girl.

Whilst our voices were captured, our fingers busily rolled, fulled, pinned, tacked and sewed our felted and batik beauties onto the banners, ready for myself and Musarat to assemble for the exhibition.

The open exhibition of the all the work will be held at Artlink on Wednesday 10th July, amongst many other artworks created during other Artlink Open Door projects. I really look forward to seeing the reactions from the participants’ friends and families when they come to share their work. Musarat and I have been planning the event with other Artlink artists and coordinators, which is shaping up to be a fabulous celebration and sharing of so much creativity, imagination and bravery.

Well done everybody and thank you for making this project happen! The project has inspired and motivated us, as echoed by some lovely quotes here:

“I really enjoyed every minute of this project. It has been a pleasure.”

“I have learned a lot and really enjoyed the company! Brilliant tutors!”

“I have made new friends and enjoyed the company of others. The staff have been very kind and are wonderful people. “

“Thank you for your kindness and patience. Thank you for sharing your skills with me.”

“It’s been great to get out of the house and make new friends, I appreciate this when I live on my own. I have improved my manual skills and my ability to be patient with others and work in a large group.”

Here is a picture of the tasty food we munched on; spring rolls, pakoras, samosas, cheese straws, jerk chicken. A delicious spread!

OPEN DOOR with Shantona

Session 7

Today we continued from last week – making our own vase, inspired by Michael Brenand Wood’s work (MBW). We decorated our base with beads, buttons and worked with wire to attach the felt pieces and the wax shavings inside it.  It was fun working with the wire and lots of other materials but was also a little messy.

It was interesting to see how the different pieces started forming shape once they were attached together. You could see the links to MBW work and how he uses interesting shapes/objects to form his pieces.

Rozi introduced the animation side of it, this looked very interesting -  we were all looking forward to having our pieces pictured in order to create interesting effects. A little like the patterns we had seen in MBW work – Rozi lead us to an area where she had set up a space for the photographs to be taken on the ipad.  

The kaleidoscope setting in the Photo Booth app. helped create patterns from our work. We took about 20 photos each, moving the camera little by little around the objects. This created weird patterns in a sequence which will play back in a movie clip, as an abstract animation.

At the end of the session we revisited MBW work and Musarat asked everyone to bring in 3 small objects which could be used for the next stage of the project – making canvases.

We are looking forward to the canvas activity – we will be revisiting the felt technique and will be introduced to other new techniques to use.

Conversations in Colour - Session 5

In the Artlink building there are four stained glass windows depicting the four seasons. What we found out today is that the theme of four seasons continue within the building, making temperature on each floor higher than the one underneath, so by the time we climbed up the stairs, to the studio, we entered the beautiful summer’s day.

  

It was so warm that we opened all the windows and the sunshine streamed in making printing colours glisten and shine. The prints came pouring out, with a fantastic array of colours. People were astonished, and even the most perfectionist and critical participants were soon taken over and carried away by the unexpected beauty of their own work! One woman who said she only liked one of her prints changed her mind and said – I like them all now ! Soon everybody finished their linos, descended back into the spring temperature of the room below, and the second group came up to enjoy the summer! 

They started tie-dyeing cloth. Most people have never done it before, but were amused with the shapes of the bundles of tied cloth.  They looked like some strange creatures, which were then painted with textile colours. We dried the cloth with a hairdryer and soon we were all opening the cloth and seeing what effects we were getting. It reminded me of the emergence of the butterflies from a cocoon. We are going to tie dye some cotton bags next time!

                                                     

On this gorgeous day, the writing group began with an icebreaker – ‘which weather do you feel like today?’ Then we proceeded to discuss emotions and states of mind and to write group poems.  We did this by finding different metaphors for these emotions, in the process discovering some strong images.  The rough drafts were all excellent and had a lot of potential so the problem was choosing which to develop.  When editing, one group of participants initially tried to find a narrative in their words but finally decided to focus mainly on condensed images, which meant that it was up to the reader to fill in the gaps. Another group put emphasis on the narrative in theirs and discarded words and phrases that didn't fit.   Condensing is a key element to writing poetry and I was pleased that the participants discovered this through the process of working together.

As we moved towards the end of the session, one participant commented that she hadn’t thought she was creative but that the project was allowing her to see that she had been repressing that part of herself and that really she was extremely creative.

In the second part of the session, I took the people who had been creating tableaux to correspond with their writing last week.  They began to put together two performance pieces which are really starting to come to life.  I look forward to developing this with them further in coming weeks. 

 Milena Dragic and Becky Cherriman

OPEN DOOR – Textile Tales - Week 11

This is our penultimate session and the room is a hive of activity. Many from the ladies are now developing their ideas with only a bit of guidance from myself and Musarat, creating wonderful self-directed pieces. Their confidence in their ideas has grown so much over the project.

We set up two tables, one for batik and one for felt making and we continued to create textile pieces in strip shapes. We are taking inspiration from print and patterns in storybooks. We are rapidly creating pieces to fit onto our large banners for our exhibition in July.

Musarat lays out all out textile strips and starts pinning all the elements onto a base cloth. Soon the floor is a sea of colour and texture. Other Artlink staff have to tip toe around the edges of our banners on the floor in order to get to the kitchen, and each of them letting out a big "Wow!" when they see the artworks laid out.

Some of us are moving between the tables and trying a different technique, this time beginning to plan and think about what colours would work well together with other strips. There is true pride in their work.

Some of us practise our 10 seconds of audio for our story boxes. Ideas are ranging from singing, reading a short poem, laughing. All sorts! These sounds will connect with the story boxes we made in the first session, which feels a long time ago!

Wendy has brought in a book of her collected silks, with an embroidered cover she did when she was 9! We love it, so want to share a picture of it. 

As the session comes to a close, none of us want to leave. There are lots of questions about how the project might continue. How might they keep learning new skills and meeting each other? They are not looking forward to saying goodbye to each other next week.

For our last session we’re plotting for a bit of a celebration, each of us will bring some food to share.

Bryony

OPEN DOOR with SHANTONA

Session 6

What a lovely day it was, the sun was out, everyone in high spirits, eagerly waiting to start the session.  Just like the previous weeks a very good turnout, the room was full, hardly space to move but we managed to squeeze everyone in.

So the session started as Musarat introduced the activity ‘Making our very own vase’ inspired by Michael Brennand Woods’ work, the pieces we had studied in the previous weeks.  Once again the table was full of materials, beautiful wooden beads, various size buttons, sparkling sequins, threads, needles, feathers, glass beads, double sided foam tape, colourful wire and lots more.

The idea was to finish off embellishing our felt and wax pieces that we had made by adding buttons, beads and gems and constructing the felt pieces into a shape and stitching them with a needle.  Once the pieces were completed we started to decorate our base, some had small glass coloured lanterns which were almost like a vase and others chose a small cage, quite attractive once decorated and embellished with beads.  We all started to decorate these by adding wire and then threading beads, feathers through.

It was fun, we were all concentrating so hard, we wanted our piece to look good and stand out.  After completing the vase, we began to attach our felt and wax pieces to the wire and arranged them almost like flowers shooting out from the base.

“The activity was messy but in a good way, I enjoyed it” one participant said.

“Hey, could you sew  before today”

“No... but now i can"

Open Door Exhibition