Abbott Hall Art Gallery

Abbott Hall was built in 1759 and is the only grade 1 building in Kendal. By the 1950's it was almost derelict and threatened with demolition. A group of local people formed a charitable trust to save the building and eventually turned it into an art gallery. I love going to this art gallery, it's like stepping  back in time. 

This is a view of the dining room. The hall is very beautiful with period furniture and fine portraits

through out.  All the downstairs rooms are all very traditional and stunningly decorated with elaborate plaster work on the ceilings and walls. The exhibition studio's are upstairs and are very surprisingly modern, light and airy. 

Hughie O'Donoghue. Born 1953 in Manchester. England.  

I came to see the artist Hughie O'Donoghue " Vivid Fields".  Some of the canvas were huge and took up a whole wall. Most of the images were of  male and females nudes using the colours of autumn, smudgy oranges, yellows and black/greys. Most of his work has been painted in the last two years some of course were painted a few years ago like his "Liquid Earth" 1984. A skeleton in partly covered the earth, quite a disturbing image .....  for me, that is.

Kurt Schwitters was also had some paintings on display and the one above is of the cottage where he once lived. Also Keith Vaughan had a small exhibition "Figures" unfortunately I do not have a image of his work.

My Hand Sewn Squares

 



 

 

 

This is a sampler piece using running stitch, satin stitch, ladder stitch and chain stitch.

 

 

This is a sample of drawn threadwork. This drawn threadwork is usually sewn into to create a pattern.

See picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

 This exhibition is at Abbott Hall in Kendal. The poster shows a piece of finished drawn threadwork.

 

 

This image is of my six different "grounds." Choosing a twill, silk, satin, tracing paper, silk organza

and woven metal. It was good to stitch though the six fabric's as each material stitched differently. So the thread behaved and looked very different with each fabric. The translucent fabrics had this lovely

round movement of stitch, like it was floating through the material.

 

 

 

 

This sample is french knot stitched onto white silk organza and this  has the floating effect of the

stitch through the material as you can see. Stitching the french knots onto this fabric was quite challenging because of the fineness of the material. I used a embroidery hoop to keep the fabric stable.

 

 

 

 

 The next sample is french knot stitched into a faux leather, which was very easy to stitch as the fabric was good to handle.

 

 

 

 

 

  

Amy Senoges a former students came in to show us her work and teach the couching stitch. I have made a couple samples using knitting wool. Found some empty reels in the studio and some thick cable rope and covered them with couching. This is the effect I have achieved.

 

 

 

        Next I thought I would experiment with other types of fabrics and stitch into them.

 

This is woven metal and metal net fabric which I have cut into shapes and stitched together using a 

running stitch. Added shapes cut out of old railway tickets and stitched onto the metal background for my Journey.

 

 

 

Experimenting with a woven copper material and adding shapes of the metal net. Then using

the ladder and running stitching to join the fabric

 



 

Another hand stitched square though it was too plain, but did not want to overpower the shape.

 

 

 

So I added some gentle strokes of ink to enhance this piece of work and I think it has done that.

Part of my Journey collection.

 

Used chain and ladder stitch for this image. Again, I knew that it lacked something. Looked at it and

thought about it, rummaged in my other samples and then saw what I needed. A very overworked piece of machine stitched square which I had painted over with gesso and now rock solid. . .   

 

 

.....Turned this over to the back and there was the image I wanted. Cut it out and dropped some red ink onto it and attached it to the chain and ladder stitched square and another piece for my Journey. 

Manchester Art Gallery

The First Cut Exhibition.

This is on one of the many exhibits on show at the exhibition. This is by artist Rod Ryan and called

" A Map Of My Entire Life" a sculpture made from paper.

 

 

This image is made is made from one dollar bills and is called " The  Judge 2010" by the artist Justine Smith.

 

 

 

The Gallery.

Lovely gallery a fushion of old and modern. Very modern inside and very good good exhibition space. The lighting was good through out the galleries. Had a look around at all the exhibitions, new and old artists alike. The one I came to see was The First Cut and I was not disappointed. The first exhibit I saw were large, colourful flowers, which were fantastic. I looked into this tiny box situated on the wall and that contained a tiny tree cut out of a Burger King bag. Some of the paper sculptures were huge there was a spiral, flocks of birds and books cut and manipulated into shapes. Wonderful to see artist's who can transform such a humble material into intricate works of art.         

The stitch squares in black and white

These are my machine stitched squares, sketch book and a drawing of my journey travelling on  trains.

These squares have been stitched using the embroidery, tailor tack and pintuck feet. Loved working on these squares using the sewing machine. The problem is I have over worked some of my pieces it's a case of less is more !!

Two of these pieces are too fussy..... 
I have decided to cut up a couple of my overworked squares and add them to my hand sewn squares.

Black and white picture squares

For this task we were asked to draw in black and white on paper squares and had only five minutes to complete each square. For the mark making we were given a sentence eg: a line walking across the paper. These are the photographs of my squares.  

I quite enjoyed this task but would do things differently if I did the task again. As I had to interpret them into fabric...... would have more clean cut linear marks.

Colour Task

Really enjoyed the colour task ..... making the colour wheel which I have done before in paint and fabric. Interesting mixing the paints and how many colours you can achieve with only the six paints.

What I did learn with this task was to be more generous when adding colours to make tones and shades and the white and black to form greys !

  

The next task was to mix colours to words eg: Fox's back which I mixed as a brownie tan colour. The other colours are pebble dash, blue bells, mushy peas, peacock blue, baggers back, elastoplast pink, germolene and corset. The colours I mixed are in the picture above and as you can see my peacock blue is not the proper colour it should be.

This is my colour chart I mixed to match my to images in my sketch book see below.

   

The colour I could not mix was emerald green...... but had a good try with the other colours and they seem to blend in.

Finding it hard at moment, my ideas are not forthcoming ..... all the changes around me as well 

trying to get my head round Uni life, travelling and boosting my own confidence.......

The Liverpool Biennial

Liverpool Biennial

The Journey.

 

 

On a very rainy day we went to visit the Biennial in Liverpool, starting at the Bluecoat Centre.

This is one of the installations by Sus Xun," 2012 The chinese scrolls." I found this fascinating

as watched the snake like image curling and uncurling making different shapes as it moved.

I was lucky to get a still photograph of the movement of this installation, see picture above. After looking around the rest of the gallery which I thought was a interesting space for exbihitions with the high ceilings and a space for small viewing galleries. We went across the centre to see the John Moores painting prize 2012. I love this exhibition with the light, airy and spacious galleries. As always a excellent range of paintings some I love, others I do not like or understand but like

to view them all regardless.

 

 

 

 

 

 The prize winner for the Chinese section was "Being 2011" a great painting about migrant

workers. A headless man carving a bamboo stick, the colours are grey, beiges with touches of colour ..like a yellow taxi and a red scarf around the man's neck. The compostion is very good and

very well executed as you can see in the above picture. 

 

Albert Dock

 

Back through the heavy rain to the Tate at Albert Dock to view the free galleries which consisted

 mostly of sculptures. The galleries were  darker and had low ceilings which was quite a shock from the others in the city. As I perused the gallery the sculpture that caught my eye was called

"Well Done" by Bill Woodrow 1987.This sculpture was about Africa made from discarded domestic appliances, car bodies and household bric-a-brac to create a new form. I just thought it was very clever how he had manipulated the waste to create his sculpture which resembled a camp fire.

The next place to view was The Pavillion next to the Tate, this was a video exhibition of interviews with artist's, architect's discussing their idea's and work. I'm glad I didn't miss this as it was like eavesdropping these conversations, just wished I had more time to watch and listen. I photographed as much as I could and drew from some of them. This is a drawing of the Albert Dock which I have done from a photo.