‘Empress Dowager’ Textile Sculpture

In my last post, I gave a sneak preview of a piece I made for an exhibition at the Bristol Guild Gallery. The exhibition was put together by the South West Textile Group, and was entitled, ‘Suspension.’ 

I was interested in the challenge of creating a three dimensional form, and the end result was ‘Empress Dowager’ – a 3D hanging textile sculpture. I used many of my original textile techniques to create it, but had the added challenge of making sure that the sculpture was interesting from every angle.

‘Empress Dowager.’ Detail.

The design was originally inspired by Buddhist parasols and by the ceremonial parasols that I saw in The Forbidden City, Beijing, many of which were embroidered with colourful, racing dragons. The parasols are traditionally a symbol of luck, royalty and protection, whilst dragons symbolise royalty and Imperial power.

Buddhist parasol

A ceremonial parasol in the Forbidden City

Although the Bristol exhibition is now closed, the South West Textile Group will be showing the ‘Suspension’ exhibition at The Town Mill Gallery, in Lyme Regis, from the 3rd – 30th October 2013.

You can find more of my large-scale textile work here:
Textile Sculpture: 4D Sphere
Textile Relief: Dragon

‘Empress Dowager’

Back to business!

Hello everyone!

Sorry for being a stranger – the months seem to have gotten away from me. I’m going to try to get back into good habits and update this blog more often, with help from my daughter, Isla. I’ve got lots to catch up on and share over the next few posts, including an exhibition at the Bristol Guild Gallery, visits to museums and the Eden Project, some textile experiments, and Isla’s graduation from Oxford!

To start off, here’s a sneak preview of the piece I made for the Bristol Guild Gallery exhibition, earlier this summer – stay tuned for more!

‘Suspension.’ Detail.

Natural History Museum

The animal and plant decoration on the museum’s exterior

I have posted before about my love for the Waterhouse Building, home of London’s Natural History Museum (The Sculpture of Nature). This time I thought that I would share a few photographs showing the outside of this beautiful and eccentric building, specifically, a few of the many, many animal and plant sculptures and reliefs that decorate its rich exterior.

A Cathedral to Science – entrance to the museum

The ambition of Alfred Waterhouse’s design is breathtaking in its complexity, with literally hundreds of sculptures and gargoyles adorning a façade that is already a busy excursion into the Gothic fairytale-land of the German Romanesque. Such richness of detail could easily have disintegrated into a jumbled mess, yet through careful control of scale and proportion, together with the cohesive force of the strong lines running through the design, Waterhouse never loses the overall coherence of the building.

Iconic landmark – The towers of the museum seen from South Kensington underground station

Primitive reptiles and a dire-wolf? beneath one of the many windows

This magnificent feline is high up, against one of the building’s central towers

A whole menagerie of beasts and gargoyles look down on visitors

This lion, like all the other beasts, was modelled from Waterhouse’s own drawings

The building also has more subtle decoration, such as this fox and birds over the entrance

Smaller creatures are represented on tiles such as these

Apart from the animal in the roundel, note the birds in the rooftop ironwork

The famous pterodactyl

I fell in love with this building on the day I first saw it and in the decades since I have only grown to appreciate it more. If you have a chance to visit London then please make a trip to the Natural History Museum one of your priorities.

(As always, thanks are due to husband Alex for helping to put my thoughts into words.)

Quartz Festival 2012

Last night (25^thSeptember), Alex and I went with a friend to attend the Private View of the art exhibition at the 2012 Quartz Festival. The Festival is an annual event held by Queens College, Taunton, in Somerset.

The 2012 Quartz Festival

The exhibition runs alongside a programme of performing arts events which this year includes performances by singers Lesley Garret and Elkie Brooks, along with sessions featuring comedy, poetry, magic and performance art. Space is always made for more serious cultural topics too and this year there will be a talk by Chris Larner, who in 2010 accompanied his chronically ill wife to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland.

Sculpture by Melanie Deegan

Photograph by Ingrid Hesling

The exhibition was an interesting and eclectic mix of painting, sculpture, photography and crafts from artists in the South-West of England. I thought that some of the sculpture by Melanie Deegan and photography by Ingrid Hesling was particularly strong.

The crowds at the Private View

The Private View was very well attended right from the opening and a good number of sixth-form students were on hand to assist with greeting visitors and supplying the canapés and drinks.

My jewellery on display

More of my jewellery at the exhibition

Queens College was founded as a Wesleyan Methodist School in 1843. Today it provides co-educational facilities for pupils from 3 to 18 years as both a day-school and boarding-school. The fine main building was built in 1874.

Queens College, Taunton

Wisteria over the main entrance to Queens College

The exhibition runs from Wednesday 26th September to Saturday 6th October. For further details see the Quartz Festival website.

The Ranakpur Jain Temple

Today I am focussing on the spectacular marble Jain temple in the village of Ranakpur, near Udiapur.  This beautiful 500-year-old building is a stunning piece of architecture most notable for the quality and variety of its carved surface decoration.

The marble Jain temple at Ranakpur

The turrets and domes of the temple are supported on over 1,400 pillars, each one with its own individual and unique carvings.

Every pillar has its own unique carvings

My favourite parts of the decoration were the amazing circular reliefs that formed the underside of the cupolas on the roof.

Carving on the ceiling under a dome

More than anything else, it is the sheer quality of the invention in the carved patterns that is so stunning, plus, of course the marvellous execution.

Jaw-dropping rhythm and movement in the design of a carving

Many of you must think that I am obsessed by India given the number of posts I have
devoted to it. The truth is that I had the chance to photograph so many beautiful
and interesting things on my visit there and I keep thinking of yet one more
that deserves to be shared.

The marble Jain temple at Ranakpur

Entrance to the marble temple

Jaw-dropping rhythm and movement in the design of a carving

The structure took 50 years to complete

The temple has around 20 cupolas each with its own circular carving beneath

Carving on the ceiling under a dome

The temple structure is tiered like a wedding cake

This photograph gives an impression of the massive scale of the building

Every pillar has its own unique carvings

Visitors to the temple are likely to get neckache from looking up!

Worshippers leaving the temple

Carving surrounds the entrance door

Related posts: Jyoti’s Pages; India Travel Portal; Heather Castle’s Blog;
Saiprema’s Blog

Crackington: Textile Relief

I created this textile relief a few years ago, when I was working on a series of reliefs that were inspired by the cliffs and rocks of Cornwall.

The bigger scale of a wall relief provides a great opportunity to play with colour, as there is a much wider surface area to work with than there is with smaller jewellery pieces.
The relief was made as one single piece of fabric, which was then stitched into shape and embellished.

I’m planning on shifting it onto a more interesting background that will provide more of a sense of connection and interplay, haven’t gotten around to it yet though!

I’m particularly fond of the detail shots I took of this piece, so I’ve included quite a few for you to browse – enjoy!

“Crackington” – Textile relief

Elephants of Rajasthan

Over Easter, I visited a fantastic exhibition of Howard Hodgkin’s Indian Miniatures at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. This fabulous show included many works by the court painters of Rajasthan, including some lovely paintings of elephants. I actually visited Rajasthan while I was in India this year, and saw images of elephants everywhere. Though the photos I took of elephants aren’t all great works of art, they’re still good fun.

“Elephants Fighting” detail. Collection Howard Hodgkin

“Elephants Fighting” detail. Collection Howard Hodgkin

Textile Sculpture Commission: 4D Sphere

Last year, I was commissioned by Samvado, a Cornish sculptor and a fellow member of the Cornish Crafts Association, to make a textile sculpture.

He asked me to create one of his sculptures, the 4D Sphere, using my fabric.
Here are a few photos of the work in progress, and some images of the finished piece.

You can visit Samvado’s website at: http://www.samvado.com/

One Final Shot

Another View

The Finished Form

Another Angle

The Plywood Armature

Making the Shape

Textile Art: Dragon

A little while back I took part in the Cornwall Crafts summer show at Trelowarren. I wanted to create a much bigger textile relief than any I had previously designed, and the result was Dragon. A bigger piece meant a lot of different challenges; there were difficulties that were never an issue for smaller pieces, particularly how to keep such a large surface interesting whilst maintaining a sense of unity of form.

Designing the Template
I began by cutting smaller scale paper templates in order to explore different shapes. The relief was cut from one piece, then shaped and stitched into a three-dimensional form. I cut out a template from fabric of roughly the same stiffness and flexibility to my own fabric to confirm that the design would work.

Making the Fabric
I used the same techniques as on the smaller pieces, but much more attention was needed to make sure that the entire surface flowed together. Different parts of the dragon were shaded in bronzes and golds, and white was used as a highlight. Alex cut brass tubing into lengths, which were added to provide contrast and structure.

Framing the Dragon
I wanted the background to be an integrated part of the design, and so rather than use a plain colour fabric, I used Japanese shibori techniques with indigo dye on silk. The silk panels were mounted over canvas onto wooden frames, and then finally the dragon was hand-stitched onto the silk.