Transition development

Haven't updated my thoughts on here for a while regarding our latest project. I have been using the hair I bought in various hand-knitted samples alongside some really nice silk wool with feathers attached to it and also various different shades of mohair. On the subject of yarns there is a really good little yarn and knitting shop in Lewisham on Lee High Road- originally enough called 'The Knitshop'. They do evening classes there too which I am thinking about joining. Although having said that I seem to have no time in the evenings anymore what with work and Chelsea. It's particularly annoying that I can't go to Oxford this weekend too as I had vaguely planned this under the pretence of going to the Pitt Rivers Museum but I can't because of work commitments so I'll go next weekend. When I say 'under the pretence' all I mean is that this is the reason I'll say I'm going and I will go because it looks like a really exciting visit but I haven't seen my friend who's there in ages and she goes to formals and dinners and such every weekend which sounds rather nice eh? Back to the textiles. I have been advised to become less involved with using the hair I bought directly and concentrate also on the drawings I made from it as these had a far more wide-ranging colour palette and also created a sense of movement. Therefore I am going to start knitting long strips with a relevant colour palette and yarn and then experiment plaiting and pleating these to look like elaborately styled hair. Obviously photos of all this progress to come and plus less venting on my next post.

The Moss Carpet

I so want this! While doing some research for my Object Analysis presentation which I have on Friday I found this amazing bath mat. 'Amazing' and 'Bath Mat' don't usually go in the same sentence but imagine the sensation of stepping out of the shower onto a forest floor... It's made using (fancy new word coming up) imputrescible foam, meaning that it is not liable to decomposition, called plastazote. The mat includes ball moss, island moss and forest moss and these mosses thrive off the humidity of the bathroom and the water that drips off you when you stand on it. It was designed by Swedish artist Nguyen La Chanh who is now looking to commercialise the product after several people have expressed an interest in buying one on her website. Her design process is a simple idea. She deconstructs items and then recreates them with a green purpose and function. Such as in her piece 'Kitchen Garden' in which she has created a holder for kitchen utensils out of a textiles through which the thin roots of herbs can pass. The herbs can grow vertically and live off the water that comes from the drying utensils and, depending on where you place it in the kitchen, the draining board. 

Things I want/like...

Dying to see the John Stezaker exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery. Have heard very good things from a friend who does mainly collage who's doing Drawing at Camberwell and also picked up a postcard for it at the cinema. From what I've seen on the website and online I'm thinking maybe my chronic hoarding of magazines, postcards, leaflets, newspapers etc might not be such a terrible habit after all...

Will come back to this later am going on a very impromptu trip to...ahem...Wetherspoons. 

Unconventional Materials

I've been trying to find other artists who use unusual materials such as human hair and I came across the artist Wendy Freebourne who felts cat hair and human hair. It's a horrible thought to be handling other peoples' hair but I one I'll need to get used to! Here's the only example I could find of her felting technique online and I have to say I'm not a fan of this particular piece but I love how innovative her techniques are. I suppose I'll have to attack my hairbrush in order to make my own felted hair piece...

Transitions Project Developments

Have had a total change of mind and direction on the 'Transition' front. Have decided to use hair for my project and to work into clothes, make new clothes etc. out of hair bought in afro-carribean shops and salons. I got my inspiration from a section in CONTRIBUTOR Magazine called Folklore Nouveau which was styled by Robert Rydberg.

I love this idea because it's fun and has the potential for being really different and exciting. Went down to the hair shop (you'll not likely to hear me say that often) with Alicia today and bought a combination of fake and human hair. The benefit of the fake hair being the price (£2.49 for quite a long section) and the fact that you can change the style of it easily by simply placing it in very hot water and plaiting it to get curls, for example, and blowdrying it. The real hair is more expensive but it does look better and less synthetic. It's actually quite depressing though how the price difference isn't huge and someone somewhere is being paid very little for their lovely hair. Anyway, it's not a big concern of mine for the hair to look real because its with a view to working into other fabrics and plaiting rather than actually styling to someone's real hair. The ladies in the hair shop thought it was for me and were trying to dissuade me from choosing such a dark colour, at which point I said I wasn't planning on attaching black and auburn coloured hair to my blonde hair and that it was for an art project. They were really helpful actually; they told me to using thread on the long synthetic hair while it was wet from the hot water then wring it out and dry as normal to create kinks. I even managed to find a possible model for the show. I know I'm being quite previous but I'm just excited! She did however seem slightly dubious when I pulled out my bag of hair...

Stumbling...

Been incessantly clicking away on 'Stumble Upon' and found this rather cool drawing tool on a website. It's just a bit of fun but I've always been envious of people who can make graphic designs look like this...hard to explain, have a go for yourself to see what I mean- www.zefrank.com/scribbler/scribblertoo/

Pigeon Food

On the way to Deptford Creek today I took us on a little detour to see if my primary school tile was still on display on the bridge over the Greenwich-Maze Hill train line. When we were in Year 5(?) we each made a tile to be fired and put in this small walkway to brighten it up and deter graffiti. I for some reason did a man in a suit feeding the pigeons. Bizarrely enough the pigeons are bright yellow and I definitely don't think that at this age I was capable of being ironic or making any kind of statement to do with a guy feeding canaries pigeon food. I was delighted to see it was still there. I think the theme was 'people in the community' but I can't quite remember...