Doorway : No. 33

Dear Diane,

I am so excited we are starting our new creativity project together! After all our private emails discussing what we are and are not going to be doing let me just check I have this straight (and so readers will know too!):
1. We will take it in turns to pick a theme. The first one is your choice which is 'Doorway'.
2. We will work to that theme for a 2- 3 month period which we will set as we go along to take account of life demands.
3. Any media goes! The only rule is that we have fun exploring what we can do with that theme with the aim of interpreting it in whatever medium is calling us to play at the time.
4. There will be no grand reveal day and no specific size requirements as there were with Twelve by Twelve because this is more about is spurring each other on to learn and grow and experiment to see what we can do. However as work is done or progress is made (or not made!) we will post here about our progression for others to see.

I am actually excited that all our discussions have taken away some of the limits we first discussed. I think that we will spark off each other and that the freedom to be 'muti-potentialite artists' will bring out the best in us. I am particularly glad we will no longer be keeping secrets until the end of the theme period - our discussions about the ups and downs of creativity are really valuable to me.

As you know, as we discussed how this was going to pan out I had some studio time so I was able to get ahead and start on our theme. here is my first work that I have been dying to show you. It is called simply NO 33. The first comment I should make is that the photo illustrates the difficulty of photographing  quilt without getting distortion even when you think the camera is straight. My Dad gifted me a tripod this weekend so I am going to be retaking a lot of photos sometime soon!

This was in the early days when we talked about just doing art quilts and you suggested using a 26 x 36 format. I have to say I like that shape a lot to work with although it proved what I said all along about the one deficiency of my wet studio - the print surface is not big enough!! Its the biggest I could fit in the space of the single garage so I am not complaining but I had to paint my quilt sidewise which was interesting. I am contemplating doing what Annabel Rainbow does and buying a big easel and back board and clipping fabric to it so I can paint vertically.  Maybe you can get table easels large enough so that I can do it in the workbench rather than in the laundry space. I don't know. I shall have to trawl some art supply websites. What a hardship :)

The quilt came from a photo I took on Brick Lane when I did my original research for the big Brick Lane quilt I made last year.

here is the photo:

Dennis wants to share the copyright of this photo because he held the umbrella over my head when I took it! The reason I was in Brick Lane is that I was exploring its potential as a source of material for a theme  of Transition picked by the newly formed Etcetera group of which I am a part. You know I am fascinated with immigration and ethic groups and this picture sums up the departure of the Jewish community who were the life and soul of this area. The Brick Lane locality is now home to a big Asian community mostly from the Sylhet  region of Bangladesh as depicted ( some say inaccurately) in Monica Ali's eponymous book Brick Lane. I love that book by the way - have you read it? its so much better than the film!

Anyway, for some time I have been wanting to explore further the use of scraped paint which I use as the background for my map quilts. Like this one for example, The Roodee:

I love that technique for backgrounds but I always do it the same way and with inks not paint. I wanted to see if I could make it look like wood or the steel doors. The whole thing is painted with normal acrylic paints and a textile medium. Mostly with a credit card and my fingers with the odd touching up detail with a brush. The No33 letters are stencilled with Luminere paint. The shop, you will see is actually No 33A ,but I didn't have a small A stencil and was feeling lazy so....!!  The quilt is not perfect but it gave me enormous confidence to know that this was a technique worth pushing further. and I have another Doorway to show you but  I am going to tease you and hold that back until my next post!

To get the look of the spray painted graffiti I used oil pastels. Not oil sticks. Oil pastels. Then I wondered why I had not read about anyone using those on quilts. After three days I realised it was probably because they do not dry well. The solution? The same non-yellowing fixative you use for pastels on paper worked a treat. Stinks to high heaven so I opened all the doors and windows turned on the extractor fan, put on a mask, didn't breathe and left the room to air for ages when I used it on the quilt rather than a test fabric! I have no idea what it does to the archival quality of quilts but thats not a concern to me right now with these pieces. Getting while oil pastel all over my hands while I quilted was a big concern!

The worn posters are Bengali newspapers. The woman in the shop was most reluctant to see something so 'useless' to me when I confessed I do not speak a word of Bengali. I did try to explain the art purpose but she was still very perplexed when I left the shop! I have to say though that I didn't know when I bought the newspapers that I would use them this way. Just proves that a stock of appealing 'one day' things is an important thing to have!


The women were extracted from an entirely different photo I took on Cheetham Hill Road in Manchester where the great Asian supermarkets are. Hmm, even writing that makes me want goo and pick ups some flat breads and lassis! The front one is turning her head to talk to the other one which is why you don't see a face. When doing the scarves ( which are chiffon) I folded the fabric so it has some dimensionality but on reflection the way I allowed the tine to go from top left diagonally across the head makes her look more like she is looking at her feet. You will see in due course I tried to improve on that. I don't think it shows well in photos but the fact the women are appliquéd on but not quilted does make them stand out from the background.

I have already been inspired to make another literal doorway ( soon I will show you - soon - this post will be too long with two stories in it!)  and I will probably use painted whole cloths a lot more now I have done this. But also, I see abstract possibilities. here are three shots I took of details of the door. Like with my obsessions with shacks I see a beauty in these photos of dilapidation and decay combed with the marks of the people who live close by. Plus the compositions are interesting.

 I love this last one particularly. Who put those feathers there I wonder? And what did they intend?

So, I am excited to see what you do with this theme and where we go together. It will I am sure be a doorway into new things - did you intend that double meaning when you picked the theme?

Helen.