Getting it wrong to get it right

 

Throughout history discoveries have been made unintentionally. The English metallurgist Harry Brearley discovered stainless steel by accident and Alexander Flemming's accidental discovery of penicillin change the course of medicine.

On a more humble level my experiments in colouring fabric have led, by accident, to the discovery of an amazingly resilient colourant. To mark out a pattern on white voile I used a stick of yellow pastel in the belief that it would wash out afterwards. After all, pastel is the most difficult of all artists' media to preserve. But try as I may, my yellow lines would not wash out. This led me to try working designs directly in pastel. 

The opening picture is a selection of attempts ranging from batik to painting with the dyes you see on the pallet. The picture below is of a design first sketched with a  permanent black marker and then coloured with pastel.

The final image shows the effect of light penetrating the semi-transparent fabric.

Before my time

I have to thank my brother for for this version of the photograph of my grandmother Catherine (Kate) Beanland (1877-1960). You can find out more about how he transformed the 1890's sepia image to subtle colour on his blog News from Nowhere.

I can remember my grandmother as a spindly little old lady. But before my time she was an attractive young woman who in her younger days worked as a barmaid. She could well have served with distinction as the model of the barmaid in Edward Manet's (1832-1883) painting of the bar at the Folies-Bergere. But rather than serving champagne in Paris, Kate was pulling pints in Yorkshire.

Trials & tribulations

 

If you think this is a watercolour, your wrong! What you're seeing is the first of my experiments of painting with dye on the white voile that I'm using for dress making. There are possibilities of adding text, as in the detail below.

There is then a whole new world for me to explore with hand-painted batik. I spent this morning working on the first sample with outstanding results: my signature blazing against a crimson background. But alas, in my enthusiasm to complete and photograph it for this post, I attempted to boil the wax out before the dye had set. When I removed the fabric from the boiling pan all that was left was the white voile that I started with. Such is vanity!

But what I can proudly show you is the tjanting tool that I made in my engineering workshop for applying the wax. The heat is supplied from my soldering iron and a light dimmer serves as to rheostat for temperature control. The tip is a plunger that retracts on contact with the fabric and allows the molten wax to flow.

You have me intrigued

A few days ago I shared some ideas I have for my fashion label Bare Minimum with my daughter Trina. Her response was, "You have me intrigued". When I told her that my material was voile (a cotton fabric that's light as a feather and semi-sheer) she added, "Now you've got me very intrigued!". 

I keep giving up on my concept of fashion for the tropics, but when I see the dreary state of what's out there, I go back to my sewing machine. 

My love affair with voile started a year ago. My body can't take the restrictions of clothing when the thermometer soars into the eighties and nineties. In desperation I made myself a pair of "bare minimum" shorts in voile. Those shorts are still going strong and the more tattered and torn they get, the more I like them. 

This led me to my tattered and torn dress designs.

 

The above dress was made from scrap pieces of voile that I had used for separating sheets of my hand-made papers. The seams are visible on the outside rather than hidden on the inside.

The dress below was intentionally ripped. Ripped jeans leave me cold, but to my incurably romantic mind a torn dress is appealing. 

Semi-sheer is semi-see-through. If one layer of white voile is set against dark skin you see the silhouette of the figure but not the detail, hence tantalizing!

Because voile is so light it can be a difficult fabric to sew, but I'm getting there.

The clothes we wear, like the houses we live in, the furniture we sit on and the plates we eat off, should represent art in our everyday lives. And the more daringly creative the better.

As I told my daughter, you could have got a father who had spent his life securely sat behind an office desk...and instead you got me!

In Memory of David Curran

 

David Curran, who modelled for the lock-keeper in my award winning sculpture for the town of Sowerby Bridge, died recently of cancer. In the above picture of the unveiling David is the one in front wearing the red neck tie. He was the very best of models and I have fond memories of our time together. 

My stories of his time modelling are classics.

For the initial nude figure David posed in my unheated cavernous studio in the dead of winter. He never complained but one day admitted that it was a bit cold. And no wonder! A window had blown open and a gale of wind was sending snow flurries onto the modelling stand.

At the beginning of one week's modelling I made coloured chalk marks on his ample belly to aid my measurements. On Friday he asked if I'd be needing the reference points the following week. I told him no, I only needed them for the one day. Why do you ask? Well Rog, I could do with a bath.

At one stage his doctor said he to needed to perform minor surgery to remove his belly button. David asked the doctor if he'd ever consider robbing Noami Campbell of her belly button. The doctor said that was different, she's a model. David's response was, and so am I.

A few days after the unveiling he came to ask for a bucket of water. He said a pigeon had shit on him. It took me a while to realise that he was referring to the sculpture.

Dave once told me that working with me was the best job he ever had. I can truly say, likewise.

David, death cannot take you away. Your sculpture will forever remain in Sowerby Bridge. 

And they all look the same

The Caribbean is not immune from the blight of little boxes that Pete Seeger sang about in the 1960's.

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes all the same...

The ticky tacky now includes plastic doors and windows and the little boxes extend to food kiosks alongside the city of Roseau's riverside in my island of Dominica.

By way of contrast below is my painting of Roseau's Old Market Place. 

In terms of housing, let me hasten to add that Dominica recently suffered two devastating natural disasters. Many lives were lost and 80% of the island's buildings and infrastructure severely damaged. As a matter of urgency it was necessary for the Government to rebuild. The "expertise" for this huge undertaking was trusted to overseas sources and led to the transplanting of a foreign concept of community, housing and infrastructure. 

My book Townscapes delves deeper into my concern for the identity of places.

The beauty of the plaster cast

Reflections

After the life of the initial clay sketch the intermediate plaster cast is invariably a disappointment. It takes the sheen of bronze cast to bring back the vibrancy of the original. 

But given time, as in the case of Reflections, the plaster cast develops a restrained patina and beauty of its own. The same is true of its accompanying sculpture You Must Believe in Spring. Both were commissioned for a new NHS hospital in the North of England.

You Must Believe in Spring

You can learn about the uproar that these innocent figures caused with the hospital's trustees in my book Notes on the Nude.