Try something different even if you don’t think it will work.
This is a favourite quote I have hanging to inspire me to experiment with different mediums and ways of working and even though it may take some extra effort to make it work, the fun is in the creating of solutions to the problems I encounter with the unfamiliar. My way of working is having a direction often inspired by something I have or encounter.
For this piece that was where I started, rummaging around in old bits of perspex, things I have made, collected, just have lying around waiting for a moment where they find their place, their destiny. I am a maximalist, a magpie I always have been, I look at something and think it will be useful or come in handy and often it does. May take years but it does find its place eventually.
Below is a visual journey of the piece, at a certain point I found these little blue plastic books so they landed on shelves and my shelves are always full of curiosities so out came these pieces that a metal detectorist had found, tubes I had made stuffed with materials and threads from things I have sewn in the past. Some pieces I had experimented with gelli plate on tissue paper that were then glued to acrylic plate. An old tube from a radio I think. Have a look and see what you can discover, the fun is in the looking and discovering and how they somehow connect.
Showing the piece from different angles as it isn’t flat it has depth, little shelves and things raised in bubbles and spirals.
Somewhere at the beginning
Building the shelving
Showing it from different angles
Another part from an angle
I haven’t done an assemblage piece before but I love the transparency of the perpex and the way the light falls.This piece has been built up over many months, I would come across something in a box and incorporate it into the piece and let the inspiration of finding and placing things happen spontaneously.
I have been working on a large piece for several years that is all hand sewing, using the same principles and inspiration but through applique and embroidery. So this was a way to do something in other materials but still keeping to found objects plus it was nice to focus on something else anentirely different way of making. Sewing for me is slow art I like to take my time and is very focussed and this was fun to do and more immediate even though eventually it took quite some time too.
Completed piece below called “The Revival” March 2025
