Back in the Studio

After a five year break I am back in the textile studio. I am taking a creative development course at Studio Eleven in Eastbourne. The course is on one Friday per month which fits in well with my day job.

During my first session I dyed fabric in Opal Fruit (they’re called Starburst now, must keep up!) colours for a piece that I am starting called The Daughters of Zelophehad.

I heard, the comedian, Bob Mortimer say on a podcast recently that everyone should go to art school, that everyone he related to had been to art school. This idea has been rolling around my mind. After being told my work was not good enough to take O-level art at school I took non-art subjects. I particularly loved geography, something which came back to me with full force recently when I was privileged to go hiking in Tasmania. I appreciated the stunning landscape and my guide’s geological explanations.

As I want to do some more representational work I am drawing for the first time as an adult. Words from many years ago are recalcitrant though and I’ve thought since then that I was unable to draw. My current teacher believes that drawing is a teachable skill which improves with practice. The five minute drawings that I am doing now are not good or bad they are observations.

In my second session I painted and printed the Opal Fruit/Starburst fabric with procion dye. We had a really interesting discussion about copying. If someone has developed process over a long period of experimentation how do we respond when someone copies that work or is it the case that there is nothing new under the sun and all ideas are up for grabs?