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Wow, what a difference colour makes!
I recently posted a couple of photograms that I’d started with my AA2A research.So, I did a couple of sessions in black and white before Chris, the technician showed me how to do colour printing (well, technically, didn’t show me, as unlike with B&W where you can expose and print using the red safe-light, with colour you have to work in complete darkness as anything you can see, the paper can see. As you can imagine, its not exactly easy lining stuff up, fumbling around and getting the exposed paper into the print developer doodah thingy, which has to be the right way up….
I’ve absolutely loved exploring the photo-grams, and really wish I could do more. Have so many ideas on how it could be expanded further, by using different combinations of glass, whether that be shape, pattern or colour, but also would love to explore scale.
Alas, I ran out of time, and we have our exhibition opening next week, so I’ve had to bite the bullet and work with what I have already got. I won’t show you everything just yet, as there’s an exhibition at the University of Derby for that purpose, but here’s a few of my favourites (including a couple more B&W for interest!)
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Metal Ages…. and it has been ages!!
If there’s an award for bad blogger of the year, I think I would certainly be in the running!There’s been so much going off. In March, Gavin and myself did some workshops in schools – this produced some fantastic work, including glass, metal embossing and casting – hopefully I can show you some of the work at a later point. Who cares about chronological order?I managed to get a few more sessions in at university doing photograms, and I was very sad when this came to an end – I feel like I’ve still got so much more to explore, but I need access to the darkrooms to be able to develop (hahaha) this further. Do you think they’d notice if I just wandered in…. we’ve got the AA2A exhibition soon, I have to be ready by the end of next week.We held the spring Open Studios at Shed 2 as part of Derbyshire Open Arts. I managed to squeeze in a visit to Chelsea 100th Flower Show to help Rachel Carter – unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of chance to look round as it rained. And rained again. And rained some more. You get the idea.However, I was very excited last week that we were able to install the first Metal Ages sculpture at the King George Gallery. That’s the Royal “we” – as in Gavin and his builder dug holes, heaved the thing around, and poured in post-crete, whilst I stood on the side-lines saying left a bit, right a bit and taking photographs.I think it looks amazing. I love the combination of new glass and old metal. I love what Gavin has done with the found objects from the Stanton site, combined with donated tools from our walks and meets we did way back in February and March.Anyway, here it is – the second sculpture should be installed fairly soon, more on that later!An overview – slightly over exposed, but had to show you the beautiful settings:
The beautiful King George Gallery building 
My glass element 
Found metal objects from Stanton Ironworks 
Donated tools from former workers 
The glass set into the Stanton Arrow 
“OLD MEN & PIPES” -
A New Way of Looking at Glass
Last autumn, I got accepted on to the AA2A Scheme at the University of Derby. It’s a residency programme, offered to several practising artists/makers over a range of educational establishments. It’s intended to help take time develop ideas and to offer the opportunity to use facilities we might not usually get access to.I became eligible to apply last year and got accepted for a place on the scheme. Unfortunately, a few things happened in my personal life which meant I struggled to find the time to spend on the project (involvement means spending a certain amount of time on-site and being visible to and accessible for students), but finally about a month ago, I was able to spend a bit of time on it at last.I’d wanted to explore new ways of ‘seeing’ glass, which fascinates me in all forms – not just because of it’s beauty, and it’s odd combination of fragility and strength but in other ways too; technically, it’s an incrediblly versatile material which can be used for an amazing array of applications, and it can look so different – of course, quite often, with glass, it’s about what we can see through it and what can or can’t get through it – heat, light.I used to do a lot of photography and used to enjoy developing my own films and printing from my negatives. Of course with the digital age, I don’t go in the dark room any longer, so having the opportunity to use the facilities at the university was too good to pass up.Glass does funny things to light – you can’t always ‘see’ what it’s doing, but expose traditional photo paper and it reveals where some of that light is actually going (this again appeals to the scientific side of me).Take this image:
Copper wire and glass photogram Remembering that this is photographic paper usually used with a negative – so the dark bits are where all light has got through, the lighter bits are where less has got through (still with me??). Nothing unusual really, this is a round of glass with copper wire wrapped through the middle. Of course, copper wire is solid, opaque, won’t let light through. But those dots? They’re air bubbles. The solid white line around the edge – that’s the curve of the glass. These bubbles and curves are distorting (well, refracting) the light in such a way that it’s not hitting the development paper. I think it’s fascinating.Here’s another one -you’ll probably recognise the style/design, people say it’s very ‘me’ – my textured glass.
Photogram There’s absolutely loads more I’ve done – I spent a couple of sessions simply working out which glass works best, out of the different techniques I use for making – just working in black and white paper is fascinating and has endless options.Just wait until you see what happens in colour… -
More on Metal
Those of you who know me personally will know that there’s been quite a lot of stuff going on in my personal life lately (that may be a bit of an understatement), which has prevented me from spending much time in the studio or on projects.But, as the Metal Age project is on a deadline, I’ve had to pick up the ball again get stuck in.I managed to get along to another one of the Walking for Health sessions, although I didn’t take any photos on the last one, it was far too cold to take the gloves off! And couple of Saturdays ago, we ran the glass inclusions workshop at the Erewash Musuem, it was the first sunny day of the year so we didn’t get lots and lots of visitors – I think people were taking advantage of the first chance to get in the garden. We met a friendly family, where grandad, like a lot of people in Ilkeston, had worked at Stanton at one time; it was great, he had a lot of stories to tell.Gavin and I are now working on the plans for the two sculptures, and for what else will be going in the exhibition. We’ve also been planning the next workshops at King George Gallery in March – we will be working with students from local schools and colleges in the day, and having open drop-in sessions on the Tuesday evenings.I’m still playing catch up, so this is a bit of a post-and-run, but I thought I would show you a few photographs of our site visit – current owners, St Gobain, allowed us access to locked up buildings and the old Stanhope Plant – it was fascinating.I took this photograph after Gavin commented that if you looked down at (extremely thick) layer of black dust on the floor, it was undisturbed apart from our footprints. It was like virgin snow….
Black Virgin Snow Something fascinated me about the chains and hooks that we found lying in trolleys around the place. Not sure this conveys the sheer scale of everything (giant light bulbs, giant oil cans, giant sack trolleys – I felt like one of the Borrowers at times!) – I just liked the pattern of this one:
Dusty Chains And this last photograph, was just a poignant reminder of the busy times that were once Stanton Ironworks – obviously a countdown until the last day in May 2007, that the last pipe rolled out of the plant – it was written on the inside of the one of the maintenance teams lockers.
The Last Post
