Harvesting

Autumn's toes are getting chilly now. The fine ladies of this town are sacrificing hair for hat. The mornings are beautiful when at last they open their eyes to us.

And the colours bring joy enough to see us through to the other side.

In our school playground, apples patiently queue in an admirably English manner. Some have arrived in such number they burst from every door of a car; others are nestled in a basket with just a few friends.

All are destined to be pressed. Here Yuli Somme, felter extraordinaire and creator of the most beautiful natural woolen shrouds, blithely ignores the instructions written on the funnel - with no unfortunate consequences.

The resultant mush is packed in a stack of gridded tins lined with muslin,

each carefully wrapped,







































then squeezed by young and old working the tightening wheel. The nectar is carefully poured into bottles 

and the leftovers taken away by the firstcomer for excellent composting.

This is our freezer. More is in our fridge. More still is in our systems already, keeping the doctor away, we hope.

Fueled by this seasonal sugar bounty, we have been getting creative. Pickle spent ages using the stick end of the brush to make the most beautiful design of dots and dashes. Them she stuck the brush in the black and covered it all up. I make art because I love the process, but it is awesome to watch Pickle do it with not a scrap of regard for the finished result (or the laundry).

I followed a recipe (almost unheard of) and made perfect playdough. We stuck our fingers deep into it, giggling a bit nervously when we couldn't see them any more. We made rings. We made moons and sausages and a little teacup. Then we squidged it all back into a lump, which was the most fun part.

Other harvests have come our way. Perfect horse mushrooms from fields around an organic farm

and a bumper haul from Chagfood: pumpkins galore plus our regular veg box, and an evening of feasting, fire and Baba Yaga storytelling from Coyopa with musical accompaniment from Rima Staines (who, it turns out, can make an accordion snore!). The children claimed they weren't scared. I can only say they must be fools.

All that has got us in the mood for Hallowe'en tonight. Many years I've celebrated Samhain in a (fairly) serious and sacred way. But this year I'm creating a new ceremony. I'm taking my favourite little witch (seen here flying her broomstick backwards - maybe it's a stunt broom) trick-or-treating.

And if any children come to our door, this is what awaits them:

Happy Hallowe'en and Samhain blessings on you all. Let's make it through!

The story of an imperfect artwork

The other day I was talking to an artist friend about what we do when a piece just doesn't work as we'd planned. Sometimes the deviation from our vision is a wonderful surprise, but here I'm going to talk about those times when the surprise is less than wonderful.

If you've been following this blog, you'll have seen a couple of progress reports on the first of my new Pattern collection for my upcoming exhibition. You'll know how excited I have been to let go of 'what I should be doing' and allow myself to diddle about with felt tip pens doing entirely abstract patterns on tiny canvasses.

Prototype Stage One

I very much enjoyed creating this pattern, and in that sense it has been a success. But, as warned by some of you, the colours have already faded. You can see the beginnings of it here, particularly in the pinks. At this stage 'Pattern One' (of twenty, gulp!) was retitled 'Prototype'. Obviously a fading piece would not be good enough to exhibit or sell.

Prototype Stage Two

At this stage it may have been prudent to stop work, but I know from experience that the trickinesses experienced at the beginning of a piece are often different to those encountered at the end, so I continued in the spirit of experimentation. 

I relearned some of what I used to know about felt tips: how individual pens need different pressures and angles to get the same result; how the colours can bleed and mix; how the texture of the surface influences the final appearance. And a lot of that I can make use of when I begin the real Pattern One with my lovely Faber Castell Artist Brush Pens which will NOT fade :o).

Prototype Stage Three

By Stage Three you can clearly see the fading. Compare the blues. And the red (below) has disappeared! But also I could see how much I liked the idea; I was buzzing with multiple variation possibilities as I coloured and that alone makes this exercise worth the time and squinting.

Finished Prototype

So, did I create art good enough to exhibit? No.

Was it what I wanted? Not entirely, no.

Has it been a necessary stage in creating fabulous, quality works I can sell? Very possibly.

A final thought: After I'd finished this and lined up all my progress shots, I started wondering about the lovely shapes more obvious in the incomplete canvasses. So, not only has the process taught me a lot about how to create the finished piece I want; I also realise I need to reassess when each piece is finished and that photographing my work is a useful way of getting that perspective.

Do you make prototypes of new forms?

And how is it when you're less than thrilled with your work?