Threads of Moirai: 13-23 March Castlemaine State Festival 2015

Since moving to Castlemaine I've come together with a bunch of talented local textile artists and started a textile collective, check out the Cobolt Textile Collective here. Our first group exhibition has just opened as part of the Castlemaine State Festival 2015. If you happen to be in the area, come to our opening party on the 17th March, invite below. 

For the exhibition I've been enjoying experimenting with finer-than-thread metallic yarns, degumming and spinning wild silk cocoons and getting Victorian silk spindles made for me as part of my piece. It's always amazing how much you learn from devising and executing any art project. This steep learning curve is the thrill of making art.

In response to our theme on the Greek Myth about the Three Fates: Namely Clotho, spinner of the thread of life, Lachesis the one who allots the length of that thread, and Atropos who severs the thread; I started to knit cocoons. I was inspired by the Urodid Moth Cocoon which is an amazing piece of natural architecture found in the Amazon - see it here.  My knitted cocoons attempt to take the form of this beautiful cocoon. They are knit on tiny double pointed needles in stainless steel and silk/wool yarns and linen/copper yarns. These fibres have a memory so that they will hold a 3D form, they are super fine and presented a few challenges in the knitting. 

This little one is knit in a superfine copper filament. It's almost invisible in some lighting. 

Enclosed within my knitted cocoons is the real spent cocoon of the Cricula Silk Moth, a wild silk moth cocoon from Indonesia. 

I eventually managed to de-gum these cocoons in order to spin them into silk which was quite a tricky process, not much information available online on degumming wild silk cocoons but I had success with a little tiny bit of caustic soda and washing soda in water.  I had a local Master turner make me these wonderful Victorian Silk Spindles which were a pleasure to whirl on. 

The cocoons hang from a flat handstitched circle of pressed Cricula silk cocoons.

Here I am ironing and stitching these together over the course of a day. The golden cocoons are a wonder to work with and the spun fibres shimmer with natural golden threads.

And if you're wondering how they take their shape after coming off the knitting needles, there's a little final magic with a balloon which is quite fun to do.

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The show is on until the 23rd of March. Shed 5. Castlemaine Woollen Mills, 1 Walker Street, Castlemaine.

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Check out the wonderful work of my fellow textilers in the

Cobolt Textile Collective at www.co-bolt-textiles.com

How to photograph your work using your phone & the Lightcase

Things have been busy here, my partner (tile designer extraordinaire Dominic Crinson) and I have been developing something for designer-makers that is going to make photographing small things super easy. It's called the Lightcase and we think it is brilliant! We've been working our precious prototype taking it to makers' studios and it's working a treat. It's basically a pop up photo studio, it's portable and low tech but creates a beautifully well lit space for photographing smaller things. It folds down into a nifty A4 folder and comes with three photographic backdrops - frosted, white and black...

The Lightcase basically came out of a need we both had to take great photos of the things we make for selling and marketing online. We do have a really good Digital SLR but for photographing the little things, getting all that equipment out and setting up a makeshift white backdrop and good lighting all just seemed overkill. We wanted to find a simpler way and so the Lightcase was born! It's made from Polypropylene and it works so well and it's so durable. I just love the way it pops up into a mini photo studio so you can take it to where ever you have the best light available and quickly document your product from a few different angles and upload to Etsy, Folksy, Made-it or whatever e-marketplace you might be using to sell or promote your work.

Here I'm photographing my products from the front with the white backdrop that comes with the Lightcase.

You can also photograph objects from above by placing your phone on top and aligning the lens with the hole in the top of the Lightcase. That way the Lightcase acts as a sort of tripod and you can get really sharp pics of smaller things from above. For taking pics from above you'd place the backdrop in flat as shown below...

What is great is that you don't even need a huge amount of light, the white material kind of captures the available light and traps it there and your phone camera does the rest! Smartphone cameras are pretty amazing these days and this suits me as I'd rather not get too technical, I just want to get good pics and get back to doing what I love best and that's making.

We really believe this is going to be a great tool for other crafters & designer-makers out there. We've even had a few other unexpected Lightcase enthusiasts like Warhammer miniature model makers and teachers who need to document student coursework. There are so many people who could use the Lightcase.

We're going to launch the concept on Kickstarter on the 1st April 2014 and if we can get it funded we can get the tooling done for the first production run of the Lightcase and get it out there for you all. It's going to be really affordable at about 22 pounds or around 35 US/AUS dollars... So stay tuned and if you like the idea go onto Lightcase on facebook and please do share it with anyone you know who could use one too. If you have any feedback at this stage, we'd love to hear your thoughts so leave a comment below.

Kickstarter Campaign Launch Monday 31st March 2014
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/640799395/660666627?token=35353fb9

Like the Lightcase on Facebook to keep up with the campaign

Also www.lightcase.co.uk

Textures

Just catching up on some of my favourite artist's blogs (Sophie Munns & Kathryn Clark)  and was really taken with the beautiful painterly quality of these two works that were brought to my attention.

white rag quilt by Barbara Wisnoski

This beautiful pieced quilt by Barbara Wisnoski is made up of hundreds of tiny fragments sewn together in a method she describes as "Happily freed from precision, this is cutting and sewing as mantra, as pure, riotous activity." This idea is incredibly comforting, to be freed from precision, from the fear that everything must be precise to be of value, to put aside doubt and just be present in the doing. Barbara's work has also really validated my inability to throw away even the tiniest piece of fabric.

07-D122 by Chun Kwang Young

The other artist I came across was a Korean artist Chun Kwang Young who wraps tiny blocks of foam in mulberry paper and creates these incredibly intricate works that resemble by their micro geometry a kind of 3D matrix over a landscape. I find a lot of similarity in their works and their methodology. I love the way they have built up of layers in an informal grid to create such a beautifully ornate yet, from a distance, visually simple aerial landscape.