knife

A drawing in pencil of a knife. I am collecting more knives for casting in lead.

Inheritance

Images of the piece on display for RCA Show 2012 (open until next Sunday -1st July) along with the etchings.

etchings

Cast iron box. I'm reading Freud's "Family Romances" and still thinking about heirlooms, unwanted traits and burdens.

necklaces

Drawings of necklaces. Graphite on paper. Exploring ideas of heirlooms and familial relationships.

Table clothes

An image of an older piece of work recently re-displayed in the Hockey Gallery.

new work

Lead pieces which will be on display in the Interim Show. On from 12th-18th January.

Curses

I am making a series of brooches, un-wearable and cast in lead.

They are a group or part of a collection and they speak of Roman lead curses, lead votive pilgrim badges, war won (war worn) medals, souvenirs and mementoes. As amulets for modern living or literal burdens to be worn and carried about. I am thinking about invested objects and their verisimilitude.

Lead with its connotations of the industrial, the poisonous and toxic, and its weightiness; and brooches, too, with their history of being pretty, decorative and way of marking out the wearer

I am using traditional casting methods with cuttlefish bones and silicon whose transparent supple skin yields hard metal shapes.

The lead will be made precious with additions of pearls and coral; coral with its supposed ability to keep away the evil eye and its associations of ‘life blood’.

Blanket, cotton bandage, soft woollen fabric or silk might be attached. Silk for striped medal ribbons. I like the mixture of textures and there is already something soft about lead.

Ectoplasm handkerchiefs.

These are 3 images of new work about ectoplasm and séances.

Some collages inspired by the use of arsenic in Victorian wallpaper for a project to design wallpaper. Eventually the collages will be put into a repeat and used as a pattern.

These are some images from recent work in progress. I was looking at the innate human ability to read meaning into shapes and dreams. I was also thinking about Rorschach's inkblots, phantom limbs and ideas of votive objects. I sent out the second image for people's responses and I'm going to work with the list that resulted. Thanks to everyone who responded with their thoughts and associations.

Work in Progress show

Images from the RCA Work in Progress show. The tears are part of the work on mourning. The 3 collages are something I'm still working on to do with sleeves.

tears

Tear drops to continue the theme of mourning. They'll be exhibited at the college Work in Progress show next week (13th-19th January).

gloves

My first attempt at screen printing. The image is to tie in with some work I'm doing at the moment about sleeves and gloves.

mourning badge

This is the result of a project at the Victoria & Albert Museum where we had to choose an item from the collection and research and re-interpret it. I chose a piece of black dress silk (for mourning use) and this badge was my initial re-interpretation of it. I am continuing to explore the theme of mourning in greater depth.

colour project

These are the results of a colour project set for the second week of term. I chose the colours quite instinctively and presented them like aura photography. Once each piece was finished I became interested in the backs of the postcards.

summer project

Two pages from the 'Who Am I?" summer project I was set before the course started last week. I looked at schoolgirl samplers, mainly from Ackworth School, which seemed suitable as I was returning to "school". I was interested in the lack of identity displayed in the samplers. Often they only give a name and birthday and feature initials and motifs of birds, flowers and houses. I chose some of these to give clues about myself without giving much away.

sewn photographs (beards)

This was a piece playing with notions of masculinity and femininity by creating something masculine (beards) out of something feminine (embroidery). I also had an idea of making them all look like Freud or archetypal psychoanalysts, in the back of my mind.

sewn photographs (lips)

Here I liked the play between the stitching looking like lipstick and sealing the mouths shut. I was referring to womens' historical lack of voice (politically and socially) and aphonia (loss of speech) due to hysteria, as described in Freud's case of 'Dora'. I was also reading about the psychological states of mind of women conforming to social demands (here illustrated by wearing lipstick) and how the apparent conformist act of embroidery helped them find ways to rebel.