ARTISTS TALKING

# 16 [9 October 2009]

Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser

Tomorrow (Saturday 10 October) we are running a day of drawing activities as part of The Big Draw. This is always slightly nerve wracking beforehand as it's impossible to know how many people will drop in. However it is always fun to actually carry out. Our theme this year is Looking from Another Point of View and our artist in residence, Louise Nason will be encouraging participants  to look through viewfinders and magnifying glasses, look round things and under things to see things in a different way. Much of her project here at St George's has been inspired by the textures, colours and details of this old church building so we will see what our visitors make of it in their turn.

# 15 [8 October 2009]

Louise Nason Artist in residence.

Monday 5th October.

An interesting day at the church. Three visitors. The first was the piano tuner. I haven’t before sat in the church and heard live music. It wasn’t music as such just notes, but it was interesting to hear the acoustic qualities of the church.

The second visitor was a student from my old university. She was basing her own work on an abbey and looking at light and shadows. It was interesting to hear of another weaver's ideas.

The third was a artist who is also an artist in residence so it was good to hear of her experiences, she got me thinking about bringing my work to an audience instead of trying to get people to walk into an unknown building. We also talked about St Georges being the next art centre and following along the lines of ‘Fabrica’ and ‘Aspex’. 

# 14 [29 September 2009]

Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser

Reading Louise's last post here I think she is underselling herself. On Monday I visited the studio to chat to her about activities and materials for the upcoming Big Draw and while I was there one of the teachers from the school where Louise's most recent workshops had been held, came in enthusing about them and asking for more involvement with this and future projects. All the feedback has been extremely positive. However there is no doubt that running workshops for children or even the general public is very different from running what might be called masterclasses where the participants already have a high level of interest and or skill. Perhaps that is one of the useful things about the residency; it gives a framework to the project with the opportunity of testing various ways of engaging with audiences and gaining experience. 

# 13 [28 September 2009]

This last few weeks have been taken over with personal events and so I have only just today finished threading the heddles of the loom. I hope that now I can start to make progress and move forward.

Last week I also taught two workshops in schools. Both of which had some positive results and feedback. Teaching a workshop as part of a class activity it is quite different to teaching workshops I have taught at St George's partly because of working with larger groups but also the teachers are still very much in command of the class. However I enjoyed imparting my skills to eager children.

# 12 [16 September 2009]

Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser, St George's Arts

While Louise's residency has been the main focus of our attention we have also been looking at our future plans as an arts organisation. Over the last few months we have been researching other organisations that have something in common with our own; whether it is being based in a heritage building / redundant church or perhaps having as we do a programme which is based round a residency. This has lead to all sorts of interesting conversations, some quite bizarre. I'm thinking here of one in particular when I visited Fabrica with the Chair of our 'Friends' group to assess, of all things, their kitchen! We have a potentially useful but undeveloped sideline as a venue for events like wedding receptions and I wanted to show her that you don't need the most up-to-date kitchen to make this sort of thing work. There have also been a series of very useful meetings with Jim Shea from Shea Debnam Associates to help us form a strategy for a sustainable future. Of course this particular year is maybe not the one to have chosen to have ambitious plans so we might take things a little slower than originally envisaged.

# 11 [15 September 2009]

Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser, St George's Arts

In the next few weeks Louise will be running several of her community outreach days and will be visiting schools and day centres aiming to involve local people in her project. This is also the lead up to a 'Work in Progress' exhibition at St George's Arts and The Big Draw. After this (very busy period) until January she will have a much calmer time to work on her final piece. It has been very interesting watching her initial ideas growing and changing during the residency and we are very excited to see her final response to the colours and light of the spaces at St George's. Her previous work has often been extremely delicate and fine but working at St George's she has been experimenting with a more substantial linen yarn and concentrating on structure. The time consuming and repetitive nature of the work chimes with the enduring atmosphere of the building and it seems rather appropriate that her last outreach in November will be a one day workshop on natural dyes, making use of the types of pigments that would have been used when the building that houses the residency was new.

# 10 [10 September 2009]

Winding of the warp.

This week I have really begun to appreciate all the knowledge that our technicians gave us at uni  (University for the creative arts Farnham) in the textiles department. Now that I am struggling to wind a large warp.

When you wind a warp on to a loom you have to make sure all the threads are wound at the same tension very tight, and that the threads are evenly spaced. You do this by running it through a raddle. Which is like a big wooden toothed comb.

 The linen am using is unruly compared to the cotton I usually use as a warp yarn. The linen is heavy and hard to grip onto without getting red hands as the linen fibres are much courser.

When I wound the warp last night I needed two people pulling the warp very tight at the front of the loom. Wailst I wound the warp at the back checking the tention was even.

It is now ready for me to thread. I have also added some shafts to my loom so now I am weaving on eight this should mean that the linen is spaced out more the new raddle I have bought should also help the linen run smoothly.

# 9 [17 August 2009]

Over the last two weeks I have been preparing to teachsummer holiday workshops for children. Having done two now I feel I have a formula that is working, but I have found you can't plan for all eventualities and each child you work with is very individual. It seems it doesn't really matter about their age to whether they can understand how to card weave, Its more to do with intuition, as I had some six year olds pick up the activities quicker than a eleven year old.

D.I.Y weekend.

I am now starting a larger production piece. This week I took a delivery of a kg of unbleached linen yarn. I have started to wind a warp. Although I have found scaling up the project makes all the processes slightly harder. This weekend I had to fashion a cone/yarn holder so that the reels of linen would wind around easier whilst I wind my warp. A piece of wood from the neighbours skip (thank you!) and a broom stick did the trick.

# 8 [29 July 2009]

This week has been quite busy already. On Monday I held a workshop for a group of embroiderer's who were interested to here about me, my work and my inspirations. It was lovely to talk to a group of people who understand the time it take to produce a piece of work by hand and they were appreciative of my skills.

The group also made a contribution to the community warp. By weaving sample structures on the table loom. I am trying to encourage all visitor to add to this piece of weaving to create one long piece of work that shows everyones individuality.

If you want to join in the community warp and come and have a go at weaving on a table loom. Visit St Georges Church in Esher surrey on a Monday between 10 and 4pm for more information google St George's arts esher.

Richard Long Exhibition Tate Britain.

Today I visited the Richard Long exhibition. I have always been interested in his work and the way he uses the landscape as his studio.

One of my favorite pieces was the mud drawing he had done using Cornwall china chalk. It had a lovely sense of energy at the same time as being peaceful. The splashes looked like rain falling.

Because of my own interests in site-specific work I was interested to read that although Richard Long's piece are usually made to fit their first venue in terms of scale the work can be re-made in another space and place but the work my be placed in a different place within the work.

I left the exhibition feeling inspired to work on a larger scale and also to think about the way I record my workings. 

# 7 [22 July 2009]

Louise Nason Artist in residence.

Well I have been weaving my new warp for a while now. It is slow going as its a double cloth. I want to persevere with it as its good to have a decent sized sample to reference to. The weaving has been very physical though. As I weaving on a hand loom the weight I lift when pressing peddles it rather heavy and for some reason this structure has made things harder. I have actually found that I come away with aching legs and back at the end of a day! So this week I have been breaking up the weaving with some sewing. I am trying to constructed my weaving ideas in canvas first to give a mock up of a shape or pattern. I shall weave on and let you know if the aches and pains have been worth it.