Struggles

My darling girl is going through a difficult time at the moment, so needing lots of support and help with life while she is signed off work. This of course means that creative pursuits tend to take a back seat, though we do sit and stitch/crochet together in the evenings. We've spent the past week cleaning her flat, which she and her husband haven't really lived in for the past three years for reasons that would take far too long to explain. Her Dad has been living there however (again for reasons that …..), and so the place is reminiscent of student digs crossed with an ageing hippy bachelor pad. Much floor sweeping, several packs of anti bacterial wipes and liberal amounts of hot soapy water have helped bring the flat back to a habitable (by normal humans) state, along with an entire afternoon (and almost a whole can of oven cleaner) just to make the oven useable again. The plan is that, once she feels on a more even keel, she will move back into the flat and, hopefully, her Dad will learn a bit more domesticity. Her husband should be able to rejoin her in December, but at least she will be there to get things back to normal again for them before he arrives, and negotiate the domestic routines with her Dad who will remain there for the time being.

All this activity meant that I missed two sessions with Christine at Studio 11. However, I had forgotten I'd put my name down for a catch up session yesterday. As Jen is feeling a bit better, I toddled off to Eastbourne with a box of "stuff" in my boot to have my first session in the Poetry of Decay class that Christine is running this year. She has taught this several times before as a stand alone workshop over several days, and will be doing so again in Italy this October, but she is also teaching it as a one day a month class at Studio 11.

So, having gathered together mark making tools, tissue and other papers, and the aforementioned stuff, along with 100 6x4 pieces of weighty cartridge paper and six photos for inspiration, I spent the day yesterday working on 50 of the cards with:

white primer manipulated with mark making tools to add texture;

matte medium (similar to PVA glue) with various things scrumpled, crumpled and otherwise stuck onto the card;

distorting the card itself by folding, scrumpling and distressing or embossing in various different ways.

I came home with a stack of 50, 50 more to go.

The next stage is to add layers of colour with various media; walnut ink, rust powder, oil pastel, dyes, to evoke aspects of decay, using our photos as starting points. As with the Eszter course, I am rather outside my comfort zone, I've not done a great deal of mixed media work in the past, being rather a "cloth and thread purist", but I really enjoyed just messing about with sqidgy, scrumply, sploodgy stuff yesterday and am really looking forward to the next stage. Another student who is on the same course was also doing a catch up, but of day two, so I know what to expect - it looks like great fun.

And the photos I took for inspiration? I couldn't decide on six so there are twelve - here they are

Rusty bolts hold sea defences together

The wall in Hastings underground car park. Built by Sidney Little and completed in 1931 it was the worlds first large scale underground car park

 Rusting structures at the end of Eastbourne Pier

Lichen on wood

Patterns of rust on Hastings seafront

ancient decay in Istanbul

barnacles clinging to sea defences

more sea derived rust

some Lake District mushrooms

a Venetian door

and Bhutanese rooves