Hello and welcome to my world of collecting, creating and sharing stories.
I collect objects, paper, packaging and ephemera along with a plethora of related stories some true and some imagined narrative. My art practice is about documenting, recording, collecting and sharing these stories through drawing, making paper and creating artist’s books. If you enjoy what you see here I would love to stay in touch with you. I endeavour to share a monthly newsletter about what I have been making and doing along with sharing about any courses or fairs I am involved in. There may be a few hints and tips along the way and definitely copious amounts of colourful inspiring images. If that appeals to you please sign up below and I will look forward to being in touch soon.
Have a look at my Linktree to see where else you can find me:
I am delighted to have been invited along for a virtual chat with Tara Axford on behalf of Fibre Arts Takes Two. If you don’t know them yet it is worth popping over to find them on YouTube to be inspired. There are over 80 conversations with all sorts of creative people about their process. I recommend following both of them over on instagram too.
This friday I will be live in the morning at 9am Central European time on their YouTube channel. When you are on the page go to the ‘Live’ section. Tune in, I would love some company if you are free! We will be talking about my work, and process especially papermaking and artists books. Particularly the journey of my process over the last three years.
There will be discussion about creating in small spaces. Along with the topic of using waste products from everyday life in our process to help us creatively, to be kinder to our planet and our budget. Ask me questions by popping them in the chat during the interview and Tara will pass them on to me during the last section of the time. I am really looking forward to this opportunity to share a little bit of my world with you!
Over the last few weeks I’ve been putting together some ideas for courses that I will be launching over the next few months.
These will include paper making, various book binding lessons and some meditative mark making sessions. But the first of these online sessions will be over the course of a weekend in the form of a making retreat. It will be entirely via zoom so you can join in from wherever you are. It will be live so those of you outside Europe will need to check your times to see how it fits with you! All the details are on my eventbrite page.
My plan is to enable each of those participating to put aside a weekend just for themselves to be creative.
It has been designed so you can enjoy making with some company and maybe discover some knew skills in the process. I recognise that allowing ourselves an entire weekend for this is a luxury but I think you are most definitely worth it. I will lead four workshops during the weekend in a very relaxed manner to give you space to explore. There will be plenty of time to go away and make on your own and some prompts available if you don’t find that all that easy to do. On the Sunday I will spend some time one to one with each of the participants to chat about what they are making and give some hints and tips, or just chat about the weather over a cuppa! Finally I will be sending out a little package of bits and pieces, including some of my handmade papers for you to play with too. I would love for you to join me. The first date is very soon 18th – 20th June and the second opportunity to join is 16th – 18th July both weekends will follow the same pattern.
So if you would be interested to make some marks with me that can become a range of beautiful artist’s books and keepsakes then book your ticket soon! There are only ten places available for each weekend so we can get to know each other and I can spend some time with each of you properly. If you are interested in being the first to hear about courses and other opportunities in the future then please sign up for my newsletter in the post above.
I am so looking forward to meeting some of you very soon!
If you have been following me through this last year of lockdown you will see that recycling the everyday left overs has slowly become an even bigger part of my practice. This began through necessity but now is just an utter delight to take the ordinary and elevate it to something else.
Predominantly this has happened through paper making which you can see more about specifically here. But I realised it was well and truly time to share some of the books that have come from all this papermaking. I will add, I am still very much in the exploratory stages of this adventure with the papers to see what they are capable of and how light fast the colours are, so I am armed with knowledge for future projects. It has so far been a very rewarding process and a little bit like playing with magic. I am known now for not throwing anything away but squirrelling everything away just in case! My recycling bins have definitly had much less use in recent times.
Those of you who have been following my work for a while will probably already know about the #areyoubookenough challenge I take part in each month over on instagram.
Those of you who don’t it is a challenge created by Sarah Mottaghinejad from Editions Studios in Seattle where we are given a word to respond to in the form of some kind of book. I have been taking part for a year now and found it the most rewarding community and challenge to be part of. I thought I would catch you up on one or two of my submissions from the last few months…
Machine
For this one I thought about the fact that a machine needs instructions of some kind to work. So I made an instruction manual about how to make a book from used tea bags. I chose the tea bags because they are also machine made (and I drink copious amounts of tea so have plenty to hand!). I made the books using a sewing machine and covered the box that houses it all with pages from an Italian book about mechanics.
Break
This book was made as a memory of a time after my dad had died when I would walk on the beach every day to find space to try and process my thoughts and feelings about what had happened. I started collecting shells on these trips without thinking about it. At some later date I realised that I was drawn to spiral shells that were broken open to reveal the inner workings. I found them so much more interesting than the intact ones. I recognised through this action of collecting that I was a bit broken open because of my experiences but that was ok and actually in some ways made me stronger and gave me a new dimension. My strength was visible not hidden away under a perfect surface. This time I collected snail shells from the garden and broke them so I could draw the shapes inside and the fragments left after they were broken open. The book is a decreasing spiral to echo the imagery inside. I used one of the shells as a clasp to keep the band around the book tight to protect what was inside. The words are random finds from an old book about sculpture.
Human
When I first thought about the word human I immediately thought of the phrase ‘the ties that bind us’. This led to thinking about how we are so much stronger when we all join together and head in the same direction. So for this piece I used a left over scrap of material and spent hours sewing by hand lines of running stitch along the length of the material. I used every colour I had and because of the hand stitching each stitch is different. It represents us as humans and the diversity on our planet and celebrates that. The piece of fabric becomes very strong because of all the layers of stitching. It is wound round an old bobbin which represents the planet we inhabit. Again I used found text from old books to piece together some words to accompany the book/scroll.
If you are interested to see more of my creations for this challenge head over to my instagram page via the link at the top. This months word is ‘recycle’ if anyone fancies a challenge!
The end of August and first couple of weeks of September saw me in Sheffield moving my studio space to its more permanent home.
It is housed in the former Bank Street Arts building in Sheffield city centre and gave me a brilliant, if exhausting, opportunity to sort everything within an inch of its life! I just thought you might like to see where some of the magic happens in my happy place…
One of the things that struck me most during my time in Iceland was the colour palette, both in the natural and those made by human choice. I’m really not sure what I expected, maybe my previous visual experiences of the country had all been Iceland in winter dark earth covered by a deep layer of crisp white snow, I’m not sure. But the sheer intensity in the range of colour reached another level entirely and provided a feast for my eyes. These quick watercolour sketches are a small sample of my subsequent experiments with the landscape I experienced.
The luminosity of colour struck me so much, maybe it is the big skies, or long days of sunlight but there is a feeling of being on top of the world. For me my choice of translucent watercolour on brilliant white paper go a tiny way towards capturing this experience and feeling. I am not sure where this will lead but I am enjoying the journey!
Wherever I travel I will always gravitate towards flea markets or charity shops. Part of my practice is the searching out of photographs, postcards, stamps, documents and books from the place I am visiting then I will expolore the history of what I find. Iceland was no exception.Reykjavik has a flea market in the old Harbour close to where I was staying. A couple of hours rumaging brough up some proper treasures. This particular book began with a black and white cigarette card of a place called Siglufjörður. It is the most northern town in Iceland and also the name of the northern coastline.
I drew a map of Iceland and used a zine fold to fold it down to the size of the picture card and stitched the card on the front and a description on the back. The envelope case came from a first day cover from the flea market too.
Amazingly with all that’s going on in the world I had the opportunity to go to Iceland. I got to stay in a flat underneath a little museum in the old harbour area of Reykjavik for a couple of weeks to explore, draw and make some books. I explored outside of Reykjavik a bit and the thing that struck me the most was the colour. There is so much colour everywhere from houses to landscape. I have so enjoyed soaking up these colours partly because they are so different to home. Will post later some of my watercolour experiments. For now these two books were made from pages of Icelandic poetry, abstract marks using colours I’d seen on my road trips and a paper bag from a very good bread shop (I am going on my friends say so here as I am coeliac and couldn’t try any, although the smell was amazing!) So here they are my little nod to ‘A Sense of Place’ in Iceland.
During this period of lockdown I have been making sketchbooks. At first it was because the shops were shut and money was scarce but now it is mostly because I enjoy the making process, love the outcome and can make them exactly tailored to my needs. I thought I would take you through the process of one of the designs to hopefully inspire making in others.
good quality magazine paper
matt white paint (acrylic, gouach or emulsion)
paint brush
card for covers
awl (or hammer and nail)
waxed thread
needle
cutting mat
scalpel
button
tracing paper (optional)
clips to secure the paper
I have been using pages from an Italian architecture magazine I got for free from a book swap near where I am staying, the paper is a good thickness and strength so can take lots of playing with. First of all I painted each of the pages on both sides with a matt acrylic white paint. When they are completely dry fold in half and trim to whatever size you require. Collect together into three signatures. With this batch of paper I made a squarish sketchbook and then a landscape one with the off cuts.
Next take your card (I have used two old school folders stuck together with double sided tape to make it thicker and two coloured) measure and cut your cover leaving extra either end to fold in at the end of the process to create a box cover. Make sure to leave a section in the middle which will be your spine, score either side of the spine and make folds. Measure and mark where you would like holes for stitching up the centre of one signature then use that as a template for the others and the cover. With your awl make holes in the paper ready for stitching. Take one signature and clip in the centre of your cover making sure the row of stitching will be up the middle of your spine. With your needle and thread start in the inside centre and use a running stitch first up to the top then back down to the bottom and back up to the centre where you can tie the thread securely. Trim the ends. For the second signature place it close to one side of the one you have already stitched and clip in place. With your awl make the holes through the signature and into the cover. Stitch using the same process as before. Repeat the whole process a third time on the other side of the first signature then you should have three lines of stitching down the spine of your cover.
The next job is to fold the ends. This is entirely up to you how you configure it. You could just simply cut them off altogether or, as I prefer score the folds to make a neat box shape which protects your precious scribbling inside. For this one I have stitched on a button for a fastening but you could simply have a length of ribbon or string that wraps around the book or anything else you fancy. A little extra touch I do is to round off the corners which really pleases me but thats completely to taste (and I have a corner rounder which makes it easy!)
As an added extra I use tracing paper for some extra layers throughout the sketchbook but also to create a pocket at the end. I am notorious for collecting ephemera wherever I go so pockets in sketchbooks are essential for me. All you need to do is fold some paper in half and half again. Stitch in wherever you like with the fold at the bottom so all you need to do is add a line of stitch (I use a sewing machine for this bit) hey presto a pocket. Of course you don’t have to use a tracing paper but I like to be able to see what is in there!
I wish you some happy hours of making something exclusively tailored to your own needs and I’m sure you can come up with some other extras that suit your practice. These little beauties will be coming with me to Iceland next week as I have been blessed with two weeks of drawing time there and I am very excited! Will keep you posted on what comes out of that as I go…
