Recipe for creating a raised bed for RHS Chelsea:

1. Weld a strong frame of mild steel and paint it black.

2. Weave the outer half of the bed with Black Maul willow

3. Hand the bed to a English Master Florist (Alison Doxey) to fill with succulents, Ivy and Senecio

4. Nestle three Bronze sculptures into the planting

5. Exhibit at Chelsea and win Four Gold Stars from the RHS, yippee!

6. One exhausted but happy artist, thats me.

Chelsea 2014

This year was my fifth exhibition at the RHS Chelsea Flower show, where I displayed my new work, woven Mini Bronze spheres and the new copper Alliums.

The stainless steel frame in the shape of a cocoon and the woven cane being applied with a continuous crochet stitch 

New woven work

Over the last few months I have, as you know, been experimenting with a new material. After putting jot through its paces I came to the conclusion that I could not weave it in the same style as my willow work as it took far too lang to weave even the smallest piece. Threading every length over and over gave it a very flat appearance, thus loosing all its texture, and the finished result was very un-inspiring. The flatness of the weave allowed the frame work within to be visible, which I do not like.

So back to the drawing board.

When ever I become stuck, I tend to leave the sculpture alone and carry on working on a different sculpture. More often than not an idea will form on its own, or working with a different weave will inspire a spark. 

Whilst using a crochet stitch on a woven copper sculpture, it struck me that a crochet stitch could work well with the new material, it could be woven in a continuous length which would speed up the process some what and it may give some depth and texture to the work.

Instead of starting again with the test piece, i decide to jump in with both feet and start working on a commission piece.

Heres the progress so far:

Heres the start of the weaving with the new material, there will be more photos to follow once I’ve completed more weaving.

A new material

As readers of my blog will know my passion is weaving, using materials that have a memory, are flexible and will endure the woven process so I can create geometric shapes as part of my sculptural art work. 

Recently a friend told me of another artist who was closing her studio after thirty years and would I be interested in a job lot of weaving material, she was selling everything to fund moving house. I had not previously used this material but wanted to help out a fellow artist, so said yes.

The material that arrived was not like any I had used before, it is made of a plastic substance that resembles willow in some way through the surface texture. I believe it was originally designed to be used for outdoor chairs and for creating woven seats in canoes. The material, being of a plastic composition, does not require any maintenance once woven and can be washed clean with soapy water, it doesn’t rot away so offers a long life span in the outdoors.

I have decided to put it through a test run and have begun weaving a sample sculpture so to speak, research showed that it could be softened by submerging it in warm water for an hour, so not too dissimilar to willow which needs soaking before use. 

Heres the results so far; 

Woven Installation

Back in November I was lucky to be selected as artist in residence for Arts Council’s ‘Art In Empty Shops’ scheme and was given the use of an old Burtons menswear shop. 

I studied the Corn Dollie weave to create over 200 individually woven geometric forms using fine paper tubes. 

Strung together as one form, they create patterns and shadows on the wall giving the feeling of a larger mass, reminding me of a Murmuration.

murmuration

noun literary

1 [ mass noun ] the action of murmuring: the murmuration of a flock of warblers.

2 rare a flock of starlings.

ORIGIN late Middle English: from French, from Latin murmuratio(n-), from murmurare ‘to murmur’. The usage as a collective noun dates from the late 15th cent.

The new Mini Bronze hand woven sculpture with a green patina. The experiments with the new wax have been a great success, no mass breakages, no heat required to set the wax, ability to hand weave…the list goes on. Next step is to scale up from the mini measuring 12cm to a small measuring 25cm diameter. Hopefully this will work as the next size to try out is 100cm diameter.

The finishing step is to stitch two halves together to create a fully woven wax sphere. This can now be sent to Pangolin to be transformed into Bronze using the lost wax technique.

The experiments with learning crochet have worked well, and I have now transferred the technique to my work with wax.

Using a crochet chain stitch is the first step, this chain is hand crocheted and then the chain wound around a polystyrene ball to form the first halve of a sphere.

Step two, the chain is stitched together with a swirl weave, in the same manor as my willow weaving.