Series: Pearls of Wisdom « — Fi Bowman : Artist

Pearls of Wisdom: progress

27 January 2010

Yes indeed, you read that right: progress!

Sorry, did I make you choke on your cuppa? I know, I know, but sometimes miracles happen and they take us all by surprise when they do.

There has been some slow, but real, progress on Pearls of Wisdom in the last couple of weeks.

(For those joining the class late, Pearls of Wisdom is my latest large Work In Progress. Except for some time it’s mostly been a Work Sitting Looking Sad And Desperate For Some Love. But y’know, WSLSADFSL just doesn’t have the same ring to it as WIP.)

Pearls of Wisdom stars mermaids – five of them, doing various finny things underwater (duh!) off the coast of Cornwall, sharing their watery home with local marine fauna. A mature mermaid, filled with the wisdom of her hundred years of so of living, dispenses advice to the young ones, one of whom has unexpectedly noticed us voyeurs watching from our bathysphere*.

(Well, I suppose we could be diving instead, but then I wouldn’t get to use such a luscious word as bathysphere, and that would suck. Because it makes me happy just saying it. Bathysphere. Weird? I am not!)

This is a big piece, the biggest I’ve made in this style, five feet square. Which is giving me all sorts of challenges just by itself. And then there’s the fact that unlike previous work, it’s not actually going to be a quilt at all – by any definition. More like an appliquéd and embroidered picture. More new challenges.

So, what have I got so far?

Mermaid gesture sketches

Mermaid hair colour play

A sketchbook full of research, ideas, notes and drawings. Colour notes, research on marine life off the Southwest coast, gesture drawings, and even a construction plan. Hooray!

Sketch-cartoon for Pearls of Wisdom

A full size cartoon on paper laying out composition. It was on my living room wall, but the damn thing keeps falling off, so it’s been banished for now. But I’ll need it out again when I start enlarging.

Pearls of Wisdom background

A dyed and painted background of fine cotton mounted on medium canvas that should stand up to heavy stitching and stretching on bars. To be honest, this has been the biggest pain so far. So damn big. Keeping it smooth while spray basting it to the canvas was tricky, and then when I pressed it, the canvas started peeling off. Argh! So it still needs some more work to smooth out those ripples before I stitch the canvas down around the edges. Fabric! Some days I long for a nice simple piece of paper or board that stays where it’s put.

The mature mermaid drawing

A mature mermaid drawing ready to be projected, enlarged and transferred onto fabric. I’ve redrawn her several times; still not entirely happy but you have to stop sometime, and she will still evolve as she’s painted on fabric and then stitched. Her tail in particular is going to be heavily stitched and embellished with metallic paints. I decided to give her a fishy tale rather than a whale or dolphin flipper. Why? It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m not so sure now, but what the hell.

Surprised mermaid drawing

A surprised mermaid girl, also ready to be projected, enlarged and transferred to fabric. This is a scary one to create, because she’s the focal point for the whole piece. I was very worried about her and took ages looking for a photo to use for a model, but last week I suddenly knew what to use, and to be honest, I really like her. (She’s bald because her hair will be added separately, not because mermaids look like eggs. Silly.)

I’m always trying to distort the human faces and bodies I take as models because the creatures I depict aren’t meant to look exactly like us. So this mermaid has large eyes (because it’s pretty dark underwater) and a flattened nose (because she doesn’t use it much) and I hope the distortion of a very close up lens gives the impression of a face coming up close to look at us. Have you ever been to one of those underwater viewing galleries at an aquarium where there are belugas or other whales? And they swim up really close to look at the crazy humans staring at them? That’s what I was aiming for.

What else have I got? Actually, um… er… that’s about it.

But it’s more than I had a week ago, so yay me.

Organised people look away now. I would hate to cause you a fainting fit. And I’m all out of smelling salts.

This is where I mention that the deadline for this piece is, um, the end of March… I think?

And, did I also mention that it’s BIG? With FIVE mermaids and sea creatures and lots of appliqué and machine embroidery?

But you know, Queen of Last Minute Panics here, so hey, what’s the problem? Loads of time still.

**Pointless Trivia:* When Otis Barton and William Beebe made their world record descent in a bathysphere Off Bermuda in 1935, the naturalist Beebe described a world filled with bioluminescent creatures so bizarre and beautiful that many refused to believe him. Of course, we now know that he’d fallen through a wormhole and landed on Pandora.

This post is part 1 in the series Pearls of Wisdom

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Pearls of Wisdom: a miracle of mermaids

3 February 2010

in My Work

What is the correct collective for a group of mermaids? A school of mermaids? A clan of mermaids? A muddle of mermaids? How about a miracle of mermaids?

With the stress of getting these babies drawn up, it seems miraculous that they’re all actually done now and ready for their next step. Here’s the full cast of characters for Pearls of Wisdom:

The star of our show, Miss Surprised, who appears at the bottom right of the piece:

Her wise and experienced grandmother, centre left:

Supporting actress, Miss O-Grandma-I-Have-A-Question, who’ll be pretty much in the middle:

The beautiful cousin swimming in from the top right:

The annoying sister at the top left:

(She’s annoying because she was a bitch to draw and I’m still not happy with either her hands or her face. Expect this one to change significantly once she’s on fabric and painted.)

All of them will have their hair added separately with couched threads and/or stitching; that’s why it’s very sketchy and they look pretty bald. Once again, my dears, mermaids do not look like eggs in the usual scheme of things. Tails will also be significantly improved with stitch and metallics.

Oh, and Miss Surprised needs gills on her neck as well; the others got them but I forgot hers and currently she’d not be able to breathe underwater, which would pretty much suck for a mermaid. (In my Humpty Dumpty “A word means what I want when I use it” rationale, a mermaid uses her gills for breathing underwater and her nose for breathing when she’s sunning herself on a rock, singing her siren songs. So there.)

So what’s next?

Well, next step is to project these images onto stretched fabric so I can enlarge them up from the A3 drawings to the sizes they’ll actually be, which range from about 18 inches for the rear couple to four feet for the mature mermaid. (Oh, what was I thinking when I planned this piece so large?)

Then I’ll trace the images onto the fabric and start painting. Painting! Probably my favourite part! At last.

I’m also chuffed to bits to report that I’ve been doing something towards this piece pretty much every day for the last week or more. Woo-hoo! Look at me go! More pictures when I have more progress to share.

Oh, and what do you call a group of mermaids? Answers on a postcard… or in the comments please!

This post is part 2 in the series Pearls of Wisdom

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Pearls of Wisdom: Nope, not done yet

20 March 2010

in My Work

Of course not. It’s only Saturday and it’s not due until Wednesday. Seriously, no need to get stressed about it just yet.

(Astute readers will have detected a hint of sarcasm. Only a hint, mind, but there nonetheless.)

You’ll be pleased to know, however, that the stitching part has actually commenced. I know, I know, you were wondering when this so-called stitched textile was actually getting down to brass tacks. Or needles. The answer is yesterday. (Polite applause would be appropriate at this point.)

Sorry, I don’t have time to take pictures of the work as it stands right now, but you see, I kind of have to get back to stitching it. This is a minor tea break to keep me going for the next stretch.

(At this juncture I’d also like to add that the Tea Fairy is doing an appalling job of supplying said beverage today. Normally supplies arrive like magic when I’m in last minute mode, but for some reason the Tea Fairy seems to have been kidnapped and replaced with a Computer Fairy without my approval. I must Have A Word.)

What I can do, though, is show some earlier progress pics, since I know you’re wasting away like hungry orphans without any gruel. I know, I know, I’m fabulous like that. So here we go.

First up is one of the rear mermaids, which has been painted directly onto the background fabric. That’s a new technique for me, and was a bit scary because of the lack of do-over potential. But she came out all right, and I do like the interaction of the paint with the fabric surface.

One of the background aliens, er, mermaids

And here’s testing the placement of the major appliqué elements, the two central mermaids and Miss Surprised. (Miss Surprised seems to have morphed into Miss Worried when she got painted. Ah well. I s’pose she could be worried about ending up in our fish supper.)

Testing the layout for the main aliens. No! Mermaids!

That’s it for now. I have much tangled hair and a couple of tails to stitch before bed!

This post is part 3 in the series Pearls of Wisdom

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Pearls of Wisdom: standing around at a party in my underwear

27 March 2010

in My Work

It’s Saturday. The exhibition that Pearls of Wisdom was destined for opened today.

Remember that the delivery deadline for the piece was Wednesday?

Well, it wasn’t finished.

Not even close.

The Queen of Last Minute Panics had really lost her crown this time. And believe me, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There may even have been some howling, but I’m not saying whether that was me or the Two Bad Dogs.

Friends suggested it was ‘done enough’ but they, bless them, weren’t actually looking at it. Because, let me tell you, it was nowhere near being done enough. It wasn’t just finishing and embellishments to be added but whole major construction sections and so much stitching that by Tuesday morning I was aware that there was no chance of me even finishing the midground section, let alone the whole of the foreground including Miss Surprised and the other close up sea creatures.

So, feeling like a failure and a flake, I emailed the exhibition organiser, my friend Bren Boardman, admitted I’d screwed up and apologised for letting her down.

Two minutes later, my phone rang.

“How would you feel about showing it as a ‘Work in Progress’?” asked Bren. “With your sketchbook and maybe your process plan showing what you’ve done and what’s still to be done?”

Now, normally you can’t imagine doing that – showing something that isn’t finished. And most venues would probably raise eyebrows at the idea as well. It’s just kind of weird.

But in this case, it actually makes sense. The exhibition is at a shop where Bren and other teachers offer workshops, and is designed to show off the work of students who have been taking a series of monthly workshops in exploring your creativity and developing your own artistic voice. So the concept of the process and development of a piece of work is actually very relevant.

So I agreed to show it unfinished – not even close to finished. Because it made sense. And today I went to see the exhibition.

Ever had that dream where you’re standing around at a party and suddenly you realise you’re not wearing any pants?

It was like that.

There was Pearls of Wisdom, larger than life (it really is), partly stitched, with pins holding on a bald Miss Surprised, and hanging awkwardly because it’s not blocked or stretched. And all I could look at were the bits that weren’t done and I wasn’t happy with and needed work. And whenever people went over to it, I wanted to shout, “It’s not done yet! It’ll be better than that! I’ll press it! She won’t really be bald! Honest, it’ll be better, I promise!”

I felt like I was standing around in my underwear and begging people to look at my beautifully made-up eyes and not my saggy bum. But that they couldn’t help being drawn to it and noticing the little hole that needed mending in my underpants as well. And then being mesmerized by the, um, general sagginess of that area… .

Feeling exposed? Yeah, just a bit.

Mike the Goblin was having a field day. “See!” he was gibbering, “Everyone can see you’re a fraud! You shouldn’t have done this! They’ll laugh at you and say you’re rubbish! You should NOT have done this.”

In the end I decided it was best to just not think about it too much. It is what it is, and the exhibition organisers (Bren and the shop) are quite happy with it as work in progress.

To be honest, I’m quite happy with it as work in progress too. Just not so much about having it hanging in public where its – and by extension, my – imperfections can be seen quite so clearly.

But maybe it’s an opportunity to be brave. To prove to Mike that the sky will not fall on my head if the public sees something that I’m not happy with. That I can live through it when people make ignorant comments in my hearing. Maybe even that my work does not equal me.

And it’s an opportunity also to learn some stuff about my process and how it failed me this time around. That’s something I want to talk about in my next post.

Oh, and my saggy bum? You really want to see it as it hangs today? Even though it’s wonky and needs a lot of work? Well, okay if you’re sure then. Here it is: