Art Academy assignments

Photo of a stil life transformes into a textile work

The assignment: take a photograph of this still life and make a black and white collage of it. Then make a textile work of it in complementary colours. In my case: purple and yellow.

I had a piece of purple burlap and threaded different purplish threads through it. I brought the elements of the photo down to three and simplified them. I wanted to make a kind of child's game (you have to throw the textile elements in the exact spot) so I made the pieces a bit dimensional by filling them with some filling material.

Invitation (for Dutch readers only)

I'm proud to announce that a few of my books will be part of an exhibition curated by the bookartist Roswitha Witten (a former teacher).

Making a collage every day

That was an assignment of the DIY Textile School. And you had to make one of the collages in textile. Here you see a part of my collages. I had 28 in total. I used mostly scraps I had in a box that were leftovers from all my paper- and bookbinding projects. It's hard for me to throw out even the smallest of pieces.
Sometimes it was fun making a collage, sometimes it was annoying. I learned that I like circles (:-)) and not too many elements on a card. But I also tried to push myself to add more than I at first wanted to do. (Succes not guaranteed.)

Because I had to do also the 'end of term' assignment (the train blocks), my textile collage is pretty simple. I copied the Audrey Hepburn photo on paper backed fabric. I like her and now and then she appears in my work.

Train and textile

Again, train photos (see below) were the inspiration for this textile work. I wanted to make soft blocks as an opposition to the steel of the train. At first I wanted to make a whole lot, so you could place them in different combinations for example. But due to lack of time it stopped at two.
At one side the elements are appliqued, the other side has embroidered lines from four different drawings on transparent paper placed on each other. That was found by luck, because when I cleared my table and stacked the drawings I saw an interesting image and I wanted to do something with it.

Because of me doing two kinds of classes, I want to combine assignments as much as possible. So this is also a decor for a play, hence the rails (made out of a leather strip), Waiting for Godot. You have to fantasize the small players in it. (Damn, I should have placed something in front of it, so it would give a kind of scale.)

It's hard to remember which photos I used because I oversimplified the drawings. But it were definitely these kind of details.

Theme book

This year's book theme was: found things. We made a round robin project of it. Every member of our bookbinding club did a page in the books of the others. Or, to be more precise: a page in the stack of loose pages. The binding was done afterwards.
I started mine with a found photograph of my dad as a young man and his twin sister. When I got the whole stack back all pages were filled with memories and photos of fathers and grandfathers. It had become a very personal book. I was very pleased with it.

For the pages I used some paper that was left over from an evening of paint spraying with friends. We used it under our work, so it had random splatters. That appealed to me very much. He presto, found paper.
For the cover I wanted to use some fake leather with a kind of fabric on the outside, because it was so supple and it had a weaving fault that was very charming.

 

I used a blanket stitch all around it. In the photo it's not very clear, but the back is half open. I hadn't done that before and wanted to try it out for one time.

First page with title and spraypainted

A kind of motto that I like. It's about that life is all about the finding, not the searching. The text is on a clear sheet.

 

The sign in page

Black and white collage

The assignment was to make a b&w collage and at the end to add a tiny speck of colour. The colour had to enhance the image or lead your eye to the focal point.
I didn't make a 'before' photo so it's a bit difficult to see, but the little pink square draws your eye to the 'semi circle'.

A train, or not

This was the original photo. I simplified the picture and felted several pieces in different shades of black. (The holes are not intended, but due to my lack of experience in felting.)
The black piece is only fastened by two buttons to give the piece some dimension. I sewed the felt pieces on some fabric.
 

DIY Textile School

This year I started with a textile course in Amsterdam. One day a month is a contact day with each time a different artist as teacher. I like working with textile and embroidery although I have almost zero knowledge. So in that part I want to broaden my horizon.
The first month was all about self portraits and contrast. They had to be in black and white.
I've tried a few different things, based on photographs with extra contrast of myself.

 Hand embroidered on paper/textile fibre

 Machine embroidered on bookbinding linen

Various pieces of lace on cheese cloth (hand sewn)

Game of cards

For a birthday girl I made a set of cards and a kind of case for them. The cards I painted pink and the dots I stencilled with two greys.
In a group effort they werd made into a Go Fish game. All the subjects werd related to the birthday girl.
The case is also stencilled with dots, bookbinding linen for the outside and thin cardboard for the inside.