Cluster tea party

I invited a group from the Somerset Day Centre to come and see the summer exhibition today as part of a project we are planning with them. As it was our first proper gathering I bought lots of cake and took in table cloths and nice china for a tea party. With the help of volunteers Abby and Ken we laid out an inviting spread which they thoroughly appreciated.
It was a lovely sunny day and the big bonus was that the artist who made Cluster, Annemarie O'Sullivan, was delivering a family drop-in workshop. So we sat talking about the exhibition drinking tea, getting to know each other while watching people make extraordinary structures with sticks and potatoes. A surreal and enjoyable afternoon for us all.
The next phase will be for us to go to their centre and run a series of short workshops based on the exhibition.

linear

landscape, body, map or crack in the flag stone?
A really interesting series of drawings was begun today in life drawing by Jenny who had the presence of mind to seize what was exciting and useful in the moment even though it meant she spent most of the session with her back to the model.
Each drawing is the same but simultaneously completely different, each evokes a different idea some really are maps, some are bodies, some embraces, and some landscapes, it's the beginning of a potentially very rich set of work.

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Picnics

I must remember to collect some tea towels or pillow cases to give out as personal drawing picnic surfaces for everyone. Jenny came up with the idea, every week I see her things laid out and it all looks so enticing, a world on a cloth, the only world that matters for the next three hours.

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two of eleven

the embrace
Jenny Shaw

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Tuesday life drawing

the exploration continues on from FLOW today in the regular 'life drawing at Fabrica' sessions. Carolyn is making a series of drawings using the weight and drag of ink soaked string attached to a stick. the drawing lines have a thick luscious inky quality not only in the overall line itself but on the two un parallel sides of the line.

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life drawing at Fabrica

sticks and other unorthodox handmade tools can open a whole new lexicon of marks, michaela made this stately drawing with a variety of twigs and kitchen sponges. we thought is was a good example of when a drawing becomes a drawing rather than simply a study of a person or object.

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Philip's discovery

today philip made a transition from one mark making approach to another more fluid and descriptive one. He has been intrigued by the different qualities of lines that various artists use, from Michaelangelo to Giacometti, and has tried to understand the impulse behind them in the development of his own work. Today he drew in the way he usually does, we discussed the problems with the drawing and I suggested he tried simply not taking the pencil from the surface while drawing using his usual method...
below - before drawing

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philip's discovery part two

The difference is subtle but remarkable, below is the fluid drawing made while keeping the pencil on the surface. Sometimes you have to keep revisiting a working method and then one day it becomes useful, meaningful and understandable. Its as if you can only use the information at exactly the right time, when you are ready to receive it.

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impact

I'm in the middle of the FLOW workshop, the concentration has been imense and the ingenuity for making the tools for the drawing matched that intensity.
Someone drawing just said to me that they had come to the combined writing and drawing workshop that Jackie Wills and I did during Anish Kapoors show a few years ago, she said she came back because "it had been a profound day" for her.
It's very gratifying to get feed back like that when sometimes you ask people to do some challenging things in workshops, I like to combine and collaborate, I think it's time Jackie and I did another.

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FLOW

some tools

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FLOW

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A happy drawer

volunteers sundays

Some Fabrica volunteers connecting visitors bound X shapes in their drop in workshop today.
They created an open friendly atmosphere and asked the public to think about combining, weaving and attaching a disparate selection of materials to add to the net like hanging.
part 2 next week, Sunday 2-4