Watermark day 3

Here is the image for day 3. Lake Matheson - a beautiful lake in the south island renowned for the amazing reflections of the mountains.

The two bottom photos are detail shots of some of the more intricate areas. I tried not to put too much dye through today so that I could keep some of the detail.

Tune in tomorrow for day 4!

Watermark Day 2

Here is the image for Day 2's Vertical dyeing performance!

A friend of mine lived on a lifestyle block north of Wellington and I have modelled this image on a little cottage and bridge on her land. This is dedicated to Jan. S.

Here is what happened when the dye started running. I haven't got as many pictures of this piece as I was distracted by something else that was going on at the time. I will come to that later.

The official opening was tonight too. Everyone who stopped to chat seemed to like it. It seems to be particularly appealing to scientists who want to know why some colours spread through the fabric faster than others. This one may radically change in colour overnight as I topped up the cups with a darker blue.

On a technical note - they are made of a very stiff type of cotton. The dye travels to where there are two layers or where there is thread embroidery. At the moment they have not had soda ash put through them so are not fixed. I cut out the outside patterns by putting all five together and cutting through all 5 with a craft knife. It was a bit like a Chinese papercut.

The reason for a lack of photos of this one is because when I arrived at the gallery someone had parked their bike there and chained it to the post in the room. Here it is chained to a post in front of my artist statement.  I went steaming off to try and get them to move it. Which I did very badly and not at all successfully. Someone more tactful than me, went and asked nicely later and it was finally moved at lunchtime. Whew!

This is a detail of part of the wallhanging dyed on day 1. The fabric has dried and you can see a shadow on the wall behind. When the fabric is white it makes a light shadow but once it is dyed it leaves  a much darker shadow.

Now I have to go and make up the dyes for day 3. Tune in again tomorrow!
Clare

Watermark exhibition Day 1

This is the first wall-hanging before the dye starts to drip. The central image is Pauatahanui Inlet near Porirua, New Zealand. The building is a bird watching hide and the estuary/inlet is a haven for all sorts of waterbirds. The outside patterns are from the willow pattern plate.

Here is my artist statement for the exhibition.

Watermark

 The inspiration for this exhibition came from a quote.

“The Chinese textile industry creates about 3 billion tons of soot each year, and a single mill can use about 200 tons of water for each ton of fabric it dyes. Millions of tons of unused fabric are burned or sent to landfills each year when dyed the wrong colour. Rivers run red or chartreuse, or teal, depending on what colour is in fashion that season – with untreated toxic dyes washing off from mills.” (Menon, 2010).

Dye pollution occurs in many textile-producing countries.  Western consumers demand lower and lower prices for clothing forcing manufacturers to cut corners to save money. Water treatment processes are expensive. Meanwhile New Zealand remains ‘clean and green’ and the pollution happens somewhere else, ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

Would we put up with our rivers turning pink or teal or scarlet according to fashion?  Probably not.  Instead our waterways are contaminated with invisible pollutants.  Nutrients from farm fertilisers, heavy metals in storm water and high bacteria levels from dairy farming.

Not so clean and green after all. 

And now for the exciting bit - when the dye starts to run. The colours for today - Delft Blue and pink.

Apologies for the photo colours - I will re-work some of them in photoshop. I can't quite work out how to change the white balance to deal with halogens (no setting on my camera).

This has been an exciting dyeing day, and I didn't get any on the carpet - honest!

Please leave a comment so I know you are there.
Clare

My Exhibition is up!

Today we hung the exhibition. A big thank-you to my brother and my son who hung all the racks, drilled all the holes and patiently moved all the lights around for hours.

Here is a sneak preview - the  wallhangings are all white at the moment, the images hardly show until you get quite close. As they are white on white against a white wall they are also hard to photograph. At 10am on Monday when the dye starts to spread down through the fabric, they will be much easier to see. I can't wait to see what happens. I will post pictures each night to show what has happened that day and if I work out how to use my new video camera I will post video too.

Here is how it looks at the moment along one wall.

Here is the poster, please come up and say hi. This is a link to Google maps for 15 Dixon St. The gallery is on the 1st floor of Whitireia City Campus (Creative Writing).

Counting down the days

11 more days till my exhibition opens. 1 piece still to make. Some of the stuff I need is on order and fingers crossed it arrives this week. I have 2.5 metres left of the fabric I am using but it must have got caught on machinery when it was being woven and it has big holes in it. I think it is in-keeping with my project to just patch the holes.

I needed a break and last night went with one of my sons to see 'Snow White and the Huntsman'. Good escapist stuff but I didn't enjoy the earthquake which happened just at the bit where she is saying something like 'who will follow me to attack the witchy lady'. I don't know what she actually said as I was deciding whether I could squeeze underneath the cinema seat if the shaking got any worse.

Must keep on sewing
Clare

Watermark Exhibition

Here is a flyer for my exhibition. It took me at least 3 times as long to make the flyer/invitation as it does to make one of the exhibits.  However that included getting help with photoshop (thankyou Moses) and dealing with Adobe via livechat to try and register Creative suite when mine came with no 'coupon code'. Then I lost the final copy when I lost a memory stick (it may have gone up the vaccum cleaner but I did look there :-) and now I have a temperature and just want to go to sleep.

I was going to put the poster of all the other students shows next but it must be too small a file and came out all pixelated. There are two shows currently on in Wellington.

Meike de Court and Camille Walton have 2 separate exhibitions at Matchstick Gallery in Cuba St (above Spacesuit)


Keri-Mae Zagrobelna has a show at Thistle Hall in Cuba st.

All three shows are contemporary jewellery and are on from 26th June - 1st July

Now I just need to shake off a lurking cold and make one and a half more wallhangings for my exhibition. Luckily the 2 week break starts tomorrow.

C

Watermark

My solo show has a new title and a new photo. Soon I will have a poster to go with it.

Watermark
16-20th July
1st floor, 15 Dixon St
Wellington
10-5pm daily

Each of the 5 wall hangings are based on the willow pattern plate. This was the test version. The actual pieces have an extra ring of decoration and are 1.2m wide. At the moment they are white on white but during the exhibition they are going to be dyed, one per day, by trickling dye down from the cups. Gravity and capillary action at work.