Edgelands and Autumn

We are well into the Autumn and enjoying the latent warm weather of an Indian Summer. The days although bright in Kent are getting shorter. November is around the corner and this year more than any other we think of the past. 'The Gardens and War' exhibition continues at the Garden Museum until January.

                     

It is also time time to tidy up in the garden and mine has been neglected with so much building work going on in the house but the Bees are enjoying the late sunshine on our hedge and makes me realise how important the edges of our gardens and  the hedges around our fields are to wildlife.

I have had my head down getting back to teaching at Adult Education and handed the copy in for my next book in this month but also managed to squeeze in a lovely visit to Sew Not Strawberry Jam in the middle of the Kent Countryside to run two one day workshops with a look at the surrounding hedges and landscape for inspiration.

Examples of student work in progress. 
Quick sketches in the garden and of plants

Layering Images in Stitch Sketch workshop

Momigami paper for Postcard Places

and a few views of the lovely garden with Geese. Just love the bright pegs.

 

Finally, I am delighted to be exhibiting with Anne Kelly in Connected Cloth at Crowborough Arts Centre, with Anne Kelly, 31 Oct - 13 Nov

Free as a Bird

I have just returned from a week in  St Marie aux Mines in the Alsace as part of the European Patchwork Meeting. I spent most of the summer flying around and doing 'my stuff'.(more about that later) It makes me realise that freedom to be who we are is often taken for granted which is why I am delighted to support this fundraising event organised by St Peter's Church  at Boughton Monchelsea village Hall. You can own an original Ralph Steadman or even a Cas Holmes You can send closed bids by email to stpeters.church@btinternet.com  (with your contact details)

So thats the most important event. 
In was delighted to be in Alsac. The European Patchwork Meeting was amazing and the team brilliant. I was drawn once again to the back of things and spaces where weeds grew up in empty building spaces.

 

Works by other people (I only managed a brief visit to other galleries and events)

 Kate Dowty On the left her exhibition was next to SAQA exhibition Wide Horizons  with a detail by  Sophie Furbeyre, on right

Mirjam Pet-Jacobs SAQA

A couple of details from the Japanese Kimono show

  Norwegian Group Sting

The prizewinning piece by Monika Schiwy,Breaking Through for the competition Imagine left and
Marianne Burr (USA), Cosmic Communication who won the
Apliquick's Prize

You can see more on Gudrun Heinz Bernina blog

And of course, I exhibited as well in Spaces, Places and Traces. A glimpse of some of 40 yards and Flowers of the Field, plus Tea Flora Tales





and an animated version of Tea Flora Tales

An Imperfect World?

At this time of the year after the longest day as passed,  I am drawn to think about what is new and what becomes a memory. I have spent the last few weeks working on pieces from my future exhibition in Alsace and for the Art Textiles:Made in Britain at the Festival of Quilts later in the week. This is a significant time, when we need to mark the events over 100 years ago but the one thing I have discovered whilst travelling is how alike, rather than different we are. In Freiburg, I spent last Sunday walking around small allotments where families, gardened, children played and just relaxed in the sun. I did the same with my grandfather who would keep one row of veggies in his garden just for us to do pick and eat when we wanted. Most were beautifully kept but my eyes were drawn to one with a lonely bench and weeds growing through. I wondered who gardens, or had gardened there?

Each of the gardens were little home form homes reflecting those who worked and relaxed in them. Conversely, outside these garden spaces, wildflowers and 'weeds' are allowed to grow down the middle of the road and roadsides. We live in an imperfect world..thank heavens and no amount of gardening will keep 'tidy'.

Rake and Magpie (private collector)

I ran a workshop in St Ulrich with Quiltstar which explored the notions of imperfection in 'New from Old Textiles' each student used an old fragment of cloth and reconstructed it anew in a short exercise

 

 Before starting exploratory projects in reconstruction. (thankyou to the students for permission to use the images of work in progress)

                                                              Annett Andersch

                 Sophie Maechler (left) and Eliane Schurgast (right)

                                                    Karin Thalicker.

and they made some more contributions to Tea Flora Tales..please join me and add to these piece at the European Patchwork Meeting.

Finally, snippets of the exhibit 'Common Place' in Quiltstar including a 'selfie' in the window

More details on exhibitions and events  and workshops can be found one www.casholmes.blogspot.com

Parodox: Poetry of connections and opposites

Paradox mid 16th century (originally denoting a statement contrary to accepted opinion): via late Latin from Greek paradoxon 'contrary (opinion)', neuter adjective used as a noun, from para- 'distinct from' + doxa 'opinion'.

Sometimes the  juxtaposition of 'opposites' or looking at things from a different perspective can provide a new source of ideas and lead to new directions for your work.  I recently visited the house of a friend and was drawn to a set of glasses placed in a window which also looked out onto a garden.

 Similarly, I enjoyed sketching this collection of objects through a window of a greenhouse.

Similarly, these wonderful Indian panels are worthy of a backside look.

Bringing the outside in has been demonstrated in the wonderfully framing of one of my crows by the owners. He is placed in the trees and more relevant shares a space with Quintin Bell's characterful ceramics. Bell was also a writer and the biography of his famous aunt, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1972)

Above sits a striking  print by Ceri Richards showing a detail of a Crane (below sits my Dungeness stitch sketch). He was commissioned to illustrate the poem The force that through the green fuse (1933) by Dylan Thomas for Poetry London (xi/3, 1947) which  led to further paintings and lithographs related to Thomas's writings and to the work of other poets such as Vernon Watkins. Bringing together different forms of artwork and interesting juxtaposition of styles.  (wonderful to be in such exulted company)

I trained in Fine Art as a painter  but use cloth as my medium, paradoxically things have gone full circle and II now 'paint with cloth'. Often these disciplines are seen as 'opposites' in the creative field....I prefer to see their connections . This detail of 'Crane', one in the series of 40 yards, uses the backside of a lace curtain and leaf print for the starting point.

Finally, serendipity sometimes plays a part. As I was writing this, I was working in Wales on a one day workshop with Itchy Fingers textile group. The focus being either Dylan Thomas or Serendipity.(Images permission of the group)

Esyllt Jones

 Looking at the back of patchwork and a jug.(Enid)

 And not forgetting poetry and music, the stuff of life.

Though I am more of Sylvia Plath Fan: from her poem Blackberrying:
 Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

                                       
 Inside out, back to front, back to the beginning.'Art is not real? it is a representation.' and equally,  the artist's studio...the world is out there. see my Extreme Stitching article. on Textileartist.

Hempel's ravens (the confirmation paradox)
While taking a group of benefactors on a tour through the new aviary they had just helped to build, a noted ornithologist commented, "And here we have two of the finest examples of ravens that I have ever seen. Notice the lustrous black plumage for which all ravens are famous." The ornithologist continued his lecture, commenting on the corvine feeding and nesting habits as well as on the birds' legendary role as harbingers of ill fortune.
When the ornithologist had finished, a young man said, "Sir, excuse me, but did you say that 'All ravens are black'?"
"I don't know if I said exactly that, but it's true. All ravens are black."
"But, how do you know that - for certain, I mean?" asked the young man.
"Well, I've seen a few hundred ravens in my day and every one of them has been black."
"Yes, but a few hundred are not all. How many ravens are there, anyway?"
"I would guess several million. As for your question, many other scientists, and non-scientists for that matter, have observed ravens over thousands of years and so far the birds have all been black. At least, I don't know of a single instance in which someone has produced a non-black raven."
"That's true, but it's still not all - just most."
"True, but there is other evidence. For example, take all these lovely multicolored birds we have seen today - the parrots, toucans, the peacocks -"
"They're lovely, but what do they have to do with your claim that all ravens are black?"
"Don't you see?" asked the ornithologist.
"No, I don't see. Please explain."
"Well, you accept the idea that every new instance of another black raven that is observed adds to the support of the generalization that all ravens are black?"
"Yes, of course."
"Well then, the statement 'All ravens are black' is logically equivalent to the statement 'All non-black things are non-ravens.' This being so and because whatever confirms a statement also confirms any logically equivalent statement, it's clear that any non-black non-raven supports the generalization 'All ravens are black.' Hence, all these colorful, non-black non-ravens also support the generalization."
"That's ridiculous," chided the young man. "In that case you might as well say that your blue jacket and gray pants also confirm the statement 'All ravens are black.' After all, they're also non-black non-ravens."
"That's correct," said the ornithologist. "Now you're beginning to think like a true scientist."
Who is reasoning correctly, the ornithologist or the young man?

Falletta, pp. 126-73