We made some prints using the Kitchen litho tutorial. It was a super easy and effective craft club project, although we couldn’t get editions going. Think next time we’ll use heavier weight (catering) foil and see how that goes.
Collaborative sculpture & Oblique Strategies
Using a combination of the round-the-clock format (each person contributes for a set period of time – in our case, minutes!) on a series of projects and using prompts from Eno/Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, we ended up with an unusual collection of pieces. What was useful about this experiment was it forced you to start without thinking too much, and eliminated anyone’s feelings of ‘preciousness’ about it. What was strange was noting the feelings of ownership (or lack thereof) of the work, but also you still got strong sensations of when it was ‘done’. However we still pretty much all ‘added to’ the constructions; not much taking away was done.
Xiao Fei Dyson’s kinetic drawing machines
I’d been experimenting with movement in one of my sculpture projects, so I was happy to see a ‘Kinetic Drawing Workshop’ come up as part of Jotta’s 3rd birthday celebrations. I’d seen Xiao Fei Dyson’s work at Kinetica earlier in the year too, so I signed up straight away. It took place in Newburgh St, London and was a tiny class so we got a lot of attention! Xiao Fei was a great teacher; full of enthusiasm and eager to pass on that he’d discovered from his working practise.
We’d been asked to bring some battery powered toys to take apart and use but in fact this was probably too ambitious to do in the time given. What was more fun (and effective) was just wiring up a little motor, a battery and a pen to make *really* simple drawing machines. These would change their line and movement quite radically with even the tiniest of adjustments to weight and balance, ie. using matchsticks and tape or gluing extra bits & pieces to the machines.
I was reminded (again!) that it’s generally more constructive to keep things super simple and use the restrictions to push against instead over complicating things and getting in a tangle of frustration.
Xiao Fei exhibited at Kinetica Artfair 2012; check out his blog with videos of some of his kinetic creations
jotta.com launched in February 2009 in partnership with the University of the Arts London to explore and facilitate collaboration in contemporary art and design.
Collaborative postcard exhibition in Bloomsbury
Collaborative project as part of the 2 To The Power 10 (#210OD) exhibition for the Bloomsbury Festival in association with CASS Art and The British Postal Museum Archive.
24 Hour Book project – get involved this weekend!
I must thrive under pressure cos the idea of this book, a collaborative novel written in 24 hours*, is dead exciting!
And they’re not just looking for potential authors; illustrators and photographers can get involved too, to contribute images to inspire the writers on the theme – based on a group of city centre allotments, ideas of shared and private space and the real and imaginary barriers between a range of different urban characters – or ultimately to go into the book itself.
On their website they mention to use the Ning community to get involved, but so far it needs an invitation – have written to them to get one… fingers crossed one comes my way!
(There *is* another 24 hours on Sunday in which the CompletelyNovel team get to edit everything; I’m hoping to get involved then as – very appropriately! – I’ll be picking apples in a Sussex orchard on Saturday)
Red Wagon & Lime
Previously I couldn’t get this yarn to knit up without pooling in horrible puddles… Garter stitch however, has solved it and I now have a project to use the remaining ball after the 1 sock incident*…. :)
Have been tagged by Sareth to do the 7 facts about you meme… Never been tagged before, so here goes!
The rules are:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
- I’m an Actionette
- I love knitting but worry that it takes away drawing time
- I’m an only child – there you go Sareth! :)
- I have dreams that go back to, sometimes years later, and can travel from one to another whilst dreaming.
- I’m a terrible procrastinator for no particular reason.
- I *need* 9 hours sleep a night and prefer mornings to evenings. M can go on about 5 hours only and is a night owl… go figure
- I’ve recently tried out Morris Dancing (!!). It’s great fun :)
The 7 people I’m tagging are: Acechick, Flibbertygibbet, tutti fruiti, Annarella, Xtreme-Knitting, Picperfics and Orata
February Finishing?
Well kind of.
I finished the sleeves of the Magnolia jumper, and haven’t yet cast anything else on :)
Next on the list are the blanket squares for Easter craft club – need to do as many of these as poss, but they’ll be more manageable than that other WIP – the Swing Jacket. erk.
In other news; the package for my swap-ee is almost ready to send – yay! Had fun making this knitting needle case (hope I’m not giving away *too* many clues!), and doing it gave me ideas for making a combined needle / project version. I did a bunch of step by step pics, as I always forget the backwards logic when placing the pieces; right side facing, inside out, etc :). At one point this project had 5 layers of fabric in a sewing-sandwich!