Kirsty Hall  |  Artist & purveyor of mad obsessive projects

Unfortunately I’ve been unwell for the last few days but I hope to get some proper writing done in the next day or two. In the meantime, in celebration of having my broadband back, here are some new photos from my garden. When I’m ill, my life often focuses down to very small things; a reflection in a bucket, the wind in the grass, pollen laden stamens, bats hunting across a twilight sky, the cat on my lap.

Kirsty Hall: Red Lily, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Blue Convolus, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Reflection, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Grass Seeds, June 2008

Unfortunately I've been unwell for the last few days but I hope to get some proper writing done in the next day or two. In the meantime, in celebration of having my broadband back, here are some new photos from my garden. When I'm ill, my life often focuses down to very small things; ...

A friend of mine is raising money for the cancer charity Maggies Centres by climbing all the Monroes in Scotland ( a Monroe is a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet and there are 284 of them!) He’d originally planned to do this in a year but didn’t manage it due to various issues, however, he kept going and he’s now nearing the end of his project. I’d love to surprise him with a last minute boost from people he doesn’t even know, so if you feel inclined, please stop by his site and make a donation.

A friend of mine is raising money for the cancer charity Maggies Centres by climbing all the Monroes in Scotland ( a Monroe is a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet and there are 284 of them!) He'd originally planned to do this in a year but didn't manage it due to various issues, however, ...

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I’m sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn’t save most of it, so I’ve had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, so it wasn’t too much work. I’ve even managed to put in a couple of pictures – if I’m very patient, I can link to photos that are already on Flickr, I just can’t upload any new ones. Using dial-up is like wading through treacle and I can’t wait to get back to the 21st century and a fast broadband connection although I am enjoying hearing the old modem sound again, it’s quite the nostalgia trip.

Anyway, it’s time to raid the vaults… this has been edited slightly to tighten up the language and grammar but is more or less unchanged from the original.

Still Life
1/7/01

I have come to realise that much of what I make is actually Still Life. My photographs, in particular, have a Still Life sensibility. I am looking at small things – like hot raspberries on the beach or the reflection in a bowl of water – and saying that they are small yet important. It seems to me that that is what most Still Lives do: they take everyday things and set them apart so we can truly see them.

Kirsty Hall: Blue Bowl Reflection, circa 1999

Still Life demands that we really look at the flagon of wine and the apple; the bowl of cherries; the lifeless carcasses. It ponders the flowers, the glass and the tablecloth. It shows us the texture of everyday life and forces the realisation that actually these things are amazing: the bread we eat, the soft cheese, the pile of fruit, the luscious cakes, the humble or grand spread. This is what keeps us alive after all. This is what nourishes us. Of course we also need vast epic pictures of the imagination and portraits that force us to look at our frail human bodies. We need art to consider many things but it seems odd that Still Life should so often have been considered the least important subject matter in art, when it deals so intimately with life and death.

Kirsty Hall: Grape Stem, May 2003

Mortality is a vital component of many Still Lives. Those flowers will soon be dead: they are just caught for a moment in time. Caught at the point of perfection? Or perhaps already weeping their petals onto the rough-hewn table or perfect lace. That food will spoil or be devoured by a hoard of hungry mouths. Even that fine glass goblet will eventually be broken or lost. The table itself will be consumed by history. Who knows what happened to the musical instruments, the sheet music or the pile of books? They are lost to us except for this captured image.

It is that quality of stillness that I love most about Still Lives. More and more my work has been edging towards stillness and quiet, not actual silence but definitely quietness. I think I am looking for contemplation and the mysterious void. Stillness is a quality that I associate strongly with the colour white, which is why I think my work has contained so much white in the last two years. I am searching for that perfect moment perhaps, that moment of clarity and stillness?

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I'm sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn't save most of it, so I've had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, ...

Sorry for the radio silence. We’re transferring to a new ISP and despite the fact that we were paid up until the end of June, our incompetent old ISP cut us off early so we’ve been totally without email and internet access since last Thursday. But it gets even better, we found out today that they managed to cut us off so completely that it will be another week and an extra £50 before the new ISP can get us reconnected. We’re not best pleased as you can probably imagine. Don’t use BE Internet, that’s my advice.

Fortunately my partner has just managed to cobble together dial-up access but it’s slow and frustrating. So while I plan to do a couple of posts this week, I warn you now that it’s likely to be all text.

I’ve actually quite enjoyed having a bit of an internet break. The weather has been lovely, so I’ve been out in the garden a lot and I’ve been catching up on my reading. Although I’m cross that we’ve been jerked around, another week without blogs, Ravelry and endless noodling around online doesn’t sound too bad.

Sorry for the radio silence. We're transferring to a new ISP and despite the fact that we were paid up until the end of June, our incompetent old ISP cut us off early so we've been totally without email and internet access since last Thursday. But it gets even better, we found out today ...

Sigh, I’m not sure where this week went. Do you have weeks like that? One minute it’s Monday, the next it’s Sunday and you’re not sure what happened to the in-between bit. I seem to be having more and more of them – maybe it’s true that time speeds up as you get older.

I have been working fairly consistently on my embroidery piece this week and I hope to get it finished later today or tomorrow. I’ve decided to set myself an informal target of finishing a piece of art a week because I need a bit of a push.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

It’s been very interesting watching this evolve because I’ve been doing it freehand, so it’s been at least a hundred different temporary drawings so far. It’s impossible to keep things in place, the loose thread spills across the surface and moves with every stitch I make. I find it a very meditative way to work; accepting that perfect arrangements of thread will come and go each time I pick up the canvas.

I once read a quote from a writer who said that as soon as you’d written the first line, your novel was committed to a certain path but before that first sentence, anything was possible. That’s not the case with this work. Certainly as I sew the loose thread into place, the number of ways the remaining thread can fall on the canvas become less and less. Yet until the last few stitches are in place, the possibility of change is still there.

I enjoy knowing that I could do a million of these and they would never be the same. I wish I’d photographed every single variation as I went along – hmm, that might make an intriguing little artists’ book.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

We had tons of rain this week, so I didn’t get as much done in the garden as I’d hoped.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

But I managed to get more of the left hand bed planted up and it’s nearing completion, although I need to go back to the gardening centre for yet more plants and some sand to dig into the annoying patch of clay.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

I’m learning to accept that gardening – like art – is a process and there will probably never be a time when my garden is ‘finished’. I certainly won’t get everything done this year but that’s OK; any improvement is better than none. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on coriander, May 2008

I guess that’s where my week went – lost in creativity, both indoors and out. Ah well, there are far worse ways to spend your time. I hope you all managed to carve out some creative time this week.

Sigh, I'm not sure where this week went. Do you have weeks like that? One minute it's Monday, the next it's Sunday and you're not sure what happened to the in-between bit. I seem to be having more and more of them - maybe it's true that time speeds up as you get older. I ...

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I’m just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise all these things but it doesn’t come easily to me.

In terms of organisation, this is obviously A Very Bad Thing. I constantly lose things and I sometimes avoid tidying up because I simply can’t decide where stuff should go. And then I end up with this sort of thing!

Kirsty Hall: Messy Study, May 2008

[I've tidied my desk since this was taken because the photo appalled me so much. If you have problems keeping your desk clear, check out Inspired Home Office for resources that may give you the push you need. Since tidying up this disaster zone, I've been noticeably more motivated and I'm feeling more on top of things.]

I do have systems but things still stump me. I’ve got a box that’s been sitting in my study unsorted and neglected for 6 months because it’s full of the sort of random objects that I find almost impossible to categorise. The pile of papers to be sorted into my filing cabinet is so large that it’s developed geographical layers and may actually have started to fossilise down at the bottom.

Since I’m so visual, I sometimes wonder if I should simply file things by colour – but I know that I’d just end up spending ages trying to decide if objects were blue or green instead because having trouble with categories is a global failure in my brain.

TIME TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE…

However, while it’s a problem in terms of organisation, being bad at categories can be a distinct advantage for an artist because you can see across boundaries to make associative leaps than non-artists often don’t. Leaps of logic that make perfect sense in KirstyLand often seem innovative and original to others.

For example, this piece called Lost was made for an exhibition in a church. To make the piece, I carefully broke an unglazed bowl, then mended it with glue, leaving deliberate holes. For the exhibition, the bowl was placed on linen and filled with salt water, which gradually evaporated through the porous clay.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

Lot’s Wife was the inspiration for the piece and I combined her familiar story with the Japanese tradition of mending broken bowl with gold to make them more valuable than when they were whole. I’d read about this several years before and had been utterly captivated by the idea of regarding a mended object as beautiful and powerful instead of flawed and damaged. Somehow in my head, this linked with my sympathy for Lot’s Wife, who was forced to leave not only her home but two of her adult children. In that situation, what mother wouldn’t turn back to see what had happened? Isn’t it interesting that she’s usually held up as an example of female disobedience but if you turn it around, her story can just as easily be interpreted as being about the power of maternal love.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

As artists, we need to turn things around. We have to learn to look at our problems and disadvantages to see if they also contain power and wisdom for us. It’s time to recognise that the things that make us bad at fitting into the ‘real world’ are sometimes the exact same things that keep us making our art.

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I'm just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise ...

Hooray, I’ve cleared out my links folder. Of course, I still have another two to get through but at least one of the three is empty.

ART

Beautiful microscopic photographs of sand from scientist and artist, Dr. Gary Greenberg.

An elaborate and intricate laser-cut book from artist, Olafur Eliasson

Arthur Ganson makes strange mechanical scupltures.

Tips on being an environmentally aware photographer.

I’m loving Poppytalk’s series of interviews with artists about their studio spaces.

Amy over at Life Craft makes intriguing collages and assemblages.

Miwa Koizumi makes ethereal sea creatures from plastic bottles.

There’s a ton of drawing lessons over on Drawspace.

I like J.T. Kirkland’s pierced wood drawings. He also has a great blog called Thinking About Art.

Reya Veltman makes very lovely pebbles covered with felt. Link found on the excellent This Is Love Forever blog.

RANDOM STUFF

Off-Grid is an excellent environmental site. I was particularly fascinated by this story about Microbial Fuel Cells, which use a combination of very basic technology and the energy given off by soil microbes to provide electricity.

A fascinating collection of objects found under the floorboards of an old British house that’s being renovated.

An alphabet made from clothes pegs shaping flesh – ouch!

Animals in formalin – what’s not to like?

25 Amazing Everyday Do It Yourself Inventions – the fangs made from a plastic fork are my favourite.

Lost caverns and buried cities from the excellent Web Urbanist.

Ladders made especially for cats – who knew such a thing even existed?

FUNNIES
Andre Jordan’s pointed cartoons about disability always make me laugh.

Cookie Monster faces his cookie addiction and asks ‘Is Me Really Monster?’

Ah, real comedy of recognition here – The Artist’s Decision Tree

Not at all seasonal but as a knitter, this photo story about Christmas sweaters made me laugh a lot and gave me 80′s flashbacks!

Hooray, I've cleared out my links folder. Of course, I still have another two to get through but at least one of the three is empty. ART Beautiful microscopic photographs of sand from scientist and artist, Dr. Gary Greenberg.

I sometimes think I was dreadfully scarred by growing up in the 70′s. I look at the things I make and I can see the legacy of string pictures and macramé.

3 Score & 10 vs crazy 70′s macramé birdcage.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10, Jan 2006

Random Macrame found on internet but unfortunately I’ve lost the link

I rest my case!

Well, what can I say? Apart from reproduction prints of paintings or images in books, string pictures and macramé were the primary examples of art that I saw as a child. My parents aren’t big art people plus I had three noisy younger brothers so although I’m sure I must have seen paintings in museums, I don’t remember visiting an actual art gallery until I was in my teens. By the time I was 15, I had started taking myself off to galleries at every opportunity and had broadened my art horizons a little but before then, pins and string had featured highly in my formative visual experiences.

Ha, you should think yourselves lucky that I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to make all my art in shades of orange and brown!

I started a new piece on Wednesday and to my eyes it’s got a distinctly 70′s look, probably because it’s on brown linen. It’s another thread drawing but from a brand new series. I’ve been contemplating this particular series for a while now; it’s all to do with pithy phrases, emotional tension, domesticity and lots and lots of red thread. For ages I’ve been collecting strange trite sayings that people use – things like “well, I suppose it could be worse” or “but apart from that, how are you”. I’m fascinated by the emotional gaps in language, the way we use clichés and meaningless phrases, especially in Britain, to cover a vastness of things unsaid. For some reason, this is connected in my mind with endless images of red thread.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I had an image in my head of a red thread drawing on raw linen that I wanted to test out. I found a natural framed linen canvas that may work although I’m not entirely sure about it because it’s sized with clear primer and I think it might be too glossy and stiff. For some reason, I’m a lot more comfortable sewing on framed canvases meant for painting than on loose fabric and when I was in the craft shop, I got scared by the proper linen embroidery fabric and coped out and bought a sized canvas instead. This one is my test piece to see if I can live with the sized surface or if I need to make that intellectual leap and do ‘proper embroidery’ on ‘real fabric’.

It’s odd: intellectually I know that what I’m doing is probably embroidery but I don’t think of it as sewing. Instead, I always think of it as a very slow and laborious way of drawing.

With little bits of thread.

On fabric.

I mean, obviously I know it is sewing. Except that in my head, it isn’t. I cannot explain this.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I don’t know why I feel this way about using cloth. A couple of years ago, I started doing sewn drawings on felt and that didn’t bother me so it’s clearly something to do with the fabric. When I was about 7 or 8, I had a scary primary school teacher who endlessly criticising the sloppiness of my stitches and I suspect this has a lot to do with my fear of using ‘real fabric’ and doing ‘real sewing’. I did like threading shoelaces through pictures with holes in them though (did anyone else do that, what was it supposed to teach us?) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I now pierce holes in my canvases before threading my needle through. Actually, you have to when using sized canvas because if you make a mistake, the hole doesn’t close up again but I also think it takes me to a safer, happier place than the word ‘embroidery’ does.

I sometimes think I was dreadfully scarred by growing up in the 70's. I look at the things I make and I can see the legacy of string pictures and

I’m in a photo mood this week. Here’s some luscious British flora that I took earlier today – not as shockingly vibrant as the Australian photos from yesterday but the colours are still very lovely. And maybe these will seem as beautifully exotic to my Australian readers as their flowers do to me.

Herb Robert grows freely around here. There’s loads in my garden and it’s so pretty that I always feel guilty pulling it up but if I don’t, it takes over.

Kirsty Hall: Herb Robert, May 2008

No idea what this is but the shape of the stems and buds are just gorgeous.

Kirsty Hall: White Buds, May 2008

Red blushed leaves on a shrub at Clifton Cathedral.

Kirsty Hall: Red Leaves, May 2008

Beautiful pinky-red flower buds on the same shrub.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, May 2008

Check out the luminous red stems.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, Close Up, May 2008

I'm in a photo mood this week. Here's some luscious British flora that I took earlier today - not as shockingly vibrant as the Australian photos from yesterday but the colours are still very lovely. And maybe these will seem as beautifully exotic to my Australian readers as their flowers do to me. Herb Robert ...

I woke this morning thinking of Australia and was inspired to put together another photo essay (you poor people are going to be seeing my holiday photos for months to come!) It’s been a little grey in Bristol over the last few days, so some hot tropical colour is just the thing to keep me dreaming of our own summer flowers still to come.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Edited to add: Erin left the following comment with a few names. “I recognize a few of these from florida and thought you might want to know names. The first is a bottle brush, the fifth looks like perhaps bird of paradise and the last is a canna lily.”

I woke this morning thinking of Australia and was inspired to put together another photo essay (you poor people are going to be seeing my holiday photos for months to come!) It's been a little grey in Bristol over the last few days, so some hot tropical colour is just the thing to keep ...