Tag Archives: life

June Days • 5 Comments

Kirsty • June 17, 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 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

A charity thing • 4 Comments

Kirsty • June 12, 2008

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.

Internet problems

Kirsty • June 9, 2008

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.

Week, what week? • 1 Comment

Kirsty • June 1, 2008

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.

I was a 70’s child • 8 Comments

Kirsty • May 23, 2008

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.

You Spin Me Right Round • 4 Comments

Kirsty • April 20, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, I booked myself onto a day-long spindle spinning workshop at Get Knitted, my favourite Bristol yarn store. I've wanted to learn to spin for several years, ever since a friend gave me her slightly broken spinning wheel but I didn't want to spend money getting it fixed until I knew for sure that spinning was something I wanted to pursue. I have to be careful to balance my need to enthusiastically throw myself into new things with keeping a focus on my existing art: I am very easily distracted! However, number 55 on my 101 Things list is Learn to Spin, so when I saw the workshop advertised, I jumped at the chance to do it.

I've been feeling very unenthusiastic about my art for months now but this workshop really released my creative juices: I came home this evening ready to get right back into the studio and start making again. There were 9 of us on the course and our teacher was Jen from the hand-dyed yarn company, Fyberspates. Jen got us all spinning with a simple wooden and plastic spindle in an amazingly short time. Spindles are an ancient technology, possibly one of the oldest in the world - apparently in the Middle Ages they sometimes used a stick and a potato if they didn't have a nice carved wooden spindle to hand! We got to play with wool, alpaca, silk, mohair, linen and even a little bit of cashmere. Just sinking my fingers into all the different types of fibre was an education and it was interesting to see how we all differed in which ones we found easiest to spin.

Kirsty Hall: Mixed Fibres For Spinning

My tiny lumpy balls of yarn don't look like anything special but to me they're quite magical because hey, I made yarn! Actual yarn, from fibre - how cool is that? OK, so it's not very good yarn - a 5 year old medieval child with a potato could probably have made better. It's extremely uneven, going from thick to thin and back again and some places aren't twisted enough but I don't care, it's a beginning. This is the incredible thing about learning something new; the joy of looking at something that you've made with little technical skill but with utter concentration and passion and knowing that you're back in that humble place of Beginner's Mind. Every artist should keep feeling their way back to that place; it kicks you out of your complacency and gives you that little skip in your creative spirit that charges you up.

Kirsty Hall: Homespun Yarn & Spindle

A Boring Bit
There's been a bit of downtime on the site this week because we needed to upgrade WordPress after a possible spambot incursion - so if anyone's had trouble getting the site to load, that would be why. A couple of things are still a bit funky: the gallery pages aren't quite right and the blog archives have done a bunk but hopefully we'll get everything back to normal soon. If you're very observant, you may also have noticed that we've switched on a confirmation box for comments. I'm sorry about this, I know they're a nuisance but I was getting upwards of 400 spam on the blog every single day and it was driving me absolutely nuts.

A new toy • 2 Comments

Kirsty • April 15, 2008

Sorry, didn't mean to disappear like that, I was hit by a virus and today is the first day I've felt like myself in more than a week.

So, what's been happening? Well, I bought a new camera with the last of my holiday money and I'm absolutely loving it. It's a Sony Cybershot DSC-H3 and it's so much better than my little Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. When I was in Australia I completely hit the limitations of the Panasonic and was finding it frustrating that I often couldn't get the shots I wanted because I didn't have enough zoom.

I've also realised that I take a lot of indoor shots and close-ups and while the Panasonic is OK on macro, it sucks in poor light. That's not to say that the Panasonic is a bad camera: if you want to photograph groups of people outdoors then it's a great choice. It's light and small enough to easily carry in a pocket and has a proper wide angle lens, which is unusual in a compact digital of that size and you can even use it underwater if you have a special case for it. I think it's a nifty little compact; it's just not a good fit for the kind of photography that I do.

The Sony has 10x zoom compared to the 3.6x of the Panasonic and a noticeably better macro setting. The lens feels like a higher quality to me and I can see the difference in the photos I'm taking. It's larger and heavier than the Panasonic but still light enough to carry around with me, which is hugely important. I looked at a couple of larger cameras with even better zooms but realised that I would end up leaving them at home half the time. There's an old photography saying that 'the best camera is the one you have with you' and it's so true.

I don't have a card for the new camera yet so I'm relying on the internal memory and it can only take 14 images before it's full. Usually I take as many photos as I want and then decide which ones I like once they're on my computer screen. I generally only junk images directly from the camera if they're obviously blurry or bad. But when I went out for a walk today I had to delete quite a few decent photos so that I could take better ones. In a way it was quite freeing because I was having to look at each image and make a conscious positive decision to keep it. When you can only take 14 images, each image has to really work to earn its keep! I can see how this could be an interestingly disciplined way to take photos but I'm still looking forward to my memory card arriving.

OK, that's enough yakking about the new camera, let's see what it can actually do...

Kirsty Hall: Sunlit Puddle, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: A Watery Window, Bristol, April 2008

Kirsty Hall: Manhole cover, Bristol, April 2008

Back Home Again • 8 Comments

Kirsty • March 28, 2008

Sorry for the week of radio silence: I got back last Friday but have been busy picking up the reins of my life and getting over jetlag and a cold.

Although Australia was fantastic and I had an amazing time, I'm glad to be home. I missed my family and while I loved the sunshine and sea, I do quite like this damp little island that I call home.

Kirsty Hall: Happy Face Graffiti, Bristol, Feb 2008

Getting off the plane I was struck both by the cold (it was snowing when I got back) and the gorgeous softness of the light we have here. Australia was so bright that I needed my sunglasses most of the time and the glaring light created strong shadows that gave everything a stark quality.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Bush, The Blue Mountains, March 2008

I found myself very aware of the relentless fierceness of the heat: there's no doubt that Australia is a harsh environment and many of the objects that I saw were weathered and bleached by the sun.

Kirsty Hall: Worn fence posts, Australia, March 2008

The light in Britain can occasionally be that strong but usually there's a subtle quality to the light and colour here that I very much enjoy. I'm not saying that I wouldn't enjoy a bit more warmth and sunshine but I like our rain-washed colour spectrum. I find that living with grey skies and muted colours so much of the year gives me a heightened appreciation of splashes of bright colour when I finally do see them.

Kirsty Hall: Purple Sunset, Bristol, Jan 2008

Kirsty Hall: New Leaves Unfurling, Bristol, Feb 2008

Going Green • 8 Comments

Kirsty • March 18, 2008

Yesterday’s colour was green. Not only was it St Patrick’s Day – apparently celebrated with great joie de vivre in Sydney – but I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Gardens with local artist, Wendy Shortland. Wendy kindly showed me around this beautiful green space and we had a grand old time admiring the plants and wildlife.

There was much to see and I took plenty of reference photos of natural forms. Yet the thing that struck me most was the strangeness of the living bamboo covered with graffiti. I don’t always like graffiti; often it can seem intrusive and destructive and I’m particularly ambivalent about graffiti on trees and rocks. Up in the Blue Mountains, seeing graffiti on trees in the rainforest threw me into a rage at the stupidity of people. However, in this case, it had resulted in powerful totemic sculptures that reminded me of the Aboriginal funeral poles I’d seen a couple of days earlier in the Museum of Contemporary Art. The harsh scratched writing had been softened, stretched and transformed by the living plants to form a beautiful monument to the basic human urge towards mark-making. I am still ambivalent about this need to mark other living things as our territory, yet it was impossible to deny the compelling accidental beauty of the end result.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

I’ve always been captivated by this sort of communal art form where aesthetics are not always the driving force. In the early 90’s, I spent a lot of time looking at African sacred objects that had been worn smooth by thousands of respectful hands or covered with nails to the point of bristling. I also studied Western traditions of sacred objects – medieval relics, votary offerings, rosary beads, museum displays and the like. I longed to make something with that same sort of presence but realised that it wasn’t possible for me to simply copy an existing form or process and ‘fake’ a sacred object. Years later, it’s something I’m still struggling with and much of my work using repetitive processes hinges on that concept of how to imbue an object with power and meaning.

Back in the gardens, I was also very enamoured with the enormous fruit bats that hung from the trees like giant cocoons.

Kirsty Hall: Fruit Bats, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

En masse, they are incredibly noisy – a plane overhead will set of a cacophony of squawking. Indeed, Australian wildlife as a whole seems quite loud to me, many of the birds can raise a real racket – the evening roosting of the parrots has to be heard to be believed. Perhaps they need to state their presence so loudly to combat the daunting distances of this vast land.

Today, I too am feeling daunted – only two and a half days left and still so much to see. Part of me wants to rush over to Sydney again and spend another afternoon looking around, while a greater part of me is arguing for a day spent on the beach in Manly! There has been so much rushing around lately and I feel overfull of textures, shapes, sounds and experiences; I know it will take me months to digest what I’ve seen here.

Back in Sydney • 2 Comments

Kirsty • March 11, 2008

Well, I've just got back from a fantastic and very luxurious wedding weekend at Peppers Manor House in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Being an artist, I'm not used to 4 1/2 star hotels but damn, I could get used to that style of living very easily...

The wedding went well and I'm thrilled to have a delightful new sister-in-law. The two of us get on really well and my brother is clearly head over heels in love with her, which is very sweet to see. I have a fund of stories from the wedding but most of them aren't repeatable on this blog. Suffice it to say that the combination of Australians and Scots at a wedding is quite a party - there probably aren't many weddings where Waltzing Matilda gets played on the bagpipes!

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Mardi Gras

Despite my sunburn, I managed to make it to Mardi Gras on the Saturday before last. I don't have any good pictures because my camera isn't good at night but there are plenty here. It was great fun but a little odd because I was at the start of the parade and mostly surrounded by apparently straight people who didn't seem to quite 'get it'. Fortunately I met a lovely man called Andrew and his group of friends, who took me under their wing and made the experience much more enjoyable for me. We were whooping, clapping and cheering while most of the people around us just stood silently and watched while taking photos. Personally, I think that if someone has gone to a huge effort to design and make costumes, put on elaborate make-up, learn complicated dance routines and generally put a lot of work into something, the least you can do is give them a clap and a wave.

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Kiama

Kirsty Hall: Kiama Sunrise

The week in Kiama was also a blast - although I could have done without the flea and cockroach infested house that I was staying in! The other three houses our group had booked were gorgeous, while the one I was in quickly earned the titles The Roach Motel and The Flea Pit. I was bitten all over by the end of the 5 days, which did not make me happy. My dad left a very pointed note, I left the flea spray I'd bought in a prominent position and strong words will be had with the letting agent when my brother and sister-in-law return from honeymoon - I hope they get some money back because honestly, the house was far too dilapidated to be let out.

But apart from that, it was fab - lots of barbies, swimming in the sea and great company. There were between 20 - 25 of us at various points in the week, so it was quite a party atmosphere and I enjoyed meeting my sister-in-law's family for the first time.

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Minnamurra Rainforest

During the week at Kiama, a bunch of us visited the stunning Rainforest Centre at Minnamurra. It was a gorgeous place that I'm sure will inspire many drawings, I just loved the way the forest grew around and through itself - all the vines and ferns were very seductive to me.

Kirsty Hall: The Rainforest at Minnamurra

Kirsty Hall: Fern at Minnamurra Rainforest

Kirsty Hall: Vines at Minnamurra Rainforest

Although we could hear loads of them, it was hard to spot birds in the dense forest canopy. However, we did see lyrebirds, parrots and a huge water dragon sunning himself on the rocks by the river.

Unfortunately I didn't quite make it up to the waterfall because it was very steep in places and I strained my dodgy hip trying. I should have known better than to attempt it but I can be too stubborn for my own good at times. Other than that though, I've been doing well at pacing and resting and I'm not struggling too much. I was exhausted yesterday though, so today I'm having a quiet day of recovery back in Manly at my brother and his wife's house. They left for honeymoon this morning and the rest of my remaining group also headed off this morning, so now I'm all by myself for the rest of my holiday. Fortunately, I enjoy my own company and although I've enjoyed being part of a big and vibrant group, I'm looking forward to having some quiet introspective time where I can get more drawing and thinking done.

I'm about to go off and do some internet research to decide what to do next - there's so much to do here that I feel a little overwhelmed with possibilities but I'll see what feels right. If I can find a cheap flight, I may jet off to somewhere else in Australia for a couple of days but I won't be sad if I end up staying here, because Sydney is just amazing and apart from my evening at the Mardi Gras, I haven't had a chance to explore it yet. Basically, I'm just going with the flow.