Women in art

Celebrating national women's day on saturday city art gallery gave tours of the gallery focusing on Women in art. Picking out pieces throughout the gallery ranging from the 17th century to present day work, either work produced by women or portraits of women. Highlighting the different ways that women and men paint women, there is an obvious difference in style and technique, male painters of the the 18th century produced very stylised and decorative pieces often with the woman gazing dully into the distance. Whereas the female artists pieces show the subject starring directly at the viewer, the painting would have narrative and look naturalistic compared to the male produced pieces.

Often the paintings by women showed domestic scenes this was because it was unheard of for women to attend art classes or be part of the Royal Academy of Art so the work they produced would often be done at home.

Personally I preferred the work produced by women, it was more honest and interesting.

6th Stitch Diary

Size - 80 cm by 40 cm

Stitch - Cross Stitch

Found - charity shop

Brass Art- The Non-existence of the Unnamed

Brass Arts second exhibition at the International 3 gallery, a solo exhibition of mysterious water colours. Not you traditional water colour exhibition, the gallery was completely pitch black except for a small bulb, when you first enter it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the darkness but I thought this was the most exciting period. Whilst your eyes adjust the images change, and more detail in each piece is revealed. I am not usually a fan of water colours but this exhibition was more about the space and the idea of the darkened surroundings, making it far more interesting. I think this also links well with the whole site project, working more with the space given to exhibit in.

The Absence of Thread

Having a fascination with thread I decided to remove it from the stitching process as to examine the stitches on there own to see what this produces and to see wether it is the stitching that I find most interesting or if it is indeed down to the thread and its qualities.

I have done this by using the sewing machine and removing the thread, this produces a series of holes, these are best seen when using paper. I have yet to find a suitable fabric that will keep the holes.

Looking at traditional sewing patterns and stitches but by removing the thread and using white paper the images produced are a much more delicate than if I had used thread.

5th Stitched Diary entry

Size - 15 cm by 15 cm

Stitch - split

Fabric - found in charity shop

Knit Knit Knit

I have decided after feeling like I had hit a wall with my animations to give myself some time off working on them. And to give my other projects more time, so over the past few days I have been knitting like mad. Having produced two 5 meter long knitted panels I am now working on my third, originally when I first began knitting these panels, back in first year, the panels where ment for making a knitted room. Now I am not so sure, another idea was to make a large banner by stitching the panels together. As it seems like the house project is on its way and more and more likely to happen I have thought about incorporating these into that.

On thursday I am going to view two possible houses, after this I may have a better idea of what to do with these pieces. But until then I'm going to keep on knitting.

Fourth Stitched diary entry

Fabric - found in charity shop

size 20cm by 60 cm

stitch- pekinese