Machine knitting

Screen printing

Graffiti

Photos taken on Leake Street this morning.

The Witching Hour at the PM Gallery

Entry: Free

I love big cities, but they can be scary places. While there are plenty of horror movies about city-slickers being menaced by inbred country-folk, but I can't recall many films that effectively show just how menacing a place the city can be – both overcrowded and isolating, both overly-ordered and a chaotic maze.

Shibori dyeing

As promised yesterday here are my dyeing samples from Tuesday's class.

We were using seven colours, which had all been mixed from Procion MX dyes that day: orange, red, blue (actually blue-purple), purple, lime-green, "peacock" (blue-green), and grey. There was also some indigo dye that had been mixed the previous week.

The first seven pieces all had over an hour in the dye baths, while the final six all had under 30 minutes.

Shibori dyeing

Tuesday's class was on shibori dyeing, (also known as tie-dye, though my tutor is less than fond of the latter term).

We were experimenting with different tying methods and different fabrics. I intended to post pictures of my dyed samples, along with my notes about each one, but it's taken me longer than expected to crop and resize the images so I'll post those tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some work-in-progress shots from the class.

Soldering

My soldering project is complete. Here's a shot of the back before I put the screws in.
And here it is with the battery in.





The noise that can be heard in the background of the first video is the sound of my soldering tutor playing Rock Band!

Soldering

I've been learning to solder this weekend, with the intention of eventually tackling some of the projects in this book. Maplins sells a series of simple electronics tutorial kits, so I chose the one that best continued my theme.


I still need a lot of practice, but I'm not even halfway through so I've got plenty to practice on.

Many thanks to James for providing a soldering iron, solder, wire cutters, and an invaluable demonstration of what to do. The kit can be found here.

"Cold as Ice"

I was sent a link to this skeleton-based video by Cemulucan79 earlier today (thanks, Maia). More of the artist's work can be found at www.cemulucan.com.

Monoprints

Drawings and monoprints made in preparation for my screen-printing module. The first nine images are based on vertebrae (giant ground sloth and human), while the final four are of skulls (deer and human).

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography at the V & A

Entry: £5 / £4 concessions

This is a glorious exhibition that I hadn't really seen advertised anywhere, (the V&A have primarily been promoting the Ballet Russes exhibition over the last few months). Fortunately, a better-informed friend took me along.

It's a very straightforward show. It showcases the work of five contemporary artists - Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Garry Fabian Miller, Susan Derges and Adam Fuss - who make images using photographic paper and chemicals, but not cameras. In addition to the work itself, there's a film showing brief interviews with each of the artists. In these interviews they explain how and why they use the techniques that they do.

With that little bit of background out of the way all I can do is whole-heartedly recommend this show, which runs until 20th February. The work on display is all gorgeous and evocative. While they've all been joined under the banner of “camera-less photographers”, the artists all have different styles and even use different techniques: Pierre Codier's chemigrams, made by painting directly on to the photographic paper with fixer, developer and varnishes, are a world away from Susan Derges' photograms of river currents. But both are beautiful and intricate, a lovely mixture of skill and chance, and completely worth seeing.