breaking through

The Key Book (back cover) Mo 15
(H 12 cm W 9.5 cm )
Yesterday I was feeling that a breakthrough was imminent for resolving this book and taking the metaphor literally, cut through the back cover to inlay this old brass keyhole
The Key Book (front cover) with rust dyed key cloth from Liz Ackert and that’s her extraordinary 60 count hand woven linen in the next pic
and here’s the reverse
so now I have the key what was the question… ?
you can see the pages in more detail here, here, here, here, here & here

PS the explorations in this little book have me thinking once again about light and layers and engraving glass
and how lace relates to glass…
listen to this interview with Tony Hanning a master of drawing the light in glass
“to see the things we remember never having seen”
Tony gave me the best lesson ever in seeing
Back in 1989 I was engraving the detail in the dragonfly wings on one of his cameo carved vases as the professional practice component in my last year at art school and he said, “these are not dragonfly wings with all these arabesques & curlicues, go home find a dragonfly, look at it’s wings and then come back and get back to work. I did and in that moment learned to truly see….

a natural order with time

Mother Nature makes her own order with time
textures made by tiny shells embedded in the sea sponge
looking through the holes and folds in dead coral
I tried to stitch some boar bristles with a silver strand of my hair into a scrap of whisper silk organza held in an embroidery hoop, dissatisfied with the artifice I cut it out & stitched it to this page. Letting go of control & allowing the thread to follow the natural flow of the bristles, will see what happens to the rose petal with time…

looking for logic

looking for the logic in an emu feather
seeing how the barbs are modified to the barest bones in the feathers of this flightless bird
emu feathers are lively and resist being stitched down
even the damaged feathers have a distinct grace and character
and looking at the way a grape vine tendril spirals
this is an ongoing exploration of looking at patterns of lace in nature you can see more of the Key Book going widdershins  here, here, here & here

“You fight with dreams as with formless and meaningless life, seeking a pattern, a route that must surely be there, as when you begin to read a book and you don’t yet know in which direction it will carry you. What you would like is the opening of an abstract and absolute space and time in which you could move, following an exact, taut trajectory; but when you seem to be succeeding, you realize you are motionless, blocked, forced to repeat everything from the beginning.”
– Italo Calvino
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
via Whiskey River

this was one of the most difficult books I have ever read, after years of starting and then throwing it against the wall in total frustration I finally got to the last page last year, it’s a brilliant search for meaning in what can often seem to be a confusing and meaningless world

Leaf Lace

exploring the lace like veins in a skeletonized Hydrangea leaf with thread and white ink
and made some French knots for the first time ever!
this is a continuation of looking at patterns of lace found in nature through the Key Book

working into the heart of the matter

Today’s Full Moon in Capricorn made me roll up my sleeves and get back to to work, looking hard at each page making sure “The illustrated lyrics of Old Man Crow” will be ready to go to the printer next month and adding a dash of red to each song with a “ooo” Series 7 Winsor & Newton sable and gouache
starting each day making a heart talisman bookmark
dried rose petals wrapped in raw red silk,
red felt cut out with a no 11 scalpel blade, stitched with Gütermann upholstery thread
knotted waxed linen thread
another heart is finished
5 talisman hearts done, 95 to go for the limited edition
the key book is also calling
continuing the exploration, looking at patterns of lace found in nature
and it’s tax time… the forms arrived in the mail yesterday so it’s time to start crunching the numbers
the gardening keeps our feet on the ground, a roof over the head and food in the bellies
there’s something almost satisfying about looking at all the ins and outs of the business and seeing how we have spent the year but it is a very different head space
the other good news is we met our landlady for the first time ever on Tuesday, she’s our vintage with a wicked sense of humour, a kindred spirit & feeling like we’ll be here in this beautiful old lady of a house for a good while yet, phew!

looking at lace in nature

5H graphite & ink sketches of lichen, fungus and smoke through the eye of a needle
patterns in smoke, lichen & Spanish Moss (not Witches Hair) nature’s weaving in phoenix palm sheath
don’t think I can do any more to the red tree in the Key Book

the key book

The Key Book by Mo 15
embellishing a vintage Chinese accordion book
Liz Ackert’s rust dyed key cloth
and 60 count hand weave linen, lichen and yellow onion skin dyed
stitched with red silk, white silk wrapped steel over passionfruit vine tendril, black linen & Silkworm threads, clay beads, hemp string border
sketch of Zig Zag aka Acacia merinthopora
drawing helps me understand the world

stitched Acacia merinthopora

a couple of red x-es
and then I spilt the vase of Zig-Zag Acacia into the book… after swearing quite loudly at 2am (hoping I didn’t disturb the neighbours) I dried the book under weights and played around with some roots and lichens stitched to bookbinders mull (RHS below) & had a go at carving the negative space into the paper without enough thought and then tried to heal it with red felt and tiny stab stitches (LHS below)… it’s so strange, perhaps it needs a little lace curtain like a modesty panel
as a wise glass artist said at Pilchuck Glass School back in 1989
“the fun is in the process, the outcome is just debris”

working so intently adding snippets of vintage lace to the canopy of the red thing I didn’t even notice the that my fingertips were flinging drops of blood

so I drew around the edges of the blood and have put the key book safely away for a little while