Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

We made a trip up to Birmingham yesterday to see the Craft Council's Lost in Lace exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. While not a massive lace fan, my partner is and I was pleasantly surprised that a few of the pieces in the exhibition I really loved. 


Nils Völker uses Tyvek to produce breathing sculptures:

Chiharu Shiota uses black thread to create grids in which she places objects which makes them inaccessible and distant:

And Kathleen Rogers uses Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Confocal Laser Microscopy (CLM) to map lace and produce a really interesting - almost sci-fi - film which an ambient soundtrack

Also in the gallery was the Tessa Sidey Bequest which is a series of around 30 prints given to the gallery by a former Curator of Prints and Drawings upon her death. The stand out pieces for me were an inkless etching by Josef Albers and a linocut by Anthony Davies - it's just a shame I didn't take better pictures.


The gallery is housed in a Georgian building and has a couple of spectacular rooms:

On leaving the museum, the city's library is opposite and there was a lovely piece of commissioned art wrapping around one side:

My tools

My tools
Linocut with hand drawn detail

Linocut with hand drawn detail

New year, new ideas

2011 was a crazy year, I started it by going on a Printmaking course at City Lit at the beginning of the year and following that began to make cards and wrapping paper. I set up a couple of online shops through Etsy and Folksy then received a huge order from Lane Crawford, a department store in Hong Kong who wanted to stock my products. I also sold my wares on market stalls throughout the summer and onto Christmas as well as being stocked in a couple of small boutique gift shops in east London - Of Cabbages and Kings in Stoke Newington and Factory Press in Homerton


After a manic pre-Christmas period with making and markets it was lovely to have a short break but now I am back at my desk working with the ideas which have been bouncing around my head. I have loads of exciting ideas ready to be unleashed in 2012 and can't wait to see where Hand Printed by David takes me next.  

Sonia Delaunay and avant-garde pattern

Sonia Delaunay was part of the avant-garde movement during the 1920s and 1930s producing textiles, surface patterns and prints. Just beautiful - would love an exhibition to come to London soon. Much of her work was commissioned by the Dutch department store Metz who are now owned by Liberty's. Hopefully Liberty's still produce some of these designs.

These images are taken from Colour Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, published by Thames & Hudson.

Sienna cathedral - a photo composite

Here is a photo composite I did of Sienna Cathedral when we visited there in May 2011. It's not perfect but I like it a lot. I really love the distorted dimensions you get with composites and how not every join fits perfectly together. Want to do some more of these; another thing to add to my list of things to do in 2012.

Arkitip geometric cover

This cover of the Los Angeles-based art magazine Arkitip pleases me so much. Once I have saved up for the postage or a flight to LA I am definitely going to pick up one of these for myself, even if it is for the cover alone.

Coming soon

Notebooks

3.2 million dots

A beautiful video of a picture composed of 3.2 million dots.

Another weekend, another...

This Saturday we will be at the We Make Christmas Fair at the Battersea Arts Centre in Clapham. There will be over 80 sellers and I think it is going to be something special.

Then on Sunday we'll be at the Rushmore Road Primary School market on Chatsworth Road.

In addition to this bhmakes is having an open studio along with the other people in her yard. There will be a party with mince pies and mulled wine on Thursday night and a studio shop/drop-in for the rest of the weekend. There is some really interesting and beautiful work coming out of there so if you get the opportunity you should definitely try to make it.