I've got this idea about...

It's a bit like what Katy did next. Copyright © PaulFC

[paulfc]

Cardboard Chairs

So a few weeks ago, Manchester Art Gallery opened a new exhibition of some of its furniture collection. The space is quite small but they have managed to cram in three tiers against one wall amounting to probably more than fifty pieces. Mostly they are chairs but there are a couple of lights and one mirror, which I love. (Not because I am vain, I am too old to be vain, but because it makes me laugh every time I look at myself in it.)

I am a Manc and over the years I have seen many of the pieces previously on display, including the mirror, and one in particular has always appealed to me, it is a lounger style chair made from a single sheet of plywood cut and steamed to bend it.

The paper model on the laptop above is an approximation of it. This lead me to wonder what other kinds of chair can you make with a single sheet and just cut lines? Actually there are several.

Looking into bending sheets of plywood I found that plywood can be had in eight foot by four foot sheets which have been made such that they will when steamed flex either in the long or short axis into either a barrel or a column. Flexing in the short axis gets you an eight foot column and in the long axis a four foot high barrel. It's one or the other not both in the same sheet you have to specify. Don't know what a sheet costs but I bet they are quite expensive.

[paulfc]

On Making a Rigid Heddle Loom III

It is just before the summer solstice and I have as my first woven article a scarf, still this is of course the UK and in a week's time I may well need it.

It is yellow and red which I understand are the colours of Belgium and Colombia since the World Cup is on, actually I didn't know that I just chose yellow and red because I had the wool. (A nice example of Post hoc justification and fallacy.)

Weavers will understand why I have arranged it thus, this is the end bit of the weaving when I had at least some idea what I was doing and this end is somewhat rectangular as opposed to trapezoidal at the start when I kept the tension too high and the selvedges kept drawing in.

It is entirely possible that I will not use this again since the exercise was to determine can I build a rigid heddle loom and with the provisos mentioned previously the answer is yes. Could I have built this one better? The answer to that is a resounding yes, and if I should build another it would be much better.

This type of loom does seem to be the entry level after perhaps a back strap loom and I will remain in awe of those more serious weavers who can understand the complexities of the much larger floor mounted pedal looms, and produce beautiful fabric. All things being equal I will not be attempting to build one of those.

[paulfc]

On Making a Rigid Heddle Loom II

In the last chapter, I ended with the need to put apron rods on it and to warp it up and actually try weaving and what with real life and other commitments getting in the way it is now over a week ago.

I have eventually put apron rods on it and warped it and actually tried to weave just this morning. So what have I got to report that I did wrong?

Well from the pictures I have seen it looks as though most apron rods are held on with what looks like zip tie, mine are done with nylon cord and the knots holding them do stick out quite a bit.

I had mentioned that the height of the loom was inadvertently restricted and as can be seen in the last image I have used a lot of space on the warp beam with about two metres of warp. For me that is not really a huge problem I can't see ever weaving anything over that but if I made another one I would take it into account. I am also only using fairly lightweight knitting yarn if it were much heavier then it would use more space on the beam. Also woven fabric is thicker than the yarn it was made from so the space on the fabric bar will be used faster.

I had also mentioned the heddle blocks were a rip-off design and the height of the shed they produce is just about 2 cms and tweaking the block design would increase this. I can get the shuttle through fairly easily so that is again, make another and that would change.

I had looked at many videos on how to warp a rigid heddle and still managed to make it complicated and long winded I guess when I have done it several times I may have a better idea, but I won't hold my breath. I have lashed the warp onto the apron rods and the tension is not brilliant I think they might have been better tied on.

The heddle I have made works fine but I would like to see a commercial one in real life, the photographs on the internet don't really give dimensions other than dent and I have approximated the height. I have also made a variable dent heddle that I will test out at some point in the future.

For a first try I am not unhappy and were I to make another it would be much better. I don't see myself becoming a serious weaver I am after all a butterfly, and some other thing will take my fancy but I do really like to have a play with textiles every now and then.

[paulfc]

On making in general and on making a Rigid Heddle Loom in particular.

On making in general, if you set out to make something, frequently the first thing you will think about is what am I going to make it out of? You may be tempted to look at what other makers have done and what materials they have favoured, Michelangelo didn't have google but I am sure he knew lots of other artists quite liked Carrera marble.

So I want to make a loom and wood seems to be preferred to marble and I have got this plank that seems like it might make a good start for the sides so I look at the dimensions of the plank and start to plan with those in mind. Then I change my mind and decide I am going to make it out of some other material and this is where the general mistake arises.

I allowed the constraints of one material, to constrain me when I decided to change materials. Instead of thinking it through from the beginning again.

On making a Rigid Heddle Loom, since the plank was 9 cms wide I had decided that the maximum height of the sides of the loom would be that, even when I decided to use laser cut plywood for the sides.

There are good weaving reasons for it to be significantly more and were I to make another loom, the maximum height of the sides would likely be more than twice that. (The height of the side goes to how much woven fabric you can wind on to the end of the loom.)

I have laser cut the heddles, which can be seen in the images and although a laser engraver is a precision instrument when engraving an image, it is much less so when cutting plywood. The kerf is the width of material that is destroyed when making a cut and the heddles that I can cut would only produce relatively course fabric. (Commercially made heddles are quite expensive, especially when I am just playing.)

The heddle blocks, where the heddle sits and the thing that looks like a dog in the photos, are to some extent guesswork and I will have to warp the loom up and weave to find how well they work. They are only bolted on so can be moved or refined as needful.

I have still to make some spools of suitable length, think about putting apron rods on it, I don't think it will tension if I don't, and to warp it up and actually try weaving.

[paulfc]

On being a butterfly, and what I have been playing with lately.

One of the discussions we had at art school was about the question "When do artists settle into a style of work?" There were a number of answers but the cynical one, and therefore the one that I remember was, "When it starts to sell!"

I am fortunate in that I do not have to sell work to live, and if it pleases me I can live to make art in any such style that I choose. It follows that to some extent I am a butterfly, and flit from project to project and style to style as I please and have not yet settled to attempt mastery in any one of them.

So to what I have been doing recently, at last month's Making Conversation meeting we were looking at the gallery's costume exhibition and I recalled as a child I had borrowed a loom from school for a while.

What I borrowed was a Rigid Heddle loom and it occurred to me that I should be able to laser cut a heddle and spool from plywood quite easily. See the first image, you can find these on eBay very cheaply, if you want to try and don't have a laser cutter in your kitchen.

Rigid Heddle and spools

Set on a frame

Woollen yarn and string, charity shops and gardening supplies

Backstrap woven wool, (see below)

Backstrap woven string

Woven fabric demonstrating my enthusiasm and lack of skill

Backstrap weaving, in many countries and for centuries the only thing that was needed to weave long thin strips of fabric that would be pieced together was a backstrap loom. At its most simple all that is needed is a heddle a spool and yarn, the heddle is laced up with warp thread and the warp is held in tension between a fixed point and a strap around the weaver's back or waist. See Mini Back-Strap Weaving

To do: - I think I am tempted to make a bigger rigid heddle loom just for the sake of it and I also want to think about how a visually impaired member of the group might be able to have a go at weaving, texture pattern rather than colour patterns perhaps?

[paulfc]

eBay and age verification

Yesterday evening I was looking to buy some new pliers and some titanium dioxide for laser engraving and I thought I would also have a new pair of cable cutters.

Bundle them up and go to pay only to be told that since I wanted to buy a bladed article I had to confirm my age is over 18 and on eBay the preferred method is to register a credit card, a debit card will not do since it does not have the same checks to obtain one.

Haven't got one don't need one, so I just bought the other items and got the cutters at pretty much the same price from a real shop this morning.

The silly thing about this is, if eBay checked its own records it would have found that I have had my account for over 20 years and therefore am over 18, even if I were only 2 when I opened it.

[paulfc]

Table top mobiles

Since recently being asked to make some decorations for a celebration and enquiring if they wanted a mobile as part of them, I have renewed my interest in mobiles. Over the years I have made a lot, almost all of them suspended, frequently made of tin plate they blow about in my back yard and eventually rust away.

So here we have two maquettes and a more or less full sized mobile which are not suspended, they have their own hanging point as part of the structure.

While it is not clear if Calder himself invented them he certainly made such structures with and without attached mobiles and that the artist Jean Arp seeing them coined the term "stabiles" a clever comment on the fact that they do not move.

[paulfc]

Art vs Craft again

15x15x12 cms laser cut plywood

Hard to be artistic when you are basically making shelves, a friend has moved office and wanted somewhere to put her plants, she has five so I have made five little plant shelves to go on the wall.

Sometimes you get asked to make artistic things and sometimes they are to be primarily functional.

Such is the life of an artist / maker.

[paulfc]

Good gracious they're multiplying!

Art vs Craft and the pricing of artistic works:-

So I took my response to the Mughal casket to the Making Conversation meeting at Manchester Art Gallery and one of the regular attendees said I like that will you make me one?

I don't know about other artists but I quite like it when someone says that, because making a copy allows you to think about the things that you didn't quite like or get right in the first one. In the latest one I have deliberately made the top looser and made the attachment of the piece against which the photographs sit much stronger. That it has a handle was her suggestion, and I have also added acetate sheet to protect any photos she puts in it.

I think it should be mandatory that in their very first lecture, art students should be told that very few of them will make a living out of art but that they will leave art school with wonderful memories, new friends and transferable skills.

It has been my wont to give away more pieces than I have ever sold and if she insists I will let her pay for the materials.

The pricing of art and of course the art vs craft debate has always interested me, this little thing, given that I already had the design files saved, probably has about a days work in it over about three of four days, glue, varnish etc have to dry. So it owes me perhaps eight hours work, if I were a motor mechanic £400 maybe, and even at minimum wage £100.

Most artists probably don't make even that for the time their pieces take to make, they're made for the love of creation, not for the love of money.

Reading this before I post it, I have noticed that I call myself an artist which is not in itself illegitimate, I have not called myself a great artist, but I have also mentioned the existence of design files and this tends to some extent in the Art vs Craft debate towards my being a craftsman since design suggests that I know what I am making before it is finished. I could wish that were true sometimes!

[paulfc]

Octagonal casket/photo frame, laser cut and engraved plywood 10x10x11 cms.

Response to a piece in a current exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery.

The City gallery in Manchester recently opened an exhibition entitled:- Splendours of the Sikh Raj: Arms and Armour

This is a stunning display of craftsmanship, if you can disregard the fact that most of the stuff was made to kill or at least control people. Many of the pieces show signs of wear so they were obviously used at some period. Given that the rifles were for everyday use, the decoration on them is quite beautiful.

It has always entertained me that even on the most expensive shotguns the only person who gets to sign his work is the engraver.

There is in one of the display cases a small box decorated with miniature portraits and for me this is my favourite, the gallery description of it is:- "Casket with painted image of Ranjit Singh and other famous figures from the Indian subcontinent circa 1850, Northern India. John Edward Yates bequest, 1934" (See the last image.)

My response took me a few days to make, and I am quite pleased with it, but how long must the original have taken to make, paper and plywood me, I don't often need to get the silver wire, ivory, and emeralds out. Even if I did have the materials, I simply don't have the skill.

Odd the things you find out when you do a bit of research, although the casket was made during the Sikh Raj at least two of the portraits on it are from the from the glory days of the Mogul empire. Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum. So likewise I have put them in my piece.

If you happen to be in town, worth having a look at.

[paulfc]

The Suffragettes civil disobedience and the toffee hammer

Automaton 20x12x25 cms, mixed media predominantly plywood

About a month or so ago one of the workers at the charity I volunteer for was asking for help to update notice boards and I saw that the women's history board was one of them.   

 If you asked most people could they name a suffragette then Mrs Pankhurst would probably be the only one, and she came from Manchester.  One of the things that suffragettes did was civil disobedience, they broke a huge number of windows, and toffee hammers were their weapon of choice, small, easily hidden, and remarkably good at breaking glass. 

One of the attacks in Manchester was by three ladies, who late one evening just before closing went into the City Gallery and set about breaking the glass on a number of paintings.  They were apprehended and sent to court where their defence was that they had not intended to damage the paintings but only to break the glass.  One was acquitted and the other two got short prison sentences. 

There was some damage to the paintings but secondary to the glass having being broken, in subsequent gallery attacks elsewhere there was deliberate damage, the most well known is that of the  Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez, which was slashed. 

While researching I did find some good sources for our notice board and also came to think that this would make a suitable subject for an automaton.  

It is a while since I made an automaton and I did make a few mistakes while working on this, gluing stuff together in the wrong order and making holes that should not have been there.  

Were this to be going anywhere serious I would make a fair copy of it and the painting “The last watch of Hero” would be mounted somewhat higher and a little closer to the suffragette.  This would mean that the hammer would hit the glass (acetate sheet) and not, as it now would if closer, foul the hammer with the frame. 

Even so I am not unhappy with it as a simple automaton, time I think to make some more.

[paulfc]

Things that only a Brit will understand

Saw this in a news feed.

So I was on the sea front in Blackpool, kids everywhere and a couple start a domestic going at it like hammer and tongs groceries all over the place. A copper comes up and tries to calm them down and they both turn on him, the husband get the officer's truncheon and starts to beat him with it and then a crocodile comes along and eats all their sausages.

I nearly choked laughing when I read this, got the the last sentence and thought oh yeah, Punch and Judy.

[paulfc]

The twelve days of Christmas

A Christmas decoration at Back on Track's Swan café.

Laser cut paper and fishing line, approximately 3 metres wide and 3 metres deep.

It is no exaggeration to suggest that I am a better artist than photographer, I photograph to record, and this, my latest Christmas decoration/installation in Swan café, is much better in real life than my rather random photographs seen here might suggest.

Thank you to the people who helped me put it together on the ground and held it taught while I hooked it into place. Lacing it up at ground level meant that I only had to spend about ten minutes perched on top of the step ladder rather than the hour or so I had envisaged, much safer.

It does work quite well as a simply white paper installation but the RGB floods do give it some lovely coloured shadows.

It is Back on Track's awards ceremony and Christmas party this coming Friday and then apart from one or two odd days I don't have much to do until the new year and the new term.

I have had a few days doing not much art after finishing this but am now putting together some text and images for one of the notice boards about the Suffragettes use of toffee hammers in the City Gallery in 1913.

Plus sa change plus c'est la meme chose, if it's not toffee hammers it's apple crumble and custard and I find myself in two minds about what is and is not acceptable behaviour, when attempting to right what were then, and are now still, clear wrongs.

[paulfc]

Named Storms

The first ever named storm in the UK was called Abigail, and this entertained me because it is an approximate homophone for A Big Gale.

Since then I always think each time I hear a named storm does it have anything to do with the weather and tonight we have huge winds and a great deal of rain and the storm is a named one, Claudia, which is being pronounced Cloudier, so yes it does.

[paulfc]

It's that time of year again.

We have just had Halloween and half term and so the next big thing is Christmas, and it's time to think about what I am going to do for decorations at Back on Track this year.

Last years hanging Christmas tree was quite well regarded so I thought that something in a similar fashion might do and then I thought that the 12 days of Christmas would lend itself to making decorations in white paper as I like to do.

So to Google for research (idea stealing, all artists steal) where I found some ideas to modify to my needs. If I have stolen your ideas forgive me it is Christmas and I am volunteering for a charity.

Now I have to decide how to hang it all, last years was hung vertically and was about a metre and a half tall. This would be three metres at least and a couple of metres wide so I am leaning toward hanging it as a net horizontally.

I am volunteering in the café tomorrow so I will spend some time looking at how it might be done, I suspect it is going to involve a lot of fishing line and a lot of time up a ladder. Won't be the first time.

[paulfc]

We live in interesting times, again!

ID Cards electronic or otherwise,

TLDR I rant about my distaste for ID Cards

I regard my Tumblr account as mainly my online sketchbook and if I am honest I haven't written in a paper sketchbook for years now. That would appal my tutors but there we are. I admit that occasionally I comment on non art stuff, and very infrequently do I let my politics out on show but this is one of those times.

I am vehemently opposed to the introduction of ID cards, the history of them in this country, is that we have them in times of war and then get rid of them. We are not at war! True the country is in a parlous financial state but we are not at war.

Just because most other countries have them doesn't mean we should.

All of the stated functions of the proposed ID system are covered by laws that are already in existence, the cost of the system is said to be about ten billion pounds and it will be run by private companies.

So why introduce something we do not need and cannot afford?

A costly system that will inevitably get hacked.

I have signed the petition on the governments website and the government has responded to it and I find their response an interesting mixture of sophistry and "Oh yeah, and how long are you going to hold to that?"

"It will not be compulsory to obtain a digital ID but it will be mandatory for some applications...

For clarity, it will not be a criminal offence to not hold a digital ID and police will not be able to demand to see a digital ID as part of a “stop and search.”...

I hate that I have become old and cynical, but how can a thing be both "not compulsory" and "mandatory" at the same time? Sophistry!

Primary legislation in the UK has to come before both of the Houses of Parliament to become law. However most Acts of Parliament have in them some mechanism whereby their application can be amended by Order in council, ministerial oversite or the word of the police or local authority, without further reference to Parliament.

This is what allows "Function creep". This is where legislation that was not primarily stated to apply to some circumstance gets amended in such a fashion that it suddenly does. Giving power to some group, the government, the police, or local authority that Parliament has not expressly said that they should have.

You have in your pocket a smartphone, you load the ID app and it says this app requires location data and access to your contacts list, so now everywhere you go and everyone you know is available to the ID app... This is not how it will start out but history suggests this is how it will end up.

I have not just become old and cynical, I have become old cynical and paranoid, and yes I thought about not posting this.

[paulfc]

Laser cutting fabric (Hitomezashi pattern grid)

So in a recent post I mentioned that I had been laser cutting a grid for hitomezashi patterns in cardboard and that I wondered if it would work in fabric.

Have tried today and in poly-cotton at least, it seems to work quite well. I have cut 0.5mm holes in a 10mm grid and sewn a pattern to try it out. I don't know the name of this pattern but I am sure it must have one, looks like a Greek cross of some sort.

Obviously putting a pencil grid of dots remains the classical method; and purists will argue that since hitomezashi is a type of visible mending then laser cutting holes in the fabric would weaken any patch made with it. I am inclined to agree but in the case of a pattern made for aesthetic purposes well it make finding the mark easy since the holes are easy to hit with the needle and I am lazy.