Woven Threads Project

I can't quite believe it's all happened but I delivered my work to the gallery last Monday morning, the private view took place on Friday evening and the exhibition opened on Saturday. I've put some photographs of the exhibition on the gallery page but I want to go back and take some better pictures during daylight! Thank you to everyone who came to the private view, hope you enjoyed it. A big thank you to Jhinuk at Nuneaton who put the exhibition together for all her hard work and thank you to everyone who has helped and been supportive throughout the project. The exhibition will be at Nuneaton until 9th January 2011 so plenty of time to see it!

All of my work for the exhibition needs to be finished and ready to take to Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery on Monday morning. So I have been working hard on getting everything finished (not quite got everything finished yet but it will be!). Last week I had a meeting at the Museum with the exhibitions officer and we discussed how my work will be displayed. We also talked about me writing some more text for my artist/exhibition statement. This has turned out to be a more difficult task than I thought, I think because I am a little uncomfortable writing about myself and my work but mostly because my brain has been all over the place this week and I've found it difficult to concentrate. Also I wanted my statement to be really good, so that was some added pressure I put on myself. Therefore writng the statement has taken most of the week with many re-edits.

Last weekend and the beginning of this week I spent attempting to sew paper labels onto a canvas, this was not an easy task. But I am quite happy with the result, there are some photos of the canvas in progress on the gallery page. The rest of today and the weekend I will spend making sure my work is tidy which will involve scissors and ironing. I am also planning a trip to a hardware store to find ways to attach my work to the wall, yes a bit last minute but that's just how things have worked out.

Woven Threads Project Exhibition

30th October 2010 to 9th January 2011

Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery

Riversley Park, Nuneaton. CV11 5TU

With the exhibition coming up on the 30th October, I've had a lot to think about in terms of organising myself. I had to decide whether to have a Private View to launch the exhibition, I finally decided I would. So I have an invitation to write, a mailing lists to complile and numbers to think of, forms to complete, etc. I also had to decide whether or not to have the work in the exhibition for sale, suprisingly this was something I hadn't considered until the gallery asked me. So now I have to come up with titles and prices for my work, not as easy as you might think (not for me anyway!)

I've also been continuing to weave and producing another piece, but I think that I will have to start consolidating and preparing the work I have already done soon and reach a point where I stop making new pieces for this exhibition. My sister has helped me a lot this weekend by talking through my work and ideas with me. I find it very useful to discuss the project and my ideas with someone else occaisionally, because I find it helps me to think through things that I've been having difficulty with working alone.

You may have noticed that I've not been updating the blog as regularly lately. Truthfully I have found it a lot more difficult than I expected to regularly write about my thoughts, ideas and progress. I think this is partly because whilst I'm in the middle of making and developing my ideas I don't have the sense of perspective to write from. I have also found that I don't like to admit to having any negative thoughts or bad days on the blog. I know that having moments where you reassess your work is part of the creative process, but it can be hard to see it that way when you are in the middle of a 'creative crisis' moment. The time pressure is also something that is often on my mind as well the pressure I have put on myself to produce work and an exhibition that is everything I would like it to be. So there you are, being honest, I sometimes don't feel like blogging!

Looking at the positive side of things, I feel I have made some really good progress lately. I have been working on a few different pieces, including the printed cushion, a woven piece incorporating the idea of family history and another woven piece that celebrates something of the colour and frivolity of ribbons. It is interesting to me that although the ribbon weaving industry was a very serious occupation on which peoples' livelihoods depended, the actual products were colourful, luxury fashion items to those that bought them. You can see images of my recent work updated on the Gallery on the recently added section, 'work in progress 2...'