one step forward

OK - been working each evening - done another straight thread piece - experimenting with attachments - this time used white drawing pins which seemed to work better looks wise - especially if I paint them white along with the wall. Also worked out better to string the thing up from the bottom up and how to attach the thread by going over in one direction and under in the other! All relevant and useful findings. Still not sure if I will use the finished piece and where to put it.

On with more projections. Bargain time!! Found someone selling a portable overhead projector in Bradford! Bargain at £30! Hardly used in great condition - took a trip out there and now its mine! Very nice Indian man who sold it - he does portraits in crayon of his family - he showed me his full range - they were very good! Nice man.

So - today I used it to project my knitted wire. And wow!! Its fab!!

This is the projection onto my dining room wall - so overwhleming and impactful.

So I set off drawing. I drew the outline of the shadow in ink and realised my pen wouldn't be enough to fill in the shaded parts. First I used acrylic but it looked too painterly so in the end I used ink and a brush to make the lines. As I went on I felt unsure about the original lines and that it might be less contrived if I were to paint with ink immediately onto the wall - more honest if less 'neat' for not having lovely outline!
This was the result.....

Obviously its only part of the projection and I've had to do it on paper on the wall (discovered that ink doesn't like to be painted over and I can't get it off my wall!!)
I find it visually quite stunning.
Imagine a large portion of wall covered in this.....



Then once it was finished I considered placing the original knitted wire in front of the shadow - as I did with the stitches. This is where I am unsure. The original problems of the wire being less organic, less flowing and web like than the stitches has returned. It doesn't hang beautifully in front. Because it is knitted the pieces are much larger and can only hang in rows. I'm in a big of a quandry about it. How do I get round this??

I placed a large piece of the knitting in front of the drawing for now - the complexity hits me immediately - the wall of wire in front of the softer drawing form, the complication of not being able to see the drawing for the wire - the corner being somehow off limits - you are stopped from entering almost. Is that what I wanted to achieve? Maybe. I will have drawn attention to it and yet made the observer aware of it by stopping them for looking more closely.
Still the wire doesn't feel right to me - I will have to think some more.....thinking....feeling.....the two are polar to each other! My feeling tells me this is not right....I wanted something breathing in the space. I tried the threads in front but that didn't work either......My thinking tells me that if I were to do this on a large scale with a wall of wire in front it could look stunning (and it was an idea I had a while back about the scale but had discarded - funny that!) ......hmmm.

Of real interest to me today I found an artist through another blog - the artist is called Heesop Yoon - http://heeseopyoon.com/index.html. The work is very similar to mine and for similar reasons - I love it. Tape is the main media used but the effect is what I would like to generate. My issue is I set myself the brief of drawing in space - it has to have a 3 dimensional aspect......doesn't it??

I also went to a friends house - they don't clean much and up on the ceiling in the corner were cobwebs of dust - and they reminded me of my work - at the window was a bamboo blind broken and wonky and it reminded me of my straight threads - funny - immediately my work became valid! ha ha!

Quiet without the children.
Sat outside watching the birds - I'm very lucky to have birds visiting my garden a lot! Two wood pigeons nest building in my tree and then landed straight in front of me a little bird, beautiful yellow across its back and a bright red face......a goldfinch!! Never seen one before! How lucky am I?!

And grateful on a very quiet day!

More tomorrow .......