weekly weaves: Dailymades

Showing posts with label Dailymades. Show all posts

Monday, 11 August 2014

now we are one thousand!

Something unmade remains full of promise
and to celebrate the 1000th post on this blog,
today's Dailymade will not be made.

I posted the 1000^th Dailymade today! It’ll be three years this October since I started http://dailymades.blogspot.co.uk. If this project was higher education, I’d be close to graduating now. But what does my Dailymade ‘degree' qualify me for exactly? I started the blog to help me generate new work and prompt more reflection on my practice. Looking at what I've written here on weeklyweaves, this has worked very well. Am I to go on with this? Absolutely! It feels like I’m only just starting with this project, and as a three year old having just learned how to walk, I’m now eager to run.

Below are the 10 most visited Dailymades. It would make sense for me to post my own favourites here, but I think the choosing will be really hard. As I do feel I’m only as good as the last thing I’ve made, my own all time favourite has to be today’s Dailymade – see picture above. In this case of course it wasn't actually made and it goes to show that there maybe is only one thing better than making, and that is not to make!

Dailymade 120531

Dailymade 120712

Dailymade 120212

Dailymade 120713

Dailymade 120905

Dailymade 120901

Dailymade 121214

Dailymade 120611

Dailymade 130513

Dailymade 120102

Monday, 2 December 2013

repetition is the mother of invention

Dailymade #131120

Over two years into posting one dailymade a day and with nearly 800 of these under my belt, the thought that I am starting to repeat myself has crossed my mind a few times. Recent work however has put this worry to rest.

Dailymade #131119

A couple of weeks ago I started reusing sisal twine which I have an abundance of in the studio. The plan was to make doilies with the coarse twine, but what happened between start of the process (always the same sequence of 6 stitches looped into a circle) and the finish (when my 10m bundle was used up) resulted in a different outcome every time. The instruction I set for myself inevitably seem to lead to freeform making and the range of objects you see illustrated above and below.

Dailymade #131122

Sure, I could have been stricter with myself and stuck to an exact pattern, but I decided instead to a keep soft focus on what I intended to make and 'riff' with the material. As a result repeating the same simple tying and knotting manoeuvres lead to much innovation and discovery. So, worrying about posting the same old dailymades, I don’t see it happening any time soon...

Dailymade #131121

Wednesday, 31 July 2013

nothing can ever be the same again...

repetition is transformative

More thoughts on Sharing Making Moving, Independent Dance’s summer intensive at Siobhan Davies Studios – see also previous post.

actions can remain the same
but intention changes everything

undoing is one way of making

making is moving

movement is change

all making is improvised

through movement we are in touch with the absolute
- Colin McLean (on Buddhist prayer wheels)

Friday, 26 April 2013

nature | maker

lace trim

Let’s take a pause, sit back, relax… Rather than getting on with making things and getting busy with my Dailymades, I’ve simply tuned in to all the stuff being made and transformed all around me.

Below is a record of what was made (and displayed) on a beach in northern New South Wales over the course of the last few days. Not doing anything can be the best way of achieving something...

tapestry

embroidery

pattern

map

score

stepping and stopping

hopping off

Monday, 4 March 2013

flights of fancy

While sourcing materials to produce artwork for a commission at the Lewisham Hospital, I was very happy to see that when I searched for suppliers of chevron border envelopes, three of the four images that first came up were of my dailymades.

I have repeatedly been drawn to working with patterned envelope papers over the years. I used them as early as 2002 in a sound installation for Danielle Arnaud at the Museum of Garden History, and in another sound piece created for my first solo exhibition at MK gallery in Rotterdam. I have included them since in the graphics on my website, and I like to think that I possibly have the largest collection of patterned envelope papers in the world. Entering the collection in the Guinness Book of Records has been on my to do list for over a decade now and writing this will, hopefully, prompt me to do something about it.

Amongst all the envelopes in my collection, there is something I find particularly compelling about the chevron border airmail envelopes; they travel faster and longer distances than other envelopes, criss-crossing the globe like migratory birds, and weighing no more than some of these avian species either. In an age where most correspondence is done via email, chevron bordered envelopes convey a sense of romance and the exotic. Though cheap, readily available and instantly recognisable, they are full of the promise of distant places. For me, this sums up their enduring appeal...

Saturday, 12 January 2013

memos to myself

Out with the old, in with the new! The New Year calls for a new brief, a new manifesto! There will only be one set of rules for making my dailymades, it’ll be THE ONLY MANIFESTO…

ONLY take a day maximum to make something

- the clue is in the title of the series of works

ONLY use found, foraged or recycled materials

- be a producer not a consumer

ONLY use the most rudimentary tools

- hi tech is good, lo tech is better

ONLY work with cheap materials

- the value is in the making

ONLY make things once

- variation is better than repetition

ONLY make sense of things through repetition

- either that or improvisation

ONLY make things spontaneously

- a variation of the previous rule

ONLY record the making process in my head

- to make reproducing more revealing

ONLY reveal the art through criticism, not backed up by it

- this one is after Robert Benjamin

ONLY make work according to these rules

- like boundaries you've got to have them

ONLY stick to these rules until you decide to change them

- the only truly sensible way to work

notebook and glue
dailymade #130110

Saturday, 5 January 2013

horns of (little and) plenty

stripped and split sycamore
dailymade #120705

Going round in circles comes really naturally when I’m making. This is not altogether surprising as I commonly use basketry techniques for producing my dailymades. Reviewing a year's work I now realise just how many of these are circular, conical and horn shaped.

plaited paper
dailymade #121021

My aim is to make sculptures rather than baskets though. These constructions rarely have bases, or handles, and are often made from ephemeral materials. I'm interested in assembling and manipulating materials through the process of weaving. Tying the ends of flexible lengths of materials together is a usual starting point and the final shape, largely determined by the nature of the materials themselves, is achieved by working these through improvised or repeated actions. Striking the right balance between the two actions is how the potential in the work is revealed, often in mysterious and surprising ways.

plaited paper
dailymade #121214

With repetition comes certainty and the accidental ends up controlled. When a pattern emerges, this is my cue to stop weaving; the suggestion of a pattern is enough. Repeatedly ‘looping the loop’ is unnecessary because at this stage the open-ended spirals of these woven cornucopias are already full of promise, tempting you to look closer.

assembled cherry prunings
dailymade #120226

plaited phormium leaves
dailymade #120518

coiled modelling balloons
dailymade #120516

woven elder, sycamore bark and grass
dailymade #120610

plaited toilet paper
dailymade #121019

corded and twined napkins and plastic forks
dailymade #120213

coiled paper spills and paper clips
dailymade #120124

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

exploding bird nests

Someone once described contemporary baskets as things that look like exploding bird nests. It was meant as a criticism I believe but no matter, I love that image…

Looking at a whole bunch of dailymades while still in the spirit of the first anniversary of the blog, I’ve put together the selection below with this in mind. There lies an idea for an exhibition... It needn’t be about contemporary basketry or even basketry art, but simply a sculpture show with works informed by the craft as well as a wider practice of weaving. Any interested curators out there?