Putting Down Roots

Kings Theatre Creative, in the main street of Kawakawa, is my local gallery.  They close down over Winter for the most part, only running some workshops and programs, and this Winter they did some renovations, but then they open up in Spring and it's always exciting to see what new work and what new artists are showing!

They opened last weekend after a last push to get the floor painted (I rolled up my trousers and lent a bit of a hand) and it looks fabulous.  I have three works hanging on the wall and I'm pretty pleased with how they look.  There are a couple of smaller works in the cabinets from the same series too.

Roots by Charlotte Scott 14cm x 57

Above is the first work in the series.  Do you remember my 100 days project - 100 days of scissors and paper cutting?  The branch shape emerged again and again for me during that project so I wanted to explore it further, but in my favourite medium - fabric.

Some of my 100 Days of Scissors project

And of course I got to thinking about what these branch shapes mean, and how they are also root shapes, which lead to thoughts about how I'm always wondering who I am and whether I actually belong anywhere in particular, whether I have strong roots in this area I've been transplanted to.

Establish and Spread by Charlotte Scott 24cm x 85cm

Unfortunately these wide shaped quilts don't fit blogger very well, but they look pretty cool on the wall!

The second quilt in the series continues my pondering of putting down roots and then using these as a foundation to shoot away and 'bloom where you are planted'.  I was still working with the branch shape.  It's such a fascinating shape and the patterns are reminiscent of rivers, tributaries, neuron pathways - all sorts of meaningful things.

This one has some hand stitching on it too.  The cross stitching joins two pieces of the grey silk together and it was a bit of a metaphor for stitching together disparate parts of my history into the person I am today.

Establish and Spread - detail by Charlotte Scott

I'll show you another of the quilts in the series in my next post, but in the meantime, if you are visiting Northland, then call in at Kawakawa, use the famous Hundertwasser public toilets and visit Kings Theatre Creative and tell me what you think.

The 100 Days Project

The 100 Days Project is over for another year.  This year I had a big stretch where I was as the uggh stage of my project; the 'have to push through' stage.  There was also the 'this is awesome!' stage; the 'I didn't know I could do that' stage; the 'what the heck do I do today?' stage; and the 'I haven't done anything for ages so now I need to do three in one day' stage.

I started the 100 days project again this year after having a very satisfying experience with last year's.  I didn't get all my days done last year, but I felt like I had really achieved something personally with my art.  My theme had been 100 days of faces and I thought I might get to the stage where I was comfortable with drawing faces and using them in my quilts.  I did get really comfortable with faces and I felt I was even reaching a point where I could narrow in on my style - I felt this was a pretty big accomplishment.

So this year I was really excited to get going on another 100.  I chose 100 days of scissors, wanting to see if I could find my voice with free hand paper cutting, with the hope that I could transfer this to my fabric cutting later.

And I have had several stretches of days where I've really thought I had cracked something.  There was a stretch when I was doing branches, I loved almost every one of them, but then I felt I couldn't keep going with them because I thought I'd exhaust myself with them on paper without ever getting them into fabric.  Was that a legitimate worry?

I spent a span of days trying to find a symbol that worked for me.  That was after seeing Dinner at Eight artists share their work that was accepted for a themed show 'Personal Iconography: Graffiti on Cloth', and wondering if I had any particular personal symbols that I could incorporate into more of my work.  Turns out I don't think I do...

So I pushed through and just kept turning up, because that is what it's all about.  Turn up, do the work, form the habits, see what happens.  Sometimes I'd cheat though, and I'd do several days in one go, which helped me work in a kind of series with whatever subject I'd picked.

But mostly I just kept trudging on.  And now we have reached the end of the process.  I'll let you in on a little secret though: I haven't done day 100.... I bought two sketchbooks in the beginning - a black one with 40 pages and a white one with 60.  I must have ripped out a page, or the manufacturers were telling fibs because at day 99 I ran out of pages!  Somehow I just can't bring myself to work on any other surface!

Overall it doesn't feel quite as satisfying as last year - the experience was positive, there are pieces of work that I like and that I want to explore more, but I guess I just don't feel like I reached the same stage as I did last year.

But that's ok, I'll be back for next year's 100 days, because the process teaches you so much, even if you don't reach the creative levels you hoped for.  And now, looking at the photographs of all the work laid out end to end, I'm proud of myself.  That's a good feeling.  I'll be back for a second helping next year.

Here's what day 99 looked like:

And here's the whole project in lots of 20 (you don't see the whole pictures, just thumbnails, and sometimes oddly cropped):

100 Days Project 2017

The 22 May was the first day of the NZ 100 Days Project.  Except it's not just NZ, there are plenty of people from around the world taking part too.  I did it last year and I'm doing it again.  This time with a side-kick, my own built-in accountability partner, my daughter.

We're both working on the idea of paper cutting.  I'm inspired by Matisse mainly, and trying to explore whether I can find my 'voice' or my 'hand' in free-hand paper cutting using scissors.  You can read more about my motivations and how I decided on my project here.

Day One is always exciting.  Will my idea work?  Will it look ok?  Am I going to come to loathe this after 100 days...or after 20?

But so far, so good.

I had absolutely no idea what my scissors would cut, but I always do gravitate towards birds.  So it wasn't much surprise when my finished work looked like this:

Day One was a beautiful day, sitting in the sun with my daughter, discovering with paper and scissors.  It was quick and easy because I'd set myself up for success.  Having a project that is quite specific helps (less choices to make), having a set size (I've decided to use sketchbook pages as my base), and having all the tools I need in one place (we've made a pack with card, scissors, zip-lock bags for small leftovers, storage for finished words and a glue stick) all contributed.  Day Two?  Well, that's today, so we'll see!

If you want to follow along with us, my project is:  https://100daysproject.co.nz/projects/100-Days-2017/charlotte-scott-115
My daughter's project is: https://100daysproject.co.nz/projects/100-Days-2017/olivia-114

I'll also post now and again to Instagram, you can find my feed by clicking on the Instagram icon at the top left of this page.

100 Days Project 2017 - Creative Practice

Last year I took part in the 100 days creative practice challenge.  I found it immensely rewarding.  Frustrating and hard sometimes, but overall I found my art going places I hadn't foreseen and finding ideas I hadn't thought of and possibilities I hadn't discovered.  (You can find my project here.)

So I'm doing it again this year.  It's running earlier, from May till August, which suits me better.  And my daughter is really keen to take part, so I have an accountability partner already!

I learnt a few things last year:

• Keep it fairly small, broad possibilities are sometimes just as paralysing as narrow ones.
• Think about a standard format in case you want to present your work as a whole in a 100 days show.
• Have something new and shiny to work with to motivate you! (Last year mine was a brand new sketch book.)

And I've been thinking a lot about what I want to explore and how.

Last year was 100 days of faces.  I had never felt very comfortable drawing faces or including them in my work.  I'm much more comfortable with them now, but I still don't really include them in my work, so my first idea was to explore adding faces into my quilts.

But that's awfully broad.

So then I started thinking about how I work, what techniques I already use and what techniques I'd like to explore or develop.  100 days of printing was quite appealing.  But it's not very transportable and really does mean that I have to be quite prepared for each day's work.  My life doesn't always run like that...

I've ended up with 100 days of scissors.  A few things lead me to this.  I had been thinking about how I work with a lot of silhouettes in my work and I use scissors constantly.  Then when Matisse and his large paper cut-outs was mentioned on the AQ education seminar that I just went to (more on that later), ideas started to fall into place.  Matisse's 'hand' was very evident in his work, he was sketching with card, using the cut-outs to play with layout and test colour and form.  I do the same with my fabric cut outs, but I'm a lot more 'staid' in my cutting out.  I draw first and cut on the line.  So what will happen if I try and develop my 'hand' by free-hand cutting?  What sort of shapes and forms will appear?  Will you be able to see my voice and style?

So I've been researching Matisse and his gouaches decoupes and I've remembered that I've followed Raymond Saa on Instagram for a while (have I subconsciously been thinking about this longer than I know?) and I found Claire Brewster as inspiration too.  I'm going to keep thinking and researching, but when it gets close to May 22, start day, I'm going to put the books away, stop looking at other's work, and see where my scissors will take me.

My new 100 days project link is here (I think it's working).  I'm charlottewaves (my daughter is oliviawaves, she wanted matching user names and I'm indulging her while she's young enough to still want to be like me).

My shiny new things to add motivation?  A black paged sketchbook, a stack of coloured card and some brand new, very sharp, dedicated to paper, scissors.

Will you be doing the 100 days challenge this year?  And if you are, what's your project going to be?

Edited to add:  Here's the link if you want to sign up http://100daysproject.co.nz click the register button in the top right corner.