Drawing Tuesday - pots and/or baskets

Before you start, do have a look at http://contemporarybasketry.blogspot.com/ if you need a little inspiration!

From Mags - At the British Museum it felt like old times , drawing in Room 72 ( Ancient Cyprus ) . Then on the way out spotted this ceramic version of a basket ! 

Then on the way out spotted this ceramic version of a basket ! 

From Sue K - Here’s my basket - used for storing my various reels of cotton. Got a bit lost in the pattern - that’s what goes when trying to be looser! 

From Carol - Here are pots in brass, stone and wood. I am a sucker for big bottom pots so have quite a few. Loved drawing them.

From Ann - A painting and drawing of pots...always enjoyable.

From Judith -  Part of my linen basket. Sailor pen and water brush.

From Joyce - Here’s a pot made by my sister. Very chunky and heavy, looks good with dried seed heads.

From Gill - I bought a lovely basket many years ago which hangs in my dining room. It inspired me to slice up an old painting and weave it back together.

From Janet B - Here is one I did five years ago at a British Museum drawing class with Mags. It was a 30-minute sketch with chalk and charcoal, so inevitably rather messy. Good to be forced out of my 2B comfort zone. 

From Janet K - Chimney pots - slightly askew. The view from our bedroom window.

From me - This topic spurred me on to empty a graceful Japanese basket that had become a dusty home to cola pens, funky brushes, 17 marbles and a few other things. I started trying to do blind drawings (top left) but all that crissing and crossing needed close attention. A chance to use various chunky felt pens.

Inspiration

Keeping my eyes and mind open for ideas for developing my ceramic "chimney pots"... I'm looking for simple but robust shapes and wondering how they might be made of fabric and be firm enough to keep their shape when dipped in clay.

Seen in the British Museum (exhibition of prints and objects from post-war Europe - till 22 January), these vessels are built of slabs of porcelain. They reminded me of strips of fabric, perhaps of creamy woolly blankets -

 This carefully shaped basket sits on a window sill, at the moment - it's made with paper yarns by Polly Pollock, twined around handles from carrier bags. The knots are on the outside, and the inside is smooth, pristine -

Basket case

Started in the Contemporary Crafts course - trying to replicate what looked at first like boat-shaped baskets, but turned out to be based on the shape of weaving shuttles -

It's humbling to compare my laborious, lumpy structure to the ones in the book (maker not noted, alas). I used paper string to finish off the ends, which hopefully look a bit like a stern and/or prow ... to get back to the boat idea.

"Contemporary crafts" course - day 3

Basketry - a whole new world of possibilities!

Having oo'd and ah'd over the samples, we set to work with willow, starting with a demo of how to put the stakes through the cardboard form (holes about 3cm apart) and tie the ends together, and then how to deal with the weavers for the open shapes (which should have an even number of stakes; closed forms need an odd number).

Each of the weavers makes three journey through the stakes. And at the end, it's important to bend the weaver s-l-o-w-l-y. And then there's the business of pulling it through so it doesn't kink....

Here I am, ready to go, inspired by the "shuttle baskets" [which look like boats to me] in a book called Woven into Memory -

And by lunchtime there had been some progress, though my thumbs were feeling rather tender from all that holding down the willow that was bending s-l-o-w-l-y ... and still managing to split! -

Much activity everywhere as baskets grew and grew -

Another demo, this time on how to find the canes together and tuck the ends securely -

I approximated the closed ends, trimmed the sticky-out bits, and will finish off the rest at home with linen thread or paper string -

... but oh my it's very lumpy, with lots of kinks and quite a lot of splitting. Not to mention some (unintentional) assymetry. It would certainly have been easier to do a nice round shape! Now I'd like to start again, using what I've learned about techniques and especially about the way the material behaves, to make an improved version - but that can wait till my hands recover.

We all had a "thing" - in some cases a finished thing - to take home -

A few hours' struggle like this certainly does make you appreciate the skill of basket makers, traditional and contemporary.

Baskets from Rwanda

Stunning, aren't they? They're made by a non-profit Rwandan handicraft company called Gahaya Links, using traditional, authentic patterns. See more pix at adeledejak.com/blog

Art I like - Laura Ellen Bacon

When Origin had a focus on basketry in 2009 this "nest" by Laura Ellen Bacon hung off the edge of the cube that housed the show (in the courtyard of Somerset House).

Not only is her work large-scale and eye-catching, the way it perches on the edges of things gives it fragility - or vulnerability. I imagine her wrestling with the branches, literally bending them to her will and vision ... much determination and focus is needed to make work like this.

Also the idea of something as 'natural' as a nest in an urban environment teeters on the edge, full of contradictions and disjunctions. What sort of bird?-creature made it? Did they think it would be safe here? Were they intending to use it as a shelter, or was making it just the expression of the nest-building imperative? Instead of laying eggs in it, was there some other agenda, a one-upmanship in the pecking order of the species? Or more rationally - did the artist want to use the structure a way of enlarging something that could go unnoticed- perhaps that animals and birds are adapting themselves to city life? Was it a matter of "there will be nice sharp edge/corner, what will look amazing there"? Does seeing this strange object in this strange place make us marvel at new possibilities? What sort of balance is it achieving?

The longer I look at it, the more strange and wonderful it becomes...

Craft fair

"Origin" has replaced the Chelsea Craft Fair, moving this annual display of "the best in crafts" from crowded, hot Chelsea Town Hall to the airier, cooler venue of the courtyard of Somerset House. It's handy for City Lit, so I went along after class and found an hour was about enough to see it all - though thinking about it afterwards, it seems a blur!

The felt necklace that looked like high-octane liquorice allsorts was an eye-catcher - and the maker was wearing a slimmer, more scarf-like version -Interesting jewellery made of layers of paper by Leah Miles -Moon jars by Adam Buick -And the usual knitwear, ceramics, jewellery, etc - but a spotlight on basketry, with a hands-on area where you could deconstruct and reconstruct basketry - an interactive project by Shane Waltener.And some niches exhibiting "interventions" - including works by Dail Behennah, who has made anethereal constructions with stretched fishing line, drawing in space; archictural rolled paper by Elizabeth Murton; work by Shuna Rendell and Lois Walpole; and Laura Street's plaited paper-clay constructions invading a domestic space. "Rising sun" by Kazuhito Takadoi consisted of zillions of tied twigs, with a large branch forming a horizon behind which the sun rose.

Outside, that basket (by Laura Ellen Bacon) slumping off the corner of the building, and this walkway by Lee Dalby -