If the last Kick-About got us circling around ideas of different pieces and the ties that bind them, this week’s showcase, inspired by the free-associating permissions of Lousie Baldwin’s contemporary textiles, is an offering no less preoccupied with fragments, layers, and bits. Enjoy this latest collection of ‘new works made in a short time’, in the knowledge that civilisation is a fragile thing, configured from acts of creativity, however small.
Marion Raper
“Well my life has certainly been bound up with fabric and stitch. I always have something ‘on the go’. From my earliest days I was making crocheted hairbands, scarves and berets (as worn by Bonnie Parker!) We thought we were so chic! Then came the ‘fab’ colourful clothes of the 60s with such happy memories of village hall discos and crazy parties! The 70s were slightly more sedate as lacemaking and patchwork reappeared. Like countless other sewers, I have a bag of leftover scraps of fabric that instantly take me back to when I made a certain dress, where I wore it and the people I was with then. Next came the wonderful Stage Shows and Carnival Costumes of the 80s. Such a tapestry of music and mayhem with enough memories to fill a book. Even now I am making a baby shawl for a great nephew arriving soon. Time moves on and the world seems a more dangerous place. Yet the basic fabric of life is still the same. There will always be a need for a baby’s shawl.”
Vanessa Clegg
“I’ve been saving the wrappings on my favourite Spanish sugar biscuits and this seemed the ideal prompt to put some to use…it also gave me a theme. So, despite having a schoolgirl knowledge of stitch work (Charly, avert your eyes!) I had a great time cobbling this together.”
James Randall
“After wallowing in the talent on display from the last KA, I rushed off to read about Louise Baldwin and took away sewing and recycling to present you with fabric and a local garbo. I’ve been snapping people from our second story apartment thinking about contemporary reality and how we don’t acknowledge the people who look after our day to day (essential) needs. I drew up the snapped garbo and his trusty truck in Illustrator and filled the shapes with with fabrics from the web – I’ve wanted to try this “fill with texture thing” for a while but have been a little afraid of it resulting in a total time consuming mess – I think it worked though.”
“And because I had the time, I decided to try and push the sewing aspect and digitally ripped the image and “sewed” it down – concept fully abused!”
Phil Cooper
“I didn’t know Louise Baldwin’s work before this prompt, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know it over the past couple of weeks. I love the colour and texture of course, and there’s a dreaminess to the work I’m drawn to. a mood that seems to float between various emotional states. Reading up about Louise’s process I could see how this rather ambiguous sensibility might come about; working directly with the materials, responding to each piece as it is made rather than having a pre-conceived idea of what it was going to be.
This led me to thinking about my own approach to making work, how much of it was intuitive and responsive and how much was planned and conceived. I talked about it to a friend who directed my gaze to the surface of my art table, covered with spattered layers of paint and pigment that had built over many years of working on this surface. The marks were entirely accidental, but this had generated its own particular quality and magic so that the table top ended up looking like an abstract expressionist painting from the 1950s. It’s a lovely thing in its own right, the random marks and colour like a palimpsest, recording the days of my working and living.”
instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com
Gary Thorne
“With sewing not in my skill set, the focus landed on Baldwin’s layering with some interest on pattern, to be applied to still-life painting. Leaning towards a darker palette established a preferred mood, and the overlapping nature of form seems to add spatial ambiguity which is a rewarding discovery for me. There may be an edgy threat within, most likely influenced by the worrying state of current affairs.” Oil on prepared paper 65cmx50cm.
Phil Gomm
“What a joyful prompt this was! Baldwin’s work gave me permission to draw quickly and instinctively, and embrace colour and abstraction, to produce a whole series of exuberant large-scale compositions. I just sat down and drew a few impressions of some of our many houseplants – in this instance, a Pilea peperomioides – and then used them to produce some big bold abstracts. In truth, I could have gone on and on with this, wishing I had the resources to produce them as massive prints for the soft white walls of some airy penthouse atelier. There is such pleasure to be found in colour and the rush and whirl of a few bold lines.”
Kerfe Roig
“I made several attempts to do this in textiles, but it just wasn’t working for me. The design looks much more painterly than textile-ish to my eye, and has an Asian feeling. So I combined watercolor and origami paper. For the first one I glued 3 squares of origami paper on some rice paper and used watercolor and black ink on top. The second one was painted first, then I cut out origami paper dots and glued them on, stitching some embellishment as a nod to the stitching in Baldwin’s piece. Her focus on spontaneity is often my approach in watercolor so that felt right as well.“
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Graeme Daly
“I ran with two things from this week’s prompt – the blobby shapes and the colours!”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
Charly Skilling
“They are like the bits of information, memories and desires that float around our brains”.
I usually spend several days just thinking about a new KA prompt; mulling ideas over, discarding them, then resurrecting them for a second try. Usually, I have a fairly clear plan in my head before I ever pick up crochet hook or pen. But this time I decided to set all prior planning aside and see what was “floating around my brain.” I selected a yarn of which I had sufficient stock for experimenting, found an appropriate size hook, and began to crochet, changing colour, direction or stitch as the whim took me.
At first I just thought “green, nature, outdoors” but as the piece progressed, I found myself thinking more and more of the chalk hills of The Chilterns, where so much of my life has been spent. These chalk ridges, created long ago from the skeletons of innumerable tiny creatures, roll in waves across much of southern England, an everlasting memorial to a receding prehistoric sea. The high ridges have been grazed by sheep and walked by man for millennia, and the thin topsoil has been scraped, and shaped, by Nature and by design, to reveal flowing lines and wondrous shapes, all gleaming white chalk against the green sward. It doesn’t seem so long ago we were flying kites on Ivinghoe Beacon, rolling down Combe Hill’s steep inclines, or chasing across Dunstable Downs, arms stretched wide and coats flapping behind, as though we might take flight at any moment!”
And for our next runaround together, our next creative muse is graphic designer and filmmaker, Saul Bass. Have lots of bold, colourful and typographical fun!
Red's Kingdom 
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