▧ gates and entrances to entrance ▧

India and gates and iron and steel work. Endlessly fascinating to me and responsible for eating up quite a lot of my camera memory. Every house in and around Mysore in India seems to have such interesting entrances. Like the titles of a book, they were the unique and creative titles of the property. 

(Dreaming of lotus flower gates at home)

In a book shop in India {hours and hours spent in the air con deluxe environment}

I found this delightful book. A reference book for gate designers and makers. 

Screenprinted (quite badly which only added to it's appeal) in red with the odd page printed inexplicably in black or blue it has become my favourite thing that I bought in India.

♒℉ishy business♒

Don't take to the smelling salts just because I am back within the week. I meant it you know. I'm a woman of my word. Which works against me sometimes but that's another looooooonnngggggg story.
It's been a productive week, lots of coming and going, toing and froing, huffing and puffing.
A quick peek-a-boo at some of my moments...

I gathered all my rubber stamps together and made this as a promotional piece. It's all the rubber stamps I have carved recently for various projects. Using my quite ridiculously large collection of inks. (it's one of my cheaper habits)
When I was a porous, diligent art student at The London College of Printing or the LCC as it is known by these days and I extended my printmaking skills, I felt as though I had come home. The thoughtful, meditative quality that comes with printmaking was a great soother to me in those (when I look back on it) quite troubled times. But printmaking is a process requiring equipment and it means making a mess and although I can quite easily manage both of those; the simplicity and ease with which I can quickly carve a stamp is increasingly seductive.
A block of rubber, my trusty lino cutting tools and a selection of ink pads and almost instant results. I teach the basic techniques of this at The Make Lounge.  Everybody can do it once they know how. A few points in the right direction from an experienced maker saves so much time and wasted materials ;-) And we achieve quietness and concentration in class there. Printmaking weaves a spell of contemplation. A yogic focus. If I had a bit more time on my hands I would take a few of the other classes there myself. They all look amazing. 


Here's a few cards I made earlier with some offcuts from book projects, painted watercolour circles and fish and seaweed stamps. I haven't got around to folding them yet, will come back and pop them in the press later when they are dry. It's coming up to lots of birthdays and I love sending cards, HATE buying them.

And in my quieter moments I wander field and woods trying to walk off excess rhubarb cake and keeping the dog happy. It's Spring you know! 

love what I do⏅do what I love

It is time to get my house back in order and reattach myself to this sharing caring blogging process. I had a crisis of faith about the whole thing since coming back from India. My creativity has been tocking away like a metronome & I've been working away like the shoemaker and the elves. 
But didn't want to share it *how mean and shellfish of me* 
I think it was the whole process of looking inwards and not being sure that I liked what I saw and thinking how frivolous my image making and making process is compared to the bigger picture of our existence and blah de blah blah...sometimes introspection is terrifying but I have now realigned myself to .this.is.what.I.do and acceptance is at hand and I am looking at using this 'gift' to change something about my approach to the universe. Sounds complicated right? Jeeez, you wanna stand here for a while. It's a cacophony of voices and ideas and on the verge of madness but I'm harmless enough. 
I just wrestle with why I do this and how perfectly everyone else seems to do it and to be honest how airbrushed it seems when the life I know is messy, dirty, smelly (that's the dog, not me), hyper, critical, argumentative and sometimes just like a box of fireworks that someone dropped a lit match into. 
Fizzing and squibbing into a blackened collapse.


And then I look at some of the creativity that is out there and I have to reattach myself to the community that is more honest than most of 'art' and say, "can I come back in now, it's cold outside?"


India and I, it's love. I miss it but actually it's great to be sparking off with stuff here and blogging and I? It's love too and although I can't share too much 'work' with you due to contractual constrictions here's some snapshots of life behind the hedge at the moment.