stitchery for a 1950's Diamond Jubilee Carnival Queen

I've set up a little 1950s corner in the studio here in Norway to make a start on the costume for a kitsch 1950s Jubilee Carnival Queen. The backpack pieces are part made and in England waiting to be assembled.

The embroidered bodice panels are full of things relating to 1952, the year the Queen came to the throne.   Amongst other things; the bar code was invented, atom bombs were tested, Singing in the Rain was at the flicks and Muffin the Mule was on the box...
(I suppose this should read 'made in Norway')

 I've also been brushing up on my fifties beatnik speak daddy-o!

More new embroidered work - Little Red

A Scaled up interpretation of part of an ink drawing I did a while ago.

New embroidery work - Crows

Monkey Sees

Deep in the Woods a Crow is Singing


Crow's Eye Q

New work that will get it's first outing to the Beetroot Tree Gallery in a couple of weeks for their show 'Four Legs Good..." more details to follow nearer the time. I'm wondering if these need embroidered text but I'm kind of enjoying the space without the usual words.

Conspicuous Consumption: eat the rich - embroidered head

Today was handover day for the Yorkshire Art loop project. I had to hand on my piece to Gillian Holt, a ceramicist who makes beautifully delicate narrative works (you can see her work here). We met in a pub car park for the handover. Quite peculiar going to meet someone I've never met in a car park to hand over a gaudy clown head, bit like the mafia with red noses - anyway I'm wondering what Gillian will be inspired to make... I'm convinced that whatever it is it will be more tasteful than my offering. I felt vaguely embarrassed handing mine over - I'm wishing I'd shaken myself out of uber-bling carnival mode before I'd started.

Now though I need to think about my next projects...something for the 'Made in Bradford" showcase in a couple of weeks time, we're supposed to be putting in one of our (Burnett + Catt) costumes but I'm thinking it would be great to make something new for it.

I'm also thinking about new work for an exhibition "birds: elementals", a project conceived by the very talented Rockpool Candy which promises to be very exciting, and well travelled, as it will be showing in Northern Ireland, USA and New Zealand. Those birds' wings are going to be knackered.

Conspicuous consumption. New work in progress.

I've been working on a new head..you can certainly tell I'm between carnivals...it's a symphony of bad taste. This one is for an exhibition in Yorkshire in which artists have been asked to respond to another artists work and then pass it on - a kind of visual chain letter.

I received a copper pipe sculpture a couple of weeks ago with some small metal balls inside it. It's reminiscent of those old puzzles where you have to release the balls from a maze. Anyway I had no idea where I would go with it... it's a long way from anything I would do. I was rooting through some fabrics and found an old scarf with a kind of pipework design on it. That started me off ... I added embroidered gold balls...the creature was becoming a joker or trickster of some sort.

Then the riots happened + the news was all about disaffected youth + looting. The disparities between rich + poor are grimmer than they've ever been, we're funding massive bank bailouts to fill the pockets of a tiny percentage of rich people, MPs are looting the public purse to furnish their homes and getting away with it. Meanwhile a kid writing something 'inflammatory' on a social networking site or stealing a bottle of water receives a long custodial sentence. The billionaire 'rich list' is full of the people who own the telecoms companies, the electronics giants, the clothing chains ...the people pushing consumer goods down our throats at every opportunity. I sat looking at my work and the phrase 'down the tubes' kept coming to mind. The head became a 'fool' - 'Eat the rich before they eat us' is tongue in cheek (obviously I'm not inciting cannibalism...). I imagine the rich would taste leathery from sun + botox anyway.

It's not finished. It needs more, more text and frills...

Sofa Monkey + co in progress

I've been attempting to reupholster my old 1960's sofa - I've had it for years and it cost the grand sum of 20 quid form a second hand shop. I used to keep it in the studio and many artists over the years have taken their rejuvenating afternoon naps on it! Anyway I took it home when I moved house a few years back and finally got fed up of its muddy green velour, black paint and pancake flat cushion. I stripped the arms and base back to bare wood and bought it a new foam cushion.

My upholstery skills leave a lot to be desired so I'm aiming for quirky, psychedelic flower power over beautifully crafted. I've finished hand-sewing the bottom cushion together and put on some newly covered buttons - it's gone slightly baggy already so I can see myself having to redo it. I've used a mix of new and vintage fabrics patch-worked together with vintage edgings and military braid.

For the back rest I've decided to make a series of faces that will be patched together, again with braid and vintage edging - I've completed a monkey and a bird - I guess I need another 2 or 3 to finish it.

a weekend at home with a Folk Art cupboard + Madame La Snake

I spent the weekend daubing a knackered old cupboard in my house with my interpretation of 'Folk Art'...It was surprisingly time consuming, I think I stooped over this for 24 hrs and didn't even paint any motifs to the sides yet. Not to mention the 15 minutes I spent wedged on the staircase by the cupboard while I tried to move its fat carcass downstairs.

A pair of silly looking 'love birds' adapted from a fabric design...
A magpie lurking in a Norwegian tree and my XL sized ginger cat Alex
This door has a cartoon of my , long dead, dog Frodo...and a squirrel that was supposed to be holding an acorn but looks like its doing something else.
I also finished the over embellishment of 'Madame la Snake', my ridiculous bejewelled draft excluder....loosely based on my Great Grandma's, which was even more bejewelled and sequined, pretty much the Mme de Pompadour of draft excluders.

Drawing with Thread Exhibition, Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford

I forgot to plug this exhibition! I'm in it, its on at the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford until May 1st if anyones passing through.

Drawing with Thread

Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford

Start date: 05-Mar-2011
End date: 01-May-2011

A new exhibition featuring work by ten contemporary textile artists will be on show at the Shire Hall Gallery from Saturday March 5 to Sunday May 1.

Drawing with Thread will feature artists who all use thread as a drawing tool in their work. The exhibition will feature a mixture of hand embroidered and machine stitched pieces, collage, 3D work and sculptural pieces - as well as an innovative new installation by award winning artist Debbie Smyth.

Other artists include Caroline Kirton, who produces large scale stitched drawings which chart the ups and down of adolescent life which were recently featured in Embroidery magazine, Morwenna Catt who subverts traditional imagery to create tragic toys and dark fairytales and Trevor Smith, a recent graduate of Birmingham City University whose hand stitched embroideries are hotly tipped to make him a future star of Britain's design industry.

For more information people should contact the Shire Hall Gallery on 01785 278345

Market Square • Stafford • ST16 2LD
Telephone: 01785 278345
Fax: 01785 278327
Minicom: 01785 278345
shirehallgallery@staffordshire.gov.uk

Web site: http://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/sams

Opening Times: Mon - Sat: 9.30am - 5.00pm Tue: 10.00am - 5.00pm, Sun: 1.00pm - 4.00pm

The Shire Hall Gallery is located in the Market Square in the centre of Stafford. Car parks, bus stops and railway station are within 5 minutes walk. Stafford is only 3 miles from the M6 (junction 13 or 14).

Freak Exhibition, Shoreditch opens 9th December

I'm making multiples to be sold in the 'Freak' Show shop that accompanies the new Exhibition ( The show opens this Thursday evening: 5pm - 10pm at Shoreditch Town Hall - all welcome.

About the Show:
Freaks and misfits hold a vague and mysterious place inside human consciousness and outside of human comprehension. They can take many forms; a freak of nature, a freak accident or a freak appearance. For centuries freak shows and circuses have fascinated and perplexed the imagination of countless audiences. They show us something which is so close to home but living in a reality so far from what we call normality. These misfits serve as a reminder that our reality is only as concrete as we decide to make it. This exhibition serves to explore the notion of the Freaks and to wholeheartedly engulf its self and viewer into the mysteries of things not quite of this world.
This exhibition displays 35 artist's from around Europe and their visions of what happens when we peer behind the curtain and see the glitches in the makeup of our reality.

Opening Night: Thursday 9th December 5pm - 10pm. All welcome.

Exhibition: 9th - 16th December
open from 10am - 7pm on weekdays and from 10am till 6pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Burnett + Catt - Carnival in progress

We've started stitching the large costumes for Bradford Lord Mayors Parade, the Sun and Moon are well on their way with ridiculous amounts of embroidery being applied late at night to massive swathes of cloak - wearing silly furry heads relieves the cold and the monotony.....



The sun head dress just needs attaching to its back pack - easier said than done as its about 5ft tall. The little dog behind the pink hammock is Tilly.
Tonight I made a start on the 'Smash' Robot who will sit in the basket of the Moon Balloon float. His eyes are way too small at the moment, probably mirroring our late night 'pisshole in the snow' squints. I think I'll give him a potato masher and some old forks to hold in his claws.