Blog posts – Page 3 – sue orton

A new beginning

I am weaving again. It’s been nearly a year.
Slowly my creative juices are flowing back. My confidence and energy are returning.

Beach pebbles and sunsets attract my attention again. Flowers, bees and butterflies hold my senses again. Colour and texture, shape and form are beginning to interest me again; at last.

I sat under my loom a week ago, bending in amongst the shafts, heddles and treadles, puzzled. “Did I ever know how to do this?” I think so.

So slowly a project is forming, gathering and beginning. I have another commission, sent by the spirits of encouragement and inspiration; it’s tugging at my soul. I am joyful, excited and terrified in equal measure.

baskets in the woods

I have just spent two joyful days making bramble baskets in new leafed woodland near Heathfield, East Sussex, facilitated by Ruby Taylor of Native Hands.

The gentle supportive tone and pace of the weekend was set as we were invited to make the short walk into our camp in the woods, silently and to turn off our mobile phones. Each day we joined in the lighting of a campfire, blowing gently to ignite a small spark held in a dry grass bundle to which twigs, sticks and small split logs were added. It became the centre of warmth, support and mindful making.

For our material, we gathered and stripped brambles; a small wall basket with a handle the aim. Each technical step was taught with care and clarity by Ruby. We shared food at lunch times and punctuated our days with plentiful tea and flapjacks. Baskets finished, but not yet trimmed as bramble shrinks, we gathered with joyful surprise at our efforts.

As we contemplated our return to busy-ness, Ruby read The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry to complete a quite beautiful weekend.

“When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Wendell Berry

Return to willow & rush

This Spring I have returned to willow and rush weaving; it’s been joyful to get my hands back onto the beautiful pliable stems. Willow and Rush compliment cloth weaving in the challenges of thinking, of form and of choice of material. My technique is improving but I have a way to go to feel satisfied; a lifetime of repetition. A time of reconnection, review and renewal is ahead.

Willow

generous inspiration

Inspiring books have come into my life these past few months; they arrived in various ways but all with generosity and warmth. I wanted to share them.

The first is by Elizabeth Fisher and Rebecca Fortnum: On Not Knowing: How Artists Think. It’s a chewy book, when slow re-reading and digesting is essential for me. It has chapters like ‘Tactics for Not Knowing’ and ‘Unteachable and Unlearnable’ and ‘Pedagogy of the Not Known’. I am loving it, chewing it and allowing myself to relax a little more into my own puzzles and artistic endeavours.

The second is by Kate Davies: Handywoman. Paralysed by a stroke at the age of 39, Kate’s world turned upside down. Forced to change direction, she took a radical new creative path. Handywoman is not a book about triumph over adversity, rather it is her account of the ordinary activities and everyday objects that stroke and disability made her see differently. Part memoir, part personal celebration of the power of making, it redefines disability as in itself a form of practical creativity.

Spirit of Damselfly

… so to the completion of Sprit of Damselfly. In late autumn last year I put aside time and settled into my weaving. Conversations with my client and a deeper sense of understanding of the essence of the weave had helped me know the structure and sett of the piece. The warp was to be random using fibonacci sequence as I painted the colours on. It was a joy to make. I also decided to weave the weft with blue bamboo over the ‘painted’ warp to give a consistent yet random feel. World it work? Knowing that a settled and clear stretch of days was needed for rhythm and form to be consistent I began. Winding the warps, threading from the back of the loom and then into steady days of weaving. Into December and I was finished in time to send it for a surprise Christmas present. I know it was received well and I am delighted.

Spirit of Damselfly 2017 (a beginning)

A request for a commission came to me last Autumn from the partner of a gifted poet who had admired my South Downs Tweed. My creative ideas had unconsciously started when she sent me a poem ‘Damselfly’ which I had been pondering. ….The process of designing started with a conversation and a wondering … and my notes record ideas and snippets …”damselfly, water, sea, rivers” ….”Spring summer, appreciate the lift of energy,”…”strong rich colours teal, lighter blue, olive greens..” … colours that expand into the bright edge of themselves… ” So my exploring, experimentation and mood board began … and as I looked and pondered my yarn palette grew too. A mix of merino wool and bamboo perhaps…? After a few weeks I decided a point threading would be fun to explore and so using fibonacci numbers to help randomise the warp I painted a warp and went ahead with an experimental cloth to send to my client for her perusal…..