Soft Blues and Sea Hues

Soft Blues and Sea Hues

The sea has been wild this week. Huge swells have ridden determinedly towards the cliffs, smashed in huge swathes of spray against the Geos and turned the once smooth and glassy horizon into a choppy array of peaks and dips. 

Big Seas and wild spray. The Geos are the huge masses of rock standing like monuments in the surf.

The colours have changed too. From turquoise, aqua, cobalt breakers fringed with delicate white spumes, the waves have become a deep Payne's Grey. They seem to hold the white inside them until they collide, throwing it high into the air. The wind has picked up, the rain has taken on a cold vengeance and for now, my calm, soft green island has become a turgid storm of wind and spray. 

This change in mood has made visiting the studio more of a challenge. Wrapped up in fleece and creaking with waterproofs I have had to park the car in the most hidden corner I can find in the lighthouse quadrangle and then holding the car door with as much force as I can, and grabbing my boxes of yarn, needles, thread and scissors I have to make a complex dive into the old narrow doorway of the studio block slamming the car door as I do so. The car can remain unlocked, key inside for now while I wrestle with the old latch, unbuckling the swinging padlock, leaning and then sort of inelegantly falling into the sudden quiet of the old musty studio block. 

The quiet inside is curious. As I pull the door behind me hard, holding onto the tiniest of latches to do so, the old, thick wood wedges for me and the storm is suddenly outside. It forms a definite break between life out of my studio and the life within. It feels a little like entering Somewhere Else, a place that has withstood the sea for a long time, seen people come and leave, weathered dark nights and calm sunny mornings when the sea becomes playful and the birds pause for a while rather than fighting against the gusts. 

Still stumbling around with my ridiculously disorganised array of things and boxes - I always grab everything I can when I leave the studio to work at home and it must all come back in the morning - I sort of waddle, in all my extra clothing and swishing plastic trousers, through to my own studio closing the doors behind me, leaving the storm further and further behind. I flick on the lights, drop everything and put the heating on. First the heating and then the kettle and then I unpack. Finally with a hot cup of tea, my big coat hung on its hook and my workspace arranged I am finally here.

I can look at the sea through the window rather smugly in my studio. I take photos of it, enjoying the power and control we get from glass. Ha haa! I think to myself. Blow wind blow. Do your worst. I am in a lighthouse! And the light atop my tower turns and turns to tell the boats to stay on their course. I work here beneath that beacon which on dark days like this shines all day way above me and  my safe little desk.

And yet, even with all this quiet now and stillness, the sea creeps into my thoughts, my work, and starts to seep into my tapestries and weavings. The shells gently scatter across the threads, forming rings and mounds - abstracted, but there nevertheless.The years of softening and rounding creep into the cloth and I find I am weaving new cloth that looks as though it has been washed and battered by the deep sea and pebbly shore forever. 

The loom still has the warp in place from the previous work and I pull it further through and knot it in place to create a new section of cloth to be cut and worked. 

A section from Woven Landscape: Fugil Uren II

     This  growing  body  of  work is Fugil Uren, named after the part of coast which inspired it. Tumbles of waves that throw trsasures up onto the pebbly beach. It was a one off piece, an experiment really, slowly turning into a series of pieces and creeping its way into jewellery. I weave the lengths of soft blue through the warp and chop down with the heddle, weave a shade darker, chop down, weave in a touch of grey, a touch of thyme, a web of deeper granite toned steel, more gentle cool blue. It starts to grow steadily, gently weaving the sea into the loom, bringing the cold damp depths inside, but safely, softly into a pallet of tones. 

I think of pottery and glazes, imagine what it would be like if my thoughts of years ago had been accurate, that you could softly weave a glaze onto a pot rather than have to muddy the surface and nervously await a firing that might turn everything a dark stubborn black. I daydream of those days I spent turning vessels and the glaze eases its way into the woven cloth. 

But wool isn't too dissimilar to a glaze. When you have the piece you want and are in love with it a little, you have to cut it off the loom. It is yours like that only for a moment before it is washed and tightens, ironed and smoothed, worked again and trimmed. 

A  tangle of form and texture. 

It is only at the very end of the process that you are truly safe to fall in love with the work. Up until that point it is like a baby that you carry in your womb. You hope and you nurture her knowing that until she's yours and in your arms your baby is just an idea waiting to happen. But you feel the movement within you and just as those kicks reassure you that the life is there, you have moments when what you are making feels right and you feel the finished piece start to stir. But even then, when you feel it is completed you can try a piece on and know that there is still more needing to be done and so it comes off and the needles come out and work begins again.

playing with yarn is impossible to resist...

Fugil Uren will continue to grow as a body of work. And so long as my head is full of blue and my mind filled with the deep waters, the sea will continue to influence my work just as its moods continue to shape our lives out here, blustering and battling with us until calm returns and my gentle green island starts to prepare itself for the softer more playful days that will certainly follow the storms.

Memory Landscape: Fugil Uren
Woven and embroidered neckpiece; 100% Shetland Wool
£130

Kathryn