Altered Book - North East England

I was looking through my images on my computer and came across these from an altered book I did a few years ago. I have posted pages from this book before but not these. The page above is all about bridges in the North East area. The Tyne bridge was the starting point for these two fabric designs.

The book was to get the inspiration flowing for the Vervey project 'Illusions of the North East'

The Baltic Flour Mills were converted into a gallery [for contemporary art]

I filled my version with images from photos I took, and other images such as the dragon which was on a bag from the Oriental Museum in Durham.

The picture above was changed a little for a canvas picture. And the one below was the idea for a mixed media 3D picture.

Layers Book

The project I am working on with Vervey is called 'Layers'. Most of my work has some sort of layers anyway, but I was finding it difficult to get off the ground. A friend had given me a little sketch book [above] so I thought I would start filling it with ideas to get me started. I ended up filling the whole book of 60 pages [7.5x10cm about ATC size] and it is now a small fat book. I filled the book in 2008 but the project is still ongoing and our first exhibition of the finished art work is in March.

the word layers is cut out

layers of torn papers [dyed, painted wallpaper, coloured & textured paper & print out of own design]

torn papers, machine stitching [own painted & textured papers & one painted wallpaper]

Nine Houses

Mixed media. Part of the 'reworked, recycled, revealed' collection. The idea was to use recycled till receipts, magazines etc, but as I thought these would fade too quickly I scanned them into the computer & printed them. I cut shapes from these sheets, collaged and then appliqued with free hand machine stitching. The exhibition at Barnard Castle ended today, so I won't be showing any more pictures from the two collections for a while. [they can be seen on my web site]

Herrington Park

Mixed Media - background is painted, the images are parts of photographs printed on fabric, appliqued to the background, with additional freehand machine stitching.

The creatures were sculpted in large rocks, the girl and umbrella were part of seats, the bull rushes were near the lake - all things found in Herrington Park withPenshaw Monument in the background, which can be seen from the park too. {part of the 'Illusions of the North East' collection}

Palm Tree Avenue

Mixed Media - the houses are collaged and made from recycled art work [paper], the trees are painted recycled papers/art work. They have been stitched to a fabric background mainly with a sewing machine, but after that broke they were hand stitched. The lines on the fabric is machine stitching. The fabric has been wrapped around a canvas frame. [sold but was part of the 'Reworked, Recycled, Revealed' collection.

Streets Above

Streets Above - recycled fabrics, hand painting, applique, machine embroidery

I'm a member of Vervey [a textile & mixed media group] and tomorrow is the start of our exhibition at Witham Hall Gallery, Barnard Castle, County Durham [13th - 19th August 10.30am - 4pm]. We have some of the work from our two exhibtions - Reworked, Recycled, Revealed & Illusions of the North East and as we all have very different styles it makes an interesting exhibition. Everyone welcome.